Infectious Diseases: The Great Pox

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Venereal disease does not attract many medical researchers. There never have been great numbers of syphilologists, and their numbers and efforts have been sharply reduced since the 1945 discovery that penicillin is a fast and almost certain cure for early syphilis. But last week, as the most prominent U.S. syphilologists met in Denver for a VD seminar, it became clear that the cutback in research is premature. What is urgently needed is a vaccine against the disease.

The Contacts. Before a cure can be effected, the victims must be identified and their contacts traced. Of about $10 million appropriated by Congress for syphilis control, nine-tenths goes for finding cases and contacts and less than $1,000,000 for research into methods of prevention.

Baylor University's Dr. John Knox is convinced that if as much money were put into syphilis research as went into research on polio — which did not kill or cripple as many people — a vaccine could be found in a few years. But the spirochete of human syphilis is a maddening germ that refuses to grow in the test tube or in most animals. And syphilis research is under way at only four or five U.S. medical centers.

At the University of Michigan, Dr. Albert H. Wheeler is working with rabbits, but he lost federal support of his 1964-65 work because he did not seem to be getting results.

At the U.S. Public Health Service's Communicable Disease Center outside Atlanta, Dr. Wilbur Deacon is working with monkeys. Next year, if Congress approves an appropriation of $175,000 covering his work, Dr. Deacon hopes to test human and other spirochetes in chimpanzees. These animals are expensive, but they will bring Dr. Deacon closer to man than any other syphilis vaccine researcher yet.

Untreated Million. Lest anyone doubt the severity of the syphilis problem, the PHS's Dr. William J. Brown declared that it is, in fact, a raging epidemic, especially among teenagers, and most noticeable among recorded cases in city slums. His statistics:

> Some 120,000 new cases each year in the U.S.; up to 12,000 deaths.

> At least 1,000,000 untreated U.S. cases.

> No less than 25% of untreated cases end with syphilitic heart disease.

> Among Americans under 20, an estimated 650,000 venereal cases (syphilis or gonorrhea) each year.