Medicine: Vaccine Safety

Seldom had the U.S. seen its scientists in sharper public disagreement—and on a matter so immediately involving the health of millions. After a closed huddle in Manhattan, a committee of 26 polio and public-health experts last week publicly agreed with the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis that inoculations of Salk vaccine should continue through the summer polio season. The probable benefits, the committee reasoned, outweighed the possible hazards. In Washington four days later, Tennessee's James Percy Priest called 15 topflight vaccine experts before the House Interstate and Foreign Commerce Subcommittee on Health and Science and got some quite different answers.

Cincinnati's respected...

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