Medicine: Polio Tempest

The American Medical Association has consistently backed Salk vaccine as the most effective means of preventing paralytic poliomyelitis. Last week in seeming contradiction, the A.M.A. Journal printed a judgment that "much of the Salk vaccine used in the U.S. has been worthless" — a charge that could snarl plans to get millions of Americans inoculated before polio begins its 1961 northward march with advancing summer. The Scripps-Howard newspapers headlined the statement, and Congressman Kenneth Roberts of Alabama urged an investigation.

The Journal's seeming switch came on its "Questions and Answers" page, where it printed an inquiry from an anonymous Wisconsin doctor...

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