Medicine: Boost for TB Vaccine

Doctors disagree sharply on the value of vaccination against tuberculosis with BCG, the Bacillus of Calmette and Guéerin (TIME, Sept. 23). Nearest approach to a consensus is that BCG is not to be recommended for people enjoying high standards of sanitation and health, but may be good for those with low resistance, living in overcrowded conditions, and those exposed to TB victims. Now the results of a long-term experiment show how effective the vaccine can be. In the Archives of Internal Medicine, three University of Pennsylvania researchers report striking benefits among American Indians who got BCG as children. Of 3,000 youngsters in the study, half were vaccinated in the 1930s, while the others (from the same families and tribes, identical in all other ways) were left unvaccinated for comparison. Checked 20 years later, the unvaccinated were found to have had more than five times as many deaths from TB as the vaccinated—68 as against 13.