Trial at Lübeck
In Paris last week a deaf old professor with a long beard was buying newspapers, searching them anxiously for news from Germany. He was Leon Charles Albert Calmette, 68, who with Veterinary Surgeon Alphonse Guerin developed Bacillus Calmette-Guerin, commonly called BCG vaccine, for tuberculosis immunity (TIME, Aug. 4, 1930 et ante). Year and a half ago 76 infants in Lübeck died after administration of BCG. Last week three Lübeck doctors and a nurse were on trial for manslaughter and criminal negligence. Question to be answered at the trial: Could the vaccine have become virulent without outside interference, or was bungling of its administration responsible for the deaths?
Professor Calmette has no doubt that his vaccine is harmless. It is prepared from living bovine tuberculosis germs. The germs are cultured for many germ generations in glycerinated ox-gall until they become non-virulent. If fed to infants in three doses during the first ten days of life, the vaccine is supposed to immunize them against tuberculosis. Dr. William Hallock Park, director of the New York civic health laboratories, has certified Dr. Calmette's claims. Last week he said: "We have not had a single accident in the use of the vaccine." Nearly 400,000 French babies and 70,000 Rumanian babes have been given the vaccine. The Hygiene Commission of the League of Nations has declared BCG harmless. But many bacteriologists have continued to insist that the live germs cause rather than prevent tuberculosis. Last week both sides in the controversy looked toward Lübeck for substantiation of their claims.
A State commission investigated the 76 deaths at Lübeck, held they were due to "omission of laboratory precautions" in preparing the vaccine. At the trial Professor Georg Deycke, director of the Lübeck municipal hospital, sought to take all the blame. He said his belief in the usefulness of BCG was "a scientific error," declared subsequent tests had convinced him that the vaccine was a perfect means of introducing tuberculosis into the bodies of the vaccinated children. Weeping, he begged that the other three defendants be freed, said the judges need feel no scruples in taking his life: "I have often wished during the last 18 months that night would break over me."
Dr. Ernst Alstaedt, chief of Lübeck's board of health, who sanctioned use of the vaccine, promptly denied that it was harmful. Other witnesses testified that the labels sometimes slipped off the cultures and that they might have been put back on the wrong containers. This the accused nurse, Anna Schütze, denied. Professor Wilhelm Kolle, a witness, lost his patience, shouted: "These attacks against Dr. Calmette are abominable! It is impossible for me not to protest, because these accusations are brought against a savant of spotless reputation but who happens to be a Frenchman!"
Last week parents of the dead Lübeck children, who had attended every session of court, grew weary of arguments. As a lawyer attempted to defend the Calmette vaccine they filled the courtroom with shouts, temporarily broke up the trial.