The experts had just pronounced the Salk anti-polio vaccine both safe and effective. Three years ago, University of California Psychologist Robert M. Gottsdanker was delighted when he succeeded in getting one of the first shots for daughter Anne Elizabeth," 5. Equally happy was Engineer Charles Phipps of Monrovia (near Los Angeles), who got a shot for his son James Randall, 15 months.
Within a fortnight, the joy gave way to anguish. The Gottsdanker and Phipps youngsters, like 77 others inoculated with vaccine made by Berkeley's Cutter Laboratories, came down with polio.* Live virus was found in six (of 17) Cutter vaccine batches. The U.S. Public Health Service reached the "presumption" that the cause of the disease in people getting shots from the six batches was the vaccine itself, promptly tightened up its previously hit-or-miss testing methods to make sure that no more live virus got through.
Nothing Left? Last week, little Anne Gottsdanker was in Alameda County Superior Court; she was paralyzed in both legs, had a heavy brace on one. Randy Phipps dangled a severely disabled left arm. For 27 days, a jury of eight women and four men under Judge Thomas J. Ledwich had heard reams of technical testimony to help them decide: Was the children's polio caused by the vaccine? Was there live virus in the vaccine? If so, was Cutter negligent in letting it get through? Was there, with every ampoule of vaccine, an "implied warranty" that the preparation was safe? On their answers hung suits for $300,000 by the Gottsdankers, $65,000 by the Phippses.
For the jury, the first two answers were easy: yes on both counts. The issue of negligence developed into a long-distance battle between two giants of medical science. From Pittsburgh came a massive, 142-page deposition by Vaccinventor Jonas E. Salk, called by the plaintiffs' resourceful, aggressive Attorney Melvin ("King of Torts") Belli (pronounced bell-eye). Though Dr. Salk expressed no overt criticism of Cutter, if the jury believed him it had to conclude that something went wrong at Cutter. For Salk stuck doggedly to his view that the killing of polio virus with formaldehyde solution to make a safe vaccine is a "first-order reaction" and that its progress and its end point (when there should be not a single particle of live virus left) can be predicted and plotted with a straight-line graph on logarithmic paper.
The trouble, he conceded, is that only the amount of virus killed during the first few days can be measured; after that, there is so little left alive that it may not be detectable. But, he insisted, it goes on getting killed at the same proportionate rate. Practical results in his own laboratory have proved his theory, said Dr. Salk; he can produce safe vaccine with no live virus every time. So could other manufacturers at the time of the Cutter incident. He doubted that some of the tougher testing requirements later imposed by P.H.S. were necessary.