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PHS officials, headed by Surgeon General Leonard Scheele, were in huddles all week long, much of the time with an advisory committee of top virologists, trying to figure out what to do. One bright suggestion, from state health officials: try giving only 1½ drops (Vw cc.) of vaccine, instead of a whole cubic centimeter, to stretch the supply. Furthermore, inject it not into the muscle, as now, but under the skin or between the skin's layers (in hopes that this is less likely to provoke paralysis). At week's end the advisers and PHS decided against this course because it is untested.
Also on its outside experts' advice, the PHS advised local authorities to go ahead giving second shots all through the polio season, because the "slight immunity resulting from the first dose of vaccine will most likely provide protection against any [harmful] effect." Yet even while the PHS talked of ways and means to continue the shots, and while parents were still being urged to let children be vaccinated, experts kept showing serious doubts as to the vaccine's safety under present testing procedures.
All week the air was full of brickbats for Secretary Hobby and her department, although President Eisenhower defended her (see NATIONAL AFFAIRS). In retrospect, a good deal of the blame for the vaccine snafu also went to the National foundation, which, with years of publicity, had built up the danger of polio out of all proportion to its actual incidence, and had rushed into vaccinations this year with patently insufficient preparation.