THE SALK VACCINE
SIR,—Doctor Byrne, in his article of July 22. entitled 'The Salk Vaccine Fiasco,' presents a rather distorted case against the Salk vaccine In the first place it is perhaps impossible to realise in England that during the summer months in North America there exists an ever- present fear of poliomyelitis. In England, the, disease is rarely, if ever, epidemic on the scale present in North America, so that Dr. Byrne and his colleagues can afford to be phlegmatic about It. Secondly, questioning the safety of the vaccine, Dr. Byrne mentions, but other- wise entirely ignores the fact that a million children have received the vaccine (this means that two million doses have been given, since each child has now received two injections), without a single serious reaction. Surely this is an indication that the vaccine, prepared according to Salk's formula, can be made safely, Is it therefore justifiable to condemn the vaccine because of the failure of one or two US firms to insure that their product was free from the living virus?
It is true that there was much publicity and perhaps premature enthusiasm about the vaccine, but again 1 would remind Dr. Byrne of the terror which exists in the minds of most people here during the season when polio is epidemic. To those of us medical men who heard and saw the television broadcast of the 1954 trials of the vaccine, the matter was care- fully, scientifically, sanely presented—and thrilling!
I believe that the Salk vaccine will be justi- fied on the basis of Canadian trials this year and next, and by an extension of a safer pre- paration in the US in the near future. Then perhaps, in about fifteen or twenty years, when a few thousand more British children have been cripplied by the disease, Dr. Byrne and the Public Health Authorities in England will consider that the vaccine is safe to use. In the words of Dr. Byrne, 'Thank God for British phlegm' 1—Yours faithfully,
G. OLYN JONES,
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