Francis Calls Salk Vaccine Most Effective

Dr. John F. Enders, associate professor of Bacteriology and Immunology at the Medical School and leader of the University research team which won a Nobel prize for its work in cultivating poliomyelitis virus, last night expressed delight at the success of the new Salk polio vaccine. "All concerned deserve a great deal of credit," he said.

The results of extensive tests made last spring, when 440,000 primary school children were injected with the vaccine, showed 80 to 90 percent success, Dr. Thomas Francis, Jr., University of Michigan epidemiologist announced yesterday. Francis was in charge of an evaluation of the tests.

In a statement of Francis' report made last night, the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis paid tribute to the work done at the University in 1949 by Enders, Dr. Thomas H. Weller, Richard Pearson Strong Professor of Tropical Health at the School of the Public Health, and Dr. Frederick C. Robbins, a former associate of Enders and Weller, who is now at Cleveland's Western Reserve Medical School.

"Their discovery paves the way for the growth of the virus in quantities massive enough for use in a vaccine," the statement said. October's Nobel Prize citation hailed the team's discovery of "the ability of poliomyelitis to multiply in tissue from primates."