State Committee Approves Resumption of Salk Shots

Salk Vaccine was approved for use in Massachusetts by the State Committee on Polio Vaccine last night after a six and one-half hour meeting at the State House.

Effectively, the decision means that Massachusetts will resume its program of inoculating children fifteen years old and under some time this spring. The inoculations were halted last summer. By reaching this decision before Feb. 1, Massachusetts became eligible for $670,000 in Federal aid for the vaccinations.

The Committee, whose membership includes John Fe. Enders, associate professor of Bacteriology and Immunology and Thoman H. Weller, Richard Pearson Strong Professor of Tropical Public Health, winners of the 1954 Nobel Prize for their work in growing the polio virus, did not give the vaccine its unqualified support. The report, read to the press last night by Samuel B. Kirkwood, clinical professor of Maternal Health and State Public Health Commissioner, said "the vaccine is very definitely in the developmental stage," and that it might be possible "in rare instances" for live virus in the vaccine to induce the disease.

Safer Standards

But the Committee was generally satisfied with recent more stringent safety standards for current vaccine production and said, "the protection to expected is now greater than the potential risk to the vaccinated individual" and his contacts.

Last night's decision reversed the Committee's earlier stand, announced Dec. 2, which continued the bar to the use of the vaccine, contending that it was not proven safe.

The Committee concluded, however, that "there is no evidence that the vaccine cansed the recent epidemic in Massachusetts."

Another factor in the Committee's making a decision at this time was the fact that the inter-epidemic period is the "safest time for vaccination."

Medical School Faculty members on the 19-member Committee are:

Dr. Stewart H. Clifford, Dr. Monroe D. Eaton, Dr. R. Cannon Eley, Enders, Dr. Maxwell Finland, Dr. William T. Green, Janeway, Dr. Brooks Ryder '40, Dr. Louis Weinstein, Dr. Weller, and Dr. Conrad Wesselhoeft '08.