After Polio, What?

After Polio, What? Hundreds of top-drawer medical scientists gathered in Manhattan last week for a conference arranged to celebrate the 65th birthday 9f Basil O'Connor, president of the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis. Chief Justice Earl Warren, on hand to pay tribute to his old friend and fellow lawyer, said that under O'Connor's leadership "the foundation has effectively conquered polio, and is within arm's length of its great goal--extinction of the disease."

The very success of the battle against polio raised a big question: What happens to the foundation now? Mushrooming since 1938 into an empire with 220 people in its Manhattan headquarters and some 250 constantly on the move around the country keeping in touch with 90,000 volunteers in 3,100 chapters, it has collected 3 billion dimes, has dispensed $28 million for medical and scientific research alone.

Rather than disband this organization with its vast experience, could it be used on some other front in the war against disease? Said O'Connor: "We've considered three alternatives. One would be to shut up shop. Quit. But I don't think the public would let us. Another would be to pick out another specific disease. But we hesitate to chop off a big hunk of disease. The third alternative would be to pick out a broader area of activity. Geriatrics and mental disease are the two biggest problems in the U.S., but the size of the program needed to tackle them would be forbidding. I wish I knew what to do."

Last week the best bet still was that O'Connor's foundation staff would move into mental health.

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At Basil O'Connor's birthday conference, Vaccinventor Jonas E. Salk had fun with what he admitted was a flight of fancy: that the kind of vaccine he developed against polio might some day be used against other diseases, including ulcers. Many viruses, Salk noted, can lie dormant for years in the human body (a common example is the virus of the cold sore). Some may attack the nerves and do only slight initial damage. In later life these neglected infections may have serious aftereffects. For instance, said Salk, severe hypertension and gastric or duodenal ulcers can occur as a result of damage to the central nervous system. Although he made no claim to have such a vaccine now, Salk speculated that it might eventually be possible to give whole populations immunity in early life against viruses that attack the nervous system.

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