Foundation Fight

U.S. medicine last week witnessed the strange spectacle of two large, well-meaning foundations fighting over which one has the franchise to help the sick in a large and serious disease field. After 20 years of vigorous life, during which it raised $560 million (virtually all from the March of Dimes), the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis announced last week a change of name and a raising of its sights against far commoner ills than polio. Henceforth to be called simply the National Foundation, the aggressive organization that spent $34 million on the research that produced (among other gains) the Salk vaccine * will turn its attention to two other cripplers: the rheumatic diseases and defects present in children at birth.

When President Basil O'Connor announced the decision that had become an ill-kept secret (TIME, July 21), the foundation was accused of claim jumping on an area already staked out and actively worked by another group, the Arthritis and Rheumatism Foundation. Also headquartered in Manhattan, it has Industrialist Floyd B. Odium as chairman and World War II's brush-cut General George C. Kenney as president. Founded in 1948, it has raised progressively larger amounts in annual fund drives, took in almost $3,000,000 last winter.

Chairman Odium (an arthritis victim himself) wrote O'Connor in January of 1957 suggesting that the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis and the Arthritis and Rheumatism Foundation merge for an all-out attack on rheumatic diseases. Through last spring, committees of the two foundations met to hammer out terms, but could not agree. Main reasons: the A. & R. F. allows its local chapters wide autonomy, lets them raise funds independently or through United Fund drives, also lets them allocate funds for research in neighborhood medical centers. N.F.I.P. forbids its chapters to join in any concerted fund drive, and it refused to guarantee that local commitments would be allowed to run their course. When the A. & R. F. asked the N.F.I.P. to stay out of its bailiwick for at least a year, N.F.I.P. replied: "Individual diseases are not the personal property of individual organizations."

The field ought to be big enough for all without sphere-of-influence fights. Estimates of U.S. rheumatic disease victims run as high as 30 million. About 4,000,000 of them need medical treatment every year, perhaps as many as 1,000,000 for severely crippling rheumatoid arthritis. In lost wages these diseases cost the nation $1.2 billion a year; in tax funds for patient care, $125 million; and in lost income taxes, $195 million.

The National Foundation could tick off a substantial victory in its battle against polio. In the U.S. this year there have been 913 cases of polio reported, as against 1,979 at this time last year. But 438 of this year's cases have been specified as paralytic, only 317 nonparalytic (the rest are unspecified). Inexplicably, out of a hearteningly smaller total of cases, a higher proportion are paralytic: 58% as against 46%. Nobody knows the reason for this. Some 70 million Americans have now been vaccinated (50 million with three shots); since some do not respond to the vaccine and develop no immunity, there is a widening pool of vaccinated subjects who may still get paralytic polio. But why do these people not respond? Vaccinventor Jonas E. Salk has spent most of the summer studying non-responders. Last week all he would say was: "The essential point is that the proportion of individuals who do not respond is influenced by vaccine potency." Last summer there was considerable evidence (TIME, July 15, 1957) that some of the vaccine, whose manufacture is highly complex, is not potent.

* By far the biggest bite, $316 million, has gone to finance the care of paralyzed polio victims (including supply of iron lungs).

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