The 1955 Salk Polio Vaccine and the 1957-61 Niles Leukemia Cluster: A Flawed Investigation by the U.S. Public Health Service

Abstract

A 1963 U.S. Public Health Service study of the 1957-1961 leukemia cluster of eight children in Niles, IL, gave cursory attention to the possible role of the Salk polio vaccine in the etiology of the leukemia. Entitled “Leukemia among Children in a Suburban Community,” and published in the American Journal of Medicine, 34:796-812 June, 1963, the study was reprinted as a “Classic in Oncology” in CA — A Cancer Journal for Clinicians, 40, 1:27-50 Jan.-Feb., 1990. Focusing on the physical environment of the school and church community to which six of the children belonged, the study either overlooked or ignored the presence of live polio virus in the first two inoculations received by first and second graders in Chicago and its suburbs in the spring of 1955. Had the investigators considered the 1955 vaccine as a vector of the disease, their conclusions might have been other than to say the etiology of the leukemia cluster could not be determined.

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References

Heath

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Jr. , and Hasterle

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40, 1: 27–50, Jan./Feb.

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See also Child & Family, 1988, 20: 134–138.

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Bookchin , p. 68.