Medicine: N.G.

Does it do any good to be inoculated against the common cold?* This question has stumped the experts ever since the capsules, shots and sprays were introduced. Last week the American Medical Association’s Councils on Pharmacy and Industrial Health gave their considered answer: there is still no proof that the vaccines do any good. Experiments on large groups of people show that the cold rates of those with and without vaccines tend to even up in the course of time. The A.M.A.’s official advice: no doctor should give cold vaccine except as an experiment; industrial groups should not be inoculated en masse.

* The vaccines used in cold inoculations are usually made by growing cultures of germs from people’s noses, then killing the cultures. As colds are mixed infections, the resulting vaccine is almost always a mixture of dead germs.