Medicine: Measles & Hairy Ears

When famed Harvard Nobel Laureate John Franklin Enders announced at a Manhattan meeting three years ago that he had isolated measles virus, his fellow virologists stood up and cheered. It would not be long, they hoped, before a vaccine could be developed to wipe out a disease that sends one child in 4,000 to institutions for the feebleminded. But the first live virus vaccine developed by Enders left much to be desired; four of five children got severe fevers, roughly half developed a rash. Last week, after much toil by Enders and others, a group of Pennsylvania physicians and virologists announced that they had successfully tested a measles vaccination technique. Children are first inoculated with Enders vaccine, which gives nearly 100% protection. Then, almost immediately, they are injected in the same arm with gamma globulin, which holds undesirable side effects, such as fever and rash, to a minimum. The Public Health Service still must approve the new measles technique, establish manufacturing standards. If all goes well, a vaccine will be on the market next year, just as measles heads toward its next cyclical peak.

Other news last week in the world of genes, germs, poisons and pains:

>Theorizing that musical talent is an inherited trait, famed Italian Otolaryngologist Leopoldo Fiori Ratti gave musical aptitude tests to the parents of the Vatican’s Pueri Cantori choirboys and other children picked at random. At the Second International Congress of Human Genetics in Rome last week, he reported that 60% of Pueri Cantori parents had high musical aptitudes (though not necessarily training or interest), while only 20% of other parents showed high scores.

> Reporting on hairy ear rims around the globe at the Rome genetics meeting last week, Dr. R. Ruggles Gates of London showed that the werewolfish trait is sexlinked. Only men have hairy ear rims, and nearly all of their sons inherit growths. On the other hand, their daughters have hairless ears, and so do those daughters’ sons. The chromosome responsible: Y, the male sex determinant.

> Please don’t eat the wisteria, the U.S. Public Health Service warned, in effect. The pods of wisteria vines, particularly in the South, where the plants grow profusely, make children severely ill with vomiting, diarrhea and abdominal swelling.