PhD Thesis - ResearchSpace@Auckland - The University of Auckland

vaccine is successful our remedy for polio is at hand, and a huge vaccination
programme will have to be got underway’. 15 It was therefore advisable, in Caughey’s
view, ‘to plan a system of mass vaccination at the earliest possible date’ particularly
as another polio epidemic was forecast for 1955. 16 Other eminent health professionals
were also enthusiastic about the polio vaccine. J. A. R. Miles, Professor of
Microbiology at Otago Medical School, believed that the Salk vaccine was the
‘largest single step in the fight against the disease’. 17 With the announcement of the
success of the field trials the New Zealand government wasted no time in preparing
initial plans for an immediate mass immunisation campaign. To facilitate this,
Cabinet announced that a committee with the power to purchase the new Salk vaccine
would be set up consisting of the Prime Minister, the Minister of Finance, and the
Minister of Health. 18 It was hoped initially that enough vaccine could be purchased to
immunise all children up to age 15 and, by including the Finance Minister, it was
hoped delays could be avoided, particularly as the threat of an epidemic loomed
large. 19 The Health Department, backed by the Cabinet, was keen to implement such
a scheme, knowing it would receive the full support of the New Zealand public.
The Cutter Incident
Almost as soon as the success of the trials reached New Zealand, reports began to
trickle in that some of the vaccine used in the mass immunisation programme in the
United States was causing paralytic polio. Cutter Laboratories of Berkeley,
California, one of five companies to make the vaccine, were having problems
inactivating the poliovirus and some batches of vaccine that had passed safety tests
still contained live poliovirus. 20 Although the majority of cases were caused by the
Cutter vaccine, all the other four United States manufacturers were having
inactivation difficulties and one lot of Wyeth’s vaccine had also caused cases of
paralytic polio after live virus had not been killed. 21 The ‘Cutter Incident’ as it
15
Evening Post (EP), 17 February 1955.
16
ibid.
17
Dominion (D), 14 April 1955.
18
New Zealand Herald (NZH), 19 April 1955.
19
J. Ross, ‘A History of Poliomyelitis in New Zealand’, p.82.
20
For a full discussion of the Cutter Incident see, P. A. Offit, The Cutter Incident. How America’s first
polio vaccine led to the growing vaccine crisis, 2005, New Haven. The other companies were Wyeth,
Pitman-Moore, Eli Lilly and Parke-Davis.
21
P. A. Offit, The Cutter Incident. pp.102-03.
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