PhD Thesis - ResearchSpace@Auckland - The University of Auckland

Britain’. 145 Australia followed Britain’s lead and despite some early interest, as with
New Zealand, continued with the curative approach of sanatoria and surgery. It was
not until 1945 that BCG began to be produced in Australia and was taken over by the
Melbourne-based Commonwealth Serum Laboratories a few years later. 146 The BCG
programme, which commenced in the 1950s, was offered initially the most vulnerable
groups, school leavers and nurses.
Some countries had wholeheartedly embraced BCG. In Japan, BCG was made
mandatory in 1949 and 59 million vaccinations were carried out. 147 Denmark, Norway
and Hungary also introduced mandatory BCG for certain categories of person. 148
Nonetheless, in the United States, BCG was never adopted on a national scale, despite
some extensive testing with good results. 149 Historian Georgina Feldberg has argued
that Americans employed a three-pronged attack on BCG after 1924, by first
challenging the safety and then the efficacy of the vaccine. Later this transposed into
‘the claim that, in the United States, mass vaccination with BCG would not be an
appropriate health measure’. 150 The late 1940s and 1950s signalled the introduction of
drugs to treat tuberculosis, streptomycin and later isoniazid, which were perceived at
the time as alternatives to BCG. 151 Moreover, with declining case numbers, the United
States pointed out that with good living standards traditional tuberculosis control
measures were enough. 152 In adopting this approach the United States, was, by the late
1950s, on its own in rejecting BCG.
In parts of Canada, BCG was given a more positive reception. In 1926 the death rate
in Quebec was 118.6 per 100,000 and 82.5 per 100,000 for the rest of Canada. 153 In
the province of Quebec trials were conducted with BCG which demonstrated a 61
percent decrease in mortality in children 15 years and younger. As a consequence the
145
G. S. Wilson, ‘The value of B.C.G. vaccination in the control of tuberculosis’, BMJ, 2, 1947, p.855.
146
F. B. Smith, ‘Tuberculosis and bureaucracy’, p.411.
147
S. R Rosenthal, BCG Vaccination against tuberculosis, 1957, London, p.54.
148
ibid. Also R. Mande, B.C.G. Vaccination, London, pp.226-27.
149
William Hallock Park conducted trials on infants in 1927 and the incidence of TB was shown to be
less in those vaccinated. In 1942 Joseph Aronson also trialed BCG on Native Americans with
satisfactory results. See G. D. Feldberg, Disease and Class. Tuberculosis and the shaping of modern
North American Society, New Jersey, 1995, pp.166-67 and p.172.
150
G. D. Feldberg, Disease and Class. p.175.
151
ibid., p.194.
152
ibid., p.210.
153
G. J. Wherrett, The Miracle of the Empty Beds. A history of Tuberculosis in Canada, Toronto, 1977,
p.62.
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