An American Vaccine Disaster 65 Years Ago: Lessons for Today

"Remember the Cutter Incident!" The phrase is not exactly the same sort of watch word as "Remember the Alamo." 

But it does have fresh resonance today. The Cutter Incident was a vaccine disaster in America 65 years ago. The case is the keystone of a column yesterday in the Los Angeles Times that said, "History tells us that speed kills."

The comment came from Arthur Caplan, a bioethicist at NYU Langone Medical Center and a co-author of an article this week in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) that sounded a warning in the rush for a Covid-19 vaccine. 

Caplan spoke about the matter with Michael Hiltzik, a business columnist at the Times and author of "Big Science." Hiltzik's column appeared one day before the California stem cell agency is set this afternoon to consider more applications in its $5 million Covid-19 funding round. (Vaccines also came up at last Friday's meeting of the agency's governing board.)

Hiltzik wrote, 

"If anything is known for sure about the scientific battle against the novel coronavirus, it’s that the quest for a vaccine has been unprecedentedly intense, with rapid development and speedy production the paramount goals."

The Cutter Incident, Hiltzik said, is example of the perils of speed. It involved errors in a polio vaccine produced in 1955 by Cutter Laboratories. An estimated 40,000 children contracted polio from the vaccine. About 200 were permanently paralyzed. Ten died. 

Hiltzik wrote, 

"The so-called Cutter incident was 'one of the worst biological disasters in American history, exploded the myth of the invulnerability of science and destroyed faith in the vaccine enterprise,' observed Paul Offit, a vaccine expert at the University of Pennsylvania whose 2005 book is the definitive account of the episode."

The polio vaccine was halted in its tracks during the summer of 1955. Hiltzik wrote, 

"Public confidence in the vaccine was shattered. 'The summer of 1955 came and went with few children getting their shots,' historian David Oshinsky, a co-author of the JAMA article, recounted in his 2005 history of the epidemic. Major outbreaks occurred in Boston and Chicago. 'It seemed like old times, with beaches and movie theaters once again deserted and people fleeing the cities to escape the evil germs.'"

Hiltzik concluded, 

"Clinical trials won’t be the final hurdle in bringing vaccines to the world. Managing the public’s expectations will be crucial, since no vaccine for anything is 100% effective. So will ensuring that the manufacturing process is airtight.

"With anti-vaxxers and conspiracy theorists already spreading wild stories about the coronavirus, it would be a shame to give them more ammunition.

"'In this world, where there’s so much vaccine hesitancy and doubt,' Caplan said, 'you better get it right, out of the box. You can’t afford a failure. Even knowing that we’re in desperate need of a vaccine and the deaths are happening, I worry that if we don’t do it right, it’s going to be worse.'"