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Modern methods of diagnosis make it possible to diagnose the
disease often in the absence of paralysis, and it is because this is so that
there will be an apparent increase in the number of cases compared
with the days when a diagnosis was never made until paralysis had set in.
There is at the present time a very extensive research being conducted
into Infantile Paralysis; whether anything will come of it I do not know,
but I am not very hopeful. The prevention of Infantile Paralysis is not
one of those things of which I can say we have reason to believe that the
answer is "just round the corner."
Although I am not at all optimistic about the prevention of Infantile
Paralysis at the present time, I am delighted to be able to say that during
my lifetime there has been an enormous improvement in treatment and
certainly, distressing as it must be to any parent to learn his or her child
has Infantile Paralysis, it is not nearly such a distressing thing as it was
when I was a young boy.
Question:—Would you advise me to allow my child to undergo
a T.B. prevention course?
Answer:—The answer to this question is undoubtedly Yes, but I
want to make it quite clear this is an experiment. It is an experiment
which cannot be tried out in a test-tube or on animals; it can only be
tried out by actually testing the children themselves.
What happens is this—all the children whose parents volunteer are
X-rayed, and in other ways tested for tubercle. This is a special examination,
much more detailed than can be done by routine, and in itself is
worth while. What is more, these examinations will be repeated from
time to time for some years, and this is still more worth while. These
children will then be divided into two groups, some of whom will be
artificially protected and watched, and some of whom will be watched
without being artificially protected, and in this way it will be possible to
find out how worth while is the artificial protection when it is employed
in mass, which is the question before those who are undertaking the
research.
Now there are certain other children whom we want to be protected.
These children are selected by your doctors, principally by the Tuberculosis
Officer, and the Tuberculosis Officer is the expert in this matter.
These children (who, for one reason or another, should be treated) in my
opinion must be treated. Not that I mean compulsion should be used—
indeed, we hope there will never be need to ask for such compulsory
powers—but I do mean that at this stage of our knowledge it is utterly
obligatory that these children should be treated in this way because
although there is a question as to whether mass immunisation is a principle
to be advocated or not advocated, there is, in my opinion, no question as
to the efficacy of this immunisation against tuberculosis in individual
cases.
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