THE CHEMICAL WORLD THIS WEEK
GERMAN MEASLES:
Swiss License Vaccine The Swiss Federal Service of Public Hygiene has granted the first license in the world for a vaccine to combat German measles (rubella) to Recherche et Industrie Therapeutiques ( R I T ) , a Belgian wholly owned subsidiary of Smith Kline & French Laboratories, Philadelphia, Pa. The vaccine contains the live (attenuated) Cendehill virus strain isolated in Belgium by Abel Prinzie, M.D., R I T s director of research and development. RIT has built a new $2.8 million plant at its Genval site (near Brussels) to make the new vaccine. Attenuation—a method used to weaken the potency of live virus—is achieved by passing the Cendehill strain through rabbit kidney tissue cultures 53 times. According to Thomas M. Rauch, SK&F president, the vaccine has achieved seroconversion rates—the percentage of susceptible individuals vaccinated who develop immunityaveraging 97.5% in large-scale studies seven to nine weeks after vaccination. The vaccine should be in general use in Switzerland in about 30 days. "We have filed a license application with the Division of Biologies Standards (DBS) of the U.S. National Institutes of Health on the manufacture, safety, and potency testing of the Cendehill vaccine and on extensive clinical studies," Mr. Rauch says. "After inspection and testing of production batches by DBS, we are hopeful of U.S. approval by late 1969."
More than 60,000 persons have been inoculated with the Cendehill vaccine in clinical trials in the Americas, western Europe, the Caribbean, Asia, and Africa. Used largely in children, young girls, and adult women, it has caused no significant clinical symptoms and no significant adverse reactions, SK&F says. The tests have shown that the vaccine is safe for the environment and does not spread to susceptible subjects kept in close contact with those vaccinated. The efficacy of the Cendehill vaccine appears to be equivalent to that of HPV-77 derivative vaccines, SK&F says. The HPV-77 vaccine was developed at NIH. HPV-77 means High Passage Vaccine which has been passed 77 times—in this case through green monkey kidney tissue cell cultures—to achieve the desired level of attenuation. Merck & Co. and Philips Roxane Laboratories, Inc., a division of PEPI, Inc., are currently awaiting U.S. Government licensing of their forms of the HPV-77 vaccines for public use. Merck makes its product by passing the HPV-77 (rubella strain) through duck embryo tissue cells. Philips Roxane uses dog kidney tissue cells to achieve its desired level of attenuation. On April 3 H E W Secretary Robert H. Finch issued proposed regulations for production standards of a German measles vaccine in the U.S. The standards cover the Merck and PEPI vaccines, but not the SK&F subsidiary's vaccine. After comments are received on the proposed regulations, the final regulations will be published in the Federal Register and licenses can be granted. Government sources indicate that by June "one and perhaps two" vaccines will be licensed.
PROJECT PLOWSHARE:
Stepchild to Weapons?
SK&F's vaccine 9 7 . 5 % immunity after 60,000 shots 14 C&EN APRIL 14, 1969
Project Plowshare cannot really succeed unless this program for the peaceful uses of nuclear explosives is divorced from the weapons program. This warning was voiced by Rep. Craig Hosmer (R.-Calif.) last week at the Symposium on the Public Health Aspects of Peaceful Nuclear Explosives in Las Vegas, Nev. Admitting that he was treading on some toes in the Atomic Energy Commission in general and at the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory in particular, Rep. Hosmer charged that the weapons program has a different philosophy from that of Plowshare. Plowshare has been a stepchild of the weapons program, Rep. Hosmer said. "Now the time has come to separate the two, both in the public
Rep. Craig Hosmer Zeros in on "liberals" and "whiners"
mind and as to technical objectives," he proposed. In Plowshare, the primary emphasis will have to be on economics. A nuclear explosives device is not a weapon, Rep. Hosmer pointed out. It must be safe and clean, but it must be designed and handled with the users in mind—not the needs of the Army, Navy, and Air Force. Plowshare users are civilians "pursuing their economic enterprises in a costcompetitive environment." Rep. Hosmer, a member of the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, hopes to get Plowshare off the back burner with the Commercial Plowshare Services Bill now in Congress. If enacted, the bill would put AEC into the business of furnishing commercial services to Plowshare users. Under present law, the commission is confined to experiments involving research and development. Besides establishing a line of devices, services, and prices, AEC will retain absolute control over nuclear explosives and will set standards for their safe use, according to Rep. Hosmer's concept. The Congressman hit strongly at "liberals" who "view any peaceful applications of atomic energy in terms of a mushroom cloud." To hear them tell it, he says, Plowshare by itself is the single, major obstacle to total and complete world disarmament. "In addition to the assorted professors, scientists, lawyers, and literati who whine over Plowshare for philosophical reasons," Rep. Hosmer charged, a hard core of Plowshare opponents seems to have developed within the executive branch of the Government itself—particularly within the Budget Bureau, the State Department, and the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency."
