The Paradox of BCG

Abstract

The Great American Public accepts docilely, even enthusiastically, the recommendation of its pediatricians and public-health authorities, who propose routine immunization of children against three bacterial and five viral infections. Two of these five (mumps and rubella vaccines) are quite new, and one, smallpox vaccine (directed against a disease absent from this country for the past 20 years), is annually implicated in at least seven to 12 deaths. And yet a live, attenuated vaccine against tuberculosis, in use since 1922, holds little appeal in this country. One wonders exactly why. Tuberculosis is still very much with us: over 40,000 new active . . .