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The basic reason for an organized attempt to solve the problem of preventing infantile paralysis lies in the simple fact that infantile paralysis is a disease which can be transmitted to experimental animals in the laboratory, and propagated in these animals under complete control of the investigators. To that extent infantile paralysis is not a mystery. While the human and monkey disease presents certain differences, yet, thus trapped in experimental animals, the various mysteries of the human affliction should be cleared up, given the qualified searchers armed with time and adequate facilities for the fight.

At the time the various scientific men, working under the Commission's grants, began their activities, two key questions dominated the thoughts and plans of all those interested: (1) Since it is an undisputed fact that infantile paralysis is an infectious disease, can experimental animals be protected against attack by the infantile paralysis virus? (2) If they can be so protected, will the means of protection be safe and simple enough to test in the field against the epidemics that every year threaten our children?

The fact of such a vaccine, able to guard experimental animals, had hardly begun to be questioned. Yet, even so, reputable scientists among our grantees questioned the rationality of such an attempt. After all, said they, in any epidemic, infantile paralysis attacks relatively few children in a given community. Would it not be wasteful in the extreme to try to vaccinate all children, those naturally immune as well as those susceptible? Would not the small number of children who, vaccinated or not, would contract the disease, make conclusions as to the vaccine's power questionable, if not valueless?

For some reason entirely mysterious, the bulk of children -- even early in their lives -- are naturally immune to this plague. But how can you put your finger upon the endangered child, so as to give only that one your hoped-for preventive? This is one of the major mysteries of the illness. There was no known test to reveal the threatened ones. Research to find such a test was urgently demanded.

Why is it, again, that among all human beings who are candidates for this fate of paralysis or death, the majority are to be found among the younger children? And what is it that causes more and more children to become spontaneously immune, as they grow older?

The majority of human beings have in their blood a peculiar protective power against the virus of infantile paralysis. This immune power of blood is demonstrated by mixing the virus of the disease with a sample of blood under investigation. It the blood is "immune," then the mixture will not be able to paralyze monkeys when it is injected directly into their brains. The mechanism of this defense is absolutely unknown. The immune substance, or power, appears in the blood of the bulk of people naturally, spontaneously, without their having to pay for it by undergoing an attack of the illness that is clinically detectable. But does any means exist of conferring this immunity of blood upon all children, all people, who are found not to have it?

The advocates of the proposed vaccine asserted that this could indeed be accomplished in the majority of people. But the question then arose: is this power of human blood against the infantile paralysis virus the real reason why the bulk of people resist the malady? The answer was by no means certain. There already existed facts hinting that infantile paralysis is uniquely and exclusively a sickness of our nerve tissues. It was by no means certain that this disease-fighting power of blood could penetrate to people's brains or spinal cords. Then, what good would the creation of mere immunity in people's blood be, in an organized attempt at protection?

Since the virus of infantile paralysis is, entirely beyond the reach of the most powerful microscope, it is extremely difficult to determine how it spreads from one child to another. Is an actually sick child required to spread it to other children? If so, how long is such a child dangerous to others? Quarantine regulations say three weeks. But this rule is based upon scientific facts that are inadequate. Research is demanded to find ways to spot such dangerous children.

If, as seems probable, the malady may also be spread by perfectly healthy people, how are these to be detected? Plans were presented outlining experiments that might begin to find an answer to this important riddle. And such proposed experiments were closely tied up with preponderating scientific opinion -- based partly on fact, partly on theory -- as to the unseen trail the virus takes, in spreading from one person to another. It is the belief of the overwhelming majority of searchers that this trail is exclusively from the nose of an infected person or a carrier to the endings of the nerves of smell in the nose of the person susceptible.

It was necessary to prove this extremely important point beyond peradventure, yet there have been isolated small epidemics where milk has been incriminated. Might it be that, sometimes, the virus gets in by way of the mouth, stomach, intestines?