SIGNIFICANCE OF ALLERGY 549 



tamiiiatioii may occur and that the administration of the vac- 

 cine produces tuberculin allerj^y in the vaccinated children. This 

 latter they regard as detrimental. 



The second group is especially concerned over the possible in- 

 crease in virulence of the B.C.G. organisms and the subsequent 

 development of tuberculosis. Petroft' and others have presented 

 evidence supporting this view. 



The third group, which favors innnunization with an attenuated 

 bovine tubercle bacillus vaccine such as B.C.G., maintains that the 

 vaccine is safe and efificacious. They disregard the development 

 of allergy, in fact many of those favoring this vaccine consider 

 allergy as desirable. 



The fourth group is made up of conservative individuals who 

 do not desire to experiment upon their private patients. They 

 constitute a very large percentage of group one who are willing 

 to accept vaccination or any other method only after such 

 methods have been tried and found successful over a fairly long 

 period of time. In their opinion adequate data upon which a final 

 conclusion can be based will come only after the present large 

 number of experimentally immunized children are followed for 

 several decades and their ultimate fate determined. 



Park's Studies on B.C.G. — An investigation of the effect of vac- 

 cination with B.C.G. on children from tuberculous families has 

 been inaugurated in New York by Park, Kereszturi, Camille and 

 Mlshulow (1933). The results of their work may be summarized 

 as follows : 



1. They observed no evidence of an increase in virulence of 

 B.C.G, when inoculated into a long series of rabbits and guinea 

 pigs nor from residence in the human body. 



2. They immunized 205 tuberculin-negative children by oral 

 and 150 by parenteral vaccination and observed them for five 

 years relative to the phenomenon of allergy and symptoms of 

 clinical tuberculosis. Comparal)le control groups were included 

 in their series. In the orally vaccinated group approximately 

 1 per cent died from tuberculosis as compared with 3.2 per cent 

 of deaths in the control gi-oup. While no deaths occurred among 

 tliose parenterally vaccinated, it is interesting to note that the 

 death rate was only 1.4 per cent among the tuberculin-negative 



