Polio Wars (86 page)

The NFIP had refused to fund his work, he explained at the hearings, because he worked with mice rather than primates. His research, in other words, was out of the mainstream compared to other virologists favored by the NFIP's science advisors. Nor was he the only scientist in this position. There were, he claimed, “a considerable number of people who have either refused to go with the regimentation of research by the National Foundation, or otherwise have been pushed out by them.” He believed that a government agency would be more likely to be fair and disinterested than the NFIP “monopoly” or at least that such an agency could be organized with “devices that make this sort of thing impossible.”
⁶⁸
Kenny had similarly declared that non-NFIP-funded research was crucial for progress in polio science. “Despite the millions of dollars that have been spent on research and investigation,” she argued, “the findings that have been of greatest value to humanity concerning this disease” had been the result of work by Jungeblut, virologist Julian Sanz Ibanez at the Cajal Institute in Madrid, and herself, none of them “grantees of the National Foundation.”
⁶⁹

The characterization by Jungeblut and Kenny of a dangerously autocratic NFIP swayed some members of the House committee. “Too often the medical profession is too orthodox, and unwilling to recognize the individual who is traveling along a path that is different from what is recognized by orthodox medicine,” Wolverton told Jungeblut sympathetically, “yet … so many of our great inventions have come about in a most unexpected way … through the vision or the thought of some individual who was thinking differently than others thought.”
⁷⁰
Although Jungeblut had not referred to Kenny's lack of medical training, a few Congressmen did—not to criticize but to show their explicit support of medical populism. Minnesota Republican Joseph O'Hara pointed out that a person's lack of professional training should not necessarily undermine his or her scientific
respectability: “[O]ftentimes the layman contributes something in the way of science to something in the way of relief that too often we might be inclined to be a little jealous of it or overlook it.”
⁷¹
In his understanding of scientific progress every contribution should be valued, irrespective of physicians' unreasonable envy.

Hart Van Riper was the NFIP's most articulate defender at the hearings. He briefly criticized Jungeblut's science – noting that “we are not going to solve the mystery of polio by working with mice” - but addressed the bulk of his testimony to Kenny's assertions. The gist of his attack was that Kenny was unfit to participate in the upcoming conference or in any serious scientific meeting, and that she had no legitimate claim to scientific insight. While he noted that the NFIP had “not argued about the quality of her treatment,” Van Riper claimed that her work was not particularly new and was widely practiced under a variety of names throughout the country. He also identified what he considered 2 glaring weaknesses in Kenny's claims to scientific respectability: her reluctance to abide by the conservative etiquette of the scientific establishment—exemplified by her speaking so brashly to the press of her “contribution”—and her inability to recognize the kinds of evidence professionals regarded as authoritative. “Miss Kenny is not a physician,” physician Van Riper explained, and “has made statements that certain things do not exist which, in the laboratory animal we can reproduce.” Further, he added, “unfortunately Miss Kenny feels that unless you accept her concept of the cause you cannot accept her treatment.”
⁷²
In short, she refused to separate her technical work—as healer and therapist—from her theoretical insights; she was not content to be lauded only as a nurse.

Although Kenny spoke often of her desire to obtain scientific confirmation of her theories through clinical and laboratory studies, she had always relied heavily on personal testimonials as evidence. These she described as “reports of unbiased medical men and the findings of science.”
⁷³
This kind of strategy did not impress the NFIP. In letters between conference organizer Stanley Henwood and Marvin Kline that formed part of Kenny's Congressional evidence, Henwood dismissed any proposed submission that would be merely “a restatement of Sister Kenny's contribution to the field of poliomyelitis” and requested instead “some concrete scientific evidence and not merely statements that are based on personal opinion.” He suggested that “actual scientific evidence” be submitted in manuscript form showing “the presentation of a sufficient number of case reports covering all of the patients treated with the end results as compared with cases in the same area treated by other methods.”
⁷⁴
In vain did Kline protest that the KF did not intend to provide a restatement but “to present scientific evidence confirming the contribution of Sister Elizabeth Kenny [through]… the medium of visual education in six different languages” (that is, by showing her film
The Kenny Concept
). Kenny also quoted Henwood's additional disapproving comment that her request to show a film was one of many from “several large institutions and personalities throughout the world who felt that their story should be told.”
⁷⁵

Kline along with Kenny and members of the KF Board recognized that nothing would convince the conference organizers to allow Kenny to participate and concluded that the reason was NFIP prejudice and elitism. “Owing to the many stumbling blocks presented we would assume that it is your intention to maintain your original attitude in considering scientific exhibits from the [NFIP] … grantees only,” Kline told Henwood.
⁷⁶

Kenny knew that her work appealed to antivivisectionists and to other antiorthodox critics. But in public she no longer acknowledged such alliances, and her friends noticed
that when first meeting a physician she wanted to know “what kind of doctor is he?”
⁷⁷
At the 1948 hearings she made much of her commitment to professional orthodoxy. While Van Riper pointedly called Kenny “Miss” instead of “Sister,” he carefully did not call her a quack. His reluctance to attack Kenny this way reflected her national popularity, her shrewd use of the press, and the fact that, in the 1940s and 1950s, antivivisectionists remained a potent political force in some states.

Charles Wolverton heard the testimony by Kenny and Jungeblut with great sympathy. Wolverton had been a member of Congress since 1927, and chaired the House Interstate and Foreign Commerce committee during the 80th and 81st Congresses. He supported the distinctive kind of research populism Kenny was promoting, and had told Surgeon General Leonard Scheele at the hearings that he was very strongly convinced that much knowledge necessary for “the proper functioning of research and research foundations is not reposed in doctors, with all due respect to doctors … much can be gained by the presence on these councils of lay members.”
⁷⁸
To Kenny, Wolverton expressed his committee's “very great appreciation for your attendance here today.” He praised her film and her marvelous work, and said he was impressed by “the disdain you apparently have for any financial reward.” His committee was “anxious … to assist you in the great work you are doing,” he assured her, for “you are doing a great service for humanity [and] … are entitled to the respect and the support of all who are in [a] position to give it to you.”
⁷⁹

As a New Jersey representative, Wolverton made much of Kenny's newly established clinic in Jersey City. He held up the front page of Camden's
Courier Post
showing a picture of Kenny at the Jersey City center with a patient who hailed from a town “about three miles from my home.” He paid tribute to Irish-Catholic Democratic boss Frank Hague who had, Wolverton admitted, “not always been spoken of in the highest terms.” Yet Hague's support of the Jersey City center “will stand as a monument for as long as he should live, and will remain long after he has gone.” Hague's recognition of the importance of Kenny's treatment by making it “a part of his Medical Center” was a gesture Wolverton wished more local officials would emulate in their own communities and thus “make possible the teaching of this new concept that Sister Kenny has developed with such wonderful results.”
⁸⁰

Despite the appearances of Kenny and Jungeblut and the support of many Republicans on the committee, the version of the NSF bill they were debating was defeated. In June 1948 only weeks after Kenny's appearance in Washington the NSF bill passed the Senate but was held up in the House Rules Committee long enough to miss being put on the House calendar so it could not be voted on before Congress adjourned.
⁸¹
Truman was beginning his presidential campaign, and the bill floundered over the issue of governance and over the highly charged inclusion of disease commissions. While the American Cancer Society and the American Heart Association welcomed federal funding of “cure-oriented research” through a government agency, the NFIP rejected any agency that included a special commission on polio. Behind the scenes, the NFIP made sure that any version of the NSF bill that included polio research would fail, assuring Congress that such a provision was part of a “ ‘Communistic' un-American … scheme.”
⁸²

With the unexpected election of Truman in November 1948 the politicization of organized medicine intensified. For the first time the AMA established an office in Washington, D.C. and a new Council on Medical Service and Public Relations, whose job was to lobby both politicians and physicians. The transformation of relations among universities, business, and the government in scientific research begun during the war continued, but Truman's national health insurance plan was firmly and effectively defeated by some of the most sophisticated activist AMA-directed campaigns the nation had ever seen.
⁸³

It was not until 1950 after the Democrats regained control of Congress that Truman finally signed a watered-down version of the NSF bill. The President appointed its director, but the director shared power with a board made up of academic and industrial scientists. And there was no polio commission. By this time the funding of medical research was clearly shifting from private to government organizations, and the NIH's emerging empire expanded with the new National Institute of Mental Health, National Heart Institute, and National Institute of Dental Research.
⁸⁴

Kenny was unable to muster enough support to establish a government research agency that targeted polio, much less one that supported her distinctive theory of the disease, and the NFIP was able to make sure that no National Polio Institute was ever established. The 1948 hearings nonetheless brought populism into the politics of science research, and the new Institutes were overseen by councils that included a few lay community representatives. In June 1948, despite AMA protests that “it may be questioned whether a leader in the field of public affairs will be particularly equipped to make very much of a contribution to the promotion of [that] kind of research,” the surgeon general appointed wealthy lobbyist Mary Lasker, wife of advertising executive Albert Lasker, as the first lay member of the National Heart Institute's advisory council. Lasker had already rejuvenated the American Cancer Society and had lobbied for laymen to serve on the Heart Institute's advisory council.
⁸⁵
Naturopath critics wondered sardonically whether she would be willing to attack “enterprises that [had] helped to make her husband rich [such as] … the white flour industry, the alcohol industry, the soft drinks industry, and other evil industries that spend billions yearly in advertising?”
⁸⁶
Lasker's appointment was a reminder that lay representation did not mean class or regional diversity; indeed “public” could easily be interpreted to mean “patron.”

On the defensive, the NFIP turned the First International Poliomyelitis Conference into a public relations project. Held at New York's Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, amid banquets, films, and poster exhibits, the conference program was filled with Kenny's work––although mostly uncredited. The July 1948 conference had 10 sessions, 3 official languages, and was attended by over a thousand representatives from around 40 countries.
⁸⁷

The conference provided an exciting opportunity to bring together American and European researchers who had been kept apart by the war. Polio had only just become a significant problem in Europe, and physicians were looking across the Atlantic for expertise. Making polio research an international issue showed the American public as well as Congress that NFIP policies went beyond parochial medical politics. Indeed, the word
international
was a coded Cold War term, indicating American allegiances with other “free” nations.
⁸⁸

Kenny's appearance at the Congressional hearings had not gained her access to the international conference as a scientific participant. But she was able to attend as a reporter with a press card from the American Newspaper Guild.
⁸⁹
While she could not formally participate during the sessions, she did attend press conferences amid the country's leading science writers where she stood out in her distinctive, elegant attire.
Newsweek
described her as a “majestic, white-haired woman in a long black frock, large plumed hat, and heavy ropes of pearls.”
⁹⁰
To the press corps Kenny complained frequently of her exclusion. She made sure her fellow reporters learned that she had not been invited as a scientific participant as a result of “the personal attitude and ambition of Mr. Basil O'Connor [who refused] … to recognize the merit of anything connected with polio treatment that cannot be identified in some way with his name.”
⁹¹
Her sense of conspiracy was reflected in her private detective escort who accompanied her to these public events along with a man who she claimed was a reporter but, according to a pro-NFIP commentator, was in fact “her own personal press agent who tried to conceal his identity at the Conference.”
⁹²