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A Critical View of “On TB Vaccines, Patients’ Demands, and Modern Printed Media in Times of Biomedical Uncertainties: Buenos Aires, 1920–1950”

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Abstract

The putative Pueyo’s vaccine was a commercial venture that obtained marketing authorization in 1946, a turbulent period of Argentine history. After a few months, health authorities withdrew financial support from the state to buy the vaccine and required patients to sign a written consent to receive that product. An independent investigation did not find any evidence of benefit in non-clinical and clinical evaluation of the putative vaccine.

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Notes

  1. The Abalaka's vaccine, claimed to be curative for HIV infection in Africa, provides a rather similar case in contemporary times.

  2. Dr Novoa Santos (1885–1933) was a well-known Spanish physician and professor of pathology at the medical school of Madrid after several years in the same position at Santiago de Compostela. In 1932 he visited Buenos Aires, invited by the Spanish Cultural Institution (an agency of the Spanish embassy to promote diffusion of Spanish culture), lecturing at the schools of philosophy and medicine of the Universidad de Buenos Aires, among other institutions. He spent four months in Argentina, together with his wife and children, and then returned to Spain, where the next year he was diagnosed as suffering from gastric cancer, which ended his life after surgery. During the Buenos Aires stay, he met Pueyo and provided him with a recommendation for Professor Bachmann. Interestingly, Novoa Santos’s expertise did not include tuberculosis or infectious diseases and his link to Pueyo is not very clear.

  3. The requirement, in drug approvals, for efficacy to be demonstrated did not begin in most Western countries until after the USA FDA reform of 1962.

  4. The authors do not provide the concentration of phenol they found. Phenol is a toxic compound that is still used as a component of multi-dose formulation as a preservative in very low concentration.

References

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  • Bignone I.M.I., and R.A. Diez. 2013. Análisis del marco regulatorio nacional sobre medicamentos en Argentina [Analysis of national regulations for medicines]. PhD Thesis, University of Buenos Aires.

  • Mason P.H., and Degeling C. 2016. Beyond biomedicine: Relationships and care in tuberculosis prevention. Journal of Bioethical Inquiry 13(1): 31–4.

  • Pueyo, J. 1947. Yo acuso la burocracia de la medicina contra los tuberculosis [I blame medical bureaucracy against tuberculous patients], 5th ed. Buenos Aires: Editorial Científica.

  • Rich L.E. 2016. “Born Like This/Into This”: Tuberculosis, justice, and futuristic dinosaurs. Journal of Bioethical Inquiry 13(1): 1–5.

  • Sarmiento S.A., C. Ludueña Funes, and P. Manavella. 1947. Estado actual de los conocimientos sobre la vacuna Pueyo. Estudio experimental clínico, radiológico y bacteriológico [Current status of the knowledge about the Pueyo’s vaccine. A clinical, radiological, bacteriologic and experimental study]. Revista de la Facultad de Ciencias Médicas de la Universidad Nacional de Córdoba 5: 313–349.

  • Vaccarezza R.F., and Raimondi A. 1947. Fístulas broncopleurocutáneas de origen tuberculoso tratadas con éxito por la estreptomicina. Revista de la Asociación Médica Argentina 61(615–616): 713–715.

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Acknowledgements

Presented as an abstract at the 45th congress of the International Society for the History of Medicine, held in Buenos Aires, September 5–9, 2016. The authors declare no conflict of interest related to this research. Partial financial support from Fundación CONAMED.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Sección Historia de los Medicamentos, Department of Pharmacology, School of Medicine, University of Buenos Aires, Paraguay 2155, Piso 16, 1121, Buenos Aires, Argentina

    Estela B. Quiñones, Lucas Goldin, Inés M. I. Bignone & Roberto A. Diez

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  1. Estela B. Quiñones
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  2. Lucas Goldin
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  3. Inés M. I. Bignone
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  4. Roberto A. Diez
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Correspondence to Roberto A. Diez.

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Quiñones, E.B., Goldin, L., Bignone, I.M.I. et al. A Critical View of “On TB Vaccines, Patients’ Demands, and Modern Printed Media in Times of Biomedical Uncertainties: Buenos Aires, 1920–1950”. Bioethical Inquiry 15, 19–22 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11673-017-9832-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11673-017-9832-7

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