The State - News from April 17, 1986

Developers of an experimental vaccine for valley fever told the Kern County Medical Society in Bakersfield that a three-year study has failed to prove its effectiveness in protecting people from the influenza-like illness. “We’ve learned a lot, but we can’t recommend the vaccine,” said Dr. Hillel Levine, who recently retired as chairman of the microbiology department at the Naval Bioscience Laboratory in Sacramento. Levine, who began experimenting with the vaccine in 1960, said further refining and retesting of the vaccine is expected to take from nine to 12 years.