At the start of this ‘pandemic’ I read about four separate experiments/ investigations carried out by the US Military during the Spanish Flu, all of which demonstrated that the Spanish Flu could not be passed from very sick to healthy persons, even by getting the healthy to drink the warm sputum of the sick.
I wondered why no similar investigation was being conducted into the transmission of COVID19. Such experiments would not have to be so ‘gross’.
Furthermore. It’s not like this is an issue of no importance.
I sent FOI requests to the Department of Health and Social Care who, in a first reply (to the question of isolation of the virus), admitted that they held “no information relating to the isolation of Sars-Cov-2”, a pretty astonishing statement the elevates Sars-Cov-2 to the same mythical status as that of the unicorn, an extraordinary thing that no one has ever seen.
The main difference between a unicorn and Sars-Cov-2 is that no one has yet invented a “scientific” test of supposed constituent parts that “proves” the existence of a unicorn, which is a great shame as it would be quite something to observe how many people would be convinced if a ‘unicorn test’ ever returned a ‘positive’.
The DHSC also held no information about transmissibility/ contagion but suggested I sent my request to Public Health England.
PHE has replied (at last).
Here are the relevant lines:
Please could you forward any information you have relating to experimental evidence demonstrating that COVID-19 is person-to-person transmissible.
PHE can confirm it does not hold information in the way specified by your request.
What this means is that no specific investigation has been carried out into the most central assumption (and that’s all it is) that has driven the global “response” to this supposed pandemic!
It would quite obviously be a straightforward issue to prove or disprove contagion (i.e. contagion-via-transmitted-droplet) experimentally. There is NO EXCUSE for not investigating this directly. Science could easily resolve contradicting beliefs about this, one way or the other.
In my opinion, it already has done. That’s why the failure to investigate is, in itself, evidence of bad faith and the enforcement of a diabolical lie.
Scientific papers that demonstrate the uselessness of lockdowns and mask-wearing in protecting people against COVID ‘infection’ offer further indirect evidence that flu-like illnesses are NOT person-to-person transmissible. This is simply not how such illnesses work. Other factors, external and internal, define who becomes ill and when.
Here was my second FOI request:
If no such experimental evidence exists for COVID-19 please could you forward any available evidence collected, targeting this particular issue over the past 150 years, that demonstrates person-to-person transmissibility for any other influenza type illness?”
Reply:
PHE can confirm it does hold this information. However, the information is exempt under section 21 of the FOI Act because it is reasonably accessible by other means, and the terms of the exemption mean that we do not have to consider whether or not it would be in the public interest for you to have the information. However, for your convenience we have included a link to the report ‘Impact of mass gatherings on Influenza.’
The first part of the response indicates, in my opinion, that PHE are admitting that they hold or are aware of the scientific evidence collected during the Spanish Flu (that used to be online in ‘The US Surgeon General’s Report 1919 [which disappeared from the document last October]).
By referring to not having to consider “whether or not it is in the public interest” that they release this information they are covertly admitting that they know the investigation demonstrated non-contagion and that it might be “in the public interest” that we be told this.
In fact, under our new global ‘Communitarian’ system (yes, we’re already in it folks) what is defined as “the public interest” is decided by rulers …. as anyone with a brain should realise by now.
Truth, or even what we understand as the public interest (i.e. the common good) has nothing to do with anything any more … as American voters recently found out the hard way.
The linked report, in my opinion, has little to do with my FOI request. The weak ‘conclusion’ of “The impact of mass gatherings on Influenza” suggests correlation without demonstrating proof of anything at all. The probabilities suggested in the Conclusion are, yet again, based on assumptions that the author does not even care to define.
Correlation between future infection and mass gatherings without investigation of other factors inherent to mass gatherings (e.g. everyone being in approximately the same place and therefore subject to multiple identical environmental influences at the same time) surely means nothing scientifically. The report admits there is no proof of causation but suggests it is “prudent” to discourage them.
Why, one wonders, does it not suggest it would be prudent to investigate the scientific community’s own primary assumption, that these illnesses are in any way contagious at all?
In conclusion there is limited data indicating that mass gatherings are associated with influenza transmission and this theme is continued with the inclusion of new evidence for the update.
Certain unique events such as the Hajj, specialised settings including civilian and military ships- a new theme for this update, indoor venues and crowded outdoor venues provide the primary evidence base to suggest mass gatherings can be associated with Influenza outbreaks.
Some evidence suggests that restricting mass gatherings together with other social distancing measures may help to reduce transmission. However, the evidence is still not strong enough to warrant advocating legislated restrictions.
Therefore, in a pandemic situation a cautious policy of voluntary avoidance of mass gatherings would is still the most prudent message. Operational considerations including practical implications of policy directed at restricting mass gathering events should be carefully considered.
After reading the entirety of the FOI response, here is my own conclusion:
PHE admits that government’s assumption of human-to-human transmissibility of COVID-19 is based on … NO SCIENCE AT ALL!
Please Donate Below To Support Our Ongoing Work To Expose The Lies About COVID19
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Actually, unlike covid 19, unicorns actually exist. I saw one in a zoo just a while ago.
Rhinoceros unicornis. The mythical horse thing was invented sometime in the 1800’s.
I wonder if it was just in good fun with fairies and leprechauns or was it an attempt to make the bible, which mentions unicorns, look ridiculous.
I would blame the king James bible for that, not ancient Hebrew
A re’em, also reëm (Hebrew: רְאֵם), is an animal mentioned nine times in the Hebrew Bible. It has been translated as “unicorn” in the King James Version, and in some Christian Bible translations as “oryx” (which was accepted as the referent in Modern Hebrew), “wild ox”, “wild bull”, “buffalo” or “rhinoceros”.
The experiments here described were performed on an island in Boston Harbor, on volunteers obtained
from the Navy. The work was conducted by a group of officers detailed for that purpose, from the U. S.
Navy and the U. S. Public Health Service, consisting of Dr. G. W. McCoy, director of the Hygienic
Library, Dr. Joseph Goldberger, Dr. Leake, and Dr. Lake, all on the part of the U. S. Public Health Service; and cooperating with those medical officers, was a group also detailed for this purpose on the part of
the U. S. Navy, consisting of Dr. J. J. Keegan, Dr. De Wayne Richey and myself.
The work itself was conducted at Gallops Island, which is the quarantine station of the Port of Boston,
and peculiarly well fitted for operations of this kind, serving adequately for the purposes of isolation,
observations, and maintenance of the large group of volunteers and personnel necessary to take care of
them.
The volunteers were all of the most susceptible age, mostly between 18 and 25, only a few of them
around 30 years old ; and all were in good physical condition. None of these volunteers, 100 all told in
number, had “influenza ;” that is, from the most careful histories that we could elicit, they gave no account
of a febrile attack of any kind during the winter, except a few who were purposely selected, as having
shown a typical attack of influenza, in order to test questions of immunity, and for the purpose of control.
Now, we proceeded rather cautiously at first by administering a pure culture of bacillus of influenza,
Pfeiffer’s bacillus, in a rather moderate amount, into the nostrils of a few of these volunteers.
These early experiments I will not stop to relate, but I will go at once to what I may call our Experiment 1.
EXPERIMENTS AT GALLOPS ISLAND
As the preliminary trials proved negative, we became bolder, and selecting nineteen of our volunteers, gave
each one of them a very large quantity of a mixture of thirteen different strains of the Pfeiffer bacillus, some
of them obtained recently from the lungs at necropsy; others were subcultures of varying age, and each of the
thirteen had, of course, a different history. Suspensions of these organisms were sprayed with an atomizer into the nose and into the eyes, and back into the throat, while the volunteers were breathing in. We
used some billions of these organisms, according to our estimated counts, on each one of the volunteers,
but none of them took sick.
Then we proceeded to transfer the virus obtained from cases of the disease ; that is, we collected the
material and mucous secretions of the mouth and nose and throat and bronchi from cases of the disease and
transferred this to our volunteers. We always obtained this material in the same way : The patient
with fever, in bed, has a large, shallow, traylike arrangement before him or her, and we washed out one
nostril with some sterile salt solution, using perhaps 5 mL., which is allowed to run into this tray ; and that
nostril is blown vigorously into the tray. This is repeated with the other nostril. The patient then
gargles with some of the solution. Next we obtain some bronchial mucus through coughing, and then we
swab the mucous surface of each nares and also the mucous membrane of the throat. We place these
swabs with the material in a bottle with glass beads, and add all the material obtained in the tray. This is
the stuff we transfer to our volunteers. In this particular experiment, in which we used ten volunteers,
each of them received a comparatively small quantity of this, about 1 c.c. sprayed into each nostril and into
the throat, while inspiring, and on the eye. None of these took sick. Some of the same material was filtered and instilled into other volunteers but produced no results.
Now, I may mention at this point that the donors were all patients with influenza in Boston hospitals ;
sometimes at the U. S. Naval Hospital at Chelsea, sometimes at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital, where
we had access to suitable cases. We always kept in mind the fact that we have no criterion of influenza ;
therefore I would like to emphasize the fact that we never took an isolated case of fever, but selected our
donors from a distinct focus or outbreak of the disease, sometimes an epidemic in a school with 100 cases,
from which we would select four or five typical cases, in order to prevent mistakes in diagnosis of influenza.
Now, thinking that perhaps the failure to reproduce the disease in the experiments that I have described
was due to the fact that we obtained the material in the hospitals in Boston, and then took it down the bay
to Gallops Island, which sometimes required four hours before our volunteers received the material, and
believing that the virus was perhaps very frail, and could not stand this exposure, we planned another
experiment, in which we obtained a large amount of material, and by special arrangements, rushed it
down to Gallops Island ; so that the interval between taking the material from the donors and giving it to
our volunteers was only one hour and forty minutes, all told. Each one of these volunteers in this experiment, ten in number, received 6 c.c. of the mixed stuff that I have described. They received it into each
nostril ; received it in the throat, and on the eye ; and when you think that 6 c.c. in all was used, you will
understand that some of it was swallowed. None of them took sick.
Then, thinking perhaps it was not only the time that was causing our failures, but also the salt solution —for it is possible that the salt solution might be inimical to the virus—-we planned another experiment, to eliminate both the time factor and the salt solution, and all other outside influences. In this experiment we had little cotton swabs on the end of sticks, and we transferred the material directly from nose to nose and from throat to throat, using a West tube for the throat culture, so as to get the material not only from the tonsils, but also from the posterior nasopharynx. We used nineteen volunteers for this experiment, and it was during the time of the outbreak, when we had a choice of many donors. A few of the donors were in the first day of the disease. Others were in the second or third day of the disease. None of these volunteers who received the material thus directly
transferred from cases took sick in any way. When I say none of them took sick in any way, I mean that
after receiving the material they were then isolated on Gallops Island. Their temperature was taken three
times a day and carefully examined, of course, and under constant medical supervision they were held
for one full week before they were released, and perhaps used again for some other experiment. All of
the volunteers received at least two, and some of them three “shots” as they expressed it.
Our next experiment consisted in injections of blood. We took five donors, five cases of influenza in
the febrile stage, some of them again quite early in the disease. We drew 20 ‘c.c. from the arm vein of
each, making a total of 100 c.c, which was mixed and treated with 1 per cent, of sodium citrate. Ten c.c. of
the citrated whole blood were injected into each of the ten volunteers. None of them took sick in any way.
Then we collected a lot of mucous material from the upper respiratory tract, and filtered ‘
it through Mandler filters. While these filters will hold back the bacteria of ordinary size, they will allow “ultramicroscopic” organisms to pass. This filtrate was injected into ten volunteers, each one receiving 3.5 c.c. subcutaneously, and none of these took sick in any way. The next experiment was designed to imitate the
natural way in which influenza spreads, at least the way in which we believe influenza spreads, and I have
no doubt it does—by human contact. This experiment consisted in bringing ten of our volunteers from
Gallops Island to the U. S. Naval Hospital at Chelsea, into a ward having thirty beds, all filled with influenza.
We had previously selected ten of these patients to be the donors ; and now, if you will follow me with
one of our volunteers in this ward, and remember that the other nine were at the same time doing the same
thing, we shall have a picture of just what was happening in this experiment :
The volunteer was led up to the bedside of the patient; he was introduced. He sat down alongside the bed of the patient. They shook hands, and. by instructions, he got as close as he conveniently could, and they talked· for live minutes. At the end of the five minutes, the patient breathed out as hard as he could, while the volunteer, muzzle to muzzle (in accordance with his instructions, about 2 inches between the two), received this expired -breath, and at the same time was breathing in as the patient breathed out. This they repeated
five times, and they did it fairly faithfully in almost all of the instances. After they had done this for five times, the patient coughed directly into the face of the volunteer, face to face, five différent times.
I may say that the volunteers were perfectly splendid about carrying out the technic of these experiments. They did it with a high idealism. They were inspired with the thought that they might help others. They went through the program in a splendid spirit. After our volunteer had had this sort of contact with the patient, talking and chatting and shaking hands with him for five minutes, and receiving his breath five times, and then his cough five times directly in his face, he moved to the next patient whom we had selected, and repeated this, and so on, until this volunteer had had that sort of contact with ten different cases of influenza, in different stages of the disease, mostly fresh cases, none of them more than three days old. We will remember that each one of the ten volunteers had that sort of intimate contact with each one of the ten different influenza patients. They were watched carefully for seven days—and none of them took sick in any way.
EXPERIMENTS AT PORTSMOUTH
At that point, the holidays came, our material was exhausted, and we temporarily suspended our work.
In fact, we felt rather surprised and somewhat perplexed, and were not sure as to the next way to turn,
and we felt it would be better to take a little breathing spell and a rest.
We started another set of experiments in February that lasted into March, again using fifty volunteers
carefully selected from the Deer Island Naval Training Station. These experiments I will not give in
detail. They would take too long. They were simply designed and the program was carefully planned, but
the way matters turned out became very confusing and perplexing. I will give two instances to explain
what I mean by that ; and I give them because they are exceedingly instructive and very interesting.
In February and March, the epidemic was on the wane. We had difficulty in finding donors. We were
not sure of our diagnosis, having no criterion of influenza. We therefore felt very fortunate when we
learned of an outbreak that was taking place at the Portsmouth Naval Prison, only a few hours north of
Boston. We at once loaded a couple of automobiles filled with our volunteers, and rushed up to Portsmouth, and there repeated many things that I have described in our first set of experiments. At Portsmouth, out of a large number of cases, we made our selections carefully, taking the typical cases for donors, and transferring the material directly to our volunteers. In about thirty-six hours, half of the number we exposed came down with fever and sore throat, with hemolytic streptococci present, and doubtless as the causal agent. All the clinicians who saw these cases in consultation agreed with us that they were ordinary cases of sore throat.
Another incident : One of our officers, Dr. L., who had been in intimate contact with the disease from
early in October, collected material from six healthy men at the Portsmouth Navy Yard who were thought
might be in the period of incubation of the disease—we were trying to get material as early as possible, because
all the evidence seems to indicate that the infection is transmittable early in the disease. None of the six
men came down with influenza, but Dr. L. came down in thirty-six hours, with a clinical attack of influenza,
although he had escaped all the rest of the outbreak.
CONCLUSION
I think we must be very careful not to draw any positive conclusions from negative results of this kind.
Many factors must be considered. Our volunteers may not have been susceptible. They may have been
immune. They had been exposed as all the rest of the people had been exposed to the disease, although they
gave no clinical history of an attack. Dr. McCoy, who with Dr. Richey, did a similar series of experiments on Goat Island, San Francisco, used volunteers who, so far as known, had not been exposed to the outbreak at all, also had negative results, that is, they were unable to reproduce the disease. Perhaps there are factors, or a factor, in the transmission of influenza that we do not know.
As a matter of fact, we entered the outbreak with a notion that we knew the cause of the disease, and
were quite sure we knew how it was transmitted from person to person. Perhaps, if we have learned anything, it is that we are not quite sure what we know about the disease.
[A complete account of the experiment is being published by the U. S. Public Health Service.]
incorporated for charitable purposes. Head Office: 27 Old Gloucester Street, London WC1N 3AX.
Burns Matkin
| #
Actually, unlike covid 19, unicorns actually exist. I saw one in a zoo just a while ago.
Rhinoceros unicornis. The mythical horse thing was invented sometime in the 1800’s.
I wonder if it was just in good fun with fairies and leprechauns or was it an attempt to make the bible, which mentions unicorns, look ridiculous.
Reply
Itsme
| #
I would blame the king James bible for that, not ancient Hebrew
A re’em, also reëm (Hebrew: רְאֵם), is an animal mentioned nine times in the Hebrew Bible. It has been translated as “unicorn” in the King James Version, and in some Christian Bible translations as “oryx” (which was accepted as the referent in Modern Hebrew), “wild ox”, “wild bull”, “buffalo” or “rhinoceros”.
Reply
rickk
| #
PHE maybe making it up as they go along, but here is a somewhat informal experiment back from 1919 when the REAL pandemic was happening.
Interestingly NONE of this would ever be approved by any REB.
===================================================
JAMA. 1919;73(5):311-313. doi:10.1001/jama.1919.02610310005002
The experiments here described were performed on an island in Boston Harbor, on volunteers obtained
from the Navy. The work was conducted by a group of officers detailed for that purpose, from the U. S.
Navy and the U. S. Public Health Service, consisting of Dr. G. W. McCoy, director of the Hygienic
Library, Dr. Joseph Goldberger, Dr. Leake, and Dr. Lake, all on the part of the U. S. Public Health Service; and cooperating with those medical officers, was a group also detailed for this purpose on the part of
the U. S. Navy, consisting of Dr. J. J. Keegan, Dr. De Wayne Richey and myself.
The work itself was conducted at Gallops Island, which is the quarantine station of the Port of Boston,
and peculiarly well fitted for operations of this kind, serving adequately for the purposes of isolation,
observations, and maintenance of the large group of volunteers and personnel necessary to take care of
them.
The volunteers were all of the most susceptible age, mostly between 18 and 25, only a few of them
around 30 years old ; and all were in good physical condition. None of these volunteers, 100 all told in
number, had “influenza ;” that is, from the most careful histories that we could elicit, they gave no account
of a febrile attack of any kind during the winter, except a few who were purposely selected, as having
shown a typical attack of influenza, in order to test questions of immunity, and for the purpose of control.
Now, we proceeded rather cautiously at first by administering a pure culture of bacillus of influenza,
Pfeiffer’s bacillus, in a rather moderate amount, into the nostrils of a few of these volunteers.
These early experiments I will not stop to relate, but I will go at once to what I may call our Experiment 1.
EXPERIMENTS AT GALLOPS ISLAND
As the preliminary trials proved negative, we became bolder, and selecting nineteen of our volunteers, gave
each one of them a very large quantity of a mixture of thirteen different strains of the Pfeiffer bacillus, some
of them obtained recently from the lungs at necropsy; others were subcultures of varying age, and each of the
thirteen had, of course, a different history. Suspensions of these organisms were sprayed with an atomizer into the nose and into the eyes, and back into the throat, while the volunteers were breathing in. We
used some billions of these organisms, according to our estimated counts, on each one of the volunteers,
but none of them took sick.
Then we proceeded to transfer the virus obtained from cases of the disease ; that is, we collected the
material and mucous secretions of the mouth and nose and throat and bronchi from cases of the disease and
transferred this to our volunteers. We always obtained this material in the same way : The patient
with fever, in bed, has a large, shallow, traylike arrangement before him or her, and we washed out one
nostril with some sterile salt solution, using perhaps 5 mL., which is allowed to run into this tray ; and that
nostril is blown vigorously into the tray. This is repeated with the other nostril. The patient then
gargles with some of the solution. Next we obtain some bronchial mucus through coughing, and then we
swab the mucous surface of each nares and also the mucous membrane of the throat. We place these
swabs with the material in a bottle with glass beads, and add all the material obtained in the tray. This is
the stuff we transfer to our volunteers. In this particular experiment, in which we used ten volunteers,
each of them received a comparatively small quantity of this, about 1 c.c. sprayed into each nostril and into
the throat, while inspiring, and on the eye. None of these took sick. Some of the same material was filtered and instilled into other volunteers but produced no results.
Now, I may mention at this point that the donors were all patients with influenza in Boston hospitals ;
sometimes at the U. S. Naval Hospital at Chelsea, sometimes at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital, where
we had access to suitable cases. We always kept in mind the fact that we have no criterion of influenza ;
therefore I would like to emphasize the fact that we never took an isolated case of fever, but selected our
donors from a distinct focus or outbreak of the disease, sometimes an epidemic in a school with 100 cases,
from which we would select four or five typical cases, in order to prevent mistakes in diagnosis of influenza.
Now, thinking that perhaps the failure to reproduce the disease in the experiments that I have described
was due to the fact that we obtained the material in the hospitals in Boston, and then took it down the bay
to Gallops Island, which sometimes required four hours before our volunteers received the material, and
believing that the virus was perhaps very frail, and could not stand this exposure, we planned another
experiment, in which we obtained a large amount of material, and by special arrangements, rushed it
down to Gallops Island ; so that the interval between taking the material from the donors and giving it to
our volunteers was only one hour and forty minutes, all told. Each one of these volunteers in this experiment, ten in number, received 6 c.c. of the mixed stuff that I have described. They received it into each
nostril ; received it in the throat, and on the eye ; and when you think that 6 c.c. in all was used, you will
understand that some of it was swallowed. None of them took sick.
Then, thinking perhaps it was not only the time that was causing our failures, but also the salt solution —for it is possible that the salt solution might be inimical to the virus—-we planned another experiment, to eliminate both the time factor and the salt solution, and all other outside influences. In this experiment we had little cotton swabs on the end of sticks, and we transferred the material directly from nose to nose and from throat to throat, using a West tube for the throat culture, so as to get the material not only from the tonsils, but also from the posterior nasopharynx. We used nineteen volunteers for this experiment, and it was during the time of the outbreak, when we had a choice of many donors. A few of the donors were in the first day of the disease. Others were in the second or third day of the disease. None of these volunteers who received the material thus directly
transferred from cases took sick in any way. When I say none of them took sick in any way, I mean that
after receiving the material they were then isolated on Gallops Island. Their temperature was taken three
times a day and carefully examined, of course, and under constant medical supervision they were held
for one full week before they were released, and perhaps used again for some other experiment. All of
the volunteers received at least two, and some of them three “shots” as they expressed it.
Our next experiment consisted in injections of blood. We took five donors, five cases of influenza in
the febrile stage, some of them again quite early in the disease. We drew 20 ‘c.c. from the arm vein of
each, making a total of 100 c.c, which was mixed and treated with 1 per cent, of sodium citrate. Ten c.c. of
the citrated whole blood were injected into each of the ten volunteers. None of them took sick in any way.
Then we collected a lot of mucous material from the upper respiratory tract, and filtered ‘
it through Mandler filters. While these filters will hold back the bacteria of ordinary size, they will allow “ultramicroscopic” organisms to pass. This filtrate was injected into ten volunteers, each one receiving 3.5 c.c. subcutaneously, and none of these took sick in any way. The next experiment was designed to imitate the
natural way in which influenza spreads, at least the way in which we believe influenza spreads, and I have
no doubt it does—by human contact. This experiment consisted in bringing ten of our volunteers from
Gallops Island to the U. S. Naval Hospital at Chelsea, into a ward having thirty beds, all filled with influenza.
We had previously selected ten of these patients to be the donors ; and now, if you will follow me with
one of our volunteers in this ward, and remember that the other nine were at the same time doing the same
thing, we shall have a picture of just what was happening in this experiment :
The volunteer was led up to the bedside of the patient; he was introduced. He sat down alongside the bed of the patient. They shook hands, and. by instructions, he got as close as he conveniently could, and they talked· for live minutes. At the end of the five minutes, the patient breathed out as hard as he could, while the volunteer, muzzle to muzzle (in accordance with his instructions, about 2 inches between the two), received this expired -breath, and at the same time was breathing in as the patient breathed out. This they repeated
five times, and they did it fairly faithfully in almost all of the instances. After they had done this for five times, the patient coughed directly into the face of the volunteer, face to face, five différent times.
I may say that the volunteers were perfectly splendid about carrying out the technic of these experiments. They did it with a high idealism. They were inspired with the thought that they might help others. They went through the program in a splendid spirit. After our volunteer had had this sort of contact with the patient, talking and chatting and shaking hands with him for five minutes, and receiving his breath five times, and then his cough five times directly in his face, he moved to the next patient whom we had selected, and repeated this, and so on, until this volunteer had had that sort of contact with ten different cases of influenza, in different stages of the disease, mostly fresh cases, none of them more than three days old. We will remember that each one of the ten volunteers had that sort of intimate contact with each one of the ten different influenza patients. They were watched carefully for seven days—and none of them took sick in any way.
EXPERIMENTS AT PORTSMOUTH
At that point, the holidays came, our material was exhausted, and we temporarily suspended our work.
In fact, we felt rather surprised and somewhat perplexed, and were not sure as to the next way to turn,
and we felt it would be better to take a little breathing spell and a rest.
We started another set of experiments in February that lasted into March, again using fifty volunteers
carefully selected from the Deer Island Naval Training Station. These experiments I will not give in
detail. They would take too long. They were simply designed and the program was carefully planned, but
the way matters turned out became very confusing and perplexing. I will give two instances to explain
what I mean by that ; and I give them because they are exceedingly instructive and very interesting.
In February and March, the epidemic was on the wane. We had difficulty in finding donors. We were
not sure of our diagnosis, having no criterion of influenza. We therefore felt very fortunate when we
learned of an outbreak that was taking place at the Portsmouth Naval Prison, only a few hours north of
Boston. We at once loaded a couple of automobiles filled with our volunteers, and rushed up to Portsmouth, and there repeated many things that I have described in our first set of experiments. At Portsmouth, out of a large number of cases, we made our selections carefully, taking the typical cases for donors, and transferring the material directly to our volunteers. In about thirty-six hours, half of the number we exposed came down with fever and sore throat, with hemolytic streptococci present, and doubtless as the causal agent. All the clinicians who saw these cases in consultation agreed with us that they were ordinary cases of sore throat.
Another incident : One of our officers, Dr. L., who had been in intimate contact with the disease from
early in October, collected material from six healthy men at the Portsmouth Navy Yard who were thought
might be in the period of incubation of the disease—we were trying to get material as early as possible, because
all the evidence seems to indicate that the infection is transmittable early in the disease. None of the six
men came down with influenza, but Dr. L. came down in thirty-six hours, with a clinical attack of influenza,
although he had escaped all the rest of the outbreak.
CONCLUSION
I think we must be very careful not to draw any positive conclusions from negative results of this kind.
Many factors must be considered. Our volunteers may not have been susceptible. They may have been
immune. They had been exposed as all the rest of the people had been exposed to the disease, although they
gave no clinical history of an attack. Dr. McCoy, who with Dr. Richey, did a similar series of experiments on Goat Island, San Francisco, used volunteers who, so far as known, had not been exposed to the outbreak at all, also had negative results, that is, they were unable to reproduce the disease. Perhaps there are factors, or a factor, in the transmission of influenza that we do not know.
As a matter of fact, we entered the outbreak with a notion that we knew the cause of the disease, and
were quite sure we knew how it was transmitted from person to person. Perhaps, if we have learned anything, it is that we are not quite sure what we know about the disease.
[A complete account of the experiment is being published by the U. S. Public Health Service.]
Reply