Alaska
Alaska. (Volver a Geografía. Cronología. Personas. Fuentes.)
Efectos de la epidemia en la península de Seward y excavación de 1951:
One of the co-authors (JVH) was a student at the University of Iowa in 1949, beginning a PhD program in microbiology. In 1950, Dr William Hale (1898–1976), of Brookhaven National Laboratory, visited the University. During a discussion about the 1918 influenza pandemic, he commented ‘someone ought to go to the frozen north to find a victim from 1918 in a permafrost grave’. Immediately after that meeting, Hultin contacted his faculty advisor, Dr Albert McKee (1913–), with a dissertation proposal: to find such a permafrost grave in Alaska. Hultin began by collecting information from Alaska, most importantly from the palaeontologist Otto Geist (1888–1962). With Geist’s help, Hultin contacted several Alaskan missions about their 1918 experiences.
By 1951, all such mission communications had been received. Three sites along the coast of the Seward Peninsula were selected for further study: Nome, Wales, and Brevig Mission. The selection was based on epidemiological evidence indicating high pandemic fatality in the Inuit population. In Nome more than half of the native population had died, in Teller 53%, in Brevig Mission (then called Teller Mission) 90%, in York 100%, and in Wales 55% [81]. Because the mode of burial is of great importance for the preservation of victims, it was most fortunate that gold miners from Nome, skilled in penetrating the permafrost, had been employed by the Territorial government. They had moved from village to village during the winter of 1918–1919, and had managed to bury all of the victims in mass graves 2 m deep.
In June 1951, an expedition consisting of Hultin, McKee, and the team’s renowned pathologist Jack M Layton (1917–), left for Alaska. At Brevig Mission the permafrost conditions were promising, and permission to perform an exhumation was obtained. The team, joined in Alaska by Geist, made rapid progress digging. Reaching a depth of 2 m, a layer of bodies was discovered, placed side by side. Layton opened the rib cages of four bodies, exposing frozen, dark red, expanded lungs. Generous biopsies from eight lungs were obtained and, while still frozen, placed in sterile containers that were then put into thermal jugs and kept frozen with carbon dioxide snow from fire extinguishers. The instruments used were sterilized in boiling water at the graveside; surgical masks were used, as were sterile gloves.
In the microbiology laboratory at the University of Iowa, this material was cultured in embryonated eggs using available containment procedures of the time, including use of face masks, gloves and special pipettes, with all work done under a negative-pressure hood. Five susceptible ferrets received nasal instillations. The ferrets showed no signs of illness. Cultures from the lung material of some of the specimens grew H. influenzae and S. pneumoniae. Histological analyses showed a predominating pattern of acute viral pneumonitis, although some sections showed acute bacterial pneumonias. All of the available specimens were processed but no influenza virus was recovered. Unfortunately, all of the materials from this project were subsequently discarded. As Alfred Crosby stated in his book America’s Forgotten Pandemic, ‘the most direct assault on Spanish influenza had failed’ [82]. He also wrote [83]: ‘It has been the dream of scientists working on influenza for over a half century to somehow obtain specimens of the virus of Spanish influenza, but only something as unlikely as a time capsule could provide them.’
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