New York Times
February 8, 1998
A specimen of the influenza virus that killed 21 million people in the 1918 worldwide epidemic has been recovered from the frozen remains of a flu victim buried in Alaska.
Researchers at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology announced on Thursday that biopsy samples from a corpse exhumed from a cemetery in Brevig Mission, Alaska, contained genetic material from the flu.
Experts have said that analyzing the genetic pattern of the 1918 virus will help scientists learn how it was able to kill so many people and will help them prepare vaccines against the virus if it resurfaces.
Last year, Army researchers identified the flu virus in preserved lung specimens taken during autopsies of soldiers killed by the flu in 1918 at military bases in Fort Jackson, S.C., and Camp Upton, N.Y., which is now the site of Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island.
At Brevig Mission, Dr. Johan Hultin, a retired San Francisco pathologist, exhumed four bodies from a mass grave and found that one, an obese woman, had been well-preserved. Tissue from her lung contained genes from the killer flu.
Filed under: Health, Science/Technology, Vaccines
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