Major Walter Reed arrived in Havana, Cuba with
special orders to find the cause of yellow fever – and how to prevent it.
Major Reed discovered that yellow fever was not caused by microbes or bacteria as they (and everyone else) had earlier assumed. Faced with this failure, they were constrained to look for other alternatives. The only other explanation for yellow fever was provided by Dr. Carlos Finlay, the eccentric Cuban physician, who insisted that it was caused by mosquitoes.
Monkeys and Apes were immune to yellow fever – and, therefore, human animals had to be used as experimental subjects. This posed a difficult moral dilemma as lives has to be risked in order to save further lives. The members of the research team decided to serve as subjects themselves, before asking for any volunteers.
Mr. Kissinger and Mr. Moran volunteered; but they refused to accept the money offered. They said that they were prepared to risk their lives for the cause of humanity – and in the larger interest of science. Indeed, the conquest of yellow fever required a great deal of courage, both on the part of the research team and the volunteers. It would not be correct to hazard whose actions were more heroic; suffice it to say that they were facing death almost every other day (because yellow fever was an extremely virulent disease).
However, Major Reed deserves special mention as he went far beyond his initial orders. As the team leader, it was his responsibility to decide the acceptable levels of risk; it was his responsibility to decide (almost) who lived and who died. He was willing to accept this responsibility as he knew that finding the cause of yellow fever would help to reduce human suffering forever…
The author (De Kruif), who has been a laboratory researcher himself, has written widely about medical pioneers and their contribution to medicine. These men, he says, need to be brave and intuitive in their approach. But to succeed in this line of work, they need to be lucky most of all!