Flu Fighter

The influenza pandemic which raged around the world in 1918-19 was the third great plague in recorded history.* Nobody ever isolated the microbe that caused it, and recent attempts to find the supposed virus in the long-frozen corpses of Eskimo victims have got nowhere. But experts are confident that the killer, which rivaled World War I in numbers of victims, was indeed a virus. And, 34 years later, they are working night & day to find a defense so that it can never strike again with such deadly effect.

Last week a crisp Australian who has done as much as any man living to subdue the influenza virus put the finishing touches on some experiments at the University of Wisconsin, then flew to California to check on virus research at Berkeley. Soon he will go back to his own laboratories in Melbourne. Sir Frank Macfarlane Burnet came to the U.S. to receive a Lasker Award and to tell fellow virologists what he has found out Down Under.

Burnet, 53, was still in school when the great influenza wave struck and had no thought that it would mean so much to him later. But he went to work and became a virologist, won fame by isolating the giant virus (rickettsia) which causes Q fever. He was in London in 1933 when influenza virus was first isolated, and his interest became sharply focused. Year after year (especially during World War II, when another epidemic was feared), Burnet went on performing delicate laboratory tests with influenza strains.

The job is complicated because there are at least two species of influenza virus (A and B) and several strains of each. While in the U.S., Sir Frank has been telling colleagues about his latest discovery: two strains of the same species can interbreed and produce offspring according to Mendelian law. On its face, this does not promise much relief for the patient with a fever and a bad cough as the 1952-53 flu season gets under way. But, says Burnet, "of all virus diseases, influenza is probably the one in which mutational changes in the virus are of greatest human importance." It is his theory that the 1918-19 outbreak happened because the virus became, by mutation, more violent. Then this form died out or mutated back.

Influenza vaccines today are often made worthless because the virus changes its nature and defeats them. The trick is to beat the virus to the draw, and have a suitable vaccine ready before a virulent strain can start an epidemic. "This is why," says Burnet quietly, "even the most academic-seeming investigations, such as mine, may one day become a matter of life and death."

*The others: the Black Death (bubonic plague), which ravaged Europe and Asia in the 14th century, and the scourge (probably also bubonic) which swept Europe in the 17th (Lyon, 1628-29; London, 1665; Vienna, 1679; Prague, 1681).

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