The Wayward Virus

When Captain Edward A. Tappe boarded his Capital Airlines DC-4 at Washington's National Airport one afternoon last week for a no-passenger flight to Baltimore, he saw a pink puddle on the rug between the forward luggage compartments. Thinking it might be hydraulic fluid, he put his finger in it, put the finger to his nose, and sniffed. It was not hydraulic fluid so he wiped his finger on his uniform and forgot about it.

At Baltimore, as 22 passengers for Pittsburgh lined up to go aboard, a baggage crew unloading the plane saw pink fluid dripping from a cardboard carton marked in inch-high letters LIVE POLIO VIRUS. The plane was airborne and banking in its turn westward when ground officials got through to Johns Hopkins University's Dr. Manfred M. Mayer (to whom the shipment was consigned). Said Mayer: "It is extremely virulent and dangerous. You must take all precautions at once."

Near Cumberland, Md., Captain Tappe received an unusual order: he and Co-pilot Robert S. Hurley were to wait in the cockpit after landing at Pittsburgh until the senior agent knocked at the door. There was no explanation. Capital had alerted Dr. Allison J. Berlin to meet the plane at Pittsburgh, and he had already conferred by phone with Virus Expert Jonas Salk, who was at a meeting in New York City. Salk's advice: give each member of the crew, and the baggage smashers in Baltimore and Washington, a double dose of gamma globulin and a dose of polio vaccine, and disinfect the plane. The passengers were allowed to take their luggage after it had been sluiced down with alcohol. The plane's interior got a dousing with hydrogen peroxide (the entire stock of three drugstores), Lysol and isopropyl alcohol. After consulting the Public Health Service, Capital ordered the same crew to fly the plane back to Washington, promptly pressed it into service again with another crew. It hopped to Norfolk, Va., then made a milk-run flight through Washington, Cleveland and Detroit to Flint, Mich., taking 124 passengers between these stops.

Then PHS and Capital began second-guessing. Had the volatilized virus been circulated by the plane's ventilating system? Nobody could be sure. Capital ordered the plane back to Washington for decontamination by the Army Chemical Corps and phoned the 22 Pittsburgh passengers, advising them to take the same shots as Salk had recommended for the crew. It advised the 124 later passengers to get a checkup with a physician, at Capital's expense.

Still unsettled at week's end was the question whether any law or regulation had been violated by the shipment from Parke, Davis & Co. to Johns Hopkins. One thing was certain: from now on, airline pilots will want to know about it whenever they carry anything as dangerous as a ten-quart jug of polio virus. Captain Tappe's cargo was the Mahoney strain of virus, which causes most paralysis.

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