>> [inaudible conversations]

the story of the great influenza pandemic of 1918 and the search for the virus there been one of the longest titles at hand, why did you write this? >> guest: it seemed something they would get sick and get better again. i'i've never been interested at all. i wrote an article for the times about a miraculous discovery. there's a guy at walter reed medical center and he does science magazine and somehow managed to get some lung tissues from a soldier that died in 1918 and the next issue there were still fragments and when i interviewed him about his work, he told me about the pandemic of 1918 and i was stunned. i'd nevei had never heard of ang

like this. it was the worst thing in history. if told so many people that if something like that came today if that killed more people than the top ten killers wrapped together, 1.5 million mortality rate. and i found out by looking at papers by the centers for disease control 99% of the people that i and the epidemic were under 65 so it was a devastating epidemic and there was this idea there was such an incredible serendipity involved somebody had some lon lung tisse but still had asked the question how good and influenza virus become such a killer and could it happen again and if so would you recognize it in time.

c-span: ten to 20 million people died. >> guest: they keep raising the number upward. people now think 40 million is an underestimate and i heard there was a meeting people that were interested in the fluids of africa were saying they think the true number worldwide is closer to 100 billion possibly 20 million died in the subcontinent alone. c-span: is influenza? >> guest: id lives in the human lungs and the they take it into the virus factories if it gets him like any other if takes the cells and forces it to make new viruses and then it dies. it's a simple little thing. c-span: what happens to the body than?

>> guest: before hallmarks of influenza i heard. one of them is you get a fever and take today. you have muscle aches and pains, fever and a cough. i think i had it once. c-span: so you don't know what it feels like. >> guest: i thought this is the flu, five days of torture. i still remember those muscle aches. c-span: 1918, where did it start? >> guest: the first time it came into the united states and a biin abig way it showed up ate called camp devin near boston and people thought at the time they couldn't believe that it was something like the flu you. it was during world war i there were these rumors that there had been clouds over boston harbor

they put something into bayer aspirin that would kill. this is the most horrible thing anybody had ever witnessed. there were so many young soldiers dying but they had special trains to take away the dead. dead. the bodies were stacked up and it was so shocking the surgeon general and the contingent of three of the leading doctors in the united states to go out and say what is going on at camp devin. one wrote a memoir in this i can't even bear to think about this. it was in the fall of 1918 when the deadly influenza virus demonstrated superiority in the taking of human life. he said these are memories burned into his brain he would like to remove if he possibly could. and he described what would happen when they wanted to see an autopsy he said that there are so many dead they had to step over the bodies just to get

into the autopsy room. it hadn't been removed yet. and then when they watched the autopsy took place, the doctor would've been owould open up tha young man and their work is lungs heavy in his body filled with fluid with a useless. he essentially died because his lungs filled with fluid and the doctor there who depend pin much imperturbable, nothing could shake him he turned and said this must be a plague. he couldn't believe it. c-span: in the buck, while could you explain what they are in the bottom picture. >> guest: these are some of the samples of lung tissue. it was dissing how did we ever know and what was miraculous there is a military warehouse people describe it as the library of congress. started by abraham lincoln and every time that a knowledge of the doctor does an autopsy, he

puts some of the tissue into the person's medical in the warehouse. the people at the time they took little snippets of the tissue and sent them to the warehouse. he asked me if he could find some lung tissue into the picture that you just saw is of the little pieces with the tissue in and outside of it after all these years there is still the virus in 1918. c-span c-span: going back to this pathology institute, have you been there? >> guest: yes i have. it is a corrugated warehouse

that's technically burning down and they have box after box and there is a man. his job i would like to get lung samples of people who died from influenza 1918 and who died a very, very quickly because they did with the person that had gotten the virus and then lingered. he could get a computer printout of where to look and end them are samples. there's brain tissue and all sorts of stuff and this was lung tissue. c-span: user abraham lincoln started it. further samples from a war? >> guest: after the civil war and so on.

it had been accumulating like a packrat. it was a brilliant idea because when they started this, how would you know what they would use it for. and the idea no one ever found a human influenza virus. so the idea somebody could make use of this material was just brilliant. c-span: i know i'm jumping way ahead but do they know what caused the influenza of 1918? >> guest: they know that it was the flu virus. they had long samples of those that had the gene and then. it was pushing the limits of molecular biology and it takes a long time and it's described as putting together a very detailed mosaic. they had gotten them put together now and they are taken in the order of the likelihood,

an easy answer. unfortunately the first three there is related to th the birtf my recent pig virus that happened provided the answer you get to why it was dangerous. c-span c-span: let me attempt a couple of questions. there's only one person that works there. >> guest: one person that i saw but i'm sure that there's others. c-span: how big of a facility wasn't? >> guest: just over the border. one of the things i must admit was kind of a drama. there's somthere is some persons in here that are fairly dramatic. were you surprised at the competition going on? >> guest: i knew there was a

story. i wouldn't writ wouldn't wake uw there was a story because this chapter after chapter for me it isn't something i would pick up and read just because i wanted to read it so that is what appealed to me there was a competition that showed the strengths and weaknesses of scientific data. c-span: with book is this for you? >> guest: commercial and noncommercial i guess commerci commercial. c-span c-span: how long did you work for the times and wher times anu before that? >> guest: science magazine. c-span: how did you get to science? >> guest: you don't want to know. i wanted to be a writer but i was studying science and at this time i was at graduate school studying mathematics. i was going to get a ph phd and

decided to get a masters instead. if you science gave me a job that wasn't as a writer, it was a boring job collecting manuscripts and i said you have to understand i'm doing this to sort of get my way into the writing department. shortly after i took it i said i would like to write an article for you on my own time for free and they said okay and they published it and i did another and another. c-span: lawyer is your hometown? >> guest: baltimore. c-span: where did you go to school? >> guest: university of maryland and then in the graduate program in molecular biology before they decided that was not for me. c-span: and it's what kind of person? >> guest: is a subscription magazine for scientists and

policy makers at the heavy news section that is supposed to be written for anybody to read. it can get kind of technical but the idea is to write so that a physicist that wants to know what they are doing in molecular biology doesn't have to know the stuff that went up to the discovery. it's like writing a normal story all they have to do is read it. it's owned by the american association of the advancement of science. there is a british magazine that has mostly scientific articles. but c-span: going back again with this more devastating than the one we hear about a? >> guest: there is no comparison. when we think about it i think i said earlier 1.5 million americans die of something like this came by. into difficulties and 20,000 by

end of most of them are very old or have some other chronic medical condition. here 99% are under age 65 so it is that is a very peculiar death curve shaped like a w.. the very young died than people between the ages of 20 to 40. then at the end of some other people died. c-span: i would like to ask you to read this if you don't mind some of the author's brother died of this and where did he write this? >> guest: i asked a number of people and they said that the description wasn't fictionalized it's what happened when his brother died of the flu. c-span: could you tell us why you put this in the? >> guest: can i tell you i first? when i talk about the flu or

people that are living today talk about the flu, it is almost impossible for us to imagine what it was like. i tried as much as i could type the words down of the people that have been there because when you have been there and have seen it, it has an emotion i can't capture and i don't think anybody else i've spoken to has been able to capture. of all the descriptions i've read of people dying of the flu, this one really touched me. it almost brought me to tears. it was the saddest thing and you can imagine yourself in the room watching somebody die like this. i can't forget this and that's why i put it in. ..

>> to be distorted and attach. and that has turned gray with two red flags. and to be a call the corrupt vitality for the constant grimace of torture and then to get the air into his lungs and

there in the room to orchestrate everyone that is in it and then to grow delirious and by 4:00 o'clock then had brief periods of consciousness and delirium his breathing was easier there were songs from old and forgotten. to a popular song of wartime in his eyes are almost closed with that sensibility and death and then to stay with

them that night even though they did not believe in god or prayer. and then whoever tonight is showing the way he heard only the dying breath. and then suddenly call the family the body appeared to grow rigid before him. and then along a powerful way to be filled in the one moment and goes without support.

and then as he has lived. >> the saying in the book? >> i know. >> and another statistic 25 or 28 percent of the people? >> yes normally only a very small percentage actually get the flu they say they get of a normally is something else but it would just spread throughout the population and then it was 25 times more deadly than normal flu. >> here is a photograph and doctor giving him a shot with the story behind this quick. >> in 1976 they thought it was

related to a flu that was infected at that time because the huge numbers but then scientists became convinced and in 1976 to go out with the marked unit because nobody knew when to join them. and then had swine flu they finally discovered. so at the very end of the flu season and to protect the population so what should we do? do we say wait until next season to see if there's a problem? are we say we should protect

everybody with the entire nation. they said we can't take a chance because if it is back again because people will be dying. so there is a decision to make it was a campaign that didn't work too well. then tried to give his own flu shot. >>. >> it turned out there was no swine flu epidemic. it is totally unclear how we try to get it in with that

virus that indicated he may have gotten one but nobody died. nobody was getting sick from the flu. and then they had a vaccine from the flu strain that was not part of the problem and around the same time and then everybody started to get immunized and they said the vaccine is killing people. so there is a lot of fear in this vaccine even to this day because still so many people say the flu vaccine they never get the right strain. the vaccine is worse than the disease and can make you sick. back and started after 1976. >> how do they know? first of all how do you know what shot you get a couple months ago? >> there is a group of experts

with international surveillance that goes on all the time. and then with the previous years. in 1918 was the example. but then to think they will be infected. cspan: you say the province right above hong kong in southern china. >> some people say that every major epidemic or pandemic around the world has begun in southern china. there is a reason why it is a hot spot for flu that in order to really sweep the world is

so different but then the birds of all kind they don't even get sick. it lives in their intestine. the bird family is really different than people. >> but what is that count? >> i know i can't answer that. [laughter] but i cannot say he was only six. but then to kill the virus you kill the pig? >> only fits alive. you don't have to worry and in

southern china what they do and then the ducks are on the rice patties and then when they harvest the rice they put the ducks back to the some animals including the pigs. now the pig has the duck flu virus. than the people can get it from the pigs and then it starts there. and in 1918. that there are historical records that's it for something that looks like the

flu. thinking that southern china. >> you say hong kong had a big scare in 1997. do we know about that here? >>. >> i never think they were overreacting but at the time there was a flu that was killing young people they were getting really sick and dying. cspan: you mention one young bo boy. he got sick and died there was a big investigation what kind of flu he had the turns out he had a bird flu. that is really weird because they don't normally affect people. but there was have 1918 on

their mind with a pandemic. nobody in schools just little kids. there was a big investigation. and then the scientist says okay. and then a few months later young people dying of the flu. and that was really terrifying because something that happened in hong kong. and then with a very able not to expect that investigation.

but it was even killing chickens the big fear was if we don't see anything if it infects a person and in their lungs with that bird type of flu to infect people and then to protect the world the hong kong government ordered every's chicken to be killed because people like to buy their chickens and then to go to the grocery store and buy them. all the wet markets they are in cages and everyone was killed. at the time i thought it was weird now i think it's a good idea. sees one - . cspan: how do we get the flu? >> when somebody around us has

it. how does it start the very first time somebody gets the flu? do they eat it? >> they breathe it in her they get the virus they touch their nose and mouth. and then they think it's because we are inside more and also when the air is dry. and then other than the flu shot to protect yourself? >> so wash your hands a lot. i don't know. cspan: do you think flu shots are a good idea? >> i didn't have one until this year. i think why was i so stupid? i have children who are 18 and 21. they are in college i said

call me that you got it and they thought i was being ridiculous and then they call. cspan: your husband got hit? >> yes. he is a mathematician it works for a nonprofit society and philadelphia we live in princeton but he works in philadelphia. cspan: when you had this idea what year was it to write this book? >> 1988. cspan: when you first call do you call your agent? >> my agent called me. he called me and said this book flu stuff but it might be really interesting. but i had seen enough pieces from the new york times that is a story of the beginning and middle and and i was

hoping that we could read it like a novel not just a textbook. cspan: when did you know you had something you need? >> when i got the contract. [laughter] >>. >> with the virus in alaska. >> here's a picture. >> in 1950 your 611th sent to alaska. cspan: this picture is from where? >> they are two of them. >> that's in the same year and below that in the laboratory almost every eskimo and they

have died of the flu. >> did the whole village go? >> in 1918. >> and a pathologist and was just going to study for one year at the university of iowa. so he decided what he would do before he started school to travel to every state so they got a car and drove around and ended up in alaska. then he met a paleontologist going around and then they said there is a terrible tragedy in 1918 the only way we will ever know what

happened is a somebody can find somebody was buried in the permafrost and then find out what it was. will i know how to do this. i can find out where the eskimo goes and people could see the permafrost and go out there so he did do this and went to alaska where he thought he could find from the 1918 flu. and then the mass grave was exactly right. and then from 1918 and then to

make a vaccine we never have to suffer like this again. but he did to bring it back with them to iowa. and today to be horrified they were trying to grow the 1918 virus but hasn't thought about the consequences and then kept injecting chicken eggs. but nothing happened so he concluded it was dead but he never forgot that grave in the 1918 flu and always swore that one day when science advanced enough, he word try again. cspan: the 1918 flu and then

you have the 1951 trip by the scientist. where is he located? >> in the san francisco area. but always thinking about the flu worried about molecular biology and the time for him to write back to alaska to do something. cspan: a jump from 51 through 1955? on - - 1995 that was out here at the institute is he a military man? >> know he is a civilian. cspan: is a medical doctor? >> both a medical doctor and phd scientists. he stumbled into this with a career a brilliant man and was

interested in influenza because what they do in the pathology lab is answer questions for other people in the military. one of the questions asked is why were they dying? he said he thought they were dying because they were infected with the virus. can you pull out the measles virus? so they actually did pull it out and set i wonder what else we could do. that is what led them to start looking for the 1918 flu virus. >> 1995 going up with 3 million specimens. >> he has never gone there. cspan: and out in san francisco didn't even know that. >> that's right.

and then in science magazine he said i have the sample from the warehouse and then he wrote a letter and said i think i can get you another simple. so he carefully tried to frame who he was and they thought he was crazy but he look back and said yes i'm really interested and then to go out there next week and then to say at the time working for 25 years to build a replica of a cabin with the mountain property before he went to alaska. >> how old is he? >> i believe he was 71 when he went up there. >> and the other doctors about half his age.

cspan: what about kirsty duncan? why no picture? >> i wanted her picture but the problem was she kept writing me letters to indicate the only pictures she wanted to have control of what was said. she is worried about of what i would write in the version but i am a journalist you can't let somebody control what is said in the book and i wanted to be absolutely accurate. but i cannot tell you that you can write this book. cspan: tell us what she looks like. >> very tall she is very little about 5-foot tall long hair now she's about 30. she is very young she lives in windsor ontario. she recently got married she

was living with her parents and got married a second time recently. very intense looking very intense looking person. cspan: you interviewed? >> yes. very passionate she wanted to find the bodies in the permafrost calling it america's forgotten pandemic and she was truly moved to tears she says by the story and she is a geographer. she's living in canada. cspan: what she go to school? >> i don't know. >> you mentioned in the book how she was working as a history auger for. >> she said i think i can find them in the permafrost.

my primary concern is safety a like olguin who would go up there by himself and not tell anybody if he found anything he wouldn't tell anybody because he didn't want the eskimos as part of the media circus. so that something everybody knew about they would all understand the urgency and in the safest manner possible. cspan: what year did she start? >> starting in the 19 nineties as well. cspan: but the article in science magazine? >> 1997. cspan: she did it before or after? >> she knew that jeffrey was onto something. >> there is some kind of a committee the doctor served on with her. >> that's right because they

said it was what she thought were the bodies on an island near the arctic circle they are norway. it is a coincidence she learned that was an area of permafrost so then she decided to investigate if there were bodies. she found out the seven minors that went to work in the mines in the winter got sick with the flu on the bow on the way over as soon as they died and they were buried in unmarked graves and she learned to dig into the graves to get their bodies. but she was raising money from governments and private entities. cspan: why is a canadian asking the national institute of health here in the united states? >> she put together an international team and was looking for money one of the

team members was an american dish and an american virologist so they were asking money for the national institutes of health. cspan: how much did she need? >> i don't know she got a several million dollars. she got money from the british and she got a bunch of money. cspan: all along jeffrey has already discovered? >> but it doesn't hurt to have more samples there's nothing wrong. but she did not know about johan and then jeffrey said he tried to tell her they had samples and then she said those don't count because they were soaked in formaldehyde we need frozen samples so he tried to say they had frozen samples. she doesn't think she understood what he was trying to tell her so she went ahead anyway. cspan: johan went back.

>> am sorry. he did with a sample and divided into four pieces and sent it on the low-tech scale and decided this is a precious sample of lung tissue you don't just want to. cspan: this is a picture just a few years ago he went back at 51 because the science magazine article. here he is. getting another long sample and then dividing it into four pieces and actually used it for different ways and then he found the scenes and started

to work on them. and with the multimillion dollar and the expedition. cspan: but the other ten? >> ten camera crews and the documentary is being made. it was a big media extravaganza. cspan: was anybody suspicious what she was doing with the media and the money? >> there was a lot of controversy all along. because scientist a - - to get suspicious when there's a lot of media involvement so i hate to say this but they did get suspicious when it's blown up like that. and then about safety safety safety. there was a lot of animosity and people were angry with

her. that was a very passionate and emotional person like a scientist wearing high heels and i hate to say it to say that she wasn't a serious person. . . . . when he made the announcement. he said he wasn't going to sprinkle the world on this. they could decide how to release this information so he was waiting for them to give the

go-ahead. he'd gotten the samples and there was a masquerade. this sleeping on the floor in a one-room schoolhouse on an air mattress he got the permission and 1950 whe 1951 he did it ally himself with a couple of teenagers which helped him a lot. c-span: going back to norway. do you go to that spot? >> guest: it was i think 981 of my colleagues was there a. they couldn't get near. they said what if this was a virus.

they heard it all from the district. they started to dig into this gravesite and everyday he would issue a press release. what happened the ground was not frozen. they had done elaborate work ahead of time and said it is frozen with permafrost. it's going to be fine. when they started t today they found out they were buried above the permafrost and it wasn't frozen so he is viewed a press release instead we have the soft tissue and people who were there told me a there was the skeleton and they took own tissue and some tissue from the brain but there was no long. c-span: did it have to be one tissue? >> guest: will that is where it was. some people thought maybe it has

sparkesparked an epidemic of parkinson's disease, that is where brain cells by. then how would you even know. there was an epidemic of 1918 when there was an awakening and a favorite of people who supposedly gutted after 1918. so but still a why is there a cause and effect. they said we don't want the flu, no one is going to balk here and there was another the people who didn't get the flu didn't get parkinson's disease. nobody ever heard of getting into the brain.

as far as anybody has ever known or been able to show it doesn't live outside of the long was. c-span c-span: for their documentaries made? >> guest: yes. c-span: he couldn't show the actual -- >> guest: there was a huge deal on this thing but it turned out because it didn't turn out so well they then made it into the documentary and from the beginning they started pulling the team together saying let's discuss the possibilities and he had the cameras rolling up in the documentary became about the race and the whole world was

watching. c-span: did you make any conclusions about the way that it was generated? >> guest: it was being done by the outsiders doing it in a quiet way and it was interesting to me you didn't need this elaborate and expensive apparatus to dig into a gravesite and ask whether you could get the tissue. c-span: i have to ask another thing because you bring up john oxford. c-span: >> guest: he was a member of the team and he began to exchange it with facts which were sort of disturbing his

daughter because he they sounded so personal and emotional and according to his adult daughter he was getting concerned and by that time he had gotten his grand and paved the way for a lot of the work. he had a falling out with her and i think that he still is a member of the team. i remember their relationship and there was never anything other than just letters, faxes and telephone calls i don't think it is anything else but it's not what it used to be. >> host: before i ask about the center for disease control

what is your conclusion of what has gone on with all of this? was all of this were the? >> guest: i think so. every time i speak to scientists eisai are we going to see another flu like this and they say yes you just don't know when or how it is going to mutate and it's important to try to understand how it can turn into such a killer and if they can find out by looking at the very least they will be able to do experiments they could say what does it do, what can you do to protect yourself. c-span: what is different in 2000 if this kind of a pandemic were to start? >> guest: there's two big

differences. one is vaccines. 1918 there were no vaccines. the fear everybody have is if they see a virus like this coming and they have a six-month notice, people will think that scientists are crying wolf. you have to start somewhere, not everyone is going to get i get t if they can get the vaccine going as fast as they can come you could protect most of the world from the virus. the second big difference is antibiotics. many of them died because of the fluid to if solve and they died

of bacterial infections. we have antibiotics now that we didn't have them. c-span: nancy cox, who is she? >> guest: at the center for ther disease control in atlanta. c-span: what is the? >> guest: the national center where they look at things like the disease detectives. c-span: how big is it? >> guest: there's lots of big buildings. c-span: from funds that? >> guest: it's not enough. c-span: she got a call on this n this whole thing back in 97. as soon as she heard there was a bird flu killing kid, she was scared. she got a call when she was on her vacation in wyoming and she was tossing and turning.

c-span: >> guest: should you ask for vaccines to be made, another 1976 thing to happen? >> guest: is it our front-line defense? >> guest: they are the ones that look at all the things you worry about. c-span: go back to the distance between the flu and the flu we are having this year. what happened to the body? >> guest: people almost overnight died because their lungs were filled with fluid. you would hav have a young perso feel sick and within hours or day or so they would be gasping

for breath. one person described it as mahogany. today you feel very ill and some people are dying but nobody is getting instant death. c-span: are you surprised that you got basically buy what you started with? >> guest: that is part of the reason i've really enjoyed working on this book. people were amazing he was taking them down and finally sent an e-mail saying i'm going to keep all the files in my

living room davi they would go through the documents how they felt, what they said. they were so generous i was stunned. they were looking for old newspaper articles and photographs and documents c-span: the search for the virus that causes it. thank you very much. >> guest: thank you.

good evening. i'm one of the founders of politics and prose and as you see this evening c-span here is the microphone working? we have one microphone here to ask questions. so if you need access to the microphone you can go around