Abstract
After George McCoy accidentally discovered a new infection in 1911 while investigating
bubonic plague in squirrels, he transmitted the disease to experimental animals and
isolated the causative organism. He called it Bacterium tularense, after Tulare County, California. In 1919, Edward Francis determined that an infection
called “deer-fly fever” was the same disease, naming it “tularemia.” He demonstrated
that it occurred in wild rabbits and inadvertently showed that it was highly infectious,
for he and all his laboratory assistants contracted the illness. This characteristic
led to studies of its potential as a biological weapon, including involuntary human
experimentation by Japan among civilian, political and military prisoners, and its
probable use in warfare during World War II. Later, in the United States, voluntary
human experimentation occurred in the 1950s-1960s with penitentiary inmates and non-combatant
soldiers. Soviet Union scientists allegedly developed a vaccine-resistant strain,
which they tested as a biological weapon in 1982-1983.
Keywords
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: June 14, 2018
Accepted:
June 5,
2018
Received:
May 2,
2018
Footnotes
The author has no financial or other conflicts of interest to disclose.
Identification
Copyright
Published by Elsevier Inc. on behalf of Southern Society for Clinical Investigation.
