Medicine: The Case of Japanese B

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In July 1950 Ornithologist Elliott McClure, with a mixed armory of guns and hypodermics, began tramping Japan's bamboo thickets, mud flats and rice fields and grabbing young birds (in their nests) by the throat. McClure drew blood from their jugulars, soon proved their guilt. More than 60% of such favorite songsters as dusky thrushes and skylarks teemed with the virus, later with protective antibodies. More important in the spread of epidemics: herons, plumed egrets, cattle egrets, cormorants and blue magpies. (Major remaining problem in field work: Where does the virus hibernate?)

Privileged Horses. The herons and mosquitoes breed side by side. Also, the herons migrate through much of southeast Asia, which explains why Japanese B is rife in such places as Dienbienphu and Kuala Lumpur. In the Pusan perimeter, the bugs got out of hand when Army medics had to lay down their DDT guns and pick up Mis. Since this realization, U.S. forces have had relatively little trouble (only 30 cases, two deaths on Okinawa this year). They spray mosquito lairs, sleep under nets; in a tough combat situation they would slaughter all the nesting birds they could find.

But Republic of Korea health officials record 2,053 cases this year, 766 deaths. Japan reports 3,386 cases, 1,194 deaths—Japanese B far outstrips diphtheria, cholera, typhus and polio as a killer. After giving up to 500,000 inoculations with a killed-virus vaccine which proved too weak to be effective, the U.S. Army is now ready to begin laboratory testing of a greatly improved vaccine which may lick Japanese B entirely for Americans in the Orient. But even if it works (which will take years to determine), the Japanese themselves are not likely to benefit. In the homeland of Japanese B. vaccines against it are rated too costly for humans; they are reserved for imported race horses.