Medicine: Aid from an Ancient Animal

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Though motorists who must swerve to avoid hitting them on roads throughout the Southwest may think otherwise, armadillos do have their uses. The little armored anteaters are edible, and their shells can be used to make novelty items like bowls and baskets. Now it seems that these primeval-looking animals may get a role in man's efforts to cure an ancient disease. Researchers at the Gulf South Research Institute in New Iberia, La., and at the U.S. Public Health Service Hospital in nearby Carville believe that armadillos may be ideal test animals for leprosy research.

No species shares man's natural susceptibility to leprosy, and thus far no artificially infected animal has lived long enough for the slow-developing disease to reach the later, progressive stages in which it can be fully studied. None, that is, except armadillos. Gulf South researchers report that an armadillo infected with the leprosy bacillus has survived well into leprosy's progressive phase. They now hope to raise a whole laboratory colony of leprous armadillos and use them to study a malady that until now has been completely observable only in humans.