Word: lassa
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Such adjectives, coming from a Columbia University professor, sounded unscientifically hyperbolic. In fact, they represented an understatement of the facts. When Dr. Frame, an assistant professor of tropical medicine at Columbia, reported his findings late last month, Lassa fever had already proved so deadly that one of the world's most expert virologists had fallen ill of the disease, a lab assistant and two nurses had died of it, and research with the virus had been abandoned until more exacting safety precautions could be devised...
...Lassa, a sun-baked herdsmen's village (pop. 1,000) in western Nigeria, Nurse Laura Wine of the Church of the Brethren Mission fell ill. She suffered fever and pain in her joints, and developed small red blotches on her skin and ulcers in her throat and mouth. Nurse Wine was flown to a larger mission hospital at Jos, in centra] Nigeria. There she died within 30 hours, but not until Nurse Charlotte Shaw had used her finger and a swab to cleanse the mouth ulcers. Nurse Shaw had nicked her finger earlier in the day while cutting roses...
...three nurses' blood serums. Using extreme precautions and working with two other expert virologists, he cultured a virus from the serums and injected it into mice. The adult mice died. Then in June, Casals fell ill. His first symptoms did not suggest what Frame had now christened Lassa fever. But at Presbyterian Hospital this diagnosis was confirmed. What to do? No known treatment was effective, but Patient Casals was more fortunate than his predecessors. Nurse Pinneo was convalescing, and there should still be antibodies in her blood. She flew to New York and gave two pints of blood...
...Yale lab technician, Juan Roman, was less fortunate. He had not worked directly with the Lassa serums or infected mice, so when he visited relatives in York, Pa., over Thanksgiving and fell ill, no one suspected the mystery virus. Roman died. Later, when his serum revealed that he had somehow been infected with the dread fever...
Casals decided that it would be wise to call a halt to Lassa research in the Yale laboratory...