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isabelott.bsky.social
Isabel
@isabelott.bsky.social
11K followers 2.2K following 2K posts
Evolutionary & population biology of vector-borne viral disease systems. 🦟 genetics PhD student in NC.
Arbovirologist, orthobunyavirus wonk, feral reference librarian, & public health advocate. 80s mosquito. Coaster-sized earrings. (she/her) 🏳️‍🌈
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isabelott.bsky.social
in this vein: this gem has recently been doing the rounds in my friend group of “older grad students who worked 4+ years before we decided to go back to school and therefore no longer fear it”
matthew diarrhea mandli @matthew_mandli Being an older student fucking rules. You? Afraid to raise your hand in class. Me? eating a ziploc of scrambled eggs in the front row. I'm interrupting the professor with a question that's actually a statement. I clear my throat so loud it sets off a car alarm
November 26, 2025 at 3:30 AM
isabelott.bsky.social
so many really lovely & moving pieces of this essay – I saved this one for later.
"The case that religion and spirituality are human inventions to help make sense of the chaotic and difficult state of affairs is an extraordinarily strong case. Faith is a choice to believe in a fiction. It is a story," he tells me. "But faith is knowing that you don't really know so much. To act in faith is to acknowledge your own vast ignorance and choose something that's vast with possibility."
November 25, 2025 at 12:56 AM
isabelott.bsky.social
hmmmm
kalimaxxing "nobody is making you do this" i am driven by unnatural forces you will never even begin to comprehend
November 16, 2025 at 11:22 PM
isabelott.bsky.social
coming out of my cage and I’ve been doing…I mean, pretty bad, honestly? but I threw together a lil poster and got to talk mosquito genetics & stacks quests and had a blast. things are finally headed in a really kickass direction. and thank god & cool bug facts & my pen pals for that.
a dark haired white woman grinning so hard her eyes are closed, wearing a black sleeveless sweater and enormous linen pants that are square patterned with red/blue/yellow/white fill alternating. she’s standing in front of an academic poster titled, “Photoperiodic diapause initiation at multiple life stages in Aedes triseriatus is linked to shared regions across all three chromosomes”. there are diagrams of mosquito life cycle/a map with mosquito life cycle info on it an it’s always sunny meme that i edited: mac saying, “well, first of all, through cool bug facts, all things are possible, so jot that down.”
November 16, 2025 at 3:11 AM
isabelott.bsky.social
I can personally vouch for the long-standing quality of two photon nerd earrings!! source: I’m currently wearing the 24k gold phylogenetic hoops I got from them in 2019 at my departmental retreat 😆
selfie of a dark-haired white woman with winged eyeliner and red lipstick, wearing a name tag. she’s holding up one of her earrings, large gold hoops with a circular phylogenetic tree pattern inside
November 15, 2025 at 7:57 PM
isabelott.bsky.social
When not even P*TA’s willing to go to bat for you, I mean. Good luck. (Solid account of a sad, bizarre story of the Canadian far right, though I’d note that CFIA was on the hook to compensate them for the actual & significant value of the birds if they’d culled per regulations.)
The morning the CFIA convoy arrived, 72-year-old Lois Wood, a neighbor of the farm, stepped onto her porch to feed her cat and found a masked man pouring gasoline around her home. When she screamed, she later told CTV News, the man doused her and punched her in the face. In a video captured on one of the farm's livestreams, Wood can be heard screaming. The RCMP said a suspect associated with the protest camp had been identified and arrested. Pasitney later said on a livestream that Wood had been "working with" the CFIA from the beginning - that she'd been the anonymous neighbor who reported the dead ostriches, which Wood denied.
November 14, 2025 at 4:52 AM
isabelott.bsky.social
warning sticker on a machine (probably photoshopped idk) that says “WARNING: IT IS POSSIBLE TO SURVIVE THIS BUT NOT UNALTERED”
November 14, 2025 at 3:46 AM
isabelott.bsky.social
a heart-aching day. my heart goes out to the survivors who have been denied justice for so long. a little goodnight liesl from her efforts to pin me down this morning.

as mariame kaba always says: may tomorrow bring us more justice and some peace.
a very sleepy little kitty who is puffered into a blanket nest with her chin puffered into her chest like a little dove
November 13, 2025 at 4:33 AM
isabelott.bsky.social
🤮
In response to the revelations of Epstein's support of Nowak and his lab (the Program for Evolutionary Dynamics), Nowak was suspended from supervising undergraduate research for two years, and the institute was permanently closed. 1911101 Harvard's review, leading to the suspension, uncovered that Epstein had maintained access to a personal office in Nowak's lab for 9 years, even after his conviction for sex crimes, and used the office over 40 times, "typically accompanied by young women serving as his assistants". (11] In 2023, Harvard lifted the sanctions against Nowak and he remains on the faculty, jointly appointed in the Department of Mathematics and the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology
November 13, 2025 at 3:33 AM
isabelott.bsky.social
Epstein’s included in Nathan Wolfe’s list of “loyal and generous friends” in the acknowledgements section of his 2011 book, The Viral Storm:
thank my father, Chuck Wolfe, mother, Carol Wittenberg, and sister, Julie Hirsch, and their families for always encouraging my love of science and standing decidedly by me despite my years of travel and absence, and my sweet grandmother, Ann Sloman, who has supported her grandson despite the fact that he didn't want to become a "doctor." I am privileged to have loyal and generous friends who have kindly contributed their valuable time and unique skills to my work, including Zack Bogue, Sebastian Buckup, June Cohen, Tom DeRosa, Jeffrey Epstein, Sanjay Gupta, Erez Kalir, John Kelley, Nina Khosla, Larry Kirshbaum, Boris Nikolic, Sally O'Brien, Sarah Schlesinger, Narry Singh, Linda Stone, and Riaz Valani. Last, but certainly not least, I would like to thank Lauren Gunderson, my thought-ful, wonderful reader, editor, and partner
November 13, 2025 at 3:01 AM
isabelott.bsky.social
I think the only absurdly frivolous luxury good I have ever craved is a pair of the classic PSB collab Miyake shutter shades. I mean, they’re ridiculous and impractical, and $10k+ on auction, which, lol. But they are also: *extremely* cool
picture of chris lowe of the pet shop boys wearing a black cap, a black and white striped shirt. and a pair of vintage issey miyake shades that have horizontally striped metal lens covers over the black circular lenses
November 12, 2025 at 1:00 AM
isabelott.bsky.social
steve is watching this right now and I’m wondering if it isn’t worth a try at this point
a japanese reporter from Godzilla vs Mothra looking somber and saying, “It may sound primitive and unscientific, but through the fairies, we could ask Mothra to help.”
November 11, 2025 at 2:08 AM
isabelott.bsky.social
always funny to revisit reading notes & encounter a date-stamped record of one’s descent into a particular strain of now-permanent madness
a little notebook with pages from May 17th and 21st, 2024 - the first page is notes on a review about temperature effects on zoonotic arbovirus transmission (Ciota & Keyel 2019) that includes some highlighted citations about diapause effects; the next page is titled “diapause crash course” (1 of 6) & i have not stopped thinking about diapause in the year and a half since. (to emphasize the point, a tab visible much later in the notebook reads “protomacleaya diap?”)
November 6, 2025 at 7:41 PM
isabelott.bsky.social
courtesy of @petrathepostdoc.bsky.social
a mosquito cartoon meme looking at a computer screen with a deeply troubled expression
November 5, 2025 at 9:58 PM
isabelott.bsky.social
oh, and: final version with cleaner diagonal lines. btw
very abstract little hexagon shape with sort of a fireplace/chimney pattern inside
November 5, 2025 at 8:00 PM
isabelott.bsky.social
since it’s not self-evident which part of a mosquito that’s an abstract depiction of, btw
www.inaturalist.org/photos/44919...
close up of a mosquito feeding with a fun and geometric fireplace shaped pattern on its back
November 5, 2025 at 7:57 PM
isabelott.bsky.social
the year i’m having
meme of sisyphus pushing the boulder uphill and a photoshopped on green pentatomid captioned “one must imagine sisyphus finding a very cool bug under the rock”
November 5, 2025 at 6:55 PM
isabelott.bsky.social
Reminds me of this piece by Sarah Kennedy & Trent Johnson, which I saw in 2018 but still think about quite often. You start walking and you keep walking. That’s the deal we make with each other. www.art.uga.edu/exhibition/w...
a print of a face with a speech bubble and chipboard letters on strings filling it reading: NOWHERE IS A HAVEN YOU CAN’T HOLD HANDS FOREVER PEOPLE STILL DIE IN CALIFORNIA SO YOU START WALKING AND YOU KEEP WALKING THATS THE DEAL WE MAKE WITH EACH OTHER
November 5, 2025 at 6:34 PM
isabelott.bsky.social
research? assisted 🫡
photo of a work setup. there is a cat in my lap in front of the keyboard & a screen where I’m taking data scans from my pen pal’s lab notebook circa 1978-1980 and plugging them into a spreadsheet selfie of a silly tuxedo tort resting her cheek wearily on my wrist as i type same scene from above where you can see her resting her little head on my wrist 😭
November 4, 2025 at 3:52 AM
isabelott.bsky.social
now, I love my mother very dearly & she has been instrumental in supporting my career to date, but I am not sure I could ever ask this of her, nor that she would agree to it even if I did,
Fig. 18 Mrs. Mochizuki. (From Susumu Hotta) Hotta was the first person to isolate dengue virus from a patient, a Mrs. Mochizuki, and he made the isolate using suckling mice - a procedure that rarely works with tissues from dengue patients. When I asked him how he knew the isolate was dengue virus, he hedged a bit and then told me he injected it into his Mother, she developed classical dengue, and he recovered dengue virus from her blood - Ah! What a Mother will do for her Son's career.
November 2, 2025 at 9:47 PM
isabelott.bsky.social
Oh yeah, that’s infamous. Less well-known deliberate human infections with flavis were the initial isolation/study attempts for dengue viruses - Hotta isolated in suckling mice & confirmed by infecting his own mother; Sabin’s US prototype strains (incl Hawaii 1944 1 and NGC 2) were human passaged…
Susumu Hotta (1918-2011) was a Kyoto Universi-ty-based physician and infectious disease researcher (Konishi and Kuno, 2013) who, as a student, investigated massive Aedes albopictus-borne wartime dengue epidemics in Nagasaki. Making repeated field trips to that city, in summer 1943 he isolated the first dengue virus using suckling mouse brain inoculation. This isolation came several months before isolations of two dengue viruses in 1944 by Albert Sabin. Arbovi-rologist John Aaskov relates that Hotta told him he had proved that his isolation was a pathogenic dengue virus by inoculating his own mother, then 57 years old, who developed clinical dengue. Hotta's isolation and Sabin's first isolation were of the virus now known as DENV 1. Sabin's second isolation is now known as DENV 2. It is of some interest that Sabin's work was greatly influenced by OSS translations of Hotta's publications and communications, by captured documents, and at least one OSS interrogation of a captured Japanese dengue researcher. Hotta continued his dengue research throughout the war, but his 1945 field trip to Nagasaki was delayed because American planes had bombed the railroad line. Unable to reach the city by August 9, Hotta survived while his research colleagues perished in the atomic bomb blast. After the war, Hotta was among the first to recognize the protective effects associated with dengue anamnestic antibody responses associated with second infections. In the 1950s Hotta went to the United States and received the PhD degree from the University of Washington. Returning to Japan as a professor at Kobe University, Hotta had a long productive career as an arbovirologist and researcher in other infectious diseases.
November 2, 2025 at 8:24 PM
isabelott.bsky.social
Another funny Max Theiler anecdote from Charlie Calisher’s field history/bio, Lifting the Impenetrable Veil (another limited run small press bio that I tracked down a rare copy of online)
Theiler received a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1951, the only Nobel Prize ever given for development of a vaccine. By now, more than 400 million doses of YF 17D vaccine have been distributed worldwide. In the summer of 1964, as a recent Ph.D., I went, uninvited and unannounced, to Yale, hoping to speak with people there working with arboviruses. I had read 2 fascinating papers in Science written by CDC investigators who had described the discovery of a Venezuelan equine encephalitis virus…in mosquitoes and vertebrates in the Everglades National Park, and of antibody to that virus in Native Americans living in that area. I was interested in finding out more about arboviruses, about which I knew virtually nothing. None of the people I had hoped to meet were there at the time, but Max Theiler was. Theiler was a Nobel Laureate but I had no idea of that at the time. He invited me into his office, and we chatted for a few hours about these fascinating viruses. Theiler encouraged me to pursue my dreams and provided tips as to how I might do that. During the course of our conversation (I did not say much) I noticed that the small and only window in his office was being propped open with a statuette. When I examined it closely, I found that it was the Albert Lasker Award, which Theiler had been given for "major contributions to medical science". He explained that his office was not air conditioned and that propping open the window was the only way he could survive the sweltering heat; "The lack of air conditioning is no big deal", he said about the unusual use of that award. We not only discussed viruses, we discussed science in general, baseball, the merits of various Yale personnel, and a large number of other topics. He related that before he had been awarded the Nobel Prize, he was known to the people who got on the train with him each morning as "the strange little guy who lives down the street from Alvin Dark" (at the time the shortstop of the New York Giants baseball team), but that after he received the Nobel Prize things had changed. He then became known as "the strange little guy with the Nobel Prize who lives down the street from Alvin Dark." Later, we went to New York City and had dinner and drinks and more delightful conversations. I thought then that if Max Theiler represented arbovirologists in general, that was the field I wanted to pursue. He didn't, but that turned out to be a small matter.
November 2, 2025 at 7:24 PM
isabelott.bsky.social
Jordi Casals’ infection - survivable only through emergency convalescent serum treatment from a recovered nurse (Lily Pinneo - her Lassa infection produced the “LP” strain), along with the fatal infection of his technician, Juan Roman, are better-known parts of this story, but still chilling (3/3)
I learned of this Monday, when Wil Downs assembled the staff for a meeting. He described Jordi Casals as suffering from a severe illness, characterized mainly by high fever of unknown origin, a low white cell count, pharyngitis and unusually severe muscle pains, affecting the leg muscles. Wil Downs, making the tentative diagnosis of Lassa fever, was in favor of giving immediately immune plasma from Lily Pinneo, known to contain protecting neutraling antibodies from the neutralization tests performed in the Vero cell cultures. But the physician in charge would not hear of this specifc treatment. He wanted to establish first a definitive diagnosis of Lassa fever by isolation of the Lassa virus from JC. That would take at least 96 hours. Wil Downs, in compliance, arranged for a messenger service of specimens from JC, Jimmy Washington, residing in NY & a long-time technician of JC, thereafter brought me blood specimens, throat washings as well as urine samples from the patient. This was carried out M-W, and in the meantime, JC was golng down-hill rapidly. On Wed, we had another staff meeting… We were unanimously in favor of therapy with immune plasma from Lily Pinneo. Jordi Casals was dying. Lily Pinneo, reconvalescing from Lassa fever at home, was summoned and reached New York within hours by plane. The very same evening, an infusion of immune plasma was initiated…& continued during the night. At the same time. I was monitoring the virema (virus in the blood) of JC by virus isolations in Vero cell cultures at the Yale Arbovirus Research Unit. The results were as follows: while the blood specimens, up to and including June 18, 1969, contained Lassa virus, the specimens as of 48 hours following therapy with immune plasma were free of Lassa virus. However, throat washings and urine samples remained Lassa virus-positive for many more weeks. While clinically JC was recovering, he continued to be contaglous. He was, however, released from the Hospital and was reconvalescing at home. By the middle of July 1969, all shedding of Lassa virus had ceased. All laboratory reports were signed out as negative by me. To our great joy and relief Jordi Casals had almost certainly been saved specifically by the timely administration of antibody derived from Lily Pinneo. Juan Roman, a young laboratory technician of Jordi Casals, was not as lucky. He acquired a Lassa virus laboratory infection verified by Lassa virus isolation in Vero cell cultures from autopsy material in a mysterious way and months later, when nobody was thinking of laboratory infections anymore. He developed a severe cold - just during the week of Thanksgiving - but unfortunately, insisted on carrying through plans to visit relatives in another state… He died there on the weekend following … Following this second laboratory infection, all experiments involving work with live Lassa virus were stopped at YARU, but continued in the high security facilities at the CDC, and at Porton Down, Wiltshire, England. …Lassa fever is described in the nineties as potentially dangerous Internationally, since it is present in small number of cases in West and Central Africa and could possibly be exported to Europe and North America. Highly fatal in epidemics. It is spread epidemiologically from a wild rodent reservoir of Lassa virus…Following recovery, there is natural immunity, probably lasting. At present, the only intervention available is rodent control, quarantine. disinfection of patient's excreta, and therapy with plasma and ribavirin. The political will for potential eradicability by the International Task Force for Disease Eradication is ascertained as "Low". Max Theller (1899-1972) warned me: "Sonja, watch out that the Lassa virus is not going to be stolen from you.” Incredible thought! He advised me to publish an "advance summary” in Nature Moreover, he said: Lassa virus made YARU" (Yale Arbovirus Research Unit), and he gave me the nickname: "The Late Bloomer."
November 2, 2025 at 6:22 PM
isabelott.bsky.social
the initial characterization of Lassa virus, continued (2/3)
The experiments carried out at the Yale Arbovirus Research Unit by me had been successful. How did the Lassa fever experiments change my daily existence? work on the new human pathogen had been restricted by wil Downs to my tissue culture section and to the adjacent section presided over by Jordi Casals on the 7th floor of the Laboratory of Epidemiology and Public Health. Other experienced and qualified investigators at YARU such as Bob Shope, assistant director as of 1968, and Nick Karabatsos, were excluded from participation, because of possible danger to their young children. In my own section, whenever I was working with the Lassa agent, I slowed down and became meticulous in techniques. Inasmuch as possible i remained in my own laboratory and avolded other people in the department, since we could not know how highly virulent this infectious agent might be. In Stamford, we were living then -- and I still do today -- in a home with a large yard. [her dog] loved children…I asked our good neighbors to keep their children temporarily away for reasons of safety… Many people asked me: "Are you not afraid for your own safety when working with the dreadful agent?" And I answered: "Not really." By the late sixties. I had a vast experience in the handling of dangerous human pathogens. but I had never suffered a laboratory infection. I had, in the meantime, familiarized myself with the course of illness of Lassa fever in the three missionary nurses. Briefly, Laura Wine, 69 years old. working in a mission hospital in Lassa, a small village with about 1,000 inhabitants in northeastem Nigeria, was in good health until January 12, 1969 when her illness started. The onset was gradual with low grade fever, malaise. myalgia, headache, ulcerative pharyngitis, dyspnea, leukepenia and some hemorrhagic signs. Following a steady downhill course, she was flown…to Bingham Memorial Hospital in Jos, a town of about 100.000 inhabitants on the Jos plateau, Nigeria. She was cared for by the night nurse Charlotte Shaw and also by the head nurse Lay Pinneo. She went Into cardiac failure, had convulsions and expired on January 26, 1969, 30 hours after admission. The illness of Charlotte Shaw, 45 years old, started on February 3, 1969. with chills and fever (102ºF to 103°F), pharyngitis, headache, drowsiness. dyspnea and leukopenia. She died on February 13, 1969, the 11th day of illness. Lily Pinneo. 52 years old, had assisted at the autopsy of Charlotte Shaw. She became ill on February 20, 1969 with fever (99? to 100ªF). malaise. headache, nausea. She was admitted to the Bingham Memorial Hospital on February 23, 1969 with a mild sore throat. She was sent by her physician, Dr. Jeanette Troup' to New York for diagnosis and treatment. During transit, she lay 4 days in an isolation shed in Lagos, the capital of Nigeria. Accompanied by a missionary nurse, she arrived at the Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center in New York on March 4, 1969, just after midnight and critically ill. Under the care of Dr. John D. Frame', Lily Pinneo was recovering. While the Lassa agent had been isolated by me from serum samples collected 5 and 14 days after onset in Vero cell cultures, the serum samples collected 28 and 37 days after onset were negative. Instead, the serum samples drawn 28 and 37 days after onset, when mixed with the Lassa agent isolated 14 days after onset during the acute phase of illness, protected the inoculated Vero cell cultures from being destroyed. Lily Pinneo had clearly developed protecting antibodies against the Lassa agent during the convalescent phase of Lassa fever. Characterization, identification and tentative classification was undertaken next. It is evident from my account up to now that one cannot characterize, identify and classify a human pathogen without having first Isolated it. That is the conditio sine qua non. Speed in going "right on" in the solving of the Lassa mystery" was our primary concern. Thus, we engaged our ested muble -workers' both from our unit and the Department of Epidemiology & Public Health. They, however, were only allowed to work with inactivated material. …in three short months the Lassa agent was characterized, identified and tentatively classifed. Up to the end of May 1969, all tests were carried out with Lassa agent grown in Vero cell cultures in the tissue culture section by me. The Lassa agent chosen for the subsequent studies was the isolate obtained from a blood specimen collected by Dr. Jeanette M. Troup on February 25. 1969 (5 days after onset). It was tentatively designated as L.P. (Lily Pinneo) strain. In serological studies, samples of serum collected from Lily Pinneo on days 14 and 28 after onset, were used as acute phase - and convalescent phase specimens. The Lassa agent was inactivated by sodium deoxycholate and by betapropiolactone. It appeared to contain ribonucleic acid (RNA)…By electron microscopy, spheroid particles closely resembling those reported for lympheytic choriomeningitis (LCM) were revealed. As calculated by filtration. the agent had a diameter between 70 and 150 nm. By complement-fixation tests, Jordi Casals showed a reproducible, although only low-level relationship between the LP strain and LCMV, and also with Junin virus, the cause of Argentinian hemorrhagic fever… Thus, a hitherto undentified human pathogen causing Lassa fever. Isolated by me in Vero cell cultures, was given at this point the name Lassa virus*, with the prototype strain being designated as L.P. (Lily Pinneo) strain. At the end of May 1969…Jordi Casals asked if I had any objection to the inoculation of baby and adult mice with the Lassa LP strain isolated in Vero cell cultures by me.? Of course not and obliging gladly in the spint of "advancing medical knowledge". It was after all the spirit which had motivated turner, my academic mentor. …I gave Jordi Casals a batch of infectious Vero cell culture fluid…He inoculated baby & adult mice housed next to his office on the 7th floor in a large sterile room. Jimmy Washington, his long-time technician, took care of the experimental animals over the long weekend…Early in June, Casals came to my office, quite excited. He said: “Come and see! All the baby mice are still well, but most of the inoculated adult mice have died, the few still living are sick." I…stood at the entrance of the "mouse room", door half open. Jordi Casals removed an adult mouse from its cage, spun it by its tail, whereupon it started to have convulsions, bringing to my memory the picture of Laura Wine who had convulsions just prior to death. I discreetly stepped away from him. I recalled at that moment vividly a statement by Hermann Mooser, the discoverer of Rickettsia typhi: "You don't have to be afraid of a corpse, it being quite stiff and still; but be aware of any living creature which sneezes, coughs. urinates and defecates." It entered my mind that this adult mouse possibly urinated over Jordi Casal's hand as he spun its tail. Be it as it may, some days later, on June 9th 1969, Jordi Casals came down with an unusually severe "summer cold" - at least so we thought at first. Nevertheless, he came to work every day. commuting from NY. He must have experienced "chills", because he was wearing a thick, gray winter sweater underneath the lab coat. His condition deteriorated during the week. By Friday afternoon, he displayed a deadly, ashen color - one of the secretaries saying: "He looks like death warmed over." He complained of having severe leg pains. …his wife and daughter visited their grandmother…over the weekend. When they returned on Sunday evening. Jordi Casals was critically ill, & his skin was flushed. Christina, on her way to becoming a medical doctor, insisted on calling the family physician, who, in turn, arranged for the immediate admission of Jordi to the [hospital]
November 2, 2025 at 6:08 PM
isabelott.bsky.social
From the chapter in Sonja Buckley’s autobiography detailing her (& the first ever) isolation of Lassa virus, a terrifying viral hemorrhagic fever, in the “bare hands and mouth pipetting” era of virus isolation. Jesus christ.
Spring 1969 was approaching bringing in its wings new vigor. The world and Max Theiler, from a front seat, were about to witness the isolation of Lassa virus, the cause of an apparently highly fatal West African disease. It was Thursday afternoon, March 6th. I was involved in a large study of tick-borne arboviruses, having been invited to participate in an international symposium on tick-borne viruses to be held in the fall of the same year in…Czechoslovakia. There was an urgent phone call from Wilbur G. Downs from the Head Office of The Rockefeller Foundation. The director of the Yale Arbovirus Research Unit. Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, Yale University School of Medicine, had just returned to New York from an extended field trip undertaken in the line of duty as the associate director of the Division of Medical and Natural Sciences of The Rockefeller Foundation. He was asking me to stay at work until his arrival with some important specimens obtained from three American missionary nurses stationed in northeastern Nigeria. All three had been afflicted in succession during the dry season with a severe febrile disease of unknown origin. Two of them had died on January 26th, and February 13th, respectively. The third nurse had been stricken on February 20th, 1969. had been flown to New York and was now in critical condition at the Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center. I called John, my pathologist husband, and informed him that I would be delayed. Jordi Casals, his section adjoining my tissue culture section on the 7th floor of the Laboratory of Epidemiology and Public Health of Yale, had been summoned to remain at the Yale Arbovirus Research Unit also. Wil Downs arrived carrying a thermos bottle filled with specimens by 4:00 p.m. We had a conference in Jordi Casal's laboratory as to the methods of procedure and strategy. What to do? Wil Downs decided to include my tissue culture section in the isolation attempts. He said: "We have to inoculate adult …the disease is not typical for an arbovirus, and we better inoculate also some cell cultures." I had not one single "spare" cell culture available on that evening. On the following day -Friday -Elinor Gilson, my skillful cell culture technician, prepared 240 Vero cell stationary tube cultures and 70 Vero cell French square bottles…In the sixties [vero] was a commonly used continuous cell line in many laboratories for the study of viruses. In the midst of all these preparations Wil Downs came into the tissue culture section, dressed like a surgeon with gown, mask, head cap and rubber gloves. He carried a metal rack holding numerous glass tubes labeled with the names of the three nurses (Laura Wine, Charlotte Shaw & Lily Pinneo) nature of specimens & dates of collection. I removed carefully small amounts of fluids from each tube, just enough material for inoculation of the Vero cell cultures. I had no mask or gloves, only the white laboratory coat as well as the sterile technique ingrained in me by my Swiss microbiology professors. Hermann Mooser and Arthur Grumbach. I handed the samples to my longtime and trusted technical associate, Charles Mullen, trained in bacteriological techniques by Stanhope Bayne-Jones at Hopkins. He stored them temporarily in the deep freeze over the weekend. In what kind of mental frame was I? Quite honestly, I was ever so slightly annoyed. All my experiments with tick-borne viruses were interrupted at the time. But discouraging was the fact that some of the Lassa fever specimens had been frozen and thawed many times during the transit from West Africa to New Haven. I had, therefore, no hope of isolating a pathogen. I had, however, great pride in the Yale Arbovirus Research Unit and in The Rockefeller Foundation. Thus, I was going to give "my very best shot". Moreover, Wil Downs had told me that aliquots of the Lassa fever specimens had also been submitted for isolation attempts to 3 other laboratories. namely to the CDC, to the NY …Thus, the element of competition played definitely a role. All 3 facilities failed in their isolation attempts, coming up empty-handed. I spent the whole day of March 10th 1969 with the inoculation of the Vero cell cultures with the specimens derived from the two deceased missionary nurses…& from the hospitalized missionary nurse. Lily Pinneo, fighting for her life in NY. There were serum samples taken at different intervals following onset of fever, samples taken on the day of death or during the autopsy and also various pleural fluid samples from Lily Pinneo. All materials were inoculated in 10-fold dilutions; control Vero cell cultures were inoculated with diluent only. The Vero cell cultures were then incubated in my large walk-in incubator... I had imposed strict safety regulations in the tissue culture section. Only Charles Mullen and I were allowed to handle the Lassa fever experiments. Every time we would leave the sterile rooms, we would thoroughly scrub our hands with soap. All work was actually done at that time by "mouth-pipetting". a hazardous procedure at that, which invoked in my memory the picture of Arthur Grumbach standing next to me, observing and criticizing my every move, far back in 1946. It was "technique, technique, technique without short cuts!" We carried all the contaminated pipettes and other glassware immersed in special pans to the autoclave ourselves, not leaving the glassware room until the autoclave was in operation. 3 sterile rooms were designated "Reserved for Lassa fever" and scrubbed down at the beginning of the day and again at the end of the day, including benches and floors, and throughout 1969. During the next few days, control and inoculated Vero cell cultures remained normal. In the adjoining section, the serological tests were negative. The inoculated mice appeared to be healthy. On Friday, March 14th, 1969, Charles Mullen and I changed the fluids on all the stationary Vero cell tube cultures and departed for the weekend. …On Tuesday, March 18th 1969, I was told that the mice had remained healthy. I was so disappointed about the Lassa fever experiments that I postponed the examination of my cultures until the afternoon. At 2:00 p.m.. Max Theiler arrived in the tissue culture section for a cup of coffee. said to me: "Do you have anything new?' & I answered: “Oh. I have not even checked the experiments as yet." Right then and there, in the presence of my former director, I started to examine the 240 Vero cell stationary tube cultures under the large Zeiss microscope placed in my office. The control Vero cell cultures were normal. The specimens of Laura Wine, Charlotte Shaw and Lily Pinneo, however, had destroyed the Vero cells in tubes inoculated with undiluted material as well as low dilutions of samples. Max Theiler, always with a prepared mind, said in a very low voice: "African hemorrhagic fever" -- giving the newborn pathogen a tentative name. This name, however, did not stick, because hemorrhages of greater or lesser extent are observed with a great variety of infections… I begged Max Theiler not to mention my positive results to Wil Downs who was at the time in his office on the 6th floor until I had finished examining all the cultures. But within the hour, Wil Downs was in my office. He sald: "I hear you have something." I answered: "Yes, but I have to make a second passage to be sure." He agreed. We also showed the CPE to Jordi Casals. The 3 of us were conscious of the fact that the Vero cell cultures had proven to be sensitive to the unknown agent, while the adult & baby mice had apparently remained healthy. This was indicative of the fact that we were not dealing with an arbovirus. I went home that evening, exeited, but tired. John, my husband, had cooked our main meal, as he was going to do many times during 1969. One week later, March 25th 1969, all the second titer passages were showing cellular damage, evidence of infection and multiplication of the three agents…
November 2, 2025 at 5:46 PM