"In the interest of full disclosure, I predicted the possibility of an imminent pandemic in an op ed piece published in The New York Times on February 13, 1976. On February 13, I was notified that influenza viruses isolated from patients at Fort Dix, New Jersey, a few days earlier and provisionally identified as swine influenza viruses were being mailed to my laboratory in New York City. A high-yield (6:2) genetic reassortant virus (X-53) was produced and later used as a vaccine in a clinical trial in 3,000 people. An even higher yielding HA mutant virus, X-53a, was selected from X-53 and subsequently used in the mass vaccination of 43,000,000 people. (I was a member of a Center for Disease Control advisory committee and an ad hoc advisory committee to President Gerald Ford on actions to be taken to protect the American public against swine influenza.) When no cases were found outside Fort Dix in subsequent months and the neurologic complication of Guillain-Barré syndrome occurred in association with administration of swine influenza vaccine, the National Immunization Program was abandoned, and the entire effort was assailed as a fiasco and disaster."
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Influenza
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