tank. An avid rugby player, he barged through Trent’s door like he was in a scrum. “Are you ready?”
Trent smiled, amused by his friend’s likeable aggressiveness. “I am. Where are we having lunch?”
Ignoring the question, Will scanned the apartment. He spotted his newspaper. “Are you finished with my paper?”
Trent looked down. A few seconds passed before he looked back at Will. He took a deep breath, nodding slowly.
Looking a bit curious, Will tested. “What’s up with the paper? I know it wasn’t the Fokker that got you all excited!”
“Did you read the article on the back?”
“I didn’t get that far. After all, you took my paper.”
Trent smiled, picked up the paper, and handed it to Will. “Here, take it with you. It’s a short article. You can read it over lunch.”
Lunch was at a small Italian deli on 58th Street half way between Trent’s apartment and the University. The best part was there was a speakeasy behind the storeroom. Will finished his sandwich before Trent had swallowed his second bite, then turned his eyes to back page of the newspaper and began to read.
Bundaberg, North Queensland Australia: In January 1928, in the early stages of an immunization campaign against diphtheria, Dr. Ewing George Thomson, Medical Officer of Health of Bundaberg, began the injections on January 20th of 21 children without ill effect. On January 27th, the same children were injected with their booster shots. Of these children, eleven died on the 28th and one on the 29th.The consideration of all possible evidence concerning the deaths at Bundaberg points to the injection of living staphylococci as the cause of the fatalities.
When he finished reading the article, Will looked back to Trent. “So what’s your interest in all this?”
“I just wondered what your take on it is.”
Will shrugged. “It seems straightforward to me, mate. The Bundaberg inquiry simply determined that the cause of the children’s deaths was the result of a two-step process gone wrong. Opening the serum vials for the first round of vaccinations exposed the vaccines to the air. When they administered the booster shots, the serum had already become contaminated because the diphtheria bacteria had multiplied. It’s not exactly unique. The same thing has been happening for years.”
While impressed by Will’s acumen, Trent tested, “Does that make it right?”
Will challenged back, his voice becoming more passionate. “Come on, mate! It’s an unwritten law. With vaccines, the risk-reward ratio is always in play, and there’s nothing we can do about it. We have to accept that there will be those that die because of a reaction to the vaccination for the greater good… killing a few to save many. I know it’s a dilemma, but every adult, including the parents of small children, has to decide for themselves. Nobody makes them get vaccinated.”
Will smiled, then stood and excused himself before scurrying to the restroom to shake off the two beers he had for lunch. Trent turned the paper to face his side of the table. He couldn’t fault Will for not understanding the danger that loomed on the horizon. It was the last sentence of the article that concerned Trent.
The Royal Commission now recommends that biological products in which the growth of a pathogenic organism is possible should not be issued in containers for repeated use unless there is a sufficient concentration of antiseptic (preservative) to inhibit bacterial growth.
Trent sat back. He knew that the article likely made little sense for most people, but he was reading between the lines. The news had implications that reached far beyond what was reported. The Royal Commission’s recommendation was commendable but, as far as the world knew, an effective antibacterial preservative did not exist. He and Richard Gurzi knew differently. The Bundaberg decision to require a vaccine preservative was just the tip of a very large iceberg. It was what was below the surface that concerned him. The formula he sold Gurzi would work. The preservative would prevent tragedies such as the one in Bundaberg but not without a price. The formula had a serious flaw.
Chapter 9
November 12, 1929
Chicago, Illinois
Seventeen months after the Bundaberg vaccine tragedy, Will Williams returned from his Australian holiday and looked up Jeremiah Trent. Trent wasn’t surprised to hear that, except for the families of the lost children, the majority of citizens had all but forgotten the event. Trent had not. Already well into his third year of medical school, Trent could smell the finish line. If all went as planned, his residency would begin in the fall. His future was crystallizing. Even the predictions of continued financial chaos for the country as a result of the stock market crash two weeks earlier had not diminished his enthusiasm. Most of the hundred thousand dollars he received from Richard Gurzi’s client was still intact, safely stored in a safety deposit box in what was considered by the experts to be the most solvent bank in Chicago. The fact that people would always need medical care only underscored what he perceived as a very bright and rewarding future.
It was nearly 6 P.M. A biting Chicago wind bore straight through Trent’s jacket as he walked home from his last class. He popped into a local diner to grab a few minutes of shelter and a cup of coffee. Snagging the last counter seat, he pulled the university’s weekly medical newspaper from his breast pocket. Half way through his coffee, he saw it. On the second to last page, reserved for general announcements that were usually ignored by almost everyone, Trent felt the world he left behind nearly a year earlier suddenly slap him in the face. He reread the announcement over and over.
Eli Lilly and Company has been granted a patent for a new product that, among many other possible uses, will be used primarily as a preservative in vaccines which will allow multi-dose vials which will help insure sufficient supplies of vaccines, particularly in times of epidemics. The trade name will be Merthiolate, and it will be marketed using the name Thimerosal.
Trent motioned to the waiter for a refill before turning back to the announcement. While distasteful, he couldn’t avoid it. Revisiting a subject he had buried for over two years was ruining his day. He recreated the formula on a mental blackboard. The chemical symbol for mercury was Hg, the single ingredient that he could not change. Mercury was toxic, a poison, but there was no method to make a vaccine preservative without it. He had hundreds of his own failed experiments to prove it. If there had been a way, I would have found it, he whispered to himself. He didn’t care whether Richard Gurzi purchased his formula to allow the Eli Lilly Company sufficient time to develop a different version of a preservative or if Lilly chose to market his exact formula. What still concerned him was that any formula with mercury in it did not come without baggage. By weight, his formula was fifty-percent mercury. A neurotoxin, mercury had the potential to damage nerve tissues in humans. Like bee stings, some people had violent reactions to their venom and some not. Mercury worked the same way. Some would be susceptible, some not. There was no way to predict the result. The formula worked perfectly in his lab tests, but he never had sufficient time to test its effects with multiple inoculations over a period of time. Without that scientific data, he feared repeatedly administering a vaccine with mercury to the same individual could be a crapshoot. Worse yet, most of those would be small children. Vaccines were vaccines, whether administered to adults or children, but there was a huge difference… body weight counted.
An hour later, Trent walked the remaining few blocks home totally oblivious to the Chicago cold. His mind was on more important matters. He rationalized that science often had to weigh the good versus the bad when developing new ideas and Lilly’s new formula would dramatically reduce vaccine shortages in times of epidemic crisis. Thousands of lives would be saved. If the formula being patented was his, he was certain there hadn’t been sufficient time to do any additional safety testing. He was certain that the attractiveness of immediate corporate profits may have managed to trump the need for further tests. Twenty-seven years after the Wright brothers made their first flight, aviation technology had advanced so far that Lindbergh was able to fly solo across the Atlantic. Advancements in medicine, if done properly, traveled a far slower path. If a new plane didn’t work, it crashed.