Flu: The Story of the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and the Search for the Virus That Caused It

by Gina Kolata

At the same time, Shope’s brilliant work, through no fault of its own, was to spark one of the greatest product liability fiascoes in U.S history. In 1976, because of his theories about swine influenza, the United States government ended up trying to immunize all Americans against swine flu. The decision was made by President Gerald Ford on advice from the nation’s most eminent scientists. A young soldier had died of a swine flu, igniting a fear that a deadly flu like the one from 1918 might be spreading to humans. It turned out that there was no swine flu epidemic—although no one could have known that at the time. Meanwhile, thousands of people became convinced that the swine flu vaccine caused medical problems ranging from paralysis to fatigue to nearly any chronic disease, initiating hundreds of thousands of legal claims. By the time it was called to a halt, the swine flu immunization campaign had generated a legacy of mistrust of flu vaccines and a mistrust of scientists, who were harshly criticized—unfairly, they say—for crying wolf. It became an object lesson for scientists on the dangers of taking the 1918 flu too seriously,