Arctic Graves May Yield Clues on 1918 Epidemic

August 21, 1998

Arctic Graves May Yield Clues on 1918 Epidemic

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By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD

ONGYEARBYEN, Norway -- Five gravediggers from London were scheduled to started digging here Friday morning. Actually, much of the time they will be hammering through ice.
Here in the islands of Spitsbergen in the high Arctic between mainland Norway and Greenland, the ground three feet down is always frozen in permafrost. At six feet, they should find the bodies, in the mass grave encased in a tomb of ice.
It is the time of the midnight sun. A white fox slinks up the steep hill overlooking this small mining town, its camouflage coat useless now against the bare rock and dark moss. The seed-fluff from the arctic cottongrass floats on the breeze among the rows of white wooden crosses.

THE DEADLY PAST

Though less widely known, the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic was among history’s most deadly events.

Deaths
(in millions)

Influenza (1918-1919) 20-40

Black Death (1348-1350) 20-25

World War II* (1939-1945İ) 15.9

AIDS (through 1997) 11.7

World War I* (1914-1918) 9.2

* Military deaths.
İ Includes Japanese deaths from 1937.
Sources: U.N., World Book Encyclopedia
Credit: The New York Times

Over the mass grave, a tent with a special air lock has been stretched and inflated. The tent is for privacy in this somber enterprise and protection against anything possibly dangerous escaping into the outside air. Inside, the diggers, with medical scientists at their side, will go about their business of opening the resting place of seven young men who were buried here 80 years ago.
This is a critical moment in one of the most ambitious efforts yet to solve an intractable medical mystery: What caused the influenza pandemic of 1918 and early 1919? Why was this particular contagion so virulent that it killed an estimated 20 million to 40 million people worldwide?
The secret of one of the most lethal viruses the world has ever known may dwell in the lungs of these seven victims.
"Five years' work culminates in the next few weeks," Dr. Kirsty Duncan, who is directing the project, said as final preparations were under way. She specializes in medical geography and teaches at the universities of Windsor and Toronto.
Inspired by reading "America's Forgotten Pandemic: The Influenza Of 1918," (Cambridge University Press) by Alfred W. Crosby of the University of Texas, she began the search for flu victims whose bodies might be preserved in ice. The research led scientists to the mass grave in the cemetery here.
In a diary kept by the coal mining company here, Dr. Duncan found the names of the seven men, 18 to 29 years old, farmers and fishermen who had just arrived here to earn extra money at winter jobs in the mine. But they had contracted flu on the boat trip from the mainland and died in the first week of October 1918.
The sight of their names on the six crosses and one headstone at the back of the cemetery moved Dr. Duncan to tears: Johan Bjerk, William Henry Richardsen, Ole Kristofferson, Magnus Gabrielson, Tormod Albrigtsen, Hans Hansen and Kristian Hansen.
Dr. Duncan impressed Norwegian authorities with the importance of the project of isolating and describing at last the unknown 1918 virus. She emphasized the safety precautions that would be taken. The authorities then obtained permissions from the families to exhume and examine six of the seven bodies (all but Kristofferson's).
By the time the permissions came through, Dr. Duncan had gathered an international group of pathologists, virologists, molecular biologists, geologists and medical archeologists for the work.
A survey with ground-penetrating radar established that the bodies, side by side, were indeed in permanent permafrost and thus should be well preserved for medical study. A team of experienced gravediggers from Necropolis Co. in London was hired.
After the topsoil is removed by spade and the permafrost is penetrated with electric jack hammer, Dr. Charles R. Smith, a pathologist from the Hospital for Sick Children at the University of Toronto, plans to remove samples of tissues from the victims' lungs, intestines and other organs. The bodies, which were not embalmed, will not be thawed or taken from the grave, both out of respect and as a precaution against the spread of any infectious material.
The scientists seriously doubt that any of the flu virus will still be alive, but just in case, they will be wearing modified space suits with self-contained breathing apparatus.
Once the tissues are extracted, portions of each sample will be sealed in separate vials and shipped to laboratories in Norway, Canada, Britain and the United States. The most sensitive investigations will be conducted at the U.S. Army's infectious disease research laboratory in Fort Detrick, Md. and the National Institute of Medical Research in London, which are equipped to maintain the highest levels of biological containment of unknown organisms.
Dr. Tom Bergan of the University of Oslo, a virologist on the team, said the tissue samples would not be touched until they arrived at the laboratories. "Our first obligation is safety requirements against the risk of contamination," Bergan said. "We want to make sure there is no viable virus in the sample and, if there is, protect against its escape into the environment."
Bergan said the research might help determine the composition, genetic structure and nature of the 1918 virus, in particular its exterior surfaces, where the virus attaches itself to the lining of the lungs and the upper respiratory tract. Such knowledge could lead to the development of a vaccine against this acute form of influenza and tests and modifications of current or new anti-viral drugs for treating the disease.
The pandemic occurred near the close of World War I, when doctors had yet to learn that influenza is caused by a virus and they had no antibiotics to treat bacterial infections like pneumonia that often attacked the weakened bodies and contributed to death.

Scientists in the project said it might take several months, maybe a year, of analysis before they would be ready to publish their findings.
Their undertaking comes at a time when the search for the 1918 virus has gained momentum on several fronts. Last year, Dr. Jeffrey K. Taubenberger, a biologist at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in Washington, reported finding viral fragments in preserved lung tissue of two U.S. soldiers who died of flu in World War I. The specimens were in a collection of autopsy tissue, soaked in formaldehyde and encased in paraffin, that the Army has kept since the Civil War. The analysis of the material has enabled the scientists to map at least one of the virus' protein-making genes.
Dr. Johan Hultin, a retired pathologist who lives in San Francisco, went to the tundra of Alaska last year and exhumed the well preserved body of an Eskimo woman who died of the 1918 flu. He sent lung tissue samples to Taubenberger, who was able to isolate more viral traces.
These findings encouraged Dr. Duncan's team in the belief that it would also find traces of flu viruses in permafrost burials. But for a time, Dr. Duncan wondered if there was any point in continuing in light of the Taubenberger successes. At a meeting with officials at the federal Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, she was persuaded to press on.
The project is supported by a $150,000 grant from the National Institutes of Health in the United States and about $194,000 from Hoffmann-La Roche, the pharmaceutical company.
Dr. Duncan emphasized the need for still more samples from other parts of the world, especially material that has not been preserved and possibly altered in formaldehyde.
So head gravedigger Roger Webber is ready. He has been exhuming bodies for 33 years, but has never worked in permafrost. It cannot be harder than the many times he has dealt with layers of solid chalk or limestone, he said.
Using a technique known as needle biopsy, the pathologist, Smith, will take bore samples of tissue from the lungs of the six bodies. Then he will try to probe the hearts, where he may be able to extract frozen blood. This is a long shot, but any blood could yield samples of serum and any antibodies produced in the acute phases of the disease. The intestines could hold bacteria, possible clues to other complicating infections. An attempt will also be made to get samples from the livers and spleens.
Dr. Smith said, "You don't know what you are going to find until you look."

The search for the 1918 influenza virus has apparently created little stir in Spitsbergen. The 1,300 residents of Longyearbyen, the island's principal community, are used to visitors with peculiar goals in mind. Explorers like Richard E. Byrd and Roald Amundsen set out from here in 1929 for the North Pole, about 700 miles away, and more recently, scientists have been operating bases for studies in geophysics, climatology and polar life in the Svalbard Archipelago, which includes Spitsbergen.
Ann-Kristin Olsen, governor of the Svalbard Archipelago, said that community meetings have been held to inform people of the exhumations, and they had seemed to accept the reassurances that the work posed no health hazard. Hallvard Holm, headmaster of the local school, agreed.
"I haven't heard of a single soul who has been afraid," Holm said. "I know there have been jokes, nothing more."
Perhaps the people of Spitsbergen and the tourists have more familiar dangers on their minds. Each day hikers head off for the rugged hills and glaciers with packs on their backs and rifles slung over their shoulders. People are advised to carry a firearm whenever they roam beyond town, in case they should meet up with a hungry polar bear.

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THE DEADLY PAST
Though less widely known, the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic was among history’s most deadly events.
	Deaths (in millions)
Influenza (1918-1919)	20-40
Black Death (1348-1350)	20-25
World War II* (1939-1945İ)	15.9
AIDS (through 1997)	11.7
World War I* (1914-1918)	9.2
* Military deaths. İ Includes Japanese deaths from 1937. Sources: U.N., World Book Encyclopedia Credit: The New York Times