“COPY OF STATEMENT GIVEN TO THE PRESS BY THE BUREAU OF ANIMAL INDUSTRY, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE, RELEASED FOR PUBLICATION, MAY 17, 1909
“ORIGIN OF THE RECENT OUTBREAK OF FOOT AND MOUTH DISEASE
“The recent outbreak of foot and mouth disease in Michigan, New York, Pennsylvania and Maryland started from calves used in the propagation of smallpox vaccine virus which had been contaminated with the virus of foot and mouth disease, and the contaminated strain of vaccine originally came from a foreign country.
“The main facts regarding the outbreak ... are as follows: The H. K. Mulford Company of Glen Olden, Pa., imported certain smallpox vaccine virus which was contaminated with the infection of foot and mouth disease. In May, 1908, some vaccine of this strain was procured by Parke, Davis & Co. of Detroit. Calves used by the latter firm in propagating vaccine were sent, October 16, to the Detroit stock yards and thence on the same day to a farm near Detroit. On October 20, three carloads of cattle from points in Michigan reached the Detroit stock yards and were put into the pens that had been occupied by the vaccine calves four days previously. Some were sold for slaughter at Detroit, while the remainder were shipped to Buffalo and some were reshipped to Danville and Watsontown, Pa., where the disease was first observed some days later. The disease spread to various places in Pennsylvania and New York and to one locality in Maryland. [See Map, page 98.]
“Three separate series of experiments were made by Doctors Mohler and Rosenau. Young cattle and sheep were inoculated with vaccine virus obtained from both firms. Foot and mouth disease was produced in experimental animals by the use of vaccine of the same strain obtained from both sources, while other strains of vaccine tested gave negative results. The disease was also transmitted from one animal to another through several series, in two instances by natural modes of infection.
“The investigation also indicates that the outbreaks of foot and mouth disease in New England in 1902-3 were probably due to contaminated vaccine of Japanese origin from the Mulford Company....
“The fact that the infection was present in the vaccine virus of the Mulford Company for so long a period, but was not transmitted to outside cattle, was doubtless due to this firm’s practice of killing its calves after taking the vaccine virus. Parke, Davis & Co., on the other hand, rented their calves and placed them again on the market a short time after the vaccine material was taken. In this way the disease spread from the vaccine stables of Parke, Davis & Co., but not from those of the Mulford Company, although it was the vaccine virus from the latter establishment that infected the former’s cattle....
“As soon as the facts regarding the contamination of vaccine became known, the licenses of the two firms involved were at once suspended, all the suspected vaccine virus on hand was destroyed and that upon the market withdrawn, and other measures of a radical nature were taken. The report commends the intelligent and prompt coöperation of the Mulford Company and Parke, Davis & Co. in accomplishing this end. After an examination of every strain of vaccine upon the market, it is stated that there is now (1909) upon the market no vaccine contaminated with the virus of foot and mouth disease. Regulations have been formulated with a view to preventing hereafter the propagation of contaminated vaccine virus. No instance of the transmission of foot and mouth disease to man through vaccine virus has been recorded, and it is considered doubtful, in view of the tests made, if it is possible to reproduce the disease in him by the cutaneous inoculation commonly used in the process of vaccination.”
AN OFFICIAL DOUBT DISPROVED
It will be noted that in the official report just quoted there is no question of the responsibility of vaccine virus for causing the deadly plague of foot and mouth disease in cattle and other domestic animals and that two or more extensive and deadly epidemics in animals have been thus caused by the virus of certain manufacturers, involving the destruction of thousands of animals and the loss of millions of dollars to the Government and people of the United States! It will also be noted, however, that at the end of this report there is a guarded or tentative statement that no instance of the transmission of foot and mouth disease to human subjects by vaccination is known or “has been recorded”; and that there is some doubt that this disease can be conveyed to man by skin inoculation only, as in vaccination, although it is clear that it can be and has been surely conveyed to domestic animals by such inoculation! It is admitted in later reports that the disease can be conveyed to animals or man by ordinary skin inoculation or scarification provided some blood is drawn in the operation, which is, of course, a common occurrence in ordinary vaccination. This rather doubtful statement as to infection in man by ordinary vaccination I will therefore prove to be an evident error and will give, further on, the most convincing proof that foot and mouth disease—or what is in every way equivalent to and identical with it—is frequently conveyed to mankind by vaccination, with fatal effect!