"One of his ideas is to give volunteers serum from recovered cases and then let them get the measlepox."
"You mean like giving children gamma globulin shots after they've been exposed to measles so they'll get just a mild case of the disease and be protected for life?" Pat asked.
"That's the general idea," the Chief said. "Then, too, he might want to look at the animal population in the area. There's a theory that cowpox was originally smallpox that got into cattle. Now if you get cowpox, as milkmaids in England often did many years ago, on their hands, you probably won't catch smallpox. That's how the legend arose that milkmaids had lovely complexions. They didn't get smallpox and so their faces weren't scarred like most people in the eighteenth century. Jenner got the original idea for vaccination from that. The same thing might apply to measlepox. If he could find a mild form of it in some animal we could use that as a vaccine. We try to do this in the Lab by inoculating animals. Harry wants to go out into the devastated areas and see if nature has done it for him."
"That may be soon, Doctor," Polly said, "but I'll bet he's also hoping to pick up news of his folks."
"Could be," Hallam agreed, "but they are very small pins in a terribly big haystack, if still alive."
"That crazy man," Polly murmured. "I know he'll kill himself yet. If he doesn't get the pox the Reds will catch him."
"There's not too much danger from the Chicoms right now," I said. "The way they are dying out, the border guard must have holes in it big enough to take a division of troops through, let alone a small reconnaissance party."
In the early summer of 1963 Pat had completely recovered from her miscarriage. The Chief and I had suffered nothing more than mild colds from the FS-flu. We had set up new experiments to see if we could temper the destructiveness of the virus with the intention of confining its effects to the human race.
"I have no compunction about using it on the human race," Hallam said. "The human being has free will and should be prepared to take the consequences of his follies and work out his own salvation."