A. That varies enormously. It depends on the epidemic. In some epidemics the mortality is five percent. In general, you count on a mortality of twenty percent. In the Serb-Albanian epidemic in 1915, there was a mortality of seventy percent, but that mortality rate is so extraordinarily high that it is generally assumed that probably, in reality, there were more cases of typhus than were actually reported.
Q. Well, we could take roughly five to thirty percent as the mortality. Is that right?
A. Yes. That is what the textbooks generally say.
Q. What was the mortality in the Buchenwald experiments, Professor?
A. In the controlled cases in the experiments that I knew of, the mortality rate was thirty percent.
Q. Among the controls, you figured thirty percent?
A. Yes. There were ten control persons in the first group of experiments, and of them, three died.
Q. Three died? Well, but I assume that you have read through the Ding diary and let us assume for the moment that it is correct. Didn’t you say that they also used control persons in the four or five other series of experiments?
A. In the controlled cases where they were testing the vaccine, the general mortality rate was thirty percent. But then there were these therapeutic experiments in which, according to the diary, blood infections were undertaken and, in this case, the diary does mention an unusually high mortality rate.
Q. Well, Professor, for your information, we have figured out five control series in the Ding diary, and I mean by controls those that were not treated with anything. The mortality ranges between fifty-four to one hundred percent and averaged eighty-one percent. Do you accept those figures as correct? I mean, do you think that’s right?