Politics of Participation: Walter Reed's Yellow-Fever Experiments.

Politics of Participation: Walter Reed’s Yellow-Fever Experiments Akhil Mehra, MD, MPhil At the termination of the Spanish-American War in 1900, American military forces occupied the island of Cuba. Tropical diseases were a major concern of the government, and the American Surgeon General dispatched Major Walter Reed and a team of young doctors to investigate the diseases, particularly the pathogenic mechanism of yellow fever. Reed’s team pursued a program of human experimentation by intentionally exposing human subjects, team members included, to potentially deadly virulent material. Despite several prominent fatalities during the experiment’s run, Reed’s experiments were a scientific success and instrumental in establishing that yellow fever was a mosquito-borne illness. Mosquito-control initiatives based on the findings were remarkably successful and began to reduce the incidence of the violent hemorrhagic fever significantly. For years following the experiments, the honor, bravery, and heroism of the volunteers were extensively celebrated in publicity campaigns, charity drives, a government-published “Yellow Fever Roll of Honor,” popular books, a movie, and a Broadway play.