NASA, the US area company based in 1958, was on the forefront of those investigations, not solely as an engineering powerhouse but in addition as a pioneer in biomedical science.
Now, many years on, newly revealed historic analysis shines a light-weight on one of many strangest – and most obscure – arenas of this Chilly Struggle experimentation and biomedical testing: the frozen bases of Antarctica.
In ‘Germs, infections, and the erratic ‘natural laboratory’ of Antarctica: from Operation Snuffles to the Killer Kleenex’ (Medical History), historian Vanessa Heggie of the College of Birmingham uncovers a outstanding and little-known chapter within the story of Twentieth-century science.
Her analysis argues that Antarctica was a key pillar in world biomedical analysis – and a Chilly Struggle-era website of secretive NASA-backed experiments.
Drawing on many years of archival materials, Heggie traces the evolution of microbiological research on the continent, from the early days of sampling to Chilly Struggle surveillance-style research and, finally, experiments to imitate the setting of area on earth, backed by the American area company.
The Heroic Age of sampling
Heggie’s analysis explains that Antarctica’s journey to grow to be a hub of experimental testing started within the early Twentieth century, throughout the so-called Heroic Age of Antarctic exploration.
As germ concept gained traction in Western medication, medical officers on polar expeditions started amassing micro organism from the setting and from their very own our bodies. Considered one of these males was Dr Archibald McLean, who took half within the Australasian Antarctic Expedition from 1911 to 1914.
As Heggie recounts, McLean carried out the primary main try to check human microbes in Antarctica. He swabbed noses, throats, and pores and skin; collected pus samples; and examined blood for immune responses. Regardless of the cruel situations and restricted lab tools, McLean’s work helped overturn the parable that Antarctica was microbially ‘pure.’
His theories steered that micro organism within the setting weren’t native to the area however carried by winds or people from elsewhere. Extra provocatively, he noticed that explorers usually fell sick not throughout isolation, however after returning residence. May chilly publicity and isolation suppress immunity?
Enter Operation Snuffles
By the Fifties, because the Chilly Struggle intensified and the House Race accelerated, Antarctica gained continuous strategic significance for US science.
America Navy launched Operation Deep Freeze, establishing a presence on the continent. As a part of the fourth Deep Freeze mission, one mission was a large-scale microbial surveillance program with the charming title: Operation Snuffles.
Led by Professor William ‘Invoice’ Sladen, a British-born medic-turned-penguin-biologist, this examine collected lots of of nasal swabs and blood samples from sailors aboard the USS Staten Island and employees at distant Antarctic bases.
As Heggie particulars in her analysis, the purpose was to grasp how infections behaved in small, remoted human populations — a priority that mirrored NASA’s fears about long-duration spaceflight.
The findings from Operation Snuffles, although not extensively publicised on the time, had been noteworthy. Sure strains of micro organism had been discovered to persist within the human physique for months, even in sterile environments, with out inflicting sickness. Infections not often unfold, even in crowded, shared quarters.
Tragedy, sabotage, and misplaced knowledge
Operation Snuffles was no clean scientific enterprise, and Heggie’s analysis brings to mild the human drama behind the petri dishes.
Sladen had already survived a base hearth that killed two of his colleagues and, later, at Wilkes Station in 1959, one other disaster struck. In keeping with oral histories cited by Heggie, an unstable crew member intentionally destroyed medical cultures by smashing lab tools by smashing them, derailing that season’s knowledge assortment.
Different setbacks present the lively company of Antarctica in disrupting scientific analysis: blood samples spoiled in damaged freezers, reagents froze, lab supplies had been misplaced in storms.
NASA, the House Race, and the Killer Kleenex
However these challenges didn’t deter researchers from Antarctic testing, and Heggie’s article reveals how, by the Seventies, NASA had taken a deeper curiosity in Antarctic medication.
The confined, remoted bases provided a parallel to life in area capsules or lunar habitats. One uncommon experiment at McMurdo Station in Antartica in 1979 concerned handing out tissues impregnated with virucide — generally known as ‘Killer Kleenex’ — to check whether or not respiratory infections may very well be lowered.
The consequence? An infection charges dropped dramatically.
These research fed into a bigger physique of area medication analysis (formed by Chilly Struggle fears and the legacies of programmes like Operation Paperclip, the plan that had quietly introduced former Nazi scientists into NASA’s ranks). One man identified solely by his initials, WS, was studied for over 15 years, with scientists noting the evolution of his nasal staph micro organism from delicate to penicillin-resistant.
So for NASA, Antarctica grew to become an vital website the place human biology may very well be examined below excessive situations, and away from public scrutiny.
Heggie’s analysis highlights that Antarctica just isn’t as ‘pure’ because it has beforehand been depicted and underlines the function of Antarctica in scientific historical past. It reveals how Chilly Struggle anxieties turned a continent of ice right into a proxy warzone for concepts about human biology and its implications for spaceflight.