Two hundred years ago, the U.S. Public Health Service, of which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is an essential part, began as a humble maritime hospital in New York City. Its mission was simply to stop infectious disease from coming in on ships and spreading across our country. Today, as we celebrate the anniversary of the Public Health Service, another historic event has occurred. One of the great detective hunts of the 20th century came to an end. Scientists at the U.S. Department of Defense confirmed that tissue from a woman’s body buried near the Bering Strait contains genetic material from the 1918 Spanish flu virus—the virus that caused the worst pandemic the world has ever known. This discovery will help us map the genetic structure of the microbe that sent a wave of death crashing around the globe 80 years ago.
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