Lab leak disease outbreaks: the long, murky history

AI Summary

The article recounts historical disease outbreaks linked to laboratory accidents, including a 1939 pneumonic plague incident in Moscow involving microbiologist Abram Lvovich Berlin. Accounts differ on the number of people who died, but the episode illustrates the risks of laboratory exposure and quarantine.

In the heart of Russia, fear of plague is spreading. Unbeknown to the outside world, authorities have quietly commandeered the building where the first case emerged. Rifle wielding guards stand at the entrances. Inside, people are locked in quarantine rooms. There have already been deaths—pneumonic plague. And it came from a laboratory.This was the scene at a Moscow hospital in 1939, according to a handful of recollections written by scientists who lived through it. The microbiologist Abram Lvovich Berlin had travelled in from the outskirts of the capital to discuss his experiments with Yersinia pestis, the bacterium that causes plague. But he had inadvertently infected himself, becoming highly contagious. He would soon be dead.Sources differ on the details—was it two or three people who succumbed after coming into contact with Berlin? Most accounts say that the doctor who first diagnosed plague in the stricken microbiologist and a hotel barber were...