INFLUENZA REPORT.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 46, 24 February 1937, Page 19

INFLUENZA REPORT.

PROTECTIVE VACCINE.

AUSTRALIAN SCIENTIST'S HOPES.

REMARKABLE EXPERIMENTS. (Special.—By Air Mall.) LONDOX, January 30. Britain, still in the grip of the worst influenza epidemic for many years, is keenly interested in the report published here this week by Dr. F. M. Burnet, the Melbourne scientist, who holds out a. new hope of finding a protective vaccine against the disease. Dr. Burnet has been carrying on his researches in London a« well as at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute, Melbourne. New-laid eggs, it seems, are the latest recruits to be enlisted in the fight against 'flu. Viruses which are not only invisible to the most powerful microscopes, but impossible to grow in test tubes like ordinary germs, have presented a big problem to bacteriologists. In research they have had to be propagated through a series of animals, but with this method it was difficult to prevent the infection from spreading further than was wanted. By using eggs Dr. Burnet haii been able to keep the germs as securely locked np as if they were in test tubes. Eggs are taken from the hen within six days of laying and kept in an incubator till they are half way towards hatching. A tiny "window" is cut in the shell with a dentist's drill. The fragile membrane underneath, which is rich in blood vessels serving as lungs for the unhatched chick, is inoculated by dropping on it a little fluid containing the virus. The window is closed with a tiny strip of glass, sealed at the edges with paraffin wax, and the egg is put back in the incubator for the virus to grow. It was found that 'flu virus was altered by transplantation to eggs; when it had been parsed 76 times from one egg to another it lost its power of producing symptoms of 'flu in animals, but, instead, made them highly resistant to infection from other sources. Attempts are being made to prepare a vaccine from this modified virus to give mankind full protection. It will be taken in drops through the nose.