DEADLY EXPERIMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 11783, 12 October 1901, Page 1 (Supplement)

DEADLY EXPERIMENTS.

Havana, August 25.Miss Clara Maas, a trained nurse from Orange, New Jersey, died last night from the bite of an infected mosquito.

This makes three such deaths, while three other persons who were bitten have yellow fever in a mild form. Miss Maas was bitten by two mosquitoes seven days ago. She had been bitten several times before that without showing any ill effects. The experiments have been conducted by Major Havard, a surgeon of the United States army, who has 11 mosquitoes that have been fed on the blood of yellow fever patients. When the first death was announced the Government ordered the tests to be stopped, but those by Dr.' Caldas were permitted to be continued. On Friday a patient inoculated with Dr. Caldas' serum was bitten by two mosquitoes. The subjects are paid £20, and offer themselves voluntarily, knowing all the risks they run. The experiments are justified on the ground that their importance to the world at large overbalances the danger to which a few "individuals voluntarily subject themselves.

Dr. Havard's yellow fever Board had a theory that the virulence of the disease depended upon a number of mosquitoes biting the subject. This does not appear to be Jjprne out results of the experiments,^.