The Atlantic Behind the factory smoke and the roar of machinery for national defense there is another, greater defense for humanity being worked out these days in laboratories where influenza is being studied. Patient, persistent, brilliant experiments are being made in California, Puerto Rico, England, Malta, Minnesota, Suez, Pennsylvania, South Africa, Budapest, and New York to defeat a baffling enemy that is so small it cannot be seen with a microscope. Influenza! It was a dread word in 1918-1919. It is a dread word now to anyone who has the memory of that winter. Just what is its present threat? Will it now become rampant again? If it does, have we any better protection in February 1941 than we had in February 1919?
Six foremost influenza specialists in this country and in England say that we now have far, far better protection. Startling new weapons have emerged from the laboratory in the past few years. With these, they feel, we are equipped to put up a fight, a sufficiently stiff fight to keep a pandemic from raging and causing the havoc of the last. Another month, another week even, and some one of the many investigators at work on the subject may give us even better means of control.