The joint discovery of Dr. Robert Gallo and French researchers of a new retrovirus called HIV settled the debate over AIDS and African swine fever. Today, HIV is widely regarded to have been an African monkey virus that jumped from chimpanzees to humans at some point between 1926 and 1946 (by virtue of humans eating raw, virus-infected chimp meat) and fully established itself in epidemic proportions by 1981.
Of the work, Dr. Teas later said, "It was viewed not as an interesting question but as a stupid thing I shouldn't be doing….Youwould think the world could use a few ideas, especially with a problem like AIDS." The limited research aimed at finding a link between African swine fever and HIV ended.
CATS
Plum Island Lighthouse keepers always kept a few cats around for company, fenced inside the lighthouse reservation, and the cats greeted the USDA when they first arrived in 1952.[29] When the Coast Guard automated the light and vacated the lighthouse in 1978, the abandoned cats broke through the old fence and foraged the island for food. Slowly but surely, the wild cats bred and bred, until there were a "zillion cats," as one observer recalls. "Everywhere you looked, there were cats." For decades, the feline and human populations coexisted; most of the cats had become feral and kept the rodent population in check. Occasionally a cat would sneak into one of the outdoor cattle pens and eat from the feed trough. But when the island's cat lovers fed the felines, many became tame. A guard fed a gang of cats with food he brought over on the ferry periodically. "This group hung around the dock guardhouse," recalls another. "Consequently, there were dozens of cats hanging around where visitors entered Plum Island."
Management decided the island's large cat population created a negative image when outside scientists visited. Instead of discouraging feedings near the guardhouse, a memorandum came out in 1981 that said, according to one employee, "We aren't worried about the cats swimming to the mainland — we just can't allow them to be here and we're going to poison them." Scientific and support staff alike vehemently protested. "You will not kill our cats! This is an agricultural facility, made up of veterinarians, for heaven's sake — we will do the next best thing. We'll neuter them!"
Workers laid out scores of Have-A-Heart traps near the guardhouse, on paths and in the meadows. As the cats were collected, the vets took pause from their scientific research to neuter them, shaving their rears just forward of the legs to identify which ones were fixed. "For weeks, it was just the strangest thing, to see these cats darting around the island with nude bottoms," remembers the worker. But the neutering didn't work— many of the cats were too smart to be lured into the traps.
So they were poisoned instead. The "Animal Welfare Committee" ordered a technician to mix sodium fluoroacetate — one of the deadliest poisons known to animal or man — in rusty tin cans with hamburger meat and set them out for the cats. One of the cats, the harbor mascot Harry — named after dock guard Harry Sinuda — was spared execution. Just before Dr. Walker laid out the poisonous food traps, Harry the Cat was secreted inside the emergency power plant, where he escaped a gruesome fate. The others wouldn't be so lucky. "Ahh — the way they did it," says a former worker, slowly shaking his head. "Maybe they thought it would put them to sleep. Instead, the wicked dose of poison fed these cats — well they were walking around the island, choking and making terrible coughlike sounds." A day later, six cats were found dead. Before long, dozens of felines were being pitched into the incinerator.
Someone got mad enough to blow the whistle on this inhumane act. The USDA was snagged, it turned out, on a technicality: the use of sodium fluoroacetate was prohibited by both state and federal law, and Plum Island hadn't obtained the special permission required for its use. Asked about a "cat overkill" by a reporter, Dr. Callis said: "I'm embarrassed."
It wouldn't be long before he embarrassed himself again.
END OF AN ERA
What happens when he who makes the rules breaks the rules? Over one hundred microbiological safety rules were in place on Plum Island. At times they were painstakingly tedious. Cutting corners here or there may not seem so bad to the casual observer. But that one missed shower, an improperly installed air unit, or a forgotten air-lock door — each inched toward disaster. At the beginning, Dr. Callis wrote in the three-inch-thick safety manual distributed to all employees that the safety program "should be backed up with provisions for enforcement and penalties for willful violations of the regulations and instructions." And furthermore, "Personnel shall report promptly to the director, through the safety officer, any safety violation that occurs or that is observed in the acts of others."
The federal law allowed foot-and-mouth disease virus to be shipped over the mainland to Plum Island, but not kept on the mainland. During a summer's day in 1982, Director Jerry Callis left a container of glass ampoules filled with a highly contagious Brazilian virus strain and related antiserum in the refrigerator at Orient Point for three days, before finally bringing it to Plum Island. An employee reported the infraction. Callis admitted guilt, and the Washington USDA office suspended him for two weeks without pay. "I unthinkingly left the container on the mainland," he later said. "I made a mistake. I'm not proud of it."
The director believed his suspension was far more severe than the violation warranted. After all, the viruses were wrapped in a self-destructing mechanism; that is, if the glass vials somehow broke, acid surrounding the container would rush in and annihilate the virus. At least that was the way it was designed to work. "There was some kind of fiasco," recalls Dr. Jim House, a recently retired Plum Island scientist. "And I don't think we'll ever know the details — it was unfortunate, really unfortunate."
A former veteran employee remembers Callis coming back from Brazil with more than cans full of viruses, and doing more than salting the germs away in the warehouse fridge. "The safety officer at the time was Jonathan Richmond. He was at Orient Point when Callis came back with the cans…[and Callis] opened them. Absolute safety violation. But before he opened them, Jonathan reminded him of the safety rules and regulations, and not to open them — that it must not be opened. Jonathan reported it to Washington to protect himself."
"I think [Callis] was getting a lot of flak at that time from the Washington area," says another former employee. "I recognized his voice when he called in [during the suspension], and he was calling from his home. It was very sad, because it hurt his reputation on the island and in the community. And guess where Jonathan Richmond is today? He's one of the heads of the CDC!"[30]
29
Soon scientists were experimenting on "imported" cats (domestics from southwestern Missouri) while researching a new cat disease called feline cytauxzoonosis, and its possible link to African East Coast cattle fever.
30
One of the more prestigious Plum Island alums, Dr. Jonathan Richmond was until recently the director of health and safety for the Centers for Disease Control and the CDC's national "hot zone" expert, responsible for writing the rules for biosafety levels one through four.