While miners twitched with malarial fever and chills, the rumor diverted the U.S. scientists from their urgent mission: to heal the immediate suffering and develop a drug to help prevent malaria from disabling people in the future. Instead of working, the researchers spent their time quieting the gossip. "Tensions were so high that we couldn't make headway," says Wilbur Milhous, director for experimental therapeutics at the Walter Reed Institute. Speaking Up for World Class Research When Juleen Zierath left Washington University School of Medicine in 1989 to complete her Ph.D. under her mentor at the Karolinska Institutet, she didn't plan on staying for more than a few years. But once she learned the language--it took about three years without formal lessons--and adjusted to the cultural difference, she kept finding reasons to stay. "It was hard at the beginning. I'm very talkative, and Swedish people don't talk a lot," she says. ...
Have Science Training, Will Travel
In the early 1990s, just after Operation Desert Storm, scientists from the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research traveled to the lower Amazon basin to conduct trials with a new antimalarial medication. They found an epidemic in full swing among a camp of gold miners. The scientists labored in the humidity of the tropical rain forest to set up a clinic. But rumors slowed their progress: People said the researchers planned to develop medications, not for Brazilians, but rather for U.S. forces who
Written byJennifer Fisher Wilson
| 9 min read
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