Monkey Malaria in Memphis & Malaysia: NIAID and Malaria Eradication in the 1960s

Leo Slater
Office of NIH History & NIAID

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     Last modified: February 7, 2005
     Presentation date: 07/14/2005 11:00 AM in MACK 236
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Abstract
Though associated with the laboratory and clinic, human malaria research has often turned to the field to collect research materials, to address ecological questions, and, in this instance, to assess the threat to human health of simian malarias. In 1960, while conducting research on the biology of simian malarias, two workers at the Laboratory of Parasite Chemotherapy (NIAID Memphis field station) accidentally contracted Plasmodium cynomolgi, a monkey malaria, from the bites of laboratory raised and infected mosquitoes. Though this might have been a routine accident readily treated with chloroquine, it raised an ominous question: Could simian malarias in the wild threaten the prospects of the global malaria eradication program of the World Health Organization by providing a non-human reservoir of human infectious disease? The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease—in association with the Institute for Medical Research in Kuala Lumpur—intensively pursued this question in South East Asia from 1961-1965.

Collecting mosquitoes, monkeys, and human blood samples in many remote locations in South East Asia, Don Eyles, McWilson Warren, and their collaborators created a novel epistemic space, mapped the biology and ecology of primate malaria throughout the region, and determined the transmissibility of different malaria species between primates, including humans. By the time they were able to conclude “that the simian malarias of Asia might produce an occasional infection in man, but were not considered to be a serious public health problem,” the fate of malaria eradication had already been sealed by drug and insecticide resistance. The infection incident and subsequent response provide a unique and illuminating case study of biological and ecological research in the service of public health.