Reed Commission: experimental confirmation of the mosquito in yellow fever
Comisión Reed: confirmación experimental del mosquito en la fiebre amarilla
- Date
- 1900-1901 · confidence high
- Place
- Camp Lazear, Quemados de Marianao, Havana, Cuba
- Credited to
- Walter Reed, James Carroll, Jesse Lazear and Aristides Agramonte
- Field
- Life & health
What was discovered
Between 1900 and 1901 the US Army commission demonstrated with human volunteers in Cuba that yellow fever is transmitted by the bite of the Aedes aegypti mosquito and not by contact with objects, as was believed, and that the cause is a filterable agent (a virus). It was the first human disease attributed to a virus.
The commission confirmed the hypothesis of Carlos Finlay (1881), whose role was acknowledged by Reed in part and disputed later. The volunteer experiments (including Lazear, who died) generate modern ethical debate.
What it led to
- mosquito-eradication campaigns in Havana (1901) and Panama (1904-1906)
- the viability of the Panama Canal
- use of written consent contracts with volunteers, a precedent for research ethics