Pandemic.

An account of an attempt by Dr. Kirsty Duncan (Univ. of Windsor, Ontario) and Prof. John Oxford (London Hospital) to obtain a sample of the virus responsible for the 1918 influenza pandemic. Dr. Duncan and her team travel to Spitzbergen to exhume corpses of those who died from influenza in the hope that they will have been buried deeply enough for the permafrost to preserve body tissue. A rival project, centred on Brevig, Alaska, is organized by Dr. Johan Hultin who has been on the track of the virus since 1957. The programme follows both scientists' exhumations. One is disappointed and one makes a valuable find; but it remains to be seen whether the virus's complete genetic structure will be discovered.