Our 1918 Influenza Project

Professor John Oxford (Scientific Director of Retroscreen and Professor of Virology at Queen Mary's School of Medicine and Dentistry) in conjunction with his collaborators Dr Rod Daniels (NIMR, UK) and Dr Jeffrey Taubenberger (NIH, USA) is investigating the genetic nature of the virus that caused the devastating 1918 influenza pandemic.

The team are studying a collection of lung tissues from the archives of the Royal London Hospital from 1908 to 1933. Additionally the team has exhumed two bodies of influenza victims from lead-encased coffins buried in 1918 and is getting permission to exhume a third who died in 1919. Professor Oxford and Dr Daniels participated in the exhumation of influenza victims buried in the permafrost in Svalbard.

In addition, in a project with the historian Douglas Gill, funded by the Wellcome Trust, we are investigating the herald waves of influenza prior to 1918 at the British Army base at Etaple in Northern France.