"Democratically speaking, it should be distributed by lot," Hallam said, "but there's no time to argue the point. If it will ease your conscience any, you're getting it, not because of favoritism, but because you, and Pat and I too, are the subjects of the first controlled experiment on human beings with the new virus. We know exactly when we were exposed to it; we know that you, at least, received a very heavily concentrated dose, and if this globulin proves effective then we can start issuing it in large quantities. The word has already gone out through the Public Health Service, to collect blood and process the serum. By the time we find out if it protects us, it will be in bottles ready for issue all over the country. It's a terribly expensive and cumbersome way compared to using a vaccine, but we have no alternative. They haven't yet got an antibiotic that will attack the flu virus. But we're wasting time! C'mon, drop those pants and take your medicine." * * * * * Later, as we sat gingerly on the hard chairs around the dining table, Hallam outlined his plans. "We won't work with antisera at all. The Routine Lab can handle that. What I want to do up here is to produce something that will give active, permanent immunity ... not just passive immunity that has to be repeated every week." "You mean to produce a vaccine?" Pat asked. "That's one way. We could try killed virus, formalin treated, something like the method Salk used for the polio vaccine. But that too can be done in the Public Health Labs or by the big drug companies. They have all the equipment set up for it." "It takes at least three months from isolation of virus to production of vaccine ... and another three or more until everybody can get a shot." "Right-o, John. It must be done of course, but I'm going to tackle the problem in another way. Maybe we can shorten the time." "How will you do it?" Hallam turned to Pat. "I don't say we can do it. We shall try. If we could alter the virus enough, by physical or chemical treatment, to knock out only the sterility effect, we could let people have the flu. Then it would be necessary only to produce a limited amount of the new virus and start it going all over the country." "That would eliminate all the processing of killed virus, sterilization and so on," Pat said excitedly. "And everybody who had the virus would produce more and spread it, faster than the drug companies could make it," I added.