12. Malaria in World War II
At the beginning of American involvement in World War II, the United States maintained stocks of quinine, the primary medication administered for the treatment of malaria. At the time quinine was made from the bark of the cinchona tree. By the end of the 19th century, the Dutch colony of Java produced 97% of the world’s cinchona bark from a genus of the tree most suitable for the manufacture of quinine. Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese captured nearly all of the regions where cinchona bark suitable for quinine was produced. American stocks of quinine were rapidly depleted at the same time as hundreds of thousands of Americans were dispatched to malaria plagued regions of the world.
Tens of thousands of Americans died of malaria in the early years of World War II as researchers struggled to find substitutes for quinine. Experiments are a part of the development of any new drug, and test groups are required to evaluate the effectiveness of the new means of treatment. With Americans fighting around the world, and others at home working to support the war effort, the means of finding suitable volunteers proved elusive. Men in their prime, in relatively good health, in large enough numbers, simply weren’t available until America looked inward, to its prisons, in the search for volunteers. Researchers found several prisoners willing to risk exposure to malaria and other tropical diseases as part of the American war effort.