Future of Malignant and Infectious Diseases 
the virus had changed its ways of infecting man and that the 
two men died after breathing in the infectious agent. 
No wonder that we do not expect ever to free ourselves from 
rabies in the Americas, and since bat quarantine has not yet 
been introduced in England, the splendid isolation (against 
rabies) of the United Kingdom may also end one day. 
An even “‘lovelier’’ prospect is offered by a virus travelling 
from the animal to the plant kingdom—and perhaps having a 
return ticket. I refer here to the so-called reoviruses of man, 
which seem to be related to a wound-tumour virus of plants. 
Where we go from here, nobody has predicted at present. 
EXTRATERRESTRIALS AND THE FUTURE 
‘And a man who will show every knave or fool that he thinks 
him such, will engage in a most ruinous war against a number much 
superior to those that he and his allies can bring into the field.” 
EARL OF CHESTERFIELD: Letters to His Son 
Somebody looking for a needle in a haystack on the moon 
may not find the needle but may find Bacillus calfactor, a 
thermophilic micro-organism which is responsible for spon- 
taneous combustion of hay on this earth. Since the earth’s 
thermophilics are remarkably resistant to thermal damage and 
grow lustily at temperatures of 65—70°c for reasons not as yet 
clear to anybody, it is perfectly possible that moon strains of 
Bacillus calfactor or a new brand of thermophilics may withstand 
moon temperatures and low supplies of oxygen or none at all. 
There is a biological entity on this earth called scrapie which 
causes a disease of the central nervous system of sheep and goats 
and was recently transmitted to mice. The “‘agent’’ causing 
scrapie can be boiled for hours and treated with high concen- 
trations of disinfectants and antiseptic without losing its 
pathogenic properties. 
I know nothing about extraterrestrial infections and even 
less about the diseases caused by these infections, but I mention 
the thermophilics and scrapie, since, first of all, we could send 
them around in outer space with the expectation that they would 
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