ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

‘Man’s Best Friend in Leprosy Research’: The armadillo, environmental extraction, and the discovery of a zoonosis

• In Event: Manipulating Biota, Engineering Healthscapes: Colonial Science & Medicine 1750-2000

English Abstract

This paper shows how the armadillo transformed leprosy research and vaccine development, examining the creation of a global supply chain for armadillo-derived leprosy bacteria in the 1970s – 1990s. For years, leprosy researchers had searched for an animal source of Mycobacterium leprae bacteria, needed for research and to make the leprosy diagnostic test. They were limited to tissue they could biopsy from patients, but this became hard to find in the US with the use of sulfone therapy, driving researchers to rely on shipments from the Philippines.

In 1971, Eleanor Storrs at the Gulf South Research Institute in Louisiana discovered that the nine-banded armadillo could be experimentally infected with leprosy, providing a source of bacteria. This transformed both leprosy research and the environment as researchers captured armadillos across the American Southwest. The bacteria enabled studies on the immunology and genetics of leprosy and made vaccine development a possibility. In search of more bacteria, the new WHO Immunology of Leprosy program turned to South America, collaborating with scientists in Argentina, Venezuela, Paraguay, and Brazil to establish colonies of various armadillo species. The M. leprae bacteria transversed the globe as it was extracted from patients in the Philippines, Ethiopia, and Guyana, injected into armadillos in South America, then harvested and shipped to London’s Wellcome Co. to make leprosy vaccines that were trialed on people in Venezuela and Malawi.

The program was complicated by the discovery, in 1975, that wild armadillos harbored leprosy – leading to accusations that armadillos had escaped from the lab. I examine the reckoning with the armadillo as both a cure and cause of disease, and the ensuing discourse around armadillos and their South American origin as natural reservoirs. I conclude with current conservation groups in Brazil that are working with public health officials to address the illegal armadillo hunt.

Author

• Lauren Killingsworth, Yale University