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[Music] In 1993, on an Indian reservation in the southwestern United States, young Navajo
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Indians were dying at an alarming rate. More than 20 people would die from the mysterious disease, one that health
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officials had never seen before. But the Navajo Medicine men provided a critical piece of information which led
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investigators around the world to a most unlikely killer. [Music] [Music] Covering 25,000 square miles of high
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desert in four states, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona, is a Navajo Indian reservation in an area known as
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the Four Corners. It's the largest Navajo community in America with some 1,200 members of the
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tribe living throughout the desert hills. The scenery brings thousands of tourists
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each year, a vital source of revenue for the Navajo who have inhabited the area for centuries. But poverty is endemic
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and was a fact of life for people like 19-year-old Merrill Bahi. But Mel Bahi had something that set him apart. Merl
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was a very phenomenal person. But where he stood out was his running ability. And uh I think if you talk to anybody
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that saw him run, you know, they would tell you that it was a gift that he had uh in running. and he loved to run.
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>> Merryill Bahi was so fast he won a full scholarship to the Santa Fe Indian
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School, a boarding school that was miles away from his home both physically and culturally.
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>> He didn't really know how to put a sheet on a bl, you know, it was like he threw the
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blanket on and that was it. Said, "No, Mo, you um you put this down first." So
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I I had to show him how to to make up a bed. >> Bahi slowly adjusted to his new life. He
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did well in school, but the transition to life in the city was difficult until he met Florina Woody.
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>> Something magical happened. He met another Navajo girl at a PBLO school and
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they fell in love so intensely that um the track coach decided to make Florina the manager of the track team to hand
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out the towels so that uh Merryill would keep his mind on his running. >> Not long afterwards, they had a son
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Maurice and planned to get married. But shortly after the baby was born, Florina
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woke up one morning with what she thought was the flu. >> She was all cold. She kept, you know,
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having these chills and it was it was something like you're getting a cold or getting sick from a a
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common cold. >> Her lungs were a white out, meaning they were just solid. They should usually be
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dark from from the air, and they obviously had something in there, fluid in there.
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>> Doctors raced to find out what was wrong. They administered oxygen to help
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Fina breathe, but she went into shock. I saw um one of the nurses coming out of her room all disturbed and she was
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crying and and I knew there that something was happening. >> None of the standard procedures worked
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and Florina's heart stopped beating. The pressure on her lungs was simply too
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much for her body to bear. The cause of death, acute respiratory failure. Florina Woody died on Mother's Day. She
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was just 21 years old. >> When they told us that she was gone, then they allowed us to go into her
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room. I just couldn't believe that my my baby is gone. I didn't want to leave her. I just want
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to hang out there right there. Doctors had no idea what had caused Florina's sudden death, and they feared
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that whatever killed Florina Woody might be contagious. Florina's death was a particularly cruel
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blow to Meil Bahi. The mother of his infant son was dead. As Bahi prepared Flerina's funeral, he too started to
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develop similar symptoms. Merryill Bahi was beside himself. He wasn't feeling well,
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but it didn't occur to him that uh that it could possibly be the same thing that
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affected Florina. >> Merryill's physical condition quickly deteriorated, and he was rushed to the
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Crown Point Hospital, the same hospital that treated Florina. After an initial consultation, Merrill
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did not want to be treated where Florina died. So his family drove him to the Indian Medical Center in Gallup, an hour
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away. Shortly before arrival, Merrill lost consciousness. As doctors rushed him into the emergency
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room, he died. The cause of death, acute respiratory failure. Merryill Bahi was only 19 years old.
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Ironically, Merryill died during Florina's funeral service, which was taking place directly across the street
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from the hospital. The funeral was going on and there we had a meeting with our medical investigator and Merryill's
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family were coming in for Flo's funeral and they were told there and everything
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just started happening here and there and and that's when I went to shock. Health authorities had no explanation
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for what killed the young couple. The only way they could determine the cause was to perform a complete autopsy. But
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autopsies are not permitted in the Navajo community. >> It's forbidden in among traditional
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Napos to have autopsies done and the Navajo tribal government can forbid that if they want to. And I don't think the
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government people really understood that that we have that sovereign power to do
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that even if it's a medical emergency. But with her daughter and future son-in-law dead, Beta Beay wanted
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answers. She took the unusual step of defying tradition and the tribal elders by giving doctors permission to perform
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the autopsies. The autopsy findings took on a new importance when Merrill and Florina's
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infant child, Maurice, also fell ill. He was rushed to the hospital and quarantined.
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>> What is it? Where did it come from or what is it? Is it going to is it going
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to be here or how? You know, I asked I had that I had those questions and I wanted to find out.
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As authorities awaited the autopsy results, the disease continued its deadly rampage.
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Within a week of Florina and Merrill's deaths, the number of dead had risen to
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six, and each day more people were being hospitalized with symptoms. New Mexico officials feared they had an
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epidemic on their hands and panic gripped the region. We were getting calls from concerned citizens and
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concerned physicians and concerned school administrators and concerned everybody. Uh and that always will
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happen when something as dramatic as this and as frightening as this is occurring and when you do really don't
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have any good answers. >> The autopsies on Meil Bahi and Florina Woody answered few questions. The
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mystery illness could not be identified and until it was more people were destined to die.
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>> Doctors in the Four Corners area are on alert to a deadly respiratory illness.
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>> May 1993, Navajo radio stations in the Four Corners Indian Reservation broadcast an
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alert. Young Navajo were dying at an alarming rate and new cases were being reported every day. So little was known
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that health officials were not able to tell listeners what precautions to take against the disease.
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>> It was frightening for people who came down with a fever and cough and headache
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at the time. As a physician, we're sending people home who we had to accept the possibility that they could drop
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dead within hours of leaving the hospital. >> The outbreak was now national news. And
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since it appeared that only Navajo were affected, it was dubbed the Navajo flu. >> There was pandemonium.
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It's impossible to keep a string of deaths like this a secret for very long.
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One possibility was bubanic plague. The dreaded black death that killed millions
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during the Middle Ages and still strikes more than a thousand people worldwide every year. Plague symptoms,
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particularly the high fever, muscle pain, and fluid buildup bore similarities to the four corners
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disease. bubanic plague still crops up in New Mexico from time to time and so the state is very well equipped to do
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that test and um much to the to the uh chagrin of the investigators um the test was negative. It it was shagrin because
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they still didn't know what had killed this young couple. Another possibility
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was pneumonic plague, a highly contagious disease. It attacks the lungs and kills quickly, which is what
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happened to the four corners victims. Since it could be treated with large doses of antibiotics, doctors actually
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hoped that this was what they'd find. But the autopsies turned up something different. The capillaries of the
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victims had collapsed, leaving the lungs wet like large sponges. This was not consistent with pneumonic plague and it
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did not resemble anything medical investigators had ever seen before >> and it was very puzzling and it was it
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was frustrating because you felt like how come we're not smart enough to figure this out? You know, this
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shouldn't be that hard. So, I haven't had I haven't had that many cases at one
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time that I didn't understand. >> Local health officials called in the
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Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, Georgia. The CDC special pathogens team was sent in to look for possible causes.
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And they started their investigation in the trailer that Mel Bahi and Florina Woody once called home.
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>> We had no idea what this was. We didn't know whether it was contagious. We
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didn't know whether working with the tissues was going to be dangerous. We didn't know whether you could get this
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uh in the laboratory or from somebody outside in the field. >> The outbreak was considered a biosafety
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level four hazard, the most lethal designation. Dressed in specially designed suits to
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keep them free from any contagion, CDC specialists searched the trailer and the surrounding area. They wore something
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like that. You know the astronauts that they're they're sending off to outer
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space. You know how they dress? They were dressed like that when they came to our place. And that was even scarier.
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They There was fear. They they scared us. While the medical community turned to their scientific experts, the Navajo
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turned to their own specialists, the traditional healers or medicine men who were responsible for the health of the
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reservation. They said they were familiar with this disease and that it had struck before. They were saying that
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uh this outbreak had occurred in the century in uh 1933 and 1918 when uh it was preceded by 2 years of plentiful
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rains and heavy winter snows in the mountains. The tribal healer said the heavy rains
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had resulted in a dramatic increase in the number of mice on the reservation. And they suspected there was some
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connection between the large number of mice and these deaths, but they could not say what it was. There was an old
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Nashville saying that I learned as a child that uh if a mouse ever runs over your clothing, you should burn it. And
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uh nobody ever knew what that old saying meant. Records indicated that there were
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heavy rains in 1991 and 92, the two years preceding the current outbreak. But health officials could not find any
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link between the rain, the growing deer mice population, and the outbreak. Meanwhile, in what's known as the
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maximum containment section of the CDC labs, an area reserved for the study of the world's most dangerous germs and
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viruses, investigators performed an ELISA test or enzyme linked imunosorbent assay on the tissue samples from the
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victims. When a disease strikes, the body reacts by producing antibodies which are unique to that disease. The
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ELISA test can isolate those antibodies in order to compare them to the thousands of samples in the CDC files.
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Comparison after comparison was made and no matches were found until the investigation took an unexpected turn,
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one that would take medical detectives back in time and halfway around the world.
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[Music] Within six weeks of Florina Woody and Melbah's deaths, more than 12 other
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young people had also died of the same mysterious disease. Investigators got a break in the case when a tourist from
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Iceland after visiting the reservation developed symptoms of the disease. Investigators now realized the outbreak
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was probably environmental and was not confined to the Navajo. >> Unfortunately,
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somebody um sort of identified this as a Navajo disease, which it very obviously
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wasn't because we were seeing there there were other cases occurring in in non-Navajos, but but that that was
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particularly offensive, I think, to people. When CDC investigators compared the antibodies from the outbreak victims
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to those in their vast file of known diseases, they made a surprising discovery. The only sample that was in
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any way similar was one that was 40 years old. It was a sample taken from a soldier stationed in Korea in 1950.
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During the Korean War, more than 3,000 troops developed high fevers and kidney failure. About 400 died. Doctors called
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it Havirus because it was traced back to Korea's Honan River. That region was
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home to large numbers of striped field mice. Feces and urine from infected mice carried the virus. When it dried out, it
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became airborne and was then inhaled by the soldiers. From there, the virus attacked the kidneys. But investigators
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were uncertain whether this was the same as the four corners virus. There had never been a haunt virus reported in
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North America. And the four corners disease attacked the lungs, not the kidneys. I had no idea what Honda virus
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was and looked looked in, you know, my textbook which had a very short section on it. Uh, and of course it describes a
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disease that occurs in Asia which which sounded nothing like what we were dealing with.
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>> Was this the same disease? And if so, how did it travel from Korea to a North
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American Indian reservation? CDC investigators then remembered what they'd been told by the Navajo
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traditional healers. >> The medicine men had said it when a remarkably wet winter was followed by
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the masting of the the pinion trees. When when the pinion trees put out um an abundant supply of nuts, the rodent
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populations in the state began to to grow. And when that happened, young Navajo died.
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>> Investigators caught and tested deer mice from the Four Corners area. They
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found the mice were shedding a virus with the same DNA profile as the virus found in Florina Woody and Melbi.
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But the DNA profile of this virus was not identical to the Korean H virus. Although the DNA profiles were similar,
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the strain from the Navajo reservation was a new one unique to North America. >> What we found when we did the comparison
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was that this was a new honor. That is the sequence was far enough from any other known hanavirus that we were
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convinced that it was a new virus. It wasn't just a minor variant on one of the old viruses. CDC scientists and
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Navajo medicine men suspected the North American HANA virus had been around for centuries, but since the cases were so
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isolated, it had always been misdiagnosed. The Navajo made up a greater percentage
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of the victims only because they lived in more rural areas with large deer mice populations.
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In the two years before the outbreak, heavy spring rains created a bumper crop of pinion nuts, a rich source of food
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for the growing mice population. Authorities believe that Merryill Bahi and Florina Woody inhaled the dried
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urine and fecal matter from the infected deer mice when they were house cleaning
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or digging in their garden. In my heart, I think it's it was God's will that
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this is what was supposed to happen to both of them and they were meant for each other and they were meant to go
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together. >> Health officials recommend that masks and gloves be worn when cleaning rodent
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droppings and that people do everything possible to keep rodents out of their homes. They also point out that the four
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corners outbreak was identified through the wisdom of the Navajo medicine men and the scientists who were smart enough
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to listen. >> We were discovering an old disease that the traditional healers had discovered
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long ago. And that was the I think to me that was uh the most exciting thing about this whole investigation. The
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Navajo, using an entirely different approach, looking at the balance of nature, were able to identify factors
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that led them to the same conclusion that um when rodent populations um explode the way they did in in the
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Four Corners in the spring of 1993, young Navajo died. These two very different sets of people
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set out on very different paths and arrived in the same place. [Music] Why? [Music]
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Heat. Are you ready? [Music]