MedPageToday We know what Legionella is thanks to an intense CDC investigation 50 years ago. Summer brings regular outbreaks of Legionnaires’ disease — including an ongoing one in New York City that has killed five peopleopens in a new tab or window — but nearly 50 years ago, the bacterium that causes the disease was unknown to mankind.
It was an intense and robust CDC investigation that finally identified the pathogen.
At the time, Walter Orenstein, MD, MPH, former director of the National Immunization Program (now the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases) at the CDC, had just served 2 years in CDC’s Epidemic Intelligence Service. He was just starting a new assignment for the agency — investigating a measles outbreak in Maryland — when he got called to Philadelphia to help get to the bottom of an unusual pneumonia outbreak.