PBS Series Features NIH Origins
NIAID’s Dr. David Morens is a featured speaker in PBS’s documentary American Experience: Plague at the Golden Gate (Season 34, episode 4).
Viewers can “discover how an outbreak of bubonic plague in 1900 set off fear and anti-Asian sentiment in San Francisco,” according to PBS’s website. The program “tells the gripping story of the race against time by health officials to save the city from the deadly disease.”
The episode describes the late NIH director Dr. Joseph Kinyoun, founder of the Hygienic Laboratory, the nation’s first federal laboratory for medical bacteriology that became the National Institutes of Health. In 1900, Kinyoun confirmed the first U.S. case of bubonic plague in San Francisco. Contributions from NIH's Office of History and Stetten Museum and the National Library of Medicine showcased the historical holdings of Kinyoun’s extensive collection of papers, photographs and artifacts.
The installment first aired on May 24 during Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month and will be available through June 21. For more information, see: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/plague-golden-gate/.