John Barry: 1918 Spanish flu pandemic—historical account, parallels to today, and lessons

**Peter Attia** (0:11)
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Now, without further delay, here's today's episode.
Welcome back to another special COVID-19 episode of The Drive. Joining me on this episode is author and historian John Barry. John is the author of arguably one of the most important books I've ever read in my life, The Transformed Cell, and we talk about that very briefly at the outset, but that's not the reason we speak today. Rather, today we are discussing a book that John wrote in 2004, The New York Times bestseller, The Great Influenza, The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History. We talk about a lot of things here, obviously, related to the Spanish Flu. Many of you have probably heard about this somewhat in the previous couple of months. Obviously, this was on a per population basis, probably the greatest pandemic in human history, perhaps comparable only to the Black Plague.
But of course, it has many parallels to the pandemic we are in now. I think history will show that the current pandemic is not a fraction of the Spanish Flu, but nevertheless, there are parallels that can be drawn. This is a discussion that goes into many of the details of the pandemic, which is complicated because it really had three separate waves and we get into some of the history of what may have accounted for that. The other thing I found interesting about this discussion is that there were a number of things that John had changed his mind on from when he wrote the book. And that to me is always the marker of a great thinker is someone who can go where the data go and not necessarily be wed to something that they put in print. And I think anybody who's ever tried to write something down and put something out there, it does become a little bit harder to go back and look at that and realize that maybe you didn't look at it correctly. But certainly when it comes to, for example, the origin of the Spanish flu, John's thinking has changed and we do get into that. Again, I'll keep the intro brief. I think the discussion will speak for itself. And so without further delay, please enjoy my conversation with John Barry.
John, it is such an honor to be sitting here talking with you because as I alluded to in the email, when I randomly reached out to you last week, you are someone whose work I've been familiar with for a very long time because a book that you wrote with my mentor, Steve Rosenberg, has arguably been one of the most influential books in my life, The Transformed Cell.

**John Barry** (3:05)
Kind of you to say. I give Steve full credit for that book. He didn't need me. It's the only thing I've ever collaborated on in my life. He was very generous in giving me credit for that.
But I did learn, for those of you who don't know Steve, we're talking about Steve Rosenberg, who is at the National Cancer Institute and was one of the leading pioneers in immunotherapy, developed, I guess, the first immunotherapy that actually worked for cancer. He also was the lead investigator on the first approved gene therapy experiments in the United States.
And I guess the world too, in terms of approval, there were a couple of disapproved experiments prior to that.

**Peter Attia** (3:50)
Yeah, and so that book was published in 91 or 92, right?

**John Barry** (3:54)
Yeah, yes.

**Peter Attia** (3:55)
So I didn't come across it until 1997 It was in my first year of medical school.
I read it and it's just one of those moments that I think people have once in a while in life. And it just sort of changed everything for me. It gave me a complete sense of how I wanted to think about the world and problem solving and all these sorts of things. And I read it probably five times. When we're done with the podcast, I'm gonna show you my original copy because three years later, I would actually get a copy from Steve signed.