Read on Twitter
:
In WW2, there was a massive disaster at a captured Italian port at the city of Bari, where Germany attacked a destroyed US ship, the John Harvey, filled with mustard gas that happened to be there in case Hitler used chemical weapons against the Allies in 1943.
Roosevelt, who was president of the United States at the time, issued a statement against the use of chemical weapons. However, he *did* say that the United States would attack similarly if someone dared to use them first.
The mustard gas bombs looked normal to the average person. The entire mission was incredibly secretive, and even the captain of the ship was not informed about what was actually his cargo.
Since the chemical crew aboard who was responsible for the unloading of the cargo was unable to unload due to the chemical weapons being announced, and other ships took priority. So the cargo sat and waited in port until the Nazis attacked at Bari.
Nearby ships, John Bascom and Joseph Wheeler, took direct hits from the German Luftwaffe. The Nazis decided that the port was the most effective location of the attack.
The crew of the John Harvey were desperate to save their ship despite the ships around them sustaining blasts from stem to stern, their vessel was still intact and sustained no bomb damage. Unfortunately, the ship suddenly caught fire. The captain and his crew stayed aboard.
Suddenly, the John Harvey blew up, killing everyone on board instantly and launching its cargo into the air, sending multicolored smoke billowing out of the carcass of the vessel into the rest of the port.
All the others who sustained fire aboard the John Bascom and the USS Pumper and were waiting to be rescued due to their downed ships were unable to cross due to massive obstacles after the attack.
Suddenly- they all smelt garlic, unable to breathe.
Suddenly- they all smelt garlic, unable to breathe.
Everyone in the port, and thousands of Italian civilians inhaled the exploded mustard gas aboard the USS John Harvey now in the air, and hundreds of seamen were covered in mustard gas laced ship oil.
The attack lasted 20 minutes, with Nazi losses being very little. Seventeen Allied ships were sunk, eight damaged. The attack at Bari was commonly referred to as “The Second Pearl Harbor.”
The next morning, they awoke to absolute destruction. Bari had sustained over 1,000 merchant marine casualties as a result of the attack. According to History Net, the full extent of civilian casualties will never be known.
The victims of the explosion in the port had complained of “gritty eyes, damaged respiratory systems, and extremely awful blistered burns. People were dying in the allied hospitals in Bari en masse. Doctors assumed that it was chemical related, and fingers were pointed at Germany
Due to the only people aware of the ship’s mission dying in the raid on Bari, everyone dispatched to investigate what had happened had no clue where the gas came from. The entire attack was still enshrouded in secrecy. Britain’s Winston Churchill was quick to not publicize it.
The gas was mentioned in American records, but Churchill ordered British records be scrubbed of any reference to mustard gas for casualties in the attack, listing them as “burns from enemy action.” https://www.historynet.com/world-war-ii-german-raid-on-bari.htm
The acquired knowledge from the Raid on Bari was that mustard gas specifically lowered the white blood cell counts of the military personnel who died closer to the John Harvey.
As a result, the United States launched four WW2 adjacent programs and eventually what became of them was a cancer treatment formed out of the mustard agents for lymphoma, what is known as today called modern chemotherapy.
Used initially on mice with lymphomas, the researchers injected original mustard agent and related nitrogen mustard anti cancer chemotherapeutic, they observed a dramatic reduction in the tumors. The pt had to continue returning for several weeks until treatment was complete..
But the end result was that cancer could be treated by pharmacological, or in this case, chemical agents, and their derivatives could be used to treat cancer. In 1946, the first clinical trial for chemotherapy was reported in The NY Times. https://cancerres.aacrjournals.org/content/68/21/8643
Today, you can see chemotherapies everywhere, often referred to by the medical world as your antifolates, vinca alkaloids, and combination chemotherapies with the introduction of antibiotics.
I was treated with the BEACOPP chemotherapy regimen after being diagnosed with Stage 4 Hodgkin lymphoma at 19, which is the German protocol for pediatric cancer patients. Bleomycin, etoposide, adriamycin/doxorubicin, cyclophosphamide, vinchristine, procarbizine, and prednisone.
Cyclophosphamide is a nitrogen mustard agent derivative, and it’s still used today in cancer treatment for many patients with lymphoma, leukemia, multiple myeloma, breast, ovarian, lung, neuroblastoma, and sarcoma cancers, and even for some organ transplants.
