Diplomat's body exhumed for study of WWI flu

LONDON — Scientists have exhumed the body of a British diplomat who died of flu during the World War I-era pandemic that killed tens of millions around the world, hoping to find clues that might help fight a future global influenza outbreak.

The British Broadcasting Corp. said Tuesday that it had filmed virologist John Oxford exhuming Sir Mark Sykes, who died in 1919. Oxford's team took tissue samples before reburying the body in its grave in East Yorkshire in northeast England last week. The British Broadcasting Corp. will broadcast the program Wednesday.

Sykes, best known for the 1916 Sykes-Picot agreement dividing up the Middle East in anticipation of the fall of the Ottoman Empire, was buried in a lead-lined coffin that preserved enough human tissue to yield useful information on how he died and the nature of the flu that killed him.

Understanding more about the 1918-19 pandemic, known as the Spanish flu, might help scientists design better treatments for the H5N1 strain of avian flu. Victims of Spanish flu frequently experienced an overly aggressive immune response that attacked their own bodies. The same phenomenon has been seen in human H5N1 cases.

Spanish-flu victims have been studied before, including Inuit bodies recovered from the Arctic permafrost and corpses of World War I soldiers. Experts estimate the flu outbreak killed more than 40 million people worldwide.

An aristocratic and talented linguist, Sykes worked with French diplomat François Georges-Picot to draft a secret agreement to divide the Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire into French and British spheres of influence. The lines they drew eventually coalesced into the borders of present-day Iraq, Syria and Israel.

Sykes traveled to Paris in early 1919 and died soon afterward.