per on December 16, and fortuitously reached him in the White House Staff Mess, lunching with Cavanaugh. Mathews by chance was at another table. The three huddled quickly; Cooper then excused himself and made a call to Salk. The switchboard reached Salk in Paris. Without enthusiasm he concurred in Sencer’s view. Cooper and the others then walked down the hall to Ford. He heard them out, sighed and agreed. For most intents and purposes the swine flu program was over. With no disease in sight nine months after Ford’s announcement, even a rare side effect could turn him around.

That afternoon Cooper announced suspension of the swine flu program, saying that he was acting “in the interest of safety of the public, in the interest of credibility, and in the interest of the practice of good medicine.”²⁷

Press comments were not kind. The TV anchormen conveyed no sense of loss. And five days later Harry Schwartz contributed an Op Ed piece in the New York Times. Entitled, “Swine Flu Fiasco,” it rounded off the points that he had previously made in anonymity:

In our view his first element overplays the politics. For the rest we offer a refinement. The “heavies” here were seven or eight personal agendas which happened to converge in the remembered light of 1918.