Johan Hultin is 90 years old. In 1997 he returned to a tiny Inuit village in Alaska to exhume remains from a mass grave that would hopefully contain cells and DNA from the 1918 influenza virus that killed close to 100 million people worldwide. The only hope of doing so was to retrieve bodies frozen in the permafrost and and find someone that had died quickly enough that their lungs still held the virus and not just the bacteria that followed the virus and killed the majority of the victims. His first attempt in the 70’s failed to find any bodies that still held the virus. In 97′ working alone, in his mid seventies, he dug, thawed the frost with driftwood fires, and found the perfect specimen. He quickly prepared the victim’s lungs for travel and carried them back to the NIH in the USA. The gene sequencing and study of the 1918 influenza virus helps scientists to understand the way viruses spread. Johann hand built a log cabin, based on a Norwegian cabin from 1325, out of giant redwoods. He also pioneered many current auto safety features and climbed and skied the highest skiable mountain in the world. He is refered to as “the Indiana Jones of science”
Chris, Olivia and I visited Johann this evening and will interview him for Eating Animals tomorrow. We arrived at the cabin, got a tour of the all the work he put into it, and then had aquavit and beer while he and his wife Eileen told us all of his stories and discussed his current passions, skiing, hiking, and research into the perfect diet.
These guys were so fascinating. It is such a pleasure to have the good fortune to be able to come from a TV commercial in NYC and less than 24 hrs later be sitting with this brilliant, important, and infinitely curious man and hear in detail about his incredible life.
I plan to eat his signature coconut protein mixture everyday so that I can live to 90 + as well.
Sadly none of us got a still image of the cabin. It is an exact copy of this from 1325-
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