A closer look
The BCG vaccine is supposed to protect infants from tuberculosis, but in 1930s Germany, it did the exact opposite. Laboratory workers in Lübeck managed to cross-contaminate the weakened vaccine strain with a highly virulent human strain of TB simply by storing them in the same incubator. They blindly administered this lethal cocktail orally to over 250 newborns. Within months, 72 babies were dead from massive tubercular infections. The resulting outrage forced governments to completely overhaul how pharmaceutical laboratories handle and store live bacterial cultures.
