ABSTRACT
The single most unanticipated conflict in Willowbrook’s many wars pitted the New York City Board of Education and Department of Health against the Willowbrook class. As more and more Willowbrook residents entered the community, and its public schools, the fact that some of them were carriers of the disease assumed a sudden significance. Everyone had known that hepatitis was endemic at Willowbrook; indeed, the institution had been the setting for research into hepatitis during the 1950s and 1960s. In 1947, Krugman moved to Bellevue Hospital and joined the NYU faculty, and in 1954 he became consulting physician to the newly opened Willowbrook facility. Epidemiologists next began to investigate the characteristics of hepatitis B carriers and found the roster bewildering in its variety. In 1976, the Center for Disease Control (CDC) convened a task force to formulate guidelines. The CDC provisions concerning carriers in institutions for the retarded replicated those concerning ordinary households.
