From Operation Snuffles to Killer Kleenex: the forgotten history of the secret Cold War experiments in Antarctica has just been uncovered

NASA, the US space agency founded in 1958, was at the forefront of these investigations, not only as an engineering powerhouse but also as a pioneer in biomedical science.

Now, decades on, newly published historical research shines a light on one of the strangest – and most obscure – arenas of this Cold War experimentation and biomedical testing: the frozen bases of Antarctica.

In ‘Germs, infections, and the erratic 'natural laboratory' of Antarctica: from Operation Snuffles to the Killer Kleenex’ (Medical History), historian Vanessa Heggie of the University of Birmingham uncovers a remarkable and little-known chapter in the story of 20th-century science.

Her research argues that Antarctica was a key pillar in global biomedical research – and a Cold War-era site of secretive NASA-backed experiments.

Drawing on decades of archival material, Heggie traces the evolution of microbiological studies on the continent, from the early days of sampling to Cold War surveillance-style studies and, ultimately, experiments to mimic the environment of space on earth, backed by the American space agency.

The Heroic Age of sampling

Heggie’s research explains that Antarctica’s journey to become a hub of experimental testing began in the early 20th century, during the so-called Heroic Age of Antarctic exploration.

As germ theory gained traction in Western medicine, medical officers on polar expeditions began collecting bacteria from the environment and from their own bodies. One of these men was Dr Archibald McLean, who took part in the Australasian Antarctic Expedition from 1911 to 1914.

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As Heggie recounts, McLean conducted the first major attempt to study human microbes in Antarctica. He swabbed noses, throats, and skin; collected pus samples; and tested blood for immune responses. Despite the harsh conditions and limited lab equipment, McLean’s work helped overturn the myth that Antarctica was microbially ‘pure.’

His theories suggested that bacteria in the environment were not native to the region but carried by winds or humans from elsewhere. More provocatively, he observed that explorers often fell ill not during isolation, but after returning home. Could cold exposure and isolation suppress immunity?

Enter Operation Snuffles

By the 1950s, as the Cold War intensified and the Space Race accelerated, Antarctica gained continual strategic significance for US science.

The United States Navy launched Operation Deep Freeze, establishing a presence on the continent. As part of the fourth Deep Freeze mission, one project was a large-scale microbial surveillance program with the charming name: Operation Snuffles.

Led by Professor William ‘Bill’ Sladen, a British-born medic-turned-penguin-biologist, this study collected hundreds of nasal swabs and blood samples from sailors aboard the USS Staten Island and staff at remote Antarctic bases.

As Heggie details in her research, the goal was to understand how infections behaved in small, isolated human populations — a concern that mirrored NASA's fears about long-duration spaceflight.

The findings from Operation Snuffles, though not widely publicised at the time, were noteworthy. Certain strains of bacteria were found to persist in the human body for months, even in sterile environments, without causing illness. Infections rarely spread, even in crowded, shared quarters.

Tragedy, sabotage, and lost data

Operation Snuffles was no smooth scientific enterprise, and Heggie’s research brings to light the human drama behind the petri dishes.

Sladen had already survived a base fire that killed two of his colleagues and, later, at Wilkes Station in 1959, another crisis struck. According to oral histories cited by Heggie, an unstable crew member deliberately destroyed medical cultures by smashing lab equipment by smashing them, derailing that season’s data collection.

Other setbacks show the active agency of Antarctica in disrupting scientific research: blood samples spoiled in broken freezers, reagents froze, lab materials were lost in storms.

• Read more | Alternate history: what if the Soviets had landed on the Moon first and won the Space Race?

NASA, the Space Race, and the Killer Kleenex

But those challenges didn’t deter researchers from Antarctic testing, and Heggie’s article reveals how, by the 1970s, NASA had taken a deeper interest in Antarctic medicine.

The confined, isolated bases offered a parallel to life in space capsules or lunar habitats. One unusual experiment at McMurdo Station in Antartica in 1979 involved handing out tissues impregnated with virucide — known as ‘Killer Kleenex’ — to test whether respiratory infections could be reduced.

The result? Infection rates dropped dramatically.

These studies fed into a larger body of space medicine research (shaped by Cold War fears and the legacies of programmes like Operation Paperclip, the plan that had quietly brought former Nazi scientists into NASA’s ranks). One man known only by his initials, WS, was studied for over 15 years, with scientists noting the evolution of his nasal staph bacteria from sensitive to penicillin-resistant.

So for NASA, Antarctica became an important site where human biology could be tested under extreme conditions, and away from public scrutiny.

Heggie’s research highlights that Antarctica is not as ‘pure’ as it has previously been depicted and underlines the role of Antarctica in scientific history. It reveals how Cold War anxieties turned a continent of ice into a proxy warzone for ideas about human biology and its implications for spaceflight.