[1] At age 10, in 1978, First Flight was selected to participate in the botulinum antitoxin program at the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) at Fort Detrick, Maryland.
[2] Another army horse named Abe was also part of the program initially, but experiments and large-scale production of antitoxin utilised only plasma from First Flight,[5] due to its reactivity against all subtypes of botulism toxin.
As part of this, First Flight was immunised every forty to one hundred days and plasmapheresed eight times, each removing 10–15% of the animal's blood volume, during the cycle.
It was shipped to Saudi Arabia in 1991 as a precaution to treat soldiers and civilians during the First Gulf War due to concern that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein might use biological weapons containing Botulinum toxin.
[7] The National Museum of American History holds the horse's halter, lead chain and a vial of antitoxin derived from its blood in its collections.
HBAT is produced by harvesting antibodies from horses that have been inoculated with botulism, building upon the earlier work developing antitoxin serum from First Flight.