Giuseppe Sanarelli

Giuseppe Sanarelli (24 September 1865 – 6 April 1940) was an Italian bacteriologist who incorrectly identified the cause of yellow fever as a bacterium.

In 1897 he triggered the first major public debate on medical ethics when he injected yellow fever bacteria into five patients without consent, three of whom died.

Sanarelli was born at Monte San Savino, Arezzo to Guglielmo and Veniglia Veltroni Poderetti.

He then studied under Max Pettenkofer in Munich and in 1892 under Louis Pasteur, Emile Roux and Ilya Metchnikoff at Paris on cholera.

His studies on pathogenesis led to the identification of rabbit myxomatosis, caused by a filterable agent that Benjamin Lipschütz named as Sanarellia cuniculi in 1927.