American Legion at the convention and later became known as Legionnaires' disease ("Legionellosis"). The bacterium that causes the illness was later named "Legionella". In 1988, after over 44 years of opposing U.S. Merchant seamen from receiving benefits under the G.I. Bill, they allowed Merchant seamen to join The American Legion. This followed Merchant seamen being granted limited veterans status by the United States Secretary of the Air Force on January 19, 1988. After a 1989 U.S. Supreme Court decision ("Texas v. Johnson"), The American Legion launched and funded an unsuccessful campaign to win a constitutional amendment against harming the flag of the
1976 Philadelphia Legionnaires' disease outbreak testing specimens. While the Center for Disease Control responded rapidly, as did the Pennsylvania Health Department, it took six months for the CDC microbiologist Joseph McDade to discover the cause of the outbreak. He initially thought the cause was viral because blood and tissues from the victims failed to grow bacteria when incubated in culture medium. His subsequent attempts to isolate the viral agent in eggs included antibiotics to kill off "contaminating" bacteria. It was only when he omitted the antibiotics that the bacteria grew in eggs. Attempts to reproduce the disease in mice, the standard laboratory animal model, also