You can go around the back. I want to welcome David Quammen who has come this evening to talk about his new book spillover animal infections and the next human pandemic. Its the first time he has been to politics and prose. He has written many many books including the song of the dodo which won the donderos metal for history writing. David holds honorary degrees from Colorado College and Montana State university where he served as professor of western american studies. He has also won the National Magazine award three times for articles in a wide variety of magazines including a squire, the atlantic and rolling stone. The third of these awards was for a National Geographic story called what went wrong. National geographic now, he has the title contributing writer, that is with capital letters which requires him did you say three articles a year . Three articles a year for National Geographic, he describes this as field biology, evolutionary biology, theoretical ecology and conservation but after this evening i hope you have as much appreciation for his physical strength and stamina as for his writing talent. In his research he tracks Indiana Jones style through jungles and rain forests but most of us would never want to set foot in. Tonight youre going to learn a new word, through gnosis. Infectious diseases that originate in animals and spread to humans. For those of you who read the hot zone, i cant believe it about 20 years ago, 18 to be exact, you had an early exposure to this frightening scenario that david has been elaborating on a great deal in his new book spillover animal infections and the next human pandemic. Publishers weekly said this is a frightening but critically important book for anyone interested in learning about the prospects of the worlds next major pandemic. [applause] thank you very much and nice to be here. I havent been here before, live a little too far away and dont publish books that often. Takes me about 6 or 8 years to get one of these things done. I will talk informally for 20 or 25 minutes. Is that what you said . About the book. The subject and to some extent the writing of the book. You know the drill better than i do. Then we will hear from you, have some conversation. As barbara explains, this is a book about scary new emerging diseases and where they emerge from and where they emerge from generally is wildlife, from other species, nonhuman animals and in particular nonhuman animals other than domesticated animals. If you have been following certain stories in the news over the last few months, you know that one point of entry into the subject is the daily newspaper itself. You probably heard about hunter virus killing three people who visited you somebody. In the summer. People have been dying in north texas of west nile fever. In the dallas area alone, 15 people died of west nile fever since july. There has been an Ebola Outbreak in Central Africa. The Democratic Republic Of The Congo has an Ebola Outbreak that has killed 3 dozen people by now and it is still going on. There was another Ebola Outbreak across the border in uganda unrelated to the spillover that caused the outbreak in the Democratic Republic Of The Congo. These things are happening. It is the drumbeat of disease outbreaks and small crises. There is another on the Arabian Peninsula. A virus that emerged that closely resembles the sars family, coronavirus, it really scared the disease experts in 2003. This new sars like virus out of the Arabian Peninsula has only killed one person, put another man in the hospital in britain but scientists all over the world are watching it carefully. Why are they watching it carefully . They know the next big one could look Something Like that. As i say there is a drumbeat of these things. Those diseases that i have mentioned all have two things in common. They all come out of wildlife, they emerge from nonhuman animals and among those that i mentioned they are all caused by viruses. That is the profile of the scariest of the exemplars of this phenomenon. The scientists have a fancy name for it. As barbara mentioned, they call these animal infections the passing humans, zoonoses. A virus or other forms infectious bug can be a bacteria, protozoa, like the creatures because malaria. It could be a fungus, it to be a worm. It could be something called a prion which causes mad cow disease. But usually it is a virus. Viruses more than anything. They pass from animals into humans, dont always cause disease. Sometimes they become harmless passengers in humans. There is a virus i talk about in the book that i couldnt resist because it has such a wonderfully gruesome name. You have to find the light side of the subject where you can find it. With all due respect to the people who suffer and die there are a lot of deaths in this book. District we nonfiction, there are a lot of deaths. But still, still, i didnt want this book to be just a painful, gruesome duty, just an important scary book. I also wanted to be a pleasurable reading experience, page turner, to have moments of suspense, mystery and discovery, moment a wisdom by scientists are studying this thing and some moments of humor. It is not a very funny book but i hope it might be the funniest book about ebola you will ever read. [laughter] so the as i said, some of these bugs when they pass into humans are harmless. Often they are not. If the zoonoses passes into humans and causes mayhem, we call it a zoonotic disease and 60 of Infectious Diseases of humans are zoonotic diseases. The other 40 comes from somewhere, the other 40 are probably of zoonotic origin in the broader sense. For example measles. Measles is only a disease of humans was where did he come from . It probably came from a virus that causes the disease in who for animals in africa but it has been in humans long enough that it has evolved and become adapted specifically to humans. It is different enough to be considered and functions as a uniquely human virus. 60 that are considered zoonotic are passing back and forth, passing from animals to humans on either a continuing basis or have done that very recently and that includes things like ebola, marburg, all of the influenzas, west nile virus, hunter viruses, hiv. I talk at some length about the ecological origins of the aids pandemic and we now know the pandemic strain of hiv passed from a single chimpanzee to a single human in a fairly small corner of southeastern cameroon in Central Africa. In 1908 or earlier give or take a margin a, how do we know that . There are wonderful scientists who have worked on the genetics, molecular phylogenetic of those that are precursors to hiv or those in chimps and monkeys and the genetic diversity of hiv1 with the pandemic strain of hiv and the scientists managed to locate the spillover event with a high degree of confidence. Theres a certain provision alien science but with a high degree of confidence they have located it to southeastern cameroon. One chimpanzee, one human, presumably human who killed the japanese and then cut himself on the hand, got blood to blood contact when butchering the chimp for food, in the very early part of the twentieth century, sometime around or before 1908. Their colleagues and labs have done that work. So there are these diseases. They spillover. They are zoonotic. One other slightly technical term i want to familiarize you with the reservoir host, the kind of animal in which the bug, the virus or whatever it is lived indirectly, permanently, inconspicuously without causing disease, without causing mayhem. Why does it live a . Probably because it has been in that species for millions of years and an accommodation has evolved. A virus and its reservoir host replicates but doesnt replicate cataclysmic lee. It tends to replicate slowly and doesnt generally cause symptoms so it is invisible. It hides in its reservoir host and then something happens, humans kill and eat the reservoir host, come in contact with it somehow. I will tell you some ways this can happen. The reservoir host sheds virus and the virus gets into humans and then becomes a zoonotic disease. One of the things the scientists do as they study this field, if they focus on these different diseases one of the first things they have to do is identify the reservoir host. New disease stills over in malaysia. Is killing pigs, then pig farmers and pig butchers and pork sellers. Where did it come from . They find the isolated very virus human victims and the pigs the same virus in the human picked victims and the pigs. This is a true case that happened in 1998. They named me but virus after a village in malaysia. Then they went looking for the reservoir host and found it in large fruit bats, large fruit bats, the kind that are called flying foxes in asia. How did the spillover occur . The disease detectives tracked it through the root of most likely spillover and heres what happened. People were cutting down forests, in peninsular asia for development, agriculture, timber itself, cutting down that forest, destroyed fruit that habitat. The fruit bats were displaced, had to go looking for food, nectar, somewhere else. They started going closer to human settlements. They were attracted to orchards, fruit trees planted by humans. Some of the fruit trees planted by humans were on pig farms, the second stream of income for the pig farmers who ran great big factory scale pig farms in northern and central peninsular malaysia. Some of these farmers even planted mango trees and another fruit tree called the water apple close to their openair pigstys and in some places even shading their pig size. For bats come to fruit trees planted over the pig size, eat the fruit and chew the mango, the water apple, drop into the pigsty, but drop their feces and urine, there virus into the pigsty, pigs pick it up, pigs get sick and pig is a very infectious respiratory disease, pigs are coughing and barking and passing this virus from one to the other. The pigs are mostly not dying, not killing that many pigs but it becomes a horrendous agricultural problem. Then it starts getting to humans and kills 109 people, causes the government of malaysia to call preventively 1. 1 million pigs, require the killing of all the pigs that came from infected farms. Some of these farms people were so scared by this disease that they were abandoning their own farms, running away from their own pig farms. At one point pigs were running loose through the villages in some cases abandoned villages of peninsular malaysia, a nightmare scenario that really happened, like something out of early Cormac Mccarthy or the book of exodus. Infectious pigs running wild through the countryside coughing a virus. One fellow called it the 1mile barking cough. You could hear the sick pigs coming and you knew your pig farm would be next. Meefa encephalitis is the disease. Scientists try to solve the ecology and ablution a biology of these new diseases. Where does the virus live . What is the reservoir host . How do humans come in contact with the virus . In many cases it is that ecological disruption that causes the contact, causes the spillover, get into an intermediate animal, pigs as the case in australia where a virus falls out of bats and get into horses, pigs or horses are referred to as the amplifier host, the virus reproduces abundantly, they showed lots of virus into getting to people. The case in kendra, in australia, the virus is called henrietta after a suburb of brisbane known as kendra which is a racing suburb, 1994 in one stable in that suburb, horses started to die. Why are they dying . Did they get poisonous feed . A veterinarian, horse trainer and stable hand tried to save the horses. The stable form and got sick, thought he had a bad flu, the trainer got sick, went into the hospital, veterinarian never got sick. The trainer died. The isolated virus from him and the horses they found a new virus, named at hand after the suburb. They did disease detection. Where did kendra virus come from . A fellow who was the chief detective on this case, a veterinarian doing a phd in ecology sampled all sorts of animals, kangaroos, wombats, rats, mice and insects and things called porter troops, he didnt find the virus, he sampled fruit bats and found a virus that matched what had killed the horses in the trainer and gave it the name kendra virus. It hasnt killed very many people, doesnt pass from human to human but it is a knock on the door. A reminder to us of where these things come from, how they emerge, why they still over. The fact they are not all independent cases that are part of a pattern and the pattern reflects things we humans are doing on the planet and then they get into humans and in some cases cause a local outbreak which is easily controlled comes to a end on its own and in other cases cause widespread suffering and death, hiv being the case in point. I might stop there and see if people have questions. There are a lot of other points i can touch on, but let me hear from you all and see what you would like to hear about. My name is rick. I have a toasty warm memory of swimming at bozeman hajj springs. It is still there. Great place. The other is a question about viruses. I imagine it is a small number. Anyone know what percentage of viruses are pathogenic . Nobody knows how many viruses there are. We hear talk about it wilson or other people trying to estimate how many living species there are on planet earth. Nobody knows how many species there are of vertebrate and invertebrate animals and plants and fungi there are with any precision. They make estimates ranging from i have heard estimate ranging from 8 million, to 30 million, 100 million species but when you had the viruses and bacteria nobody knows. The percentage of viruses that come out of animals that are pathogenic to humans may well be a small percentage. But the ones that are the exception to that are consequential. All the survivors have reproduced down generations and thats all there is left. Looking back in time for old pandemics to trace disease that way. I havent seen much on that. Certainly one other thing is very interesting to me is tracing in the human gene something they call endogenous retroviruses, which are retroviruses, hiv is a retrovirus, particular cachet a aendogenous retroviruses insert themselves permanently into the human genome and we dont know exactly maybe in some cases they have functions maybe they are what used to be called junk dna but they are there. They are record read in the human genome of past infections and can be recognized as belonging to this virus. In terms of the i cant put you toward any particular worker come across on that noise. Probably been done it would have to be speculative to a certain degree. Im sorry, i really cant tell you much more than that. I have a question so far weve heard you speak about different diseases and they cause death in the examples you gave us was hundreds and dozens and maybe thousands but the reaction seemed like the government was overreacting when it was trying to solve the situation. Recently in texas there was a west nile virus detected and they started spraying the swampy areas with the airplanes. There are other diseases that killed millions and millions and we are not doing much in here since these are such exotic diseases when we hear about them we get into shock and the reaction seems to be too much and may be harming the population. I hear you asking two questions, one is are we doing some things that cause more harm than good and also her we sort of taking these things out of proportion to the damage that they do . Let me answer the second one first, i asked the same thing of a fellow who studies at dnieper virus i mentioned to has a different story in bangladesh because bangladesh is a Muslim Country and there arent big pork farms. It doesnt pass through pigs as amplifiers in bangladesh its transmitted broad date palm sap that people drink and the bats because of the way the date palm sap is tapped, batson drink from the pot to leave their waste to the pots and people drink it and get the virus. I spoke to this fellow steve luby second from cdc and asked him the same thing, there are hundreds of thousands of children in bangladesh dying of bacterial diarrhea and bacterial pneumonia and bangladesh, he was based at a place called the colorado hospital. These kinds of diseases have been murderers in bangladesh for centuries. abtold me that this is such a nasty disease and has such potential that we cant ignore it simply because its now small, it could be large its important to take these other diseases these more oldfashioned gardenvariety diseases like cholera its very important to take them seriously and keep this in perspective but its very important also to be vigilant about these new emerging diseases because after all, in 1981 we had a disease emerge called aids and it was one of these. The influences emerge anew each year and influences are also capable of killing millions of people. So i think thats the response ive heard from the experts about why to take these small boutique diseases like dnieper very seriously. You never know when one of those is going to become the next big one. In terms of the things we do to try to stop contain or prevent these spillovers, in some cases, yes, we audibly do more harm than good. Spraying for insects is depending on what they are spraying with would be an immediate candidate for that. Youd want to think about that. Weve done so much, so much futile damage over the decades trying to spray and sex out of existence and it just doesnt work. There are cases when governments have taken very rigorous action and it has been very important and beneficial. For instance, with stars emerging from Southern China got to hong kong was a very nasty virus that was passed by the respiratory route killed 10 of the people that infected and spread quickly from hong kong to toronto in the beijing, and singapore. It infected a total of about 8000 people, killed about 900, better than 10 . And then it was stopped. I heard somebody i think in one of the book reviews i got somebody was saying, why does he take sars so seriously its one of those that burned out . Sars did not burn outcome but sarss was stopped by very good early diagnostic scientific work in the field and laboratory and then very firm Public Health measures. Containment of cases isolation of cases getting the right equipment the right personal protection to the healthcare workers so that it didnt go further. One of the things i always wonder abou