Host good evening i am one of the founders to politics and prose. We have cspan here so we have moved, is like working back there pretty somebody is running towards microphone. We have just one microphone read to ask question so, if you need access to this mike, or microphone, you can go around back there. I would welcome davi david quam, is come this evening to talk about his new book the spillover. It is the first time he has been here and hes in montana so i think that is why he has had written many books. Including some of the dodo which won a medal. Natural history writing. He has honorary degrees in Colorado College and Montana State university where he served as a professor of western american study read hes also won the National Magazine award three times for articles in a wide variety of magazines including esquire, literally stone stone. In the third of these awards, magazine wars, was for a National Geographic called was darwin wrong. National geographic map, he has a title contributing writer at the capital letters, which gives him and requires him to write you say three articles a year . Three articles a rear for National Geographic. He describes his field of biology and evolutionary biology, theoretical ecology and conservations. But after this evening, hope you will have as much appreciation for his physical strength and stamina you have for his writing talents. In this field, research, he tracks Indiana Jones style through jungles and rain forests. And that most of us would never want to step foot in. Tonight you will learn a new word. Stenosis. At least i learned that new word. Did gnosis, their Infectious Diseases that originate in animals and spread to humans. For those of you have read the hot zone, that was i cant believe it about 20 years ago, 18 to be exact, you had a very early to this frightening scenario. And david has elaborated on a great deal in his new book, spillover. Publishers weekly gave spillover a start reviewed said that this is a frightening, critically important book for anyone interested in learning about the prospect of the worlds next major pandemic. So he is here to talk about his book. [applause]. David thank you very much barbara. And think youll. It is nice to be here at politics and frustrated and as barbara said, im not been here before. I live a little bit too far away. Dont publish books that often. It takes me about six or eight years to get one of these things done. Im going to talk informally for 20 25 minutes. So as you said would be best barbara. Yes, about the book and that the subject and to some extent about the writing of the book and then you you know this better than i do im sure, and then we will hear from you. Lucas and conversation going. As barbara explained, this is a book about scary new emerging diseases or the emerged from. And when they emerge from, generally this wild life. From other species, nonhuman animals. In particular, nonhuman animals other than our 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 this subject is the daily newspaper itself, youve probably heard about a virus that killed three people that visited yosemite the summer. It people have been dying in north texas west nile fever. It may in the dallas alone there have been 50 people who died of west nile fever. Just since july. There is been an ebola bright outbreak again in Central Africa in the democratic republic of congo, and as an Ebola Outbreak that is killed three dozen people i think went out and it is still going on. There was another Ebola Outbreak across the border in uganda unrelated to the spillover because the outbreak in the democratic republican congo, that was has been there. These things are happening. This like a drumbeat of disease outbreaks in small crises. There is nothing in the peninsula, a virus that emerged that closely resembles the sars virus in boston the same virus, coronavirus is the same virus that really scares this disease experts back in 2003. This new sars like virus out of the Arabian Peninsula is only killed one person, put another man in the hospital in britain. In the cytosol of the world are watching it carefully. When watching it carefully. It is no the next big one could look Something Like that. So as i say, nurses drumbeat of these things. This diseases that i mentioned, all have two things in common. They all come out of wildlife they emerge from non human animals and logos that i mentioned, not caused by viruses this a particular profile of the scariest of the exemplary phenomenon. The scientists have a fancy name for it as barbara mentioned, the coal these animal infections the past and humans zone aussies, its a virus or it can be other forms of infectious book, it can be a bacteria give it a creature the causes malaria, qb fungus, giving worms, they could be something called priya, which causes mad cow disease. In another syndrome. Usually its a virus. Viruses more than anything. It has from animals into humans but they will always cause disease. Sometimes to become harness passengers and humans. Theres a virus that is talked about in the book and i cannot resist it because has such a wonderfully recent payment have to find right side of the subject. Where you can find it. And with all due respect to the people who suffered and died, there are a lot of deaths this book pretty strictly nonfiction. A lot of debts i respect that. But still, i do not want this book to be just a painful gruesome duty. Just an important story book. I also wanted to be a pleasurable reading experience, a page turner, moments of suspense. Have mystery in discovery. Moments of heroism by these scientists were studying the sort of thing. Yes, even some moments of humor is a very funny book. But i hope it might be that funny spoke about a bullet that you have read. [laughter]. Is a symptom, some of these folks, when passing humans, harmless. But often they are not. If they passes any humans, 60 percent of Infectious Diseases of humans, or zoonotic diseases manner 40 percent, everything comes from summer break better 40 percent are probably zoonotic origin in the broader sense. For instance measles, only a disease of humans. But it come from, probably came from a virus that causes the disease and hoofed animals in africa. It is been humans long enough that his and civil become adapted specifically to humans. So is different enough that a student centered and functions as a uniquely human virus. The 60 percent that are considered zoonotic a passing back and forth are passing from animals to humans under a continuing basis of than that very recently. That includes things like ebola, marburg, all of the influence us, west nile virus hiv. I think at some length in the book about the ecological origins of the aids pandemic and we now know that the pandemic strain of hiv passed from a single chimpanzee to single human fairly small corner of southeastern camarillo and Central Africa. In 1908 earlier, give or take, i know that because there are some wonderful scientists who have worked on the genetics. On the viruses that are precursors toys uv, and viruses there in terms of monkeys in the genetics of diversity of hiv one ruben which is that Pandemic Group of hiv. In these scientists have managed to locate the spillover event with a high degree of confiden confidence, theres oysters and provisionally in science that they have located it to southeastern cameron, one chimpanzee, one human, presumably one human who killed the campaign and then cut himself on the hand and while he was butchering the jumper food and cut his hand and in the very early part of the earliest are around 1908. Michael and beatrice on the scientists with their colleagues of the network. So the diseases, they spillover, or zoonotic, whether slightly technical term but i want to familiarize you with them a reservoir, reverend reservoir host is the kind of animal in which the bunker virus or whatever it is, lives permanently inconspicuously without causing disease. Without causing mayhem in that particular creature. One is a live there. What is it live there nondestructively. Probably because business species for millions of years. So virus and is reservoir host, replicate but it does not rip locate canvas medically. It replicates slowly does not generally cause symptoms. Its invisible. It hides in the reservoir post then something happens, humans kill and eat that post or they come in contact with it somehow. Leslie a couple of ways this can happen. The reservoir host sheds the virus then he gets into humans and then it becomes a zoonotic disease. One of the things that the scientist to as they study this field and they focus on these different diseases, one of the very first things that they have to do is identify the reservoir post. And new disease bills over in malaysia, is killing pigs. That is killing pigs farmers and then peg butchering them park sellers printed part of the come from. They isolate a virus. Human victims, and in the face. Same virus in the human and in the pics. This is a true case pretty happen in 1998. They named it nika virus after a particular village and malaysia and then went looking for the reservoir post. Was it. They found it in large fruit batches. The kind that are called flying foxes in asia. How did this pullover occur. The disease detectives finally tracked it through the relevant most likely spillover and heres what happened. People were cutting down forests, and peninsula malaysia, for development and for agriculture, the timber itself going down the forest, destroyed fruit habitats and they were the fruit bats were displaced and they were looking food connectors morosely started going closer to human settlements. If the orchard were attracted, fruit trees planted by humans. In some of the moron pig farm some of the second stream of income for the performers who ran these great big actors guild reforms in northern and Central Peninsula malaysia. Some of these farmers even planted make countries and another conference recall the water apple. Very close to zero but are excised and in some cases even cheating excised. So that the bats came to the fruit trees, the throat may choose mango, into the water apple and drop the pulp into the pigsty they brought their feces in the drop in urine on the proper virus and pigsty, the pics pick it up, pigs get sick and its a very infectious respiratory disease, pigs are coughing and barking and passing this virus from one to the other. Pigs are mostly not dying however previous killing of any pigs. But because of brendas agricultural problem. And it starts getting into humans. He kills 109 people. Because the government of malaysia to call preventively 1. 1 million eggs they required the killings of all of the pigs who came from infected forms. Some of these farms, people were so scared by the disease that they were abandoning their own forms. They were running away from their own big farms printed at one point, pigs were running loose. Through the villages and in some cases abandon villages. It is like a nightmare scenario. But it really happen. Like something that an early book of exodus. Infectious pigs, running wild through the countryside, coughing a virus. One fellow called it the one ill barking park off, because you could hear the second pigs coming. He knew that your pig farm would be next. No story. Real story. They tried to solve the ecology and evolutionary biologys of these new diseases. Where does the virus live. For kason hendrick, the virus is called hendrick after a suburb of brisbane. It is a racing suburb. 19941 sables and that suburb the horses started to die. Why are they dying . Did they get poisonous feed . I veterinarian, a horse trainer and a stable hand tried to save the horses. The stable foreman got sick and went home thought he had a bad flu. The trainer got sick had a very Bad Influence of the hospital. The veterinarian never got sick. The trainer died. The isolated buyers from his him and his organs and from the horses they found a new virus and they named it after the suburb. Then they did the disease contact enchanted action where did it come from the chief detective was doing a phd on ecology he sampled kangaroos, wombats insects, things called porters he did not find the virus. Finally he sampled fruit bats and he found the virus that match what killed the horses and the trainer. They gave it the name henderson virus. It hasnt killed very many people comment 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 spill over. The fact that they are not all independent cases, but they are part of a pattern and that pattern reflects things that we humans are doing on the planets. And then, they get into humans. In some cases they cause a local outbreak which is easily controlled or comes to an end on its own. In other cases they cause wide spread suffering and death. Hiv being the case in point there. I might stop there and see if people have questions. There certainly a lot of other points that i can touch on. Let me hear from you all and see what you like to hear about. Thanks david, my name is rick and first of all comment i have a toasty warm memory of swimming at Bozeman Hot Springs i bet you have been there too. Its so its still there. Its a great place for the other is a question about viruses. I imagine is a small number, but does anyone know what percentage of viruses are pathogenic like the ones you mention . Guest no, because no one knows how many viruses there are. We talk about ed wilson or other people trying to estimate how many living species on planet earth. Nobody knows how many species of vertebrates and invertebrate animals, plants, fungi art with any precision. They make estimates ranging from 8 million to 30 million, to 100 million species. When you add the viruses and bacteria, nobody knows. [inaudible] guest the percentage of viruses that come out of animal pathogens to humans may be a very small percentage but the ones that are, are the exception are consequential. Thanks your question. Hello i enjoyed your book very much. I used it while i was a student in a class on biology. I do have a question about the genealogy of these diseases. I was curious if they had been using the human genome from the deep past where theres evidence of stuff that kills a lot of people maybe killed issues with the human population but is now totally harmless because all of the survivors have reproduced down the generations. So looking back in time for old pandemics and to trayce disease that way. Guest i havent seen much on that. Certainly certainly interesting to me is tracing in the human genome is endogenous retroviruses which are retrovirus, hiv is a retrovirus. Endogenous retroviruses insert themselves permanently into the human genome we dont know exactly, may be some cases that functions may be or what they used to be called junk dna. Theres a record right in the human genome of past infections and they can be recognized as belonging to this virus family or that virus family. So thats one thing that is there. In terms of their darwinian relationship between the infections of the deep past and the human genome as it survived, very interesting. I cant point you towards any particular work i have come across on that note. It has probably been done. It would have to be speculative to a certain degree. Im sorry, i really cant tell you much more than that. Hi, i have a question, so far we have heard you speak about different diseases that cause death. Usually, in the examples you gave us it was in dozens and hundreds, maybe thousands. But the reaction make it seemed like the government, the local governments overreacting when theyre trying to solve the situation and the problem. Recently for example in texas there was a west nile virus detected and they started spraying the swampy areas with the airplanes. My question is, are you doing more harm we try to solve these issues were only hundreds dying where there are diseases that kill millions and millions were not doing much. Here, since these are such exotic diseases we hear about them we get into a shock and the reaction seems to be too much, it may be harming the population what he think about that . Guest i hear you asking two questions for it are we doing some things that cause more harm than good . And also, are 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 studied the meat virus i mention. It also occurs in bangladesh and has a different story and bangladesh because it is a Muslim Country and theyre not big pork farms. Doesnt pass through pigs as amplifiers and bangladesh. It is transmitted into raw date palm sap that people drink. Because of the way it is tapped, you drink from the pots and leave their waste in the pasta and they drink it and the virus. So i talked to this gentleman named steve luby he was second there from the cdc. I asked him the same thing. There are hundreds of thousands of children and bangladesh dying of bacterial diarrhea, and bacterial number own you. And bangladesh he was basted a place called the cholera hospital. These diseases have been murderous and bangladesh for centuries. I asked him, why bother with nippon which kills a few dozen people each year . When youve let all these other diseases. And he told me this is such a nasty disease, and it has so much potential that we cant ignore it simply because it is now small. It could be large. It is important, yes, to take these other diseases the oldfashioned garden diseases like cholera. Its important to take them seriously and keep it in perspective. But its also important to be vigilant about these new emerging diseases because after all, and 1981 we had a disease emerge called aids. And it was one of these. The influenza is emerged anew each year end influenzas are also capable of killing millions of people. Thats the response ive heard from the experts about why to take the small boutique diseases very seriously. You never know when one of those is going to become the next big one. In terms of the things we do just try to stop, contain or prevent the spillovers. In some cases yes, we probably do more harm than good. Spraying for insects, depending on what they are spraying with, would be an immediate candidate for that. Youd want to think about it. Because we have done so much, so much, so much futile damage over the decades trying to spray existence of insects. It just doesnt work. There are cases governments have taken very rigorous action and it has been very important and beneficial. For instance when sars emerged from Southern China and got to hong kong. It was a very nasty virus that was passed by the respiratory route. Killed 10 of the people and infected, spread quickly from hong kong to toronto, beijing, hanoi and singapore. It infected a total of about 8000 people, kills about 900. To better than 10 . And then it was stopped. I heard somebody one of the book readers i had someone was saying well what is he takes are so seriously . Its one of those that burned out. Sars did not burn out, it was stopped by very good, early diagnostic scientific work in the field and laboratory. 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 was wonder about, when i think about sars, is if that disease had emerged from a different place than Southern China and then hong kong, had gone to different cities in toronto, hanoi, beijing, and singapore, mike the whole history have been different . Think about those cities those are commandandcontrol cities with a lot of strong government. A lot of good Public Health, affluent facilities. If that disease emerge in a province of the democratic republic of the congo. I love the congo, but it has a lot of disadvantages. And its disadvantages would have been probably very consequential as Something Like sars had been there. Hi you have spoken a lot about the wildlife aspect of the diseases. Could you comment on the role of the livestock industry . Both in terms of the control and prevention of these diseases but also the potential spread . Guest factory farming, huge operation like pig farms in malaysia are part of what makes this problem more urgent and more dangerous. As part of what makes us, the human population and our extensions of force a very dry tinder waiting for a spark. I mention the case in malaysia. The fact that the pigs were kept in these huge outdoor compounds, and that they were arranged in a particular way with the fruit trees, was part of what resulted in that spillover. The other thing is a huge aggregations of wildlife also represent populations in which a bug can evolve. The more abundantly a virus replicates, the more its likely to mutates. And if it is an rna virus as opposed to a double helix virus comments mutation rate will be particularly high. It will generate a lot of change, genetic variability as it replicates itself. And of course is great for dorians national selection. Our viruses evolve more quickly than other pathogens. If you let them build up huge populations, so that there are many, many hosts that are infected in each host contains many, many virus particles, then you provide abundant opportunity for evolution to function. For some particular strain to come out of there that is really transmissible among humans, and really virulence. That represents a danger. So the mass production of livestock is part of it. That is only one aspect. There are other aspects im less aware of. Its part of what makes this particularly jeopardized by the situation as it is. In your experience, following scientists to these areas where there is a high rate of crossover, spillover of these diseases, to what extent have you noticed efforts to educate the local human population on how to modify their lifestyles so its better to avoid this crossover and spillover . Guest there certainly efforts, bangladesh to trying to educate people not to drink raw date palm sap that could potentially contain the virus. You cook the stuff you can kill the virus. But people like to drink it raw it sort of a traditional, seasonal treats. So there are things like that. In Southern China, they cracked down on the big wet markets. At least above ground, theres a blackmarket underground. But the big wet markets where all kinds of wildlife are sold live for food. There is a fashion in Southern China, they call it wild flavor. It is a vogue for eating wildlife. Not because people need the protein for subsistence but because they have some money and this is considered to be very robust and tasty food. One other thing on that in terms of education of local people, i mentioned the original spillover, the pandemic strain of hiv occurred in southeastern cameroon. I went there to retrace what was probably the route it took aiming out of southeastern cameroon down the river system that took it along this river to the main strand congo into the cities of brazzaville and leopoldville. That is where it really started to have a higher rate of transmission. Sexual mores were different, population was more concentrated. There are some other factors there that i described in my long chapter on hiv. It began to crackle and what became kinshasa. That eventually went from kinshasa to haiti and to the world. So i went to southeastern cameroon to see what i can learn about the state of human relations with the chimpanzees now where people are still killing and eating chimpanzees and therefore exposing themselves to other spillovers of the simian virus that became hiv. That is true, they are. I heard about it from a confidential source i heard about a practice, about quelling tribal which is becca involve some rituals that includes the eating of champ chimpanzee arms. So people are still exposing themselves to the viruses that chimpanzees carry. And in one office, and office of the Wildlife Department in the southeastern corner of cameroon, i saw an aids poster. In french, its a colonial language that most people speak there. Suppose turned french trying to educate people about the dangers of aids. What they call the red diarrhea. But the poster said there was not to practice safe, use condoms, dont exchange needles. No, the aids awareness poster saint south cameroon is dont eat the apes. Dont eat the chimps, dont eat the gorillas. That is aids education. Guest thank you for being here im doctor sam hancock of earl planet tv. With the Transportation System supply chains within 24 hours as you know virus can be around the globe. One of the most underfunded Public Programs is of course Public Health. This is something that a massive amount of money has been drawn out of over the last 50 years and put into specialty health. Are there any best practices that you have seen in the various countries that you have traveled to about how to build up the Public Health system so they can more easily identify these pathogens, viruses and be able to respond to it . Or something thats always reactive instead of proactive . Guest thank you for your question. There is some very interesting initiatives of vigilance that are going on. We have may have heard about some of these one that comes to my mind is a global viral forecast initiative founded by a fellow named nathan wolfe. A youngish disease scientists base at stanford. He worked in cameroon for years doing fieldwork on the transmission of viruses by way of bushmeat from African Wildlife into hunters, the bushmeat hunters and their families. Nathan has worked on this a long time he has a big grant from google now. He has expanded this operation into a global viral forecasting initiative. He now calls it global viral. Just one sample of the kind of work been done out there, is he and his people send little kits out with the people, usually it is men. The men who do the bushmeat hunting from these villages in south africa. It involves filter papers, simple filter papers of the kind used for medical purposes and probably not that different from what you would filter your coffee with. And ziploc bags, and they pay the hunters to collect samples for them. Eight dots of blood on a filter paper, then placed in a ziploc bag now can be used as a sample from which in the laboratory a week, two weeks or months later you can extract enough dna or rna to identify virus. So thats what they do. It is a big advance over what used to have to be done. You have to capture an animal, take a blood sample from it and put that sample in littered nitrogen and russia back to the u. S. Liquid nitrogen would freeze it. Note the dots of blood or at Room Temperature they do not have to be kept cool food. This can be done. I think they use Pcr Technology and a lot of other fancy laboratory things to extract. Not live virus you cannot extract a live virus from Something Like that you cant grow it in the lab. You can extract dna and rna to identify what was there. Thats what nathan wolf and his people are doing. The idea being to spot the next big one at a very, very early phase. Before decades pass before he realized that hiv was in the human population. The idea is to try to catch the next big went much earlier than that. How do these deadly animal viruses tend to evolve . Do you think they will continue to evolve at the rate that they have done in recent experience monitoring and trying to control them . Guest two things can happen if you are virus. Picture yourself a virus living in a monkey in Central Africa. Humans are coming in, they are tearing down your habitat. They are tearing down the monkeys habitat. They are killing the monkey for food, they are building villages, settlements, timber camps. The horizons, the prospects of that virus are shrinking and shrinking and shrinking. At the point where that monkey approaches the brink of extinction two things can happen to the virus. It can go extinct along with the monkey or it can make a leap to another host. Viruses dont have purposes i dont want to make the sound delia logical. They dont have choices. And evolution is not delia logical anyway. Things happen and they have consequences. If a monkey is killed and theres no spill over, the virus goes extinct with the monkey. But the virus gets into human by chance or opportunity, and finds itself able to replicate in the human, and then it adapts to the human by mutating and undergoing Natural Selection so it is better and better adapted to the human. Both are replicate and be transmitted to the next human. That viruses won the sweepstakes. It is passed from a species of host with shrinking prospects to a species of host that is the most abundant species of large vertebrate animal that ever existed on this planet, us. So are there thousands or millions of these viruses that have the potential to then evolve into a dangerous killing virus . And then be transmitted to humans . Guest the safest answer is yes, presumably. Were just scratching into that area. Some of the scientist i talked to said that we dont know how many species there are out there in the tropical forests. We know there are millions. We can safely assume that each one has unique virus, at least one. So okay weve run out of questions just as we run out of time. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Guest think of a much think of your questions. [applause] so youre watching a special edition of book tv airing now during the week while members of congress are working in their districts because of the coronavirus pandemic. Tonight at eight eastern feature bestsellers, first journalist niclas kristof on their book tight rope about issues facing the working class in rural america. They were interviewed by oregon democratic senator. And then tarrant westovers recalls growing up in the idaho mountains and her education a formal introduction to education at 17 her book educated, a memoir. After that turning point usa founder on the new conservative agenda. Please enjoy book tv now and watch over the weekend on cspan2. Television exchange and cspan began 41 years ago. But our mission continues, to provide an unfiltered view of government. Already this year we brought you primary election coverage and now the federal response to the coronavirus. He clutched all of cspans coverage on cspan, online or free radio app. Be part of the Free National coverage. Or through our social media feed. Cspan created by private industry, americas Cable Television company. As a Public Service and
vimarsana.com © 2020. All Rights Reserved.