"Spillover: The Next Human Pandemic" - Hangout with Author David Quammen

Hi everybody. Welcome to Read Science in
conjunction with Scientific American

my name is Joanne Manaster
and I am a blogger with

Scientific American and along with my
cohost Jeff Shaumeyer we like to

take a little bit of time out
every once and awhile to speak with

a science author of either great books or
blogs or just something for tv

and today we are very fortunate to
have our guest

David Quammen who is an author
and journalist who has written

I read fifteen books but I guess
twelve of them are non fiction

the include "Song of the DoDo"
"The Reluctant Mr. Darwin"

and most recently "Spillover"
which is a work on science history

and human impacts on emerging diseases

particularly the viral diseases

it has been recognized on seven
national and international awards lists

and he has also published a few hundred
pieces of short non fiction featured

articles essays and columns

and all the places we are used
to seeing our great science writers

which included Harper's,
National Geographic, Outside, Esquire

The Atlantic, Rolling Stone

he occasionally writes op-eds

for the new york times

and reviews books for the new york times

as well. he has been honored
with an academy award

from the american
acadamy of arts and letters

he is a three time recipient of
the national magazine award

he is a contributing writer
for national geographic

and he travels often usually
to wild and remote places

he is currently in ??? Montana

right now if you watch the weather channel
at all and you might be

catching his video series
, based on the book "Spillover"

Called "The Virus Hunters"

and its base don stories from the book

so welcome David

(david speaking)
Thank you Joanne very good to be with you

Hi Jeff, nice to be part of this

(Jeff speaking) Its a real pleasure to be talking with you

and I hope it doesn't make you feel old
or something but I will say I was reading

your books when I was three years old

But I checked the list to make sure

and I have read all of your books

I've enjoyed all of your books

I'm just starting "Spillover"

So that is my latest one to enjoy

I have a little story,
if Joanne reminds me later

to tell about a personal connection

But since we are going to be talking
some about this book

"Spillover" and about the video
series on the weather channel

which is called "The Virus Hunters"

I want to throw you the easy ball and say

lets start by talking about
this idea of spillover

what it is, what zoonatic
is a new word for

everyone to learn

and why its important so
we have some context

for these things we are going to discuss

(David speaking) Yeah.
That is sort of the ABC's of this

whole subject

The book is about zoonatic diseases

um, very simply defined
as Zoonosis is an animal

infection that is transmissible to humans

that could mean a virus or a bacterium

or a fungus or preon

or worm or what else does that leave

a protozoan, a protist

all the things that infect
humans and other animals

so zoonosis is an animal infection
transmissible to humans

and if it causes symptoms
if it causes problems

once that virus or whatever
it is is transmitted

then we call that a zoonatic disease

Most of I think the figure
is around 60 percent according to

different accounts, of the infectious
diseases known among humans

are zoonatic disease
in the strict and sort of

imminence, in the longer
term you could argue that

all infectious diseases of
humans are ultimately

zoonatic because we are a
relatively young species.

and even our old diseases had to come

from somewhere else

originally

the book is all about the spillover of

infectious agents from non human animals
into humans

causing in some cases dramatic disease
gruesome pandemics and in the

current years seemingly causing an

increasing drum beat of
new emerging diseases

(Jeff speaking) You had a log which
I had memorized with all of the

things that have been in the news lately

like SARS and Ebola and HIV
and a much longer list than that

all of these are zoonatic

(David speaking) That's right yeah

these influenzas are all zoonatic

all of the influenzas emerge ultimately

from wild aquatic birds

there are things, little known things

with names like nepovirus

and hendra virus disease that come out

of animals and get into humans

and cause death on a small scale

but in a very dramatic way

you mentioned ebola, SARS, MERS

out of Saudi Arabia

Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome (MERS)

is also a zoonosis

so virtually all of these scary new diseases that we hear about

that we read about in the headlines

are zoonatic diseases

because the fact that they are new means

they have come from somewhere else

and gotten into humans and
they turn out to be really

destructive agents once they are in humans

so in some cases no just very destructive

but also very dangerously transmissible

(Joanne speaking) Right so Ebola of
course is one that is real well known for

being very transmissible and very
devastating but in short loops

it burns itself out so do
you want to talk a little bit about that?

(David speaking) that's right, Ebola

Ebola has a strange reputation

its a very strange dramatic,
gruesome disease

Ebola virus disease

but its not as preternatural

or quiet as gruesome, quiet as bloody

as the public has been led to believe

by some of the books that came out

ten and twenty years ago

the hot zone a riveting book

when it came out twenty years ago

I read it, a lot of other people read it

and in some cases it was the first thing

that anyone learned about ebola virus

I have been back and
forth a little bit with

Richard Creston on this,
I don't want to beat up

on him. But i think even he admits now

that there was a bit of exageration

a bit of I won't call it poetic license

but it was portrayed as
almost a preternatural

virus that caused horrific bleeding

in virtually every case,
people were bleeding out

people were melting down from this virus

well the experts have told me that

is really not the case with ebola

it is a horrible disease

it kills between 60 and 90 percent of the

people it infects

depending on the species of ebola virus

depending on the circumstances

so its a terrible disease

but its not preternatural

it causes organ shut down

it causes something called

disseminated intravascular coagulation

which is a blood symptom

that can in some cases lead to

unusual bleeding but

doesn't necessarily in most cases

it causes a lot of vomitting

and diarrhea and it

causes people to die for those reasons

but its not very transmissible from

human to human

as you said Joanne it burns out

it burns so hot it kills people

so quickly it makes them very sick

so quickly and kills them if its going to

kill them so quickly

that it doesn't spread as well as

some others

also its not an airborne virus

its not transmissible on a sneeze

or a cough

the way the influenzas and some of

the coronaviruses are

so ebola virus is the most infamous

of all these things

and its a terrible disease if you are an African villager

but its not the highest on the list

of global threats

(Joanne speaking) So what would
be highest

on the list of global threats?
I'm going to guess

its a flu, but..

(David speaking) Well flu, a flu
would be in that group

Near the end of my
research for "Spillover"

I asked some of the experts that I'd

been talking to over the yeras

what do you think the next

big one will look like?

what should we be watchign for?

and they said

well there will be a next big one

its inevitable that there will be

another large pandemic whether it kills

tens of thousands,
hundreds of thousands or

millions of people,
depends on circumstances and

how we respond, but,
something like that will come

along it will almost
certainly be a zoanatic agent

it will come out of non human
animals, it will almost certainly be a

virus, it will probably be a
single stranded RNA virus

because they replicate less reliably

they mutate, they have
a high rate of mutations so

they are very changeable,
the single stranded RNA viruses

very changeable and
therefore very adaptable

and then you look down
that list of single stranded RNA

viruses of zoonotic
origin and the experts say

well that brings us to the influenzas

the coronaviruses the
paramyxoviruses so things

like SARS represent good scary paradigms

for what the next big one might
look like SARS

or the influenzas or some other
sort of coronavirus

and thats the reason people have
take MERS so seriously

this new virus out of the Saudi Arabia

because it falls in that small
group that rank highest

on the watch list of possible
next really big bad ones

(Joanne speaking) types of viruses so has,
now of course common sections

are really hard to gather, but has the
middle east been dealing with this

appropriately? Because now we do
have our first case, someone who traveled

to Saudi Arabia has ended up in Indiana

then diagnosed with MERS and
my understanding is that at this point

human transmission is low, and they are
seeing a lot of the cases might come from

camel milk or camel meat and otherwise
implicating camels but maybe bats

you know bats seem to be a new reservoir,
but yeah you could expand a little bit on

MERS in the middle east?

(David speaking) Yeah well as of this
morning a message that I got yesterday

MERS now stands at 411 cases
with 112 deaths.

so that's a case fatality rate

(Joanne speaking) of like 35% or so?

(David speaking) I think its about 27%. So
that's high but its any where

near as high as Ebola. Its higher
actually though than SARS was

SARS' case fatality rate was around
10% if I recall correctly

something like 8,000 infected around
the world with eight hundred fatalities

so this has got a higher case
fatality rate than SARS

but its not nearly as transmissible
human to human as SARS

I gather there does seem to be some,
at least suspected human to human

transmission. I think as of the report
yesterday, i think there

were fifteen new cases and of the fifteen
new cases, seven of those

were among contacts, personal contacts
of people who had already been confirmed

as having MERS. (Joanne speaking)
Like Hospital workers or family

(David speaking) yeah, so the
secondary cases, seemingly

secondary cases, but I don't think
that has been proven that they

are secondary cases because
there is always a possibility

that these secondary cases could have
shared situations with the primary case

and they might have been
exposed directly to the reservoir

host, or the amplifier host of the
virus rather than getting it from humans.

so I'm tossing these terms around,
reservoir host and amplifier host

the reservoir host is the species of
creature or maybe in some cases several

species of creatures in which
the virus or the other pathogen lives

endemically, permanently, inconspicuously,
without causing symptoms

that's its permanent residence. If it is
something that kills humans as soon as it

gets into us then it has to live
somewhere else

over the longer term to survive
that's the reservoir host.

An amplifier host is an animal or a
species of animal that serves as an

intermediator, in the case of for
instance Hendra virus in Australia It is

known that the virus resides in fruit
bats, three species of fruit bats

it spills out of fruit bats, and gets
into horses, and then it really rampages

through horses it causes horrible symptoms
fast death, high viral loads, a lot of

viral shedding in horses and then it
gets into the people who take care of

horses veterinarians and horse trainers
and people that's been the pattern

of the Hendra virus. Now with MERS in
Saudi Arabia I think there is some

suspicion that the virus might have it's
reservoir host in bats, but that it

has a presence in camels as an amplifier
host and that humans are perhaps getting

it from camels and not directly from
bats. But the camels may be

getting it from bats, but there
is new work that has just been

published in about the last week, online.

By a group of who the senior
author is Ian Lipkin,

Mailman School of Public Health at
Colombia, who is a brilliant

laboratory researcher on these emerging
viruses, and Ian Lipkin and his group,

if I recall correctly, found that based
on molecular phylogenetics, this virus

has been circulating in camels since
about 1992, there is

enough divergence among the
different strains

found in camels in Saudi Arabia, possibly
also Egypt to suggest that its not just

spilling over day by day from bats into
camels, and then from camels into people

but its perhaps circulating as new
infection, but as an infection that

has become endemic in camels

as I say, don't hold me to every detail
of what I've just said, but that's what I

recall seeing in this new report that
I just saw online, a few days ago

(Joanne speaking) So this brings a couple
questions,

one is from someone who is asking
a question here from our audience

they said, "Many of zoonatic diseases
examined and spill over

need bats as reservoir hosts
what impact does

bat habitat destruction have in this
puzzle, and that is one thing if

you read the book, you will leave going,
I think I should be

afraid of bats. (laughing).

(David speaking) Well I hope I didn't
add to the undeserved bad reputation

that bats have, they have enough PR
problems. And I do not

want to demonize bats.
I wanted to describe the situation.

(Joanne speaking) I thought it was
realistic though,

I didn't feel like there was any

overt, attempt at demonetization. But
they just kept coming up again and again.

(David speaking) But yes, yeah there is a
strong pattern that

in many many cases these
new zoonatic diseases have been

found to have their reservoir
host in one species

or other, of bats. So that scientists
started asking why bats? Why do they

seem to be disproportionally
indicated as reservoir hosts?

And there are a couple of possible
explanations for that.

One is that bats are a very
very diverse group of animals

There are lots of species
of bat, I think it is one of

every four species of mammal
on planet earth is a species of bat

so they are disproportionally represented
in the diversity of mammal species

Also many of them live long life
times they live to be 18 or 20 years old

They're very social, they live in huge
aggregations

So you put those things together
long life spans and massive colonies

at very very close proximity to one
another and you have potentially

very good circumstances for incubating
viruses, for allowing viruses

to live and persist in a population of
animals

(Jeff speaking) and they travel widely too right?

(David speaking) and they travel widely.
They move around, and not just in

two dimensions, but in three dimensions
they occupy a big volume of space

so all of those things combine to create
this pattern wherein a large number

of these new diseases are found to have
their reservoir hosts in bats

and SARS which is a coronavirus, belongs
to the coronavirus family

was found in several species of bat
in southern China, and because of that

bats were high on the list of
hypothetical reservoirs for MERS

because it also is a coronavirus not
too closely related to SARS but within

the same family anyway. So some of the
people I write about in my book were

involved in doing field work in Saudi
Arabia. Testing bats,

sampling bats, looking for evidence of
this new MERS coronavirus

and they found some. They found that
there was evidence of the virus in bats

but they didn't find such a prevalence
in bats, and such a high level of virus

as to answer the question definitively
where this virus has it's reservoir host

but the original question was about
habitat destruction. Let me loop back

to that before I chatter on too much more
about bats. The question was absolutely

right that habitat destruction causes
bats to move closer to humans

at least in some cases, this is true in
Australia, where the great inland

eucalyptus forests have in broad
areas been cut down, been chained down

been clear cut for agriculture and
human development of various different

sorts, and those eucalyptus forests
were habitat for some of the fruit bats

that carry Hendra virus, among others
and those fruit bats are now coming into

the city. To Sydney, to the botanical
gardens, to the parks in Sydney.

They're coming into orchards along the
eastern coast of Australia up in the

sub tropical Australia. They're coming
closer to humans. And that may be

the reason that suddenly this new virus
known as Hendra, started getting into

horses and then humans back in
1994. In Malaysia

likewise, the destruction of Malaysian
tropical forests

seems to have pushed some species
of bats

closer to human orchards
places where humans are

growing fruit trees, on which the bats
can feed

these are big tropical fruit eating bats
that they actually eat fruit, and in some

cases blossoms and nectar.

So they go looking for those
things

and if people have planted
orchards, then those will attract

bats when the bats are driven
out of their natural habitat

and if the orchards happen
to be planted on pig farms

around pigsties, around even
overhanging pigsties

as was the case in northern
Malaysia then that

represents a great opportunity
for the virus to spill over

down from these bats down
into the pig pens

getting into the pigs, this
happened with nepovirus

causing an outbreak of this
disease in pigs

and then it passed from pigs
into pig farmers, pig butchers

pork handlers, and ended up
killing more than 100 people

in the pork industry in
Malaysia

(Jeff speaking) Well habitat destruction
is a big part of your answer

to the question of why do we think
we've seen so many of these

zoonatic outbreaks in the last
few decades, is that a real

phenomenon, or are we imagining it
and it seems that it's real and

that there are several reasons and that
is one of them

(David speaking) Absolutely yes. Yeah
Habitat destruction

the fact that we are pushing
into the highly diverse

ecosystems where lots of
different kinds of species

including lots of different
kinds of viruses live

We're building roads and
timber camps

and mines, and settlements
in the central African forests

in the forests of southeast Asia
in the forests of South America

and we're disrupting ecosystems
we're destroying habitat

we're killing and eating the
native animals, and in some

cases we're capturing them and
shipping them to live animal markets

in other countries. We're doing all these
sorts of things that are disruptive of

native species, and that bring
us into close contact with

native species both animal and
plant, but I think we're talking

mostly about animals. And those
animals, those different kinds of

animals carry different kinds of
viruses. So we offer opportunity

to those viruses, to change hosts
to spill over, to leap from one species

of animal into this other species,
that happens to be

humans. And that turns out
to be, as a said in the book

it turns out to be a great
career move, if you are a virus

and you infect some sort of
endangered species of primate in

central Africa, and you manage to
jump from that endangered species

of primate into this other kind
of primate, of which it turns out

there are 7 billion individuals
all moving around the planet

closely interacting with one another
then you've just made a great

career move. And that is what
the HIV-1 virus did.

(Jeff speaking) Right. If Joanne
will let me there is some lurking

kind of communication issues
I wanted to

(Joanne speaking) although quickly
since he ended with AIDS

you do, it looks like your last
chapter of your book is going to

be turned into its own standalone
book right?

We want to make sure our watchers
here are aware of that.

(David speaking) Thank you Joanne, yeah.
Actually the second last chapter of my

book I think of it as the crescendo
of "Spillover" its a long,

about 110 page chapter on the
ecological origins of the AIDS

pandemic. How a chimpanzee
virus, spilled over from a single

chimpanzee into a single human,
back around 1908, give or take

a margin of error, in the southeastern
corner of Cameroon, we know this

now from good molecular work.

and spread across the world as
what we now know as the AIDS

pandemic. So I tell the story
of these new scientific findings

worked on by some wonderful
scientists

Michael Worobey out of Tuscon,
and Beatrice Hahn of

University of Pennsylvania and
one of their colleagues

that have developed this new
and radically unexpected story

of the origins of AIDS.
so I tell that whole story in my

penultimate chapter, which
is titled "The chimp and the river"

and my publisher WW Norton
has decided that they want to

in addition of publishing a paperback
version of "Spillover" in the coming

I think this winter, they will publish
"The Chimp and the River" as a

small free standing paperback book
itself with a new introduction by me.

(Joanne speaking) I actually
think that's a great move

because some people will be
intimidated by a book of this size

so I think just having the AIDS, and so
many people have questions about AIDS

(David speaking) Well good, well I hope
you are right. We think that makes

sense too. Now it is, "Spillover" is a
long book, I like to think of it as a

concise long book.

(Joanne speaking) It is, it's excellent.

(David speaking) So the AIDS story
is very important, and very

counter-intuitive, very different
form what most people think they

know about the history of AIDS
so it seemed like a good idea to

put it out as a free standing book.

(Joanne speaking) Be sure to promote it.

(David speaking) Yeah.

(Jeff speaking) So there are lots of
things we were talking about

Ebola, and how it may have been
over sensationalized and there

are several issues, I think about how to
get precise and accurate information

to people who need to know about it,
and I thought, one starting place I

was thinking about when I was reading
the first chapter about

Hendra virus and how it had moved to
some humans through horses

and that whole thing, and you were
talking to a racehorse trainer,

I pictured it in a bar or something,
and a little bit of what he had to say

he gives you his perspective on the
Hendra virus.

"They shouldn't allow it! They should
get rid of those bats! Because

of the disease. They hang upside down
and they shit on themselves, and then

they shit on people! It's backwards
let the people shit on them!

Yeah but those sentimental greenies
won't allow it!"

and I thought boy, but there is so
much mixed up in his head

but how do you break through?
There are several ways to push this

but how do you break through those
attitudes? How do you get in there?

How do you do some instruction?
Some useful learning

and understanding without
being sensational

or, everyone has to make
a choice. I think that

one choice is sort of to be
calm and very thorough

and some people will see it and
you can use materials

and that is sort of the way
I'm thinking of spillover and

your long conciseness, and you
always approach things with a

thoroughness, that's not boring but
is very important to have

and I think that is one way to keep
people calm

at least the ones who hear the message
and not everyone

is going to hear a message.

Is that a choice? How do you decided
these things, how do you avoid

sensationalism? Or should you?

(David speaking) Well yes, I think
you should

this is potentially a very
sensational subject

maybe even objectively you
could say it is

a lot of people die in this book
there is a lot of gruesome

misery. And it is important
I think to convey that because

these viruses many of them are
very very dangerous and the subject

is important. So it is dramatic,
and I wanted to make it dramatic

so that people would pay
attention. But I did not want to

make it melodramatic.
I did not want to exaggerate

You don't need to exaggerate
these things in order

for them to be arrestingly scary

So I stayed very close, tried
to stay very close to accurate

and precise scientific information as it
was present in the

journal literature.

When I write a book I travel alot

I talk to a lot of scientists

I try to spend time in the field,
with field scientists

and I also read huge piles
of journal articles I read

a lot of journal articles

and so that is where some
of the information

a lot of the information, comes
from

the hard facts. And if they have
appeared in peer reviewed

journal articles then you can
presumably rely on them

So that's where I get a lot of my
hard facts about for instance

Hendra virus or Ebola virus

When I report from the field
I hold myself to a very strict

standard of accuracy.

In terms for instance of
quotes, if I don't get

a quote verbatim in my notebook,
either because

I'm scribbling fast, or
on my recorder because I'm taping

then I don't assemble my best
recollection of what

somebody said and then put it in
quotation marks later on

For instance you mentioned that
racehorse trainer

we were in a bar, we were at
a race course we were in a

member's lounge of a race course
in Australia

and I had brought in my
veterinarian friend who dealt with

this disease. A wonderful fellow
named Peter Reid.

So he took me to the races
one day , and took me to the

member's lounge and I met
the owner's and trainers along

the stables and in the back

I was behind the scenes,
and I was his guest

and he introduced me to this
famous Australian race trainer

who had won all the big races
in Australia

his name was Bart Cummings, and
he was quite a character

but we were standing there
with beers in our hands

and he hears that I am a writer,
following the threat of the story

of Hendra virus. And he starts to
give me an earful you know.

Like "Oh they should kill all
the bats etc etc"

Well, I'm certainly not
taping him, and I'm really not

in a situation to be scribbling
in my notebook, it would seem

peculiar and rude. I think I did
but a few things in my notebook

but I did not get his
tirade verbatim

and if you look back at that
passage in the book

unless I am hugely mistaken
there are no quotation marks

around what he said, I am
essentially paraphrasing him

maybe I put it in italics
or I did something to indicate

this is the essence of what this guy
said but I'm not claiming

that this a verbatim quote

(Jeff speaking) Oh sure. Sure. Well it
certainly gave the flavor

of the communication issues
some people might try to

directly go at some of his
misconceptions

there is an awful lot,
he's got some of the truth in there

we learned about the bats and things
he knows bats are involved but

its because he has come up with this
idea that bats hand upside down

so they shit on themselves
then somehow that causes the

disease (coughing) what do you do?

and I think what you do which
I quite like is, not try to take

all of those misconceptions apart
but to tell the coherent story

sort of calmly from the
beginning, and try not to

be distracted by that

(David speaking) Well good that
is what I try to do and I'm glad

that it seems like a good
tactic to you Jeff.

I mean there are a couple
of places where it would have been

possible to just stop and
give readers a lecture on how

important bats are and
they are beneficial to our

ecosystems and they
deserve to live and you

shouldn't demonize them
and they pollinate plants

and they eat a lot of insects
and things and I mean

I have written a lot of that
kind of thing in other books

and in other places, and it just
seemed to me maybe

I'm mistaken in this, but
it just seemed to be so obvious

that those things. That to
a reasonably intelligent reader

I didn't want to bring the
narrative and the science explanation

to a halt in order to
give that particular ecological lecture

so I didn't, and essentially I let
the facts speak for themselves

(Jeff speaking) I would say its a good
choice not to everyone, but

not to entirely change the subject,
but what you can do, in telling

those stories in 500 pages of "Spillover"
is an awful lot different

than what you could do in a 5 minute
video on the weather channel

right? And we have both
of these and they are

very different ways
of telling the stories

and I think the book appeals
to me more but I can see

a lot of value in the videos,
but do you have anything

you want to say about what
you give up being having to

work within those 5 minute videos?

(David speaking) Well sure
Yes, I mean this

series of videos "Virus Hunters"
is now up on

weather.com produced
by some very good filmmakers

at the weather channel
and they came to me

I guess last fall
through my agent and said

we would like to make a series
of short films, about what

you write about in the book
about some of the facts

and ideas and characters of "Spillover"

and they said, when we say
short films we mean short

this is what is happening now
with media very short

but well produced, dramatic
films for streaming on the web

4, 5, 6 minutes long.
we want to do 6 of these

6 episodes. So I saw
some of their other work and

it was careful, it was responsible
and it was also dramatic

and effective. I saw a couple
of episodes they made about

conservation biologists and field
biologists that I know

and I thought they did a very
good job of capturing some important

things in that little cameo form
so I said yes lets do this

and I was involved with them
in terms of developing contacts

and helping them with ideas
and

ground truthing some
of their early versions

and helping them
correct things that needed

to be corrected. And I
think I'm listed as an

executive producer in that vain. But I
didn't write the scripts

They wrote the scripts
I helped correct those

so yes you give up a lot
to reach a different

particular kind of audience
in a different way

if I were to start from
scratch and say

well I want to produce a
television series based

on "Spillover" I would
not say and I want each

episode to be 6 minutes long.

(Joanne speaking) Yeah (Jeff speaking) Mhm.

(David speaking) and that was an
opportunity of a particular sort

presented to me so I said
well lets explore this

and see if we can do it
in a way that's useful and

doesn't trivialize these
diseases and these people

and these topics and if we
can do that then I'm happy to

proceed. They showed me you
could do that, and you give up an

awful lot of but little slices
that you get I think have a

particular value in the form
that they were in

(Joanne speaking) Right, well I
thought that they were fantastic

would it be okay if we
go to some of our viewer

questions?

(David speaking) Absolutely. Yeah.

(Joanne speaking) Okay, well we've
got one here saying

do you vaccinating primates against
disease like Ebola could help

prevent outbreaks?

(David speaking) well vaccinating
wild animals is always tough

it is just difficult logistically.
But its not a crazy idea

it has been considered and
work has been done towards

developing a vaccine against
Ebola that could somehow be given

to Gorillas and chimps in
central Africa because

we haven't talked about this
but its in the book

Ebola turns out to be devastating
not just to humans but also to

gorillas and chimps and there
are some people who believe

Ebola has been spreading
through gorilla populations

in central Africa, killing thousands or
tens of thousands of gorillas

over recent decades

there are areas of wonderful
gorilla habitat in central

Africa, for instance in Gabon
that these areas of wonderful

gorilla habitat that are empty
of gorillas

and I walked through
one of those areas for

ten days on a national geographic
assignment some years ago

with a fellow who was censusing
wildlife, looking for gorillas

among other things

and in ten days of walking
we found sign of, hundreds and

hundreds of sings of forest
elephant and other creatures that

were alive and well in that forest
and zero sign of gorilla

what was the reason?

Well the probable reason was
that Ebola had killed those gorillas

difficult to prove
but strong inferential hypothesis

so some of the wildlife conservation
people including veterinarians

have been researching the possibility
of using some sort of bating system

putting out food that is, that
contains an Ebola vaccine to try

and stop the spread, the chain of
transmission of this disease in

gorilla populations and the
devastation that they cause

so as I say it is difficult to do
difficult to vaccinate wild animals

how do you get to every one of them
how do you get to enough of them

you don't go running through the forest
tranquilizing gorillas and

giving them injections you have to
do something that is more effective

than that, so people are thinking about it
people are working

on it.

(Joanne speaking) So that is actually a
really good answer, so here is

something that is interesting
This comes to probably humans

affecting our environment, this
is actually about global warming

which there are whole books written
about how global warming

is affecting our ??? But this is
interesting. That global warming

being all too evident, and the
glaciers and ice caps melting

what is the probability that
an ancient virus or bacteria

that has been frozen, thawing out
and being re-introduced into the world?

This is not exactly Zoonosis but,
you have become an accidental expert

by writing the book

(David speaking). Yeah..Right. Well a
virus frozen in glaciers?

Well viruses only survive in living cells.
So if an animal is frozen for

ten thousand years, is it
possible for a virus in that animal

to be reactivated?
I suppose that it is

And if I'm wrong I'm sure
people will correct me

immediately on that one
but thats my off the top

of my head recollection response

It might be possible.

(Joanne speaking) Yeah I'd not
heard this before so

(Micheal speaking) Yeah, well
you know we know that you

can get ancient DNA out of
a creature, even a human being

that has been frozen for ten
thousand years

it might be possible to wake
up a virus that has been

frozen in cells of such creature

whether that is something
worth worryin about is

a different question.

I mean there are a lot of reasons
to be concerned about climate change

global warming I wouldn't put
that near the top of the list

because there are so many
other viruses that aren't frozen

that we are coming in contact with

Some people estimate that
every species of plant, animal,

fungus, bacterium, on the plant
probably is a unique host of at least

one virus, maybe ten viruses,
these are very very rough

ballpark guess.

So that you don't need
to go to a mammoth thawing

out of the ice in northern
Canada that might be carrying

a new virus in order to
be exposed to a new virus

all you need to do is walk across
central Africa and turn over

a couple of rocks and
eat a fish and touch a turtle

and be shat upon by a bat
to be exposed to new viruses

(Joanne speaking) or fruit.

(David speaking) Yeah, or eat
a piece of fruit that a bat has licked.

(Jeff speaking) well our mother's
were right when

"Don't touch that turtle! You'll
never know where its been!"

(David speaking) That's right.

(Joanne speaking) Well and infectors like
mosquitoes, their habitat is

increasing with warmer climates
so that infector born disease is

not necessarily zoonotic but you did
address that as far as Malaria

like how it may have originated in
a different animal that it didn't

just evolve

(David speaking) Yeah, well yeah.
That is what I think of when

the potential impacts of climate
change in terms of infectious disease

and in terms of zoonotic disease
in particular

I mean now we've got
don't we have west nile fever

in all of the 48 contiguous states?
I think we do and

what's the reason for that?
Well one of the reasons for that is

there are mosquitoes that are vectors
for west nile virus that are surviving

through the winters in places
where they did not use to survive

through the winters

(Joanne speaking) Yes, yes. Right.
Well it is amazing.

This last, there is one more question here
from our readers.

This one you can modify to answer
the way that you see fit

he is asking, "What are the top two
mistakes that humanity has made

by in large, historically speaking,
when its been hit by a pandemic?"

So I suppose you could answer
just one.

(David speaking) You've got to remember
this is from Hugo right?

(Joanne Speaking) Yes.

(David Speaking) Interesting question
Hugo.

Well, the mistakes that we make
have changed over time

For instance, in the late 19th
century in America

when people came down with
smallpox. We would put them

in pest houses.

And in particular if they
were poor, and came from

tenements and slums. We would
drag them out of those tenements

and slums. Officials would. City or
state officals

and would confine those people
in pest houses

and these pest houses then
became wonderful places

of transmission if you were
a suspected case, but not confirmed

and you were confined in a pest house
the chances are that you would become

a confirmed case fairly quickly.

That sort of response
that the idea that infectious

diesases were endemic to
the poor people

was a horrible mistake
but it was a common mistake

the idea that poor people
because their hygiene standards were

not high enough. That they
were particularly susceptible to

these disease and therefore the
way to deal with these diesases

was some sort of a
public health apartheid

that was a horrible mistake
that was made with

severe consequences in this
country and a number of other

places. In terms of mistakes
that we are making now

Well one potential mistake
is related to that

its the notion that
the way to deal with these

diseases is to confine people
to shut down movement

to treat the disease
as a form of guilt

you know we saw that
in the early stages of

the AIDS pandemic in the US
that also occured in Cuba

where people who were HIV
positive were, well I don't want to

say more than I
actually know

but in Cuba there was
there were some harsh measures

towards people that were
HIV positive

in terms of segregating them
from the general population

With Ebola, currently
there is this outbreak in Guinea

and they are trying to stop it
but I noticed that the

world health organization has
not recommended restrictions

on travel. Guinea. Why
is that?

Well its been explained
that if they invoke

restrictions on travel and
force confinement of possible cases

you're going to drive the disease
underground. And people

are going to be afraid to
go to clinics if they think

they might have the disease.
Because they'll be treated as

guilty they'll be treated as
prisoners. So generally

I guess what I'm saying is
one of the worst mistakes

that we've made is
confusion of being infected

with being guilty of something
and the forms of

social segregation and constraint
that followed after that

and we've mostly gotten past
that but its something we've got to be

very careful about

(Jeff speaking) This is something that
we sort of talked about, but I made

a not of this. As you were talking
about how these outbreaks of these

various zoonotic incidents might
be seen as independent

disconnected, perhaps judgmental
things said to point out the varoius

groups of people as causing
this or that

and in fact they are
related there is a pattern

there are things we can understand,
and its a natural event

and it can be pretty hard to keep
our prejudices even for scientists

out of understanding what's going
on right?

(David speaking) That's right.
We can demonize the victims, we can

demonize the reservoir hosts,
we can demonize anybody associated

with these things and that does not

lead us either to better understanding
or to better response to these things

I think the way I put it in
the book is that

there is a tendency of people,
for the public to think that

this drumbeat of new diseases,
Ebola, and Machupo, and Hendra

and Nepo, and SARS, and Bird Flu
and MERS, and a number of others

that this drumbeat of new
diseases represent things that

are happening to us. Independent
forms of misfortune that are happening

to us, and the point that I try
to bring out in the book is that

these are not merely things that
are happening to us

these are reflections of things
that we are doing

they are part of an
interconnected pattern that

relates to our activities,
how we live together and how

we live with other species
on this planet

(Jeff speaking) yeah, and that things are
different when that's the

habitat destruction, and how we can
do all of these things

when there are only say,
500 million people on the earth

versus when there are 7
billion people on the earth

(David speaking) That's right and some of
this, the scientists would call

this density dependent effects

The fact that if somebody gets
sick from eating a wild animal at

a restaurant in southern China
and that person picks up a virus

and that person goes to a wedding
in Hong Kong, and stays in a

hotel and coughs or
sneezes in the elevator and

some woman from Toronto can
walk into that elevator

pick up that virus and
that virus will travel around

the world in about 14 hours

that is a new situation

(Joanne speaking) That is sort of the
plot for Contagion.

So I'm looking like we are at
the end of our show

and its been wonderful to talk
with you David and I really

hope our audience here
if you have not picked up

"Spillover" and you're up
for a nice book

Its got technical depth
its an engaging story

because you have personalities
its not just a review paper

on every type of zoonotic disease
its really an engaging story

(David speaking) its full of detective
stories, I like to say.

(Joanne speaking) Yeah, it is like
a detective story

this is great, which makes
the 500 pages go by fast

it is one of the ones
that is hard to put down

which is always helpful
with a big book

and I really enjoyed it
I also listend to it on

audio, I would switch
back between book and audio

and you had a great narrator
for this too

So, is there anything
else you would like to add

that maybe we forgot to ask you
David before we sign off?

(David speaking) Be safe. Travel well.
Stay healthy. And don't eat the monkeys.

(Joanne speaking) Don't eat the (laughing)
Yes. we have one last story

Jeff has a website called
Scienticity and his website has

a mascot. And its related
to you David

(Jeff speaking) Yep. The Scienticity
mascot is an American crow

and the reason that we thought
the crow was an entirely suitable

animal was largely based on
or largely inspired by your article

from long ago called something like
our crows a product of their own success

or Has success spoiled the crow?
In which you describe many of the anticts

(David speaking) yeah I remember that

(Jeff speaking) and things they get
up to, basically you posited

because they're bored.
and I found very appealing

that idea that crows are just
out to learn new things

and have new experiences
and I'll say about "Spillover" that

I enjoy reading it at that rate
and I think it exposes, it proceeds

in a way that parallels the way
science works and unfolds

and that's something that
I always look for as a mark of a

good science book. So
congratulations on that.

(David speaking) Well thank you. Thank you
both very much. Its been a real pleasure

to talk to you, I've enjoyed this and I
appreciate the interest in the book

and the ideas.

(Joanne speaking) Great. Well thank you
David so much and thank you Jeff

as always its a pleasure to
sit here with you

and Thank you to everybody
who watched and turned in

questions, and we will
see you again next time

on Read Science.