StarTalk Radio - Confronting Zika and other Viruses, with Bill Nye and Laurie Garrett – StarTalk All-Stars

Episode Date: August 16, 2016

If you want to sleep tonight, skip this episode of StarTalk All-Stars. Bill Nye, Chuck Nice and virus expert Laurie Garrett examine how we’re fighting Zika, Dengue, West Nile, HIV and other viruses – and why the battle may not be going our way. Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ on Apple Podcasts to listen to new episodes ad-free and a whole week early.

This is StarTalk. Greetings, greetings. I'm Bill Nye, hosting StarTalk Special Edition. This is the all-star edition of StarTalk. And this week, not only am I here, and not only is Chuck Nice here, our beloved man about the universe and the planet. Hey, Bill. our beloved man about the universe and the planet. Hey, Bill.

Dr. Lori Garrett is a senior fellow for global health at the Council for Foreign Relations, the oldest think tank in the United States. On foreign relations. On foreign relations. Not for foreign. That's a whole other thing. Yeah, that's a whole other thing. Council on foreign relations,

and you won a Pulitzer Prize chasing Ebola viruses around. Back in the 90s. Yes, the 1990s, yes. Thank you. See, and Prize chasing Ebola viruses around. Back in the 90s. Yes, the 1990s. Yes. Thank you. See, and now we have Zika, right? And everybody loves to hate the government until it's time to get the Centers for Disease Control to create some magic or magical scientific answer to an infestation, right? Oh, yeah. This week, I've been twice doing briefings for

congressional staffers about Zika because, of course, it's coming to the United States. It's just not hot enough yet for the mosquitoes. We're in our winter, and it's steadily moving up through the Caribbean, moving north. We're going to hear of more cases in Mexico. And then, you know, it's inevitable that when our Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus mosquitoes, which we have, come out of their winter hibernation and start looking for food, we will almost undoubtedly see Zika cases in the United States. For food, it's among which we are home. We are home. Yummy, yummy.

Hilarious, yeah. And the problem that is unique to the United States. For food, it's among which we are home. We are home. Yummy, yummy. Yes. And the problem that is unique to the United States that is not shared by most of our southern amigos is we do not have national mosquito control. We don't even, in most states, have state mosquito control. Now, mosquito control, this is DDT? Yes. Well, no, we're not allowed to use DDT anymore.

That's been banned for decades. But when I was a kid, it was sprayed on you, on a person. Isn't that how we got rid of malaria in the United States? It is indeed. Was the government did massive sprayings of DDT? Actually, the CDC was originally created to control malaria. But the problem is that now it's local. And so in the United States, we face the NIMBY problem,

not in my backyard. And we face every conspiracy theory imaginable. Oh, you're coming in and my children will all have pointed heads because of you, or all my kids will be autistic because of you or whatever. And it's going to be,

I've warned members of Congress, it's going to be very, very difficult for us to control our mosquitoes in the United States for political reasons. And the worst case scenario is if it gets involved in the presidential election campaign in some way, then we can all just kiss it all goodbye and assume we're all going to get Zika. Why is that? Why do you say that? Well, I'm exaggerating. Well, just a little. Yeah, because the mosquitoes are not in every state.

The further north you go, the lower the mosquito population is because they can only tolerate a certain temperature range. They like it. But as the world gets warmer. As the world gets hotter, we are seeing more mosquitoes in areas where they had not previously existed. Well, with all that said, this is Cosmic Query edition of All Star Star Talk. Yes.

And Dr. Laurie Garrett just set up a charming scenario that I hope gives us all pause. And Chuck, Dr. Nice, you're going to give us, read us the first query from the cosmos. Yes, yes, I am. And, you know, it's amazing. We have questions from all over the internet. And you'd be surprised how many people are really concerned about Zika. So let's go to Greg Fichter on Facebook who wants to know, with Zika's primary vector as the mosquito, what is the WHO's current anti-mosquito approach besides long sleeves, bug spray,

and hoping like hell the mosquito just doesn't bite me or have Zika. Yes. WHO's World Health Organization. Yeah. And also, doctor, for me, the civilian, what is the relationship between the World Health Organization, our Centers for Disease Control, and controlling mosquito populations? Boy, you just asked a $10,000 question. This is a very expensive show. Yeah.

And may I please have that in cash? Let's take the Facebook part of the question first. Look, we can't control every single possible way that a virus can be transmitted when it's human-to-human transmission. It's very, very difficult. We have all the human behavioral issues to deal with. Here, in a way, we're lucky. It's a vector-borne disease, meaning there's an intermediary between the humans. You don't just sneeze on somebody to pass Zika. Exactly. Having said that, we are now discovering that there are at least 14 confirmed cases of sexual transmission of Zika.

There are at least three. That's human to human or mosquito to human? Human to human. I'm joking. Is this smooching? I'm sorry. Is this kissing or something more of a commitment? It's in semen.

And we're finding more and more viruses have somehow adapted to human semen because Ebola, we're having this problem trying to finally end the Ebola epidemic in West Africa. Some of the sort of resurrected cases seen long after it looked like the epidemic was over have involved sexual transmission from an individual who survived and then many months later passes the virus sexually

to a female partner. So he has antibodies to this Ebola. She does not. And the same appears to be true with Zika. And of course, we know it's transmitted from mother to child in utero. to be true, was Zika. And of course, we know it's transmitted from mother to child in utero. And this is not 100% proven, but it is assumed at this point that that is how these babies are being born with the misshapen heads. And we're now seeing a whole chain of other issues showing up in people who've been exposed to Zika. The Guillain-Barre paralysis, which can be anywhere from a very minor sort of change in the walk and gait that you're able to execute to total body paralysis that can last for months. This is just frightening stuff. Terrifying. All the more reason to engage in safe sex. Well, and indeed, the government of Puerto Rico just announced that they

are putting a price freeze on condoms to keep them affordable to the total population. Oh, thank God you said condoms. I was thinking something totally different when you said price freeze, but that's just me. You travel in different circles. So what can you do besides not get bit by mosquitoes? Well, to not get bit by mosquitoes, there are personal

protective measures and then there's society protective measures. The personal overlaps with society because if a lot of people refuse to go along with the program,

they're imperiling everybody in their neighborhood by providing... But I've got rights, man. I've got rights, dude. I've got rights, dude. And the Second Amendment says I can carry a gun. So if you come on my property... I'm going to shoot a mosquito.

Well, we had Chris Christie as a candidate for president before he pulled out of the campaign said in one of the debates that he would use quarantine to control Zika. And I thought, well, if you can figure out how to quarantine mosquitoes, more power to you. But obviously he was talking about quarantining human beings, which is ludicrous. It has nothing to do with the transmission. What has to happen is everybody, every single person who lives in a state where these mosquitoes flourish in the summertime needs to look around your property and say, what do I have sitting outside that could hold water and therefore be a breeding site for these mosquitoes?

What makes Aedes aegypti especially tough is they can breed in something the size of a thimble. So if you have any kind of trash, somebody in the household threw a coffee cup outside. The bottom of a milk carton. The bottom of a milk carton. The bottom of a milk carton. The kids' toys. Things that are innocent. Now, is it possible, Doc, to create a vaccine for this? A lot of work is going into it right now, but let's keep in mind, it is a very close cousin in terms of how the immune system sees it, sees the Zika virus to dengue and chikungunya. And we don't have vaccines for those. And one of the reasons they're having such a hard time figuring out the mysteries about Zika

is that it cross-reacts in antibody tests with dengue. It cross-reacts. Yes. It cross-reacts antibodies. What does that mean, Dr. Sark? It means that if I'm trying to do an antibody, I take a little of your blood, and I want to do an antibody test and see, have you ever had Zika? I can't easily tell the difference between have you ever had dengue, have you ever had chikungunya, or have you ever had Zika? They cross-react.

The antibodies kill all of them. In North America, in the United States of Canada, or Mexico, there can't be that many people who have had dengue fever. Right. There aren't. So if you had a positive, statistically, you'd be pretty far along. Right now, perhaps that is our advantage compared to what they're going through in Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela, and Central America is that we don't have huge populations dealing with all three viruses at once. At large, this is another science problem that is going to be affected by political issues. It already is. Yeah.

Great. That's great. So, Chuck, let's try another query. Let us move on. That's great, everybody. I mean, that's not great. That's what it's being. It's irony.

Why? I mean, the people in Washington are so smart and so proactive on everything else. Why would they drop the ball on something like this? I mean, well, lead on. All right. So Randall Zeisler wants to know this. He says, hi, Bill. With Zika virus having been around for over 60 years, we only hear about it when it spreads to pandemic proportions.

How many other viruses are out there that are just contained to a certain area that are waiting to spread under the right conditions? Also, what do you think will be the next Zika virus? Well, here's a rosy outlook for you to paint, Laurie. Yeah, well, that precise question is what I have focused on for the last, you know, three decades professionally. And we don't know a number. We can't give you an exact count and say this is how many viruses lurk out there. One of the reasons is that they're all mutating all the time. They adapt at an incredible pace at whatever we throw at them, including climate change. Because they reproduce so fast. So fast. Many of the viruses are reproducing in the order of minutes or hours. And of course, the bacteria are producing on the order of days.

And humans are reproducing on the order of years. Decades. And so it allows them tremendous advantage to change. And in a way, you can look at any given ecology, whether it's right here at the top, the surface of this seems to be some kind of felt here. Bays. There is a biome. Right. Right? On this surface. We don't see it, but there are a lot of organisms living here.

And by the way, people, they're delicious. living here. And they... And by the way, people, they're delicious. And they range from the big ones, you know, parasites, all the way down to the really tiny ones, phage, which are just little packets of DNA, right? That attack viruses. That attack viruses and bacteria. Bacteria. And so here's what's happening. It's a giant lending library. You know, all over here is DNA. happening it's a giant lending library you know all over here is dna and bacteria if i if they feel attacked if i had antibiotics to splash the word feels as we're morphizing a little bit but if bacteria experience an assault some sort of a antiseptic i put on this surface they scour actively their environment for any phage that might have some DNA that they can use to counter.

That's a model for us. Wow. We scour the rainforest and our tummies and everything else looking for something that will fight this, a given. Well, we mostly destroy. Oh, that's great. So by that, I mean, it's not great. Did we answer the question? I don't remember. Oh, how many great. So by that, I mean, it's not great. So did we answer the question? I don't remember what, Oh, what's the next viruses that caused the cold? There gotta be

six. There's a great guy that we've never heard of. There's a great guy up at Columbia university at the medical school named Ian Lipkin, who has proposed a project to actually go out and scour the planet for missing viruses and to identify them. Is this akin to what Craig Venter was doing with his sailboat? He was doing total microbiome, not just viruses, and he was just the Saragasso Sea. But now the NIH, our National Institutes of Health, is looking at funding together with NSF what they would call the Earth Microbiome Project, to actively go out and scour all kinds of different ecological settings, looking to identify all of the bacteria,

viruses, and phage in a given community setting. Now, that poses another problem that I'm actually working on in a new book I'm writing, which is when is a life form a pathogen? And when is it an innocent bystander or something happily helping you? Symbiot, a commensal, something that actually is digesting your food for you or protecting you by doing combat with other microbes, right? But then suddenly they will switch and there'll be a pathogen. And we don't know why. We don't completely understand how this happens. It turns out almost every human being has anthrax in your gut. This is a huge surprise. We only discovered this in the last couple of years. Well, why is anthrax in your gut harmless,

but anthrax in the air or on a surface. And as we all learned in 2001 with the mailings to members of Congress and the media, why is that a lethal event? We don't really understand, but in any ecological setting, a plant, an animal, the ocean, the air, there's this mix of microbes, which under certain circumstances are at least neutral, if not beneficial, and in other circumstances are dangerous. And we don't really understand it. But you're working on it. We're working on it. Now, if we did this, before we get to the next query, if we did this Earth Microbiome Project, where would the money come from? How would that be funded? That's actually in process right now. You probably know the National Science Foundation has a process where groups of scientists can come forward and

basically say, we think this kind of a mega project needs to be done. It has to involve lots of different labs and lots of different scientists and a much bigger budget than a typical grant proposal. A few years ago, a group came forward to the NIH and said, we need a human microbiome project. And that was done. And it unfolded unbelievable surprises. Like the anthrax. Like the anthrax.

It's like finding that there are all sorts of ways that we're actively changing our microbiome that involve things like, hi, Mr. Nice, I just rubbed your arm, and now I'm going to rub my arm, and maybe I just transferred some of your microbiome to me. Oh, well, good for you. Good for me. I can tell. All right, YouTube biomas. We're going to have biomash here. Fantastic. Careful.

It's a family show. All right, Chuck, you got another query. From Twitter. This is Nate Acevedo. And he's at Nate Acevedo. Wants to know this. Research suggests the placenta began with a viral genome. By using vaccines, are we only stunting the advancement of our species?

Wow. What a crazy question. That's why I read it. Well, it's just, Dr. Garrett, I'm sure you'll give us an earful on this, but that's just taking two nouns and just slamming them. Yeah. Sounds a little conspiratorial. I just say this all the time

about conspiracy theories, everybody. They're lazy. If there only were just six, you know, five dozen people that are controlling it, all we got to do is find those 60 guys or gals

and then we just imprison them or get all their knowledge and then we'd be set. Well, you know, before I answer this question, let me just tell you, Dan Brown, you know, who wrote Angels and Demons. Yes. What's the one about the conspiracy about the Pope? Well, the Jesus has a descendant, and she's running around.

Yeah, that one. Anyway, super bestseller. Well, his most recent book, the premise is that there's an evil biologist at the Council on Foreign Relations who kidnaps the head of WHO and locks her into the basement of the Council on Foreign Relations. And then carries out some grand scheme involving trying to genetically change all of humanity. And I thought, oh, my God, that is the ultimate conspiracy theory. And now it's actually about me. Except that, of course, in the book, because they don't believe women do anything, the bad guy had to be turned into a man. So before you do that, this is Star Talk, the all-star edition with Dr. Laurie Garrett, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations, joined once again by our beloved Chuck Nice.

And I'm your host, Bill Nye, and we'll be back right after this. Welcome back. Welcome back. I'm your host, Bill Nye, here on StarTalk, but not just StarTalk. This is StarTalk all-star edition. And our all-stars, of course, include our beloved Chuck Nice, man about the planet.

And we're joined this week by Dr. Lori Garrett, who is a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations, the U.S.'s oldest think tank. Now, while you're thinking about, I guess not about tanks, about big ideas. Some people there think about tanks. As we went to break, a guy, somebody asked, Cosmic Query inquired.

Are we, by using vaccines, stunting the advancement of our species? Because placentas may have come from virus genes. What we know, actually, is that a baby, an infant, even pre-toddler. I did that for a while. You know, it's funny. We've all kind of been there. At that stage in life, they have two jobs, and everything else is done for them. One job is to listen and look at everything and start trying to figure out what does that word mean, taking in data.

And the second is to touch, lick, eat, ingest everything in their environment. You watch a baby and what does it do with a toy? It sticks it in its mouth, maybe in its ear. It rolls it around. It touches and licks the floor. What is that about? Why would we have evolved into such a thing? I say, everybody, if you concentrate for just a moment, you can remember what a kitchen floor tastes like. I've said that. I don't have to concentrate.

That was this morning. Oh, nice. Nice, nice. He's down there with his kids interacting. I got a two-year-old. But there's a reason for that. And we see the same, of course, in all the primates. And there's a reason for it.

We're coding our immune system. You know, our immune system's job at that point is to figure out what is foreign, what is dangerous, and what is me. foreign, what is dangerous, and what is me? Because the worst thing you could have is for your own immune system to start attacking you because it doesn't know foreign and it's confused and it thinks, you know, you are the problem. With the immune system we're thinking. I know. Well, yeah, I'm with you. So that, for example, you get asthma because your immune system is overreacting against all sorts of things that it ought not to be reacting against, and sometimes even including elements of your own body. So, would you say to mothers here in the very clean environments of the United States and Canada, let your kids play in the dirt?

Absolutely. And I would furthermore say, you know, a vaccine is an infinitesimal version of that daily experience of absorbing everything in your own environment. The amount of what are called antigens. So, you know, what you, if I touch this tabletop right here and then put it to my mouth. Which you just did. Which I just did. On that tabletop is a lot of stuff, including proteins. And all those proteins are potentially antigens, which my immune system and antibodies see.

Okay? And that's how you program your system. Well, you know, the amount of antigenic exposure a baby has in its environment is orders of magnitude more than what's in a given vaccine. So what about this guy? No, what you just said to him is it is exactly the opposite of what he is postulating. It's exactly the opposite. The vaccine doesn't help stunt us.

It actually propels us because it's this tiny little thing that it's our version of the baby putting things in its mouth. Chuck, tell the truth. Testify. Well, I mean, look, if you're a parent and you have a, say, 12-month-old child, you have two options in terms of one particular nasty microbe called polio. You can either say, eh, you know, I've kind of decided the odds my child in its environment as it ages is very unlikely to be exposed to that virus, so I'm not going to vaccinate. Or you can say, you know, this is an absolutely minuscule exposure, but it will program that child's immune system. And for the rest of

their life, as they travel the world and drink waters all over the world and are exposed to soils all over the world, any one of which could potentially contain polio, my child will grow up fully protected. I remember the polio vaccine was introduced in the 1950s is that right was it 1960s and i was the 60s i went to elementary school with a guy who had polio wow and i can tell you you don't want polio it's like it's not in your best interest and uh you know he was a tough guy and he got through it but man well you know who the major opponents of polio vaccine use today are? The number one group that actually kills people? Very well-educated. No, for polio,

the number one group that's actually murdered more polio vaccinators than there have been children who got polio in the last three, four years, the Taliban. Wow.

Oh, that's great. One more thing to recommend them. They're normally so progressive. So everybody, you know, if you're listening, you're listening to StarTalk. You're self-selected. You're interested in science. But I say all the time, science is the best idea humans have had so far. And if you don't like the process of science, we'll come up with something that throws that out.

And that will actually have been a right result of the process of science. So this anti-science sentiment we have now in the technologically developed United States is so troubling. And here it is an election year and we're facing climate change and climate change is going to allow the advancement of all these microbes. You may remember in our last presidential election, we had a candidate who said on live television that she opposed the use of a human papillomavirus vaccine on the grounds that she was sure that girls got mentally retarded as a result of getting the HPV vaccine. And just this week, we have announcement from independent scientific teams all over the United States, a 64% reduction in cervical carcinoma in young... From a vaccine. From a vaccine. Preventing cancer from a vaccine.

From a vaccine. It's not magic, people. It's science. Chuck, read us another query. Okay, let's take a query from one of our Patreon patrons. Of course, they support us financially, and so therefore we like to give them a little shout out. We take their questions. That's right. That's right.

So you want to influence people? Okay, give us some money. All right. Just a little bit. Just a little bit. All right, and this is from Kilia Silvis. Okay. Kilia Silvis from Patreon wants to know this.

She's actually a scientist from Minnesota. And she says, do you support proposals to introduce GMO male mosquitoes that could breed genetic defects that kill or sterilize large populations of human biting mosquitoes. She says GMO. Genetically modified. Not GMO, just genetically modifying the mosquitoes. They're not plants and crops. We're modifying the mosquito males. So even though they have sex with the girl mosquitoes, they don't make them.

They're sterile. So they don't make any baby mosquitoes. And therefore, you can't get bit. This overlaps with a previous question that I forgot to completely answer. What are the suggested ways of controlling mosquitoes in the face of Zika, dengue, chikungunya, yellow fever, and other diseases carried by these mosquito populations? other diseases carried by these mosquito populations. The World Health Organization is very actively, with our Centers for Disease Control, trying to come up with real answers that are proven in the field to work and that involve some of the latest technologies we have available that really go to the cutting edge. Why do we have to go to the cutting edge? Which includes genetically modified mosquitoes,

includes mosquitoes infected with a bacteria called Wolbachia, which also sterilizes the male. How do you get a mosquito to get infected with a bacterium? You put Wolbachia in the larva. How do you do that? Well, they're just sitting right there like a soupy mix on whatever watery surface. So you find stagnant water. It doesn't need to be stagnant.

That's the problem with this particular mosquito, Aedes aegypti. It actually likes fresh water. Oh, my God. I mean, if it's in the rapids. It's drinking water. It's drinking water. Oh, my. That's the problem.

See, the reason we have this explosion and how it's linked to climate change is it really started in northern Brazilzil in an area that's undergoing an el nino driven drought and so people think wait mosquitoes they breed in water how would that be connected to a drought well it's because people are storing drinking water and washing water um especially in the favelas the poorer communities where they may not have uh running a lot running water into their home. Or a municipal system with chlorine and all these other fabulous... Or they are storing additional water over and above what they have in the home for washing purposes, for gardening purposes, and so on.

And unless they are really sealed tight, these become breeding sites for this mosquito. So, yes, what tools will work? First, let's say what doesn't work. Because in 1999, we had the bizarre experience that a disease, a virus native to the Nile Delta all the way up to the source of the Nile in Sudan. Which is on the other side of the world. In a completely different ecology. That virus, which is called West Nile virus,

emerged in the concrete jungle of Queens, New York. Yes. Got on a plane. And we're not sure how it got here, who brought it and so on, but what happened was... It might have been brought by a lot of people, if it's airplanes, over the years.

It could have been in cargo. Yeah. A lot of the, if it's airplanes, over the years. It could have been in cargo. Yeah. A lot of the introductions actually are via cargo. Point is, it ended up that despite very vigorous mosquito control efforts carried out by New York City and state health officials. Which freaked a lot of people out because the government was spraying. And spraying and asking people to remove breeding sites from their yards and so on and so forth. Flash forward a few years and we not only now have West Nile virus endemic in almost all 50 states, returning every single spring and summer,

but it has now reached the point where it's endemic and carried by 60 different species of North American mosquitoes. And has been the key reason that we've seen an obliteration of songbirds and crows all across North America. And is the number one infectious disease cause of death for racing horses. Because they bite on horses as well as humans. So there we were executing what we think is state-of-the-art United States mosquito control, and it not only failed, it failed miserably. We now have a permanent new feature in our disease background in the United States. So could we have done, could the United States have stopped these mosquitoes?

It doesn't sound like it. We had tremendous ignorance at that time. We didn't imagine that it would readily get taken up by so many indigenous species of North American mosquito. Here's something from Africa. How could that happen? And I think they really underestimated a lot of the life cycle. Aren't you they? Aren't you them?

Well, I don't do the actual field science. That's done by others. But there's a lesson. Pass the buck now, Lori. Well, there's another lesson to learn, and that is right now in Hawaii, they're in the grips of a dengue epidemic. And it's carried by the two mosquitoes that we're worried about, Aedes albopictus and Aedes aegypti. The health officials and mosquito abatement officials on the big island in Hawaii have worked very aggressively to try and control this mosquito. But they've had almost 300 cases now of people getting dengue.

If you get dengue fever, what do you do? You die or do you lie low? No, and this is another thing that complicates trying to figure out what's going on with Zika. Dengue is a really strange disease. Before World War II, it was almost unheard of that people died of dengue. It was mostly in its extreme form. Here, we called it breakbone fever. Benjamin Rush, who signed the American Declaration of Independence and was one of the early colonial physicians in North America, you know, labeled it break bone fever and it swept through Philadelphia over and over. You get so sick your bones break? No, but it feels like they're breaking. Just unbelievable pain.

That's a little wimpy. No, but it feels like they're breaking. Oh. Just unbelievable pain. That's a little wimpy. Nasty. But it was rarely lethal. What happened in World War II was that it turns out there's four different strains of dengue in the world.

At least. And they're heavily concentrated in Asia. And when we started having troop movements in the Asia Pacific, and we were moving troops there in the Philippine Island, and then they're in Guam, and then they're in Hawaii, and then so on and so forth, humans started to be exposed repeatedly to different strains of dengue. And it turns out, if you get exposed to strain one, it's nasty, you feel lousy, but you don't die. Strain two, you feel even lousier, but you probably still don't die. Strain three, you go to viral hemorrhagic fever. It's sort of like dengue version of Ebola. And it is high mortality in the neighborhood of 50%.

And we don't really have much we can do for you, just as we don't have much we can do for you with Ebola. The people who survive it, they have antibodies, right? They do. Why aren't we harvesting the antibodies of the people who survived these? Because there's a lot of people who survived Ebola this time because of, you know, the World Health Organization moving in. And why don't we take these people? We do. And we have.

And the problem is that giving plasma to people saying, you know, this guy here survived, so we're going to take his blood and transfuse it to that person or what have you. So far, these efforts have failed. They have not worked. But there's very, very aggressive work on trying to figure out what's the nature of that antibody response and can we induce it with a vaccine. Back to the vaccines, folks. You know, that really is our ultimate solution. The vaccine. In every of these diseases. And it sounds to me, because all these problems you have presented comes from us moving around the planet. So the real answer is stay the hell home, please.

I'll tell you something. Okay. You've told us a lot of things. Tell us another. Aedes aegypti. Okay. This is a mosquito. That is the main carrier of all of these key viruses we've been talking about. You know where that came from originally? No.

And how it got to the Americas? It's named aegypti. Okay. So it originally came from Africa. All right. And it got to North America and South America via slave trade. Oh, of course. Blame the slaves.

Of course. Hey, you guys, this has been Star Talk, the all-star edition. We have our beloved Chuck Nice here, a man about the earth, and Dr. Lori Garrett, senior fellow

of the Global Health Council on... Or something like that. Council on Foreign Relations the Global Health Council on. Or something like that. Council on Foreign Relations. Global Health Council on Foreign Relations. The oldest think tank in the United States. And I've been your, I am your host, Bill Nye, and we'll be back right after this. Chuck, you know what time it is. As a matter of fact, I do, Bill.

It's time for That Day in Science. That's right. It's not this day in science. It's that day in science. And that day in science was roughly September the year 1347. Does that ring a bell to you? Yes, it does. It was a while ago. I wasn't there.

But that was when the Black Plague, the first signs of the Black Plague showed up in Europe. This would be the bubonic plague. The first signs were present around the fall of 1347. And in the span of just three years, Chuck, the Black Death killed one-third of all the people in Europe. Imagine one-third of the people you know just dying, disappearing. If I pick the right people, that would be a good thing. If only we could, you can't. The Black Death stands out as the most dramatic and lifestyle-changing event during this century. And a lot of other stuff went on, but that was a big deal. That is a big deal. So let me ask you, what do you think culturally? I mean, you're a person as a scientist who pretty much encompasses it all.

What today have we taken from the Black Plague or the Black Death? What today, how does it resonate today? Well, people ask me, Bill, they say, Nye, what is the most significant invention of all time? Yes. And people have some expectation about a smartphone or internal combustion engine or fuel injection. No, it's the sewer. The sewer? Yes. If once you have hygiene, once you have a way to get rid of your waste, then you have a chance of reducing the number of rats running around and the number of fleas feeding on the rats and infecting you with something like the bubonic plague. Wow. That's my, I mean, bear in mind, that's my opinion.

But as is so often the case, my opinion is correct. So often the case, my opinion is correct. So this is where civil engineering goes so far back. And people talk about the success of the ancient Romans. They had clean water for an enormous number of their people. Right. For a lot of their populace. And you've got to have – it's very fashionable right now, Chuck. It's very fashionable right now, Chuck, if I may wander off before we get back to something substantive with respect to this particular StarTalk episode.

Yes. It's very fashionable now for people who are wealthy to say they're libertarian. True. Right? It seems like it's a fad. But everything's fine. You say, well, you should have your own sewer system. You should have your own clean water supply.

Every person should be wealthy enough to filter their own water and this and that. But what if your neighbor is infected with something? And he or she is exhaling. And he or she has rats that have fleas. And you get infected. You don't want that. This is where you have to have a community working together for the public good. You have to have public works. I was about to say, they call that public works. And so sewer is the classic-est example of that. Everybody should have their own fire department.

But what if your neighbor's roof is on fire and the embers are blowing onto yours and so on? So disease control writ larger is a classic example of using public works for the public good. Suppressing these horrible mosquito populations that Dr. Garrett's talking about and controlling so that everybody who's young gets vaccinated against every disease that we have vaccines for, and spending public resources to develop new vaccines. These are all for the public good. These are public works. And so this thing where people want government to disappear, to be small, get rid of government entirely, government's bad. Right.

It's not all bad. I'm sorry, it's not all bad. Yeah, because sewers are pretty daggone good. And you want a government and tariff. The government's bad. It's not all bad. I'm sorry. It's not all bad. Yeah, because sewers are pretty daggling good. And you want a government-run sewer, and you want the people who run it to take pride in their work, and you want them to be compensated in such a way that they do a good job, and you want to have civil engineers come out of civil engineering school, and you want people, the workers there, to make a good wage and maintain the sewers properly. And this is what makes cities livable and clean and reduces the number of plagues.

That was pretty good. Sewers. Who would have ever thought? Sewers. That's my opinion. Now, while we're at it, you know, we're living at an exciting time. Yes. Not just because we could all die of some new infection that Dr. Garrett's talking about, but also we could discover life on another world.

And I say this would change the course of history. This is my opinion. Okay. The Black Plague, one out of every three people died. Yes. That's just astonishing, right? But that, we still sing Ring Around the Rosie, which is a rhyme that dates from the 14th century. That's correct.

So it's had a huge effect on us both literally and culturally. By literally, I mean we're still, many of us are still alive. Those genes, the people that lived through it passed their genes on. But if we were, shortly thereafter in centuries terms, people realized the earth was round and went around the sun. Right. People in Europe realize it, run around the sun. And this changed the world. It allowed international commerce.

Yes. Which led to all these amazing discoveries in science and commerce and navigation around the world's oceans. All this is made possible by planetary exploration. If we were to discover life in another world, everybody would think differently about what it means to be a living thing on this planet. Everybody would feel differently about

being alive in the cosmos. So speaking... Profound, Chuck. Profound. Speaking of life on another planet, and if we were to discover life on another planet, and let we were to discover life on another planet, and let's just say we were able to encounter that life on another planet. Now the black plague, when people traverse the globe,

they exchange some nasty stuff. Yes. And one third of Europe died. Yes. So now we meet some people from another planet. Who's going to kill whom? It's unknown captain. Yeah. Specul kill whom? It's unknown, Captain. Yeah.

Speculation. But I'll give you this. If we go to Mars, we will contaminate it. If humans walk around on Mars, as diligent as we try to be, we're going to contaminate it. But the surface of Mars is exposed to ultraviolet light all Martian day all the time. And it's crazy cold. And it's extraordinarily dry. Yes, there's a little water around, but it is super dry there.

So it's very reasonable to me that our spacecraft, which have been on the surface of Mars for years, are effectively sterile. Oh. And so we could, in good conscience, drive one of them up to one of these weeping walls, these craters that have liquid water flowing out of them, apparently in the Martian summer. And we could, with the instruments that are on, let's say, for example, Bill shooting from the hip. Right. The Curiosity rover or the 2020 rover, which will have many of the same instruments, launching in what year, Chuck, do you think? Going to Mars? Yes.

The 2020 rover. What do you think? I'm going to go, I don't know, 2017. It's close. 2020. And so we could make instruments that would drive up to one of these features. We could leave it on the surface of Mars for a couple of years just to feel better about sterilization, drive up to one of these features, and perhaps make a discovery that would change the world.

And the discovery would be very much akin to the discovery of all these microbiomes, all these ecosystems that are alive in our gut and all the genes that we have that are apparently a result of interaction with viruses here on this planet. It's all of a piece. It's science, Chuck. Basic research to change the world for the betterment of all humankind. And at that point, change the solar system. We're not just changing the world. That's right. Welcome back. Welcome back. I'm your host, Bill Nye, here on StarTalk Special All-Star Edition. And one of our all-stars, of course, our beloved Chuck Nice, and also Dr. Lori Garrett, Senior Fellow for Global Health at the Council on Foreign Relations, the oldest think tank in the United States. You got it. And we're talking about germs, parasites.

And I'll just say from an evolutionary standpoint, germs and parasites are the bad guys. It's not lions and tigers and bears. That's nothing. It's germs and parasites. They're good guys, too. You can't exist without them inside of you. Outnumbering your cells 10 to 1. Wow, that sounds like a germ love song.

I can't exist without you. You outnumber me 10 to 1. Little germ. Well, 100 to 1 if you count the viruses. But seriously, that's all? 100 to 1? So how many cells do we have on the order of a trillion? Yeah, so it's many trillions.

Wow. Wow. That's amazing. That is amazing. Well, you know what? It's a cosmic query. You have a query. We have another query from our cosmos.

And this is, Justin Lesnewinski wants to know, what is the nastiest virus we can expect to show up that would be like a doomsday virus? So is there anything on the books right now that could possibly. Well, they are. But that has the ability to wipe us out. To wipe us out. This is the zombie question. And I always get the zombie question. Yes.

Is there something out there that will turn everybody into. Brain. And so the answer is, well, yes, we already have it, but it's moving in slow motion. It's HIV. In the absence of antiretroviral therapy, HIV is 100% lethal event. Great. for reasons we don't fully understand to survive and be long-term carrying the virus in their bodies without becoming deathly ill is infinitesimal in terms of the large mass of, you know. So if you like to worry about something, human immunodeficiency virus is great.

It's proven. It's already happened. It's already out there. 75 million people. Now, the thing is, it's 75 million. That's already happened. It's already out there, 75 million people. Now, the thing is, it finds— 75 million? That's since 1979. But here's the thing. It's in slow motion. It takes 10 years to reach a stage of post-infection, on average, before you develop what is called AIDS. So not to anthropomorphize HIV, but it sounds to me like it's the smartest virus ever. Well, if I'm going to design a virus, if I'm a virus, I get to live in you for 10 years

as you're my host before you die. I'm living rent free for 10 years. Well, I'll give you better because the way it gets away with it is that HIV is what's called a retrovirus. It makes a reverse copy of itself and sticks it in your DNA. And that's why you can't get rid of it, because to build an immune response against it, you'd have to attack your own genes. So how do the retrovirus viral therapies work? Well, they try to interrupt various aspects of the life cycle inside of a cell of the virus. And you take a kind of combination of them, and they kind of hit the virus at each of these life cycle stages, these drugs.

But now here's the thing. Actually, it turns out, as we finished the Human Genome Project, which was completed in the year 2001, sequencing the entire human genome, and then since then, analyzed, you know, millions of people's genomes. We're appreciating that a heck of a lot of what we in our, you know, species arrogance think is unique to us, right? I'm a human. These are my genes, right? Turn out to be originally viruses. So actually, we have been absorbing viral DNA into our DNA as long as we have existed as primate, and probably our ancestral primates and their ancestral primates and their ancestral primates were sucking up viral DNA into our genome.

And some of it turns out to be very important. And some turns out to do nasty things like cause cancer. So it just depends. So I know in nature... All the proverbial dice. And so I know last year there was a paper published showing that genes go from one plant to another carried by viruses. And so genetically modifying plants or crops is not that different from what nature does. And you're saying this whole thing's been going on for millennia. Well, how do you think it all started in the microbial soup? You know, the first little bits of genetic material formed and we're surrounded by some kind of something that was protein goop to protect them. And here we are of something that was protein goop to protect them. And step by step by step.

And here we are, the most elaborate protein goop on the planet. With that said, thank you so much for coming. This has been StarTalk, the all-star edition. And you've been listening to Chuck Nice, our man about the planet. And this week, special insights from Dr. Laurie Garrett, the Senior Fellow for Global Health at the Council on Foreign Relations. And you go around the world telling us about all these germs and parasites that are out

there with whom we have to deal. And I just want to say a special thank you, Bill, for the work you do to try and make the people of the world understand how idiotic it is to be anti-science and to absorb bogus theories and notions of how our planet works, you do a great service that we honor. Wow. Bring it on. It's true.

Thank you, Laurie. This is fantastic. I'll say something nice about me, please. You're very nice. You're very nice, both descriptively and by surname. So thank you all for watching StarTalk, the All-Star Edition. We will be back again next week. I've been your host, Bill Nye.

Let's change the world. This is StarTalk.