The Chaser Report - The Man-Eating Screwworm is Coming!!!

Episode Date: June 3, 2025

Dom has discovered a blood-curdling new parasite that literally eats humans alive! He later describes to this episode by saying: "They're not all gonna be winners." Please leave us a five star review using the code-word 'hominivorax'.---Follow us on Instagram: @chaserwarSpam Dom's socials: @dom_knightSend Charles voicemails: @charlesfirthEmail us: [e-mail] our caviar addiction: https://chaser.com.au/support/ Send complaints to: [e-mail] Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Chaser Report is recorded on Gatigal Land. Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Hello and welcome to The Chaser Report with Dom and Charles. Charles, you know those episodes of this podcast where I discover something happening in the world that is utterly bleak and very depressing and sort of talk about the benefits of it in an exercise in heavy-handed sarcasm? Are you going to talk about marriage? Don't you love those episodes, Charles?

I love those episodes. No. whether or not this is a metaphor for anyone's relationships you can decide during the course of the podcast and make your own judgment. Charles, have you heard of C hominivorax? Well, I haven't until about five seconds ago when you mentioned that that's what we're going to do, the podcast. But Charles, you studied Latin back in your mystery. Oh, yes, yes. Homini Vorax, you can probably work out what that means.

Well, hominy would be human. Yeah. Vorax. Oh, does that mean like voracious eating? Yeah. Yeah, it's something that eats humans, Charles. Its scientific name is C, I don't know what the C stands for, human eater. Wow.

This is the New World screw worm. Oh, the screw worm. Yeah, we've got, you know how we have a snake and... Yeah, you've got all these reptiles, yeah. Yeah, I think we breed screw worms somewhere next to the cockroach farm that we breed for the... They do actually have a cockroach farm. Yeah, and... Well, they're more nutritious than crickets.

I have when you've been... overseas had to feed crickets into the enclosures of your reptile. See, we got crickets because we knew you'd be weirded out with the cockroaches. No, I would have loved it. Oh, really? I would have preferred,

because I don't mind crickets, but cockroaches, I love to see you getting eaten. Ah, okay. I hate those things. All right, anyway, the New World Screw word, I hadn't heard of this, but this is from the Atlantic magazine, a reliable source of both amazing group chats,

but also stories like this. So full credit to Sarah Zhang. I'd never heard of this. We'll talk about it more after this. So Charles, for the past 70 years, the United States has been fighting an aerial war in Latin America. And you might be thinking that we're talking about, you know, deposing regimes and so on.

And of course they have been doing that sort of stuff. But from the 1950s on... One day, we've got to do a podcast on Guatemala, the coup in. Guatemala. Oh, maybe one of those really long ones that we're supposed to be doing. Because if we go through some of the major, I mean, we, in, it's worth checking out in our old extreme, oh, that was the Katz Percians versus Katz Piss podcast.

We did a whole episode that I researched on the ways in which the CIA tried and failed to kill Fidel Castro. That's one of my favorite episodes of all time. So we might do some research on that. But this, I had never heard of this, Charles. This is a massive project that's been going since the 1950s. And so far, it's been very, very successful. Let's start by talking about what C hominivorex actually does.

This is a parasite that eats animals alive, whether it's a cow, a pig, deer, dog, it says he, or even a human. Right. It's the larvae of a parasitic fly that chews through flesh, and it can transform a tiny nick into a big, gruesome wound. So once they get in there, it's kind of game over. But America did a very good job of getting rid of these things. And it was the 1950s, can you guess what they did? Because it was pretty extraordinary. Was it napalm?

it's even worse than napal nuclear nuclear what they didn't nuke them what they did was they got a whole bunch of screw these screw worms they had multiple factories where they raised them yeah they blasted them with radiation until they were sterile their screw worms hundreds of millions of screw worms yeah and they would drop them even hundreds of millions a week they got a huge numbers of them and they would drop them out of aircraft across the u.s then they went further south and further south and further south through Mexico. They got permission to do it and it kept going further down.

By the time they got to 2006 when they established a kind of barrier in a very narrow bit of the continent in Panama. In Panama. The Darian Gap, which is the jungle between Panama and Colombia, and they basically, every single week, planes release millions of screw worms

in the Darian Gap. And the screwworms, screw... But they can't breathe. And they can't breathe. And so... They get all sexed out. They do. And so that has managed to...

They're just shooting blanks. To do the whole thing. That's right. They got nothing. Screw you, screw worm. Elon would be very unhappy with them. They can't reproduce at all. So...

And what happens south of that border? Oh, you're stuffed. You're screwed. No, you don't want to be down there. Yeah. I mean, in typical US fashion, they're just to defend for themselves. And if any of them... Of obviously, any of the farmers who's, you know, stock is ravaged.

by screw worm if they try to make it further north to America they are yeah we know what happens to them nowadays so here's the thing Charles

it hasn't been going well so in 2022 the barrier has been breached cases in Panama absolutely rocketed up and why for a couple of dozens a year to a thousand

I'll get to why I'm not sure why but the parasite has now been moving north it's gone through 1,600 miles since that point

it's in Waxaca and Veracruz in Mexico now 700 miles left to go until the Texas border. By the way, the US has suspended live cattle imports from Mexico on health grounds. They're pretty ironic that they're trying to make Australians except American beef. Anyway, and so now in Texas, they're really worried that the screwworms are coming.

They can't produce enough sterile flies to stop the screw worm from making it into America. Oh, no. America's going to suffer. And what happened back in the day is that basically, whenever you had a new, it's really shocking. Whenever there was a newborn calf with like a cut or a scratch at all, even their navels, they could just be fatal once the worms got in there. And what about humans? Because you promised me that this was a man-eating. It sounds like it's just about cows.

Well, cows for now. But what's going to happen when the screw worm tires of cattle and move further north to places where there aren't cows? And where there isn't proper healthcare. Because presumably the one thing that would save humans would be, you'd be able to go along to your GP. and get the wound checked out and... Oh, not in America.

Yeah, no, exactly. You wouldn't have a local GP. So they're trying that, of course, as is always the way, when something serious happens, the Texans want the government to come in and fix it. Yes, yes. They're very pro-government in this case. There's one case.

They want a new sterile fly plant that can do far more of them and put them out there. And so they've introduced a thing called the Stop Screw Worms Act in the US. Try and get this going. on. And is the point that the sterilised screw worms just aren't cutting it? Well, they can't produce enough. It's not entirely clear why. So there are a couple of possibilities as how this happened. So one of them might be, because of COVID,

ruining so many things, would have stuffed up the supply chain. You know how awesome. So the sterile fly. Oh, remember when you'd go to the supermarket and you'd be looking for sterilized screw rooms and there were none. You couldn't get a single irradiated fly on shells. It was that and tolerated. And it was so selfish because people were stockpiling sterilized screwworms. But then also what happened was that Darien Gap, which was an impenetrable jungle, migrants figured out how to work through, to make their way through.

So so could the screw worms. But it kind of suggests also that the flies are getting smarter, doesn't it? Of course they are. Smart flies. Yeah, because they're sort of realizing, oh, I'm not going to have sex with that one. That's sterilized. But it's also the case that there are. there's illegal cattle trade going on.

So this is probably the biggest reason. It's in Central America, 800,000 cattle a year are raised illegally. And then they're trucked not to Mexico because Mexico is wealthy, therefore wants to buy more beef, et cetera, et cetera. So there's all these new screw worm cases along the smuggling routes. Right. Okay. Fair enough.

Yes. So what we do about this, I mean, it's a bit of a long bow to say that the world's going to make it into humans. Yeah. But why don't we say it anyway? They'll say it anyway to make it more exciting. It'll juice the numbers. The Chaser Report, now with extra whispers.

So there are a few interesting technologies. They want to use a thing called gene drives, which can apparently basically push out new DNA genetic material. And this is something that's... So the solution may be worse than the cure. Yeah, yeah. Like eugenics for flies. Essentially, yeah.

It's a new way of trying to prevent diseases, basically, where the way that it does is obviously if there's a mutation, usually there's 50, 50 chances of it being passed on. Yes. This makes it almost 100%. So if you, let's say you have fruit flies in your lab, this is also from the Atlantic, you can just basically engineer a drive

and then all the population in a couple of generations will have that characteristic. Oh, that's quite clever. So it is essentially forcing diversity in a particular direction. The problem with that approach, though, I've heard is... Requiring all the fruit flies to go and get a 23 and me test. It's very the administration and the backlog and all that stuff, terrible. So I'm not sure that it's going to be logistically the way to go.

So probably what happens from here, Charles, is that the screw worm makes its way into America. We're forced to take US beef. Yeah, well, comes here. Five cattle exports, why not? Yeah. It comes here and then it's all over. Prime Minister Susan Lee. stops the worms.

Yeah, stops the worms. And I mean, the bottom line that I've come to at the end of this conversation is just wouldn't it be easier if we're all vegetarians? Yeah, well, I think cows are a bad for the environment, aren't they? They're very delicious though. It is a dilemma. Yeah, there's a dilemma. I mean, the clove and hooves that stuff up the soil, the screw worms.

I mean, what we need to do, presumably, Charles, is engineer flies that taste like beef. Because we're very good at breeding flies in a lab. Well, crickets are quite delicious. Have you ever eaten crickets? I think I had cricket in Southeast Asia. Yeah, we left some out to you when you were looking after our lizards and you fed them to the lizards. Yeah, no, I'm sorry about that. It was very spitiful of you to do that.

So you might say, at this point in the podcast, what is the point of this story? Well, I feel like it's just a little bit like, I know it's bad that the US is about to be invaded with men. Man-eating worms. But it seems like they're not actually going to eat the human. I mean, the headline of the story does say, this is from respected publication in the Atlantic. Owned by Loreen Powell Jobs, I think. Yeah, yeah, that's right. The man-eater screw worm is coming.

Yeah. That maybe that's interesting that it's out. I'm open at that possibility. But I think we should still call this episode the man-eating screwing. I don't know why it's so gender-specific either. I mean, this is Sarah Zhang probably, you know, This is also a threat to Sarah Zhang. Let's be clear, the author of this article.

So what happened is, I mean, if I was smarter, I could probably come up with some grand metaphor for the US, the breakdown of the US state or something. Well, I suppose the point is the stakes don't feel as high now. It's like, I think we used to empathise with the US. And, you know, if they're all going to be eaten to death, we go, oh, no, that's terrible. Texas is always a bit of a longer bow, though, wasn't it?

Oh, well, there's pluses. and minuses, you know. I mean, I think my biggest problem is actually the fact of this scientific name. I mean, C. hominivorax is an exaggeration. I think at the very most C. Boseovorax, come on. Yeah, come on. Yeah. So, look, then are all going to be winners.

We do this every day. The screw worm that ate the feed. And ironically, that was produced by, by being parasitical, parasitically regurgitating an article from the Atlantic, which turned out to not be... And I like that you tried to do a matter about it. I think we could just sit in...

It's obviously awful for cattle. I think let's think of the cattle. Who never asked to be produced in these vast numbers, by the way. And, you know, a little cut or a little scratch can turn into a tidal disaster. That is genuinely sad. Yeah, that's sad. but possibly is not enough to salvage the episode.

Can we have a moment silence for the cows and also so that we get across the 15 minute mark? Yeah, let's have a minute silence for me bringing this to the table today. I do apologize. It did sound good and I did read the article before. No, no, it was very. Promising, yeah.

Yeah. And look, if you are from Texas and you think we should be more serious back, which sounds like a terrible thing. Oh, terrible. I mean, it's so terrible that they had to invent irradiating flies in the 50s. Yeah. Isn't that bizarre that our standards for catastrophe are so high?

They were like, oh, that's not a big deal. Why are we even talking about this? Yesterday, we were talking about how 40% of Americans basically believe in murder nowadays. They do. I feel like, you know, flesh-eating worms, whatever. A little bit fairer than that, Charles. 40% believe in it, as long as it's for so a good cause, like a meme. Yeah, as long as you're filming

Okay, we've reached 15 minutes now We can go Now, I have a feeling that We shouldn't say what network we're from This episode Yeah, I think that might be seen as Yeah, we're from Hamish and Andy Yeah, we're part of the Hamish and Andy network

We're part of the ABC We're part of DM, we're part of DM, we're part of DM Yeah, yeah There we go Thank you.