Eastern and more live conversation weeknights at 8 00 p. M. Eastern from washington journal prime time. Good evening, im one of the founders of politics and prose and as you see, this evening, we have cspan here. Is the mike working back there . I see somebody running toward the mic. We have just one my care to ask questions so if you need access to this microphone and youre sitting over there, go around back there. I want to welcome david, come this evening to talk about his new book. This is the First Time Since politics and prose, hes written many, many books. Including the dodo which one a metal form Natural History writing. His honorary degree, Colorado College in Montana State university where he served as the professor of western american studies. Hes also one the National Magazine award three times for articles and a wide variety of magazines including the atlantic and rolling stone. The third of these awards, magazine awards was for a National Geographic story. National geographic now, he has the title contribute writer with capital letters, it gives him, did you say three articles a year . Three articles a year for National Geographic. He describes has biology and illusionary biology, theoretical ecology and conservation. After this evening, i hope you will have appreciation for his physical strength and stamina as he as you have for his writing talents. He tracks Indiana Jones style through jungles and rain forest that most of us would never want to step foot in. Tonight, you can learn a new word. Its a new word to me at least. Gnosis is Infectious Diseases that originate in animals and spread to humans. For those of you who read the hot zone i cant believe it, it was about 20 years ago, 18 to be exact, had an early exposure to this frightening scenario. But david has been elaborated on a great deal in his book. They gave him a start review and said, this is a quote, this is a frightening but critically important book for anyone interested in learning about prospects of the world next major pandemic. Here is david to talk about his book. [applause] thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you all, nice to be here at politics and prose. As barbara said, i havent been here before, i live a little bit too far away. I dont publish books that often. It takes me about six or eight years to get one of these things done. Going to talk informally for 20 or 25 minutes. Is that what you said . The subject and some extent about the writing of the book and know this better than i do, then we will hear from you. We will have some conversation. As barbara explained, this is a book about scary new emerging diseases and where they emerge from. Where they emerge from generally is wildlife, from other species, nonhuman animals. In particular, nonhuman animals other than our domesticated animals. If youve been following certain stories in the news over the last few months, you know one. Of entry into this subject is that daily newspaper itself. You probably heard about virus killing three people who visited yosemite this summer. People have been dying in north texas of west nile fever thinkig the dallas area alone 15 people who died of west nile fever since july. There has been an Ebola Outbreak again in central africa, the republic of the congo has an Ebola Outbreak that killed 3000 people, i think by now and its still going on. Another across the border in uganda, unrelated to the spillover that caused the outbreak democratic republic mcconnell, found has been entered. These things are happening, its like a drumbeat of disease outbreaks and small crisis. Theres another on the Arabian Peninsula from a virus that emerged that closely resembles the stars virus. It belongs to the same virus, the coronavirus that scared the disease experts in 2003. This new stars like virus out of the Arabian Peninsula has only killed one person from another man in the hospital in britain but scientists all over the world are watching it carefully. Why . They know the next big one could look Something Like that. So theres a drumbeat of these things. The diseases ive mentioned all have two things in common. They emerge from nonhuman animals and among those that i mentioned, they are caused by viruses. Thats a particular profile of the phenomenon. Scientists have a fancy name as barbara mentioned, they call these animal infections that pass into humans, so i know sees. A virus or other forms of infectious book, it could be a bacteria, a protozoan like the creatures that cause malaria, it could be a fungus, a worm from could be something called a prion that causes mad cow disease. Usually it is a virus though. Viruses more than anything because these. They pass from interest to humans, they dont always cause disease. Sometimes they become harmless passengers in humans. Theres a virus i talk about in the book, i couldnt resist because its a wonderfully gruesome name. You have to find a light side of the subject, where you can find it. With all due respect to the people who suffer from of those who die, there are a lot of debts in his book, stickley nonfiction. A lot of death and i respect that but still, i didnt want this book to be just a painful gruesome duty, just an important and scary book. I also wanted to be a pleasurable reading experience, a page turner. I want to have moments of suspense, mystery and discovery. Moments of heroism by some of these scientists studying this sort of thing. And guess, even some moments of humor. A very funny book but i hope it might be the funniest book about ebola you ever read. [laughter] so as i said, some of these bu bugs, when they pass into humans are harmless but often, they are not. If it passes into humans and causes mayhem, then we call it a disease 60 of the Infectious Diseases of humans are these kinds of diseases. Together we present, everything comes from somewhere. The other 40 are probably are in the broader sense. For instance, measles. Its only a disease of humans. Where did it come from . Probably from a virus that causes the disease and hoofed animals in africa. Its been inherent long enough that it is evolved and has become adapted specifically to humans. It is different enough that its considered and functions as a uniquely human virus but 60 considered this are passing back and forth, passing from animals to humans on either a continuing basis for have done it recently. That includes things like ebola, all of the influences, west nile virus, hiv. I talked at some length in the book about the ecological origins of the aids pandemic and we now know the pandemic strain of hiv past a single chimpanzee to a single human in a fairly small corner of southeastern cambrian in south africa. In 1908 or earlier, give or take, and we know that . Theres some wonderful scientists who have worked on the genetics, the molecular genetics of the viruses precursors to hiv, the viruses in chimps and monkeys and the genetic diversity of hiv one group and from of the pandemic hiv scientists have managed to locate of the spillover event with a high degree of confidence, theres a certain provision audi in science both high degree of confidence, they located to southeastern, one chimpanzee and one human, then he cut himself on the hand, blood to blood contact while butchering the chimp for food and in the early part of the 20th century, sometime around or before 1908. Michael and beatrice are the scientists who have done that work. So there are these diseases, the spillover they are zoonotic. Another technical term i want to familiarize you with, reservoir host. It is the kind of animal in which the bug from a virus or whatever it is, lived permanently in think is truly without causing disease. Without causing mayhem in a particular creature. Why does it look better probably because its been in the disease for millions of years. An accommodation has evolved. A virus in its reservoir host replicate but it doesnt replicate cataclysmic leak, it tends to replicate slowly and it doesnt generally cause symptoms. So, it is invisible, it hides in its host and something happens, humans kill and eat the host, they come in contact with it, somehow maybe ill tell you a couple of stories in ways this can happen. The reservoir host sheds a virus the virus gets into humans and it becomes a zoonotic disease. One of the things the scientists do as i study this field as they focus on these different diseases, one of the very first things they have to do is identify the reservoir host. New disease spills over into malaysia thats killing pigs, then pig farmers and butchers and booksellers. Where did it come from . They find that they isolate a virus in the human victims and in the pigs, same virus in the human victims and the pigs. This is a true case that happened in 1998. Named after a particular village in malaysia. They went looking for the reservoir host, where was it . They found it in large fruit bats. The kind that are called flying foxes in asia. How did it occur . The disease detectives finally tracked it through the route of most likely spillover and here is what happened. People were cutting down forests in malaysia for development for agriculture, the timber itself, cutting down the forest, destroyed fruit that habitat. The fruit bats were displaced, they had to look for fruit for food, effector summer us. They started going closer to human settlements. If there were orchards, they were attracted to the orchards. Some of the fruit trees planted by humans were on pig farms, the second stream of income for the pig farmers rent these great big factory scale big firms in northern and Central Peninsula malaysia. Some of these farmers even planted mangrove trees and another fruit tree called the water apple from a very close to the open air pigstys. Some cases, even shading the pigstys. The bats come to the fruit trees planted over the pigstys, they eat the fruit into the mango from the water apple and drop the pulp into the pigsty, they drop vcs into their urine, they drop their virus into the pigsty from the pigs pick up about the pigs get sick and the pigs, its a very infectious respiratory disease, they are coughing and barking and passing the virus from one to the other, the pigs are mostly not dying, however. Its not killing that many fixed but it becomes a horrendous agricultural problem. It starts getting into humans. It kills 109 people. They caused the government to call preventively 1. 1 million pigs, they required to kill the pigs from infected firms. Some firms, people were so scared by the disease that they were abandoning their own forms, running away from their own pig farms and were running loose through the villages and in some cases, abandoned villages and its like a nightmare scenario but it really happened its like something out of early mccarthy for the book of exodus, infectious pigs running wild through the countryside, coughing and one fellow called it the onemile barking cough because you could hear the sick pigs coming. You knew your pig farm would be next. Real story. Encephalitis is the disease in humans. This is what the disease scientists do, they trying to solve ecology and biology of these diseases. What is the virus live . Was the reservoir host . How do humans come in contact with the virus . Were they doing . In many cases, its ecological description that causes the spillover. It gets into sometimes intermediate animal, pigs, a case in australia where a virus falls out of that and gets into nurses. Pigs or horses are referred to as the amplifier host. The virus reproduces abundantly in them, they should the virus indicates into people. The case in hendrick, in australia, the virus is called hendrick after a suburb of brisbane, its a racing suburb. 1994 and one stable enough suburb, horses suddenly started to die. Why are they dying . The get poisonous feed, a veterinarian, a trainer or strainer and stable tried to save the horses. Stable formant got sick and went home, he thought he had a bad flu. The trainer classic, a very bad flu, went to the hospital, the veterinarian never got sick. The trainer died. They isolated virus from him, from his organs into the horses and they found a new virus and named kendra after the summer. They did this disease production, where did it come from . A fellow who was a chief detective on this case during his phd on it, a veterinarian doing phd in ecology, he sampled all sorts of animals, kangaroos, wombats, rats and mice and insects, he didnt find the virus. Finally, he sampled fruit bats and found the virus that matched what killed the horses the trainer. Thats how it got its name. It hasnt killed very many people, it doesnt pass from humans to humans but its a knock on the door, a reminder to us of where these things come from, how they emerge, why they spillover, the fact that they are not all independent cases but part of a pattern in the pattern reflects things that we humans are doing on the planet and they get into humans and in some cases, they caused a local outbreak which is easily controlled which it comes to an end on its own and other cases, they cause widespread suffering and death. Hiv being the case there. I might stop there and see if people have questions. There are a lot of other points i can touch on but let me hear from you all and see what you would like to hear about it. Thank you. First of all, comment, are both toasty warm memory of schooling in the springs and i bet you have been there. Its still there. Has questions about viruses, i imagine its a small number, does anyone know what percentage of viruses are pathogenic like the ones he mentioned . Nobody knows how many viruses there are. We talk about edibles and or other people trying to estimate how many living species there are on planet earth, nobody knows how many species of invertebrate animals and plants and fungi there are with any precision, they make estimates ranging from 8 million to 30 million to 100 million species on you at the viruses and bacteria, nobody knows. The percentage of viruses that come out of animals that are pathogenic to humans may well be a small percentage. The onset are accepted are consequential. Thank you for your question. I enjoyed your book some of the dodo very much. I used it while i was a student in the class so i had a question about the study of the genealogy of these diseases, i was curio curious, using human genome in the deep past with theres evidence of stuff that killed a lot of people, maybe caused a bottleneck in the human population but now is totally harmless because of the survivors have produced down for generations and thats all thats left. Looking back in time for old pandemics to trace disease that way i have not seen much on that. Certainly, one of the things thats very interesting to me is tracing the human genome, something they call endogenous retroviruses which are retroviruses, a jumpy retrovir retrovirus, they interact them selves permanently in the human genome and we dont know exactly, maybe theres been some cases with functions, they be used to be jump dna. They are right in the human genome of past infections and that can be recognized to this or that virus family. That is one thing but there. In terms of the relationship between the infections of the deep past and human genome as it survived, very interesting. I cant give you any particular work of come across. Its probably been done, it would have to be speculative to a certain degree. Im sorry, i really cant tell you much more than that. I have a question, so far weve heard you speak about different diseases and they cause death, usually, the example he gave us was in hundreds, maybe thousands but the reaction seemed to be, it seems like the government, local government was overreacting trying to solve the problem recently for example in texas, a west nile virus and they started spring the swampy areas airplanes, my question is, are we doing more harm when we try to solve these issues . There are other diseases that kill aliens in finance and we are not doing much in here, these are exotic diseases, when we hear about them we go into shock and the reaction seems to be too much, maybe harming the population. I hear you asking two questions, one are we doing some things that cause more harm than good and also, are we sort of taking these things out of proportion to the damage that they do . The me enter the second one first, i asked the same thing about fellow who studies the virus that i mentioned, it also occurs in bangladesh, it has a different story in bangladesh because its a Muslim Country and their art big firms. That doesnt pasture pics as amplifiers, is transmitted into raw date palms that people drink and the bats because of the way tapped, they drink from the pot and leave their waste in the pot and then they drink it and get the virus. I talk to a fellow named steve from cdc and i asked the same thing. There are hundreds of thousands of children in bangladesh dying of bacterial diarrhea and pneumonia in bangladesh he was placed at a place in a hospital, these diseases have been orders in bangladesh for centers. I asked him, why bother this disease that kills a few dozen each year when youve got these other diseases. He told me that this is such a nasty disease and has such potential but we cant ignore it simply because its not small, it could be large. Its important yes, to take these other diseases are more oldfashioned gardenvariety diseases its important to take them seriously and keep it in perspective but its very important also to be vigilant about these new emergent diseases because after all, in 1981, we had a disease emerge called eight. It was one of these. The influence us emerge each year end influence us are capable of killing millions of people also. Thats the response from the experts about why to take these small boutique diseases very seriously. You never know when one of us will become the next big one. In terms of the things we do to try and stop, contain or prevent these, in some cases yes, we probably do more harm than good. Spring for insects, depending on what they are spring with would be an immediate candidate for that, you want to think about that. Weve done so much futile damage over the decades trying to spray infects out of existence and it doesnt work. But there are cases when governments have taken very rigorous action it has been very important and beneficial. With sars, when it emerged from Southern China, he got to hong kong, it was a nasty virus passed by the respiratory route and killed 10 of the people infected, it spread quickly to toronto, beijing and singapore. Infected a total of about 8000 People Killed about 900. Better than 10 . And it was stopped. I heard somebody in one of the book review cycle, somebody said why does he take sars so seriously . It burned out. Cars did not burn out, it was stopped by very good early diagnostic scientific work in the field and laboratory and very firm Public Health measures. Containment of cases, isolation of cases, getting the right equipment and personal protection to the healthcare workers so i didnt go further. One of the things i always wonder about when i think about sars is, if that disease had emerged from a different place than Southern China and hong kong and had gone to different cities than toronto, beijing and singapore, like the whole history have been different. Think about those cities, their command and control cities with a lot of strong government. A lot of good Public Health, affluent facilities. If that disease emerged in the democratic republic of congo, i love the congo but it has a lot of disadvantages and they would have been probably very consequential if Something Like sars had come out of there. You spoke about wildlife aspect of the disease, could you comment on the role of the livestock industry both in terms of the control and prevention of disease but also the potential spread . Factory farming, huge operations like pick firms in malaysia are part of what makes this problem urgent and more dangerous. Part of what makes us, the human population and extension, a forest dry tender waiting for a spark. I mentioned the case in malaysia, the fact that the pigs were kept in these huge outdoor compound and that they were arranged in a particular way with fruit trees was part of what resulted in the spillover. The other thing is that huge aggregations of wildlife also represent populations in which a bug can evolve. The more abundantly a virus replicates, the more likely to mutate. If its an rna virus as opposed to double helix dna virus, it will be particular high. It will generate a lot of change from a lot of genetic variability as it replicates itself and thats great for Natural Selection. Rna viruses evolve more quickly than other kinds of pathogens and let them build up huge populations so that there are many host infected and they contain many virus particles, you provide abundant opportunity for evolution to function and for some degree strains to promote, that is both really transmissible among humans and virulent. That represents a danger. The mass production of livestock is part of that and its only one aspect. There are others, im sure. Its part of what makes us particularly jeopardized by the situation as it is. Your experience, following scientists to these areas where theres a high rate of crossov crossover, spillover of these diseases, what is something you noticed in efforts to educate the local human population on how to modify they lifestyles to better avoid this crossover . There are certain efforts in bangladesh, they are trying to educate people, not to drink raw date palm that could potentially contain the virus. If you cook it, you can kill the buyers. But people like to drink raw, etc. Edition from a seasonal treat so there are things around the world in Southern China, they crackdown on the big wet markets, at least above ground, they found underground, there is a black market but the big wet market where all kinds of wildlife are sold live for food. As a fashion in Southern China, they call it wild flavor, for eating wildlife, not because people need the protein for subsistence but because they have some money and its considered to be robust and tasty food. One other thing on that in terms of education, local people, i mentioned that the original spillover, a pandemic strain of hiv, i went back to retrace what was probably the route that it took coming out of southeastern cameroon, down River Systems that took it along down to the main stem congo and eventually to the cities, the city that became a kaiser. Thats where it started to have a higher rate of transmission. Rows were different, the population was more concentrated. There were other factors that i described in my chapter on hiv. Is it something thats always reactive or proactive efforts . Thank you for your question. Theres some very interesting initiatives of vigilance that are going on, and you may have heard about some of these. One of them that comes to mind is something called the global viral forecasting initiative, founded by a fellow named nathan wolf, a youngish disease scientist, based at stanford. He worked in cameroon for years, doing field work on the transmission of viruses from African Wildlife into hunters and the people the bush meat hunters and their families. Nathan has worked on this a long time. He has a big grant from google now. Hes expanded this operation into as i said a global viral forecasting initiative. He now calls it global viral. One of the things, just one sample of the kind of work thats being done is that he and his people send little kits out with the people usually its men, the men who do the bush meat hunting from these villages in central africa, little kits that involve filter papers, just simple filter papers, the kind you use for medical purposes and probably not that different from what you would filter your coffee with, and zip lock bags, and they pay the hunters to collect samples for them. A dot of blood on a filter paper, then placed in a zip lock bag now can be used as a sample from which in the laboratory, a week or two weeks or a month later, you can extract dna or rna to identify a virus. Thats what they do. It is a big advance over what used to have to be done. You would have to capture an animal, take a blood sample from it and put it on liquid nitrogen and rush it back to the u. S. It kept cool . Liquid nitrogen would freeze it. No i mean the dots of blood. They are at room temperature. They dont have to be kept cool. I think they use Pcr Technology and a lot of other fancy laboratory things to extract, not live virus. You cant extract live virus from a sample like that. You cant grow it in the lab, but you can extract dna and rna to identify what was there. Thats what nathan wolf and his people are doing, the idea being to spot the next big one at a very very early phase, decades passed before we realized that hiv was in the human population. The idea was to try and catch the next big one much earlier than that. How do these deadly animal viruses tend to evolve, and do you think they will be they will continue to evolve at the rate that they have done in recent experience of monitoring and trying to control them . Two things can happen, if you are a virus, picture yourself a virus living in a monkey in central africa, humans are coming, tearing down your habitat, tearing down the monkeys habitat, theyre killing the monkey for food. Theyre, you know, building villages, settlements, timber camps, so the horizons, the prospects of that particular virus are shrinking and shrinking and shrinking. At the point where that monkey approaches the brink of extinction, two things can happen to the virus, it can go extinct along with the monkey or it can make a leap to another host. Viruses dont have purposes. I dont want to make this sound you know, they dont make choices. Evolution is not that way anyway. Things just happen and they have consequences. And if the monkey is killed, and there is no spillover, then the virus goes extinct probably with the monkey. But if the virus gets into a human, by chance, by opportunity, and it finds itself able to replicate in the human and then it adapts to the human by mutating and undergoing Natural Selection so it better adapted in the human, both to replicate in the human and then transmitted to the next human. Then that virus has won the sweep stakes. It passed from a species of host with shrinking prospects to a species of host that is the most abundant species of large vertebrate animal thats ever existed on this planet, us. Are there thousands or even millions of these viruss that have the potential to then evolve into into a dangerous killing virus . Yes, presumably and then be transmitted to humans . I think the safest answer is yes, presumably. Were just scratching into that area. Some of these scientists that i talked to say that we dont know how many species there are out there in the tropical forests. We know there are millions. We can safely assume that each one has a unique virus, at least one. Okay. We ran out of questions just as we ran out of time. Okay. Thank you very much. [applause] thank you for your questions. Thank you. Youre watching a special edition of book tv, airing now during the week wile members of congress while members of congress are working in their districts because of the coronavirus pandemic. Tonight at 8 00 eastern, we will feature best sellers. First journalists, on their book tight rope about issues facing the working class and rural america. They were interviewed by oregon democratic senator. Then Tara Westover recalls growing up in the idaho money tans in her book idaho mountains, in her book. After that, charlie kirk and his book on the new conservative agenda. Please enjoy book tv now and watch over the weekend on cspan 2. Cspan has round the clock coverage of the federal response to the coronavirus pandemic, all available on demand at cspan. Org coronavirus. Watch white house briefings, updates from governors and state officials. Track the spread throughout the u. S. And the world with interactive maps. Watch on demand any time, unfiltered, at cspan. Org coronavirus. Let me tell you a little bit about our author this evening. Hes a senior reporter