Transcripts For CSPAN2 Books About Pandemics 20240713 : comp

And now im book tv we would like to highlight some Program Summer archives of focus on pandemics. All of the programs are about to see can be viewed in their entirety by visiting our website booktv. Org using the Search Button at the top of the page. First, in 2000 on cspans book note Program Science journalist talks about the history of influenza, specifically the 1918 outbreak. Heres a portion of that interview. Hadley thought much about the fluid just seemed like something that came round every year people get sick and then they get better again. Ive never really been interested in it at all within a few years ago im a reporter for the new york times, wrote an article for the times about a really miraculous discovery. There is a guy at Walter Reed Army Medical Center and he was writing and that technical journal called Science Magazine that he had managed to get some lung tissue from a soldier who died in 1918. And that lung tissue, there were still fragments of the virus that it killed him. When i interviewed this man, about his work he told me about the influence of pandemic of 1918. I was stunned. I had never heard of it or seen anything like this. Its the worst Infectious Disease in recorded history. It killed so many people do Something Like that came by today i would kill more people the top ten killers wrapped together 1. 4 million americans or Something Like that. I saw that was some centers for Disease Control that 99 of the people that died in this epidemic were under age 65. It was an astonishing devastating epidemic and what made the story for me was this idea that all these years later, was a century later molecular biology as there is such incredible serendipity involved someone could actually have some lung tissue that some of the viral genes in there and asked the question what was this virus . How could the virus become such a killer. And could it happen again and if so would you recognize it in time . Theres one reference in the book that may be as many as 20 to 100 Million People died worldwide in 1918. Smack there making the number upward people now think 40 million is an underestimate its immediate estimate i heard most recently theres a meeting of historians and people in south africa that think the true number worldwide was closer to 100 million and a proximally 20 million died on the indian subcontinent alone. Smack what is influenza . Its a simple virus that only lives in human lungs. While its there its only job is to take up lung cell and make it into a virus factory so the virus gets in it takes the cells machinery and forces it to make new viruses. Then the cell dies and the viruses escape infected new cell its a simple little thing. What happens to the body then . There are four hallmarks of influence ive heard one of them is you get a fever and you take your bed. You have muscle aches and pain save muscle aches and pain fever you have a cough you dont always sneeze but you have a cough. Ive ever had a bye the way . I think i had it once. You you dont know what feels like . Smack i did i remember thinking so this is the flus five days of torture i silliman the muscle aches they were the worst in the high fever. By jim back in 1980 where to start . Thats a very good question the first time it came as the United States in a big way it showed up at a place called camp bevins which is near boston people thought at the time this might be germ warfare because they couldnt believe it was Something Like the flu. Many people insisted on putting the word influence and quotation marks. It was during world war one and there were rumors that bennis greasy cloud floating over Boston Harbor floating germs and it and its killing people in Boston Harbor or the germans are putting something into bayer aspirin they would kill people. When it arrived was one of the most horrible things anyone had witnessed. That so many young soldiers dying that they had to have special training to take away the dead. The bodies were stacked up. It was so shocking that the Surgeon General senate contingent of leading doctors the United States to go out and say what is going on at camp devens . One of them later wrote his memoirs and said i cant even dare to think about this thing. This is camp devens in the fall of 1918 when the deadly influenza virus demonstrated the inferiority of taking of human life he said these are memories burned on his brain he would like to remove he possibly could. When they describe what happened when these doctors want to see an autopsy they said there so many dead that they had to step over the bodies just to get into the autopsy room the bodies of the dead who had not been removed yet. When they watched an autopsy take place, the military doctor open the chest of a young man who had died and there were his lungs sodden and heavy with his body filled with fluid the man had essentially died because his lungs filled with fluid and a doctor there whod been pretty much insurmountable and nothing could shake and turn to him and said this must be a plague. He could not believe it. In this your book explain what they are the bottom picture. Guest these are some of the samples of lung tissue from people of 1918. What was this virus and how would we ever now and what was really miraculous was there is a military warehouse people described it as a library of congress of the dead started by Abraham Lincoln every time a military doctor doesnt autopsy some of the tissue in the persons medical records in his big warehouse. There were people who died of flu 1918 and at the time doctors took little snippets of the lung tissue, soak them in formaldehyde wrapped up in and set them to the warehouse. Doctor tappan berger at walter reed put in a requisition for some people who died of that fluent asked if they could find some lung tissue that had viral and it in that picture you saw is of the little pieces of pads and wax with lung tissue and an inside that lung tissue after all these years there still that flu virus or 1918. A back to this path Biology Institute at walter reed of you been there . There are 3 million what samples . Smack yes there in boxes and jars and things its a big sort of corrugated metal warehouse its protected from burning down or maybe because more cheap to make that way, they have these big racks of box after box after box. Theres a man there, they miss out riddick and i said i think id like to get some lung samples was asked for his people who died of influenza in 1918 and who died very, very quickly because they did not want the person to have gotten the flu virus and then lingered and meanwhile the virus was left in your lungs had died. Service actually this record since 1917 have been computerized. He can get a computer printout of where to look, he goes over with his ladders and his hoax and he takes on these boxes, and them are samples. Theres cancer tumors, brain tissue, theres all sorts of stuff in that warehouse. This was lung tissue. Sue mccue said Abraham Lincoln started it other samples from back during the civil war also there . Right after the civil war and then on sort of like a packrats paradise. As a brilliant idea because when i started this who would ever know what you would use it for . The idea that in 1918 no one ever found the human influenza virus. So the idea that somebody someday could come back and make use of this material was Just Brilliant i know im jumping way ahead, do they know what caused the influence of 1918 . Guest they note the flu virus. They had three lung samples from people who died in 1918 who had those genes and them. Getting them out is pushing the limits of molecular biology it takes a long time they describe it is putting it together detailed mosaic piecebypiece to put it together theyve got some completely put together their choosing them in the order of the likely theyll think ill get an easy answer of what made the virus so deadly. Unfortunately the first three of said their bird viruses pig viruses but they have not provided the answer yet to why it was dangerous. We went let me ask a couple questions about the pathology incision this way one that works are . Guest one that i saw but im sure theres others. Connected you to sensors interest or traffic . How big is it . Its right near. 3 miles away in maryland just over the border. Host one of the things i must admit when i picked this book up and i didnt expect to get as the drama there some personal. [laughter] stories in here that are fairly dramatic reeves surprised about the competition going on to find this . Guest by the time i started to write this book i knew there was a story. I write books for myself i read fiction for fun. I would not write a book unless i thought there was a story because you can do chapter after chapter of the textbook, for me is not something i would pick up and read just because i wanted to read it. So thats what appealed to me was there was drama there. It was competition. I set all the strengths and weaknesses of the search for scientific data. Host go back to 1918 again. Was this a more devastating flu than the average when we hear about all the time every day . There is no comparison we think about the number of dead, i think earlier 1. 5 million americans die from Something Like this came by in a typical flu season 20000 die. Most of them are very old or have some other sort of chronic medical condition that weakens them here 99 are under age 65. Its a very peculiar desk curve that shaped like a dot w. The very young guys in people between the ages of 20 and 40 died in huge numbers at the middle of the w and then at the end some old people died. Sue and i like you to reach page 20 find if you dont mind, thomas, the authors brother died and then he wrote this. Guest he was writing a fiction book and i asked a number of people he said the description of his brothers desk was actually his brothers real name and it was a description that was not fictionalized it was what happened when his brother died of the flu. See what you mind reading this in here and tell us why you put this in the book . Guest can i tell you why first . I think when i talk about the flu or in people who are living today talk about the flu, almost impossible for us to imagine what it was like. I tried is much as i could put the words and people whod been there because when youve been there and seen it, it has an emotion we cant, i cant capture i dont think anybody else i have spoken to has been able to capture. The reason i put the thomas description was because of all the descriptions i read about people dying of the flu, this went really touched me. I almost brought me to it tears it was the saddest thing and you can imagine yourself in that room watching somebody die like this it was one of those moments, i cant forget this passage thats why put it in. Wolf came home to a self watches brother was lying in a sick room upstairs while his family waited for what they feared was inevitable. Wolf went upstairs to the great shaded light of the room or been late. And he saw in that moment staring recognition his beloved 260 brother was dying now heres a clue of how he died. Vincent lungs and body lay three quarters covered by the betting its a gaunt outline was bitterly twisted below the covers in an attitude of struggle and torture. He seem not to belong to him, somehow is distorted and detached as if it belonged to a beheaded criminal. In this sallow yellow of his face had turned gray mist by two red flags of fevers the three day beard was growing the beer had some how horrible recalled the corrupt vitality of hair which can grow from a raw in corpse and his thin lips were lifted in a grimace of strangulation about his white somehow dead looking teeth as inch by inch he gasped to get air into his lung. He sounded this gasping is rapid unbelievable filling the room and orchestrating every moments final note of horror. The next day ben grew delirious. By 4 00 oclock it was apparent death was near. Ben has big consciousness, unconsciousness and delirium but most of the time he is delirious. His breathing was easier, he hummed a popular song long time forgotten front in attics of his childhood but always he returns to this quiet humming to a popular song of wartime sentimental but now tragically moving to babies prayer at twilight. And then he sank into unconsciousness. His eyes were almost close, the gray flicker was gone coated with the sheen of sensibility and death. He lay quietly on his back very straight without pain and with the curious upturned thrust of his sharp thin face. His neck was firmly shut, wolf stayed with had that night fervently praying out of his body did not believe in god or prayer. Wherever you are, be good to bentonite, show him the way. He lost count of the minutes, the hours he heard only the feeble rattle of a dying breath. He woke suddenly calling his family sir knowledge that the end was near. His body grew rigid before them. Then an elastic gasp been drew upon the air and a long and powerful respiration, his gray eyes opened fields of the terrible vision of all life in one moment, he seemed to rise forward from his bills without support, flame a light a glory. Ben passed instantly, and unafraid as he had lived into the shades of death. Snap of open a bar i cars to look up author programs about pandemics. 2012 Science Writer david looked at diseases that originated with animals but then spread to humans. They call these animal infections that pass into humans is on ocs. A virus could be other form of infectious bug it could be bacteria, protozoan, the creatures that cause malaria, it could be a fungus, it could be a worm. That could be some thing called a prion which causes bad cow disease. But usually its a virus. Virus is more than anything. Thats what causes these. They passed from animals into humans they dont always cause disease. Sometimes they become harmless passengers in humans. Theres a virus i talk about in the book and i could not resist it because its got such a wonderfully gruesome name. You have to find the light side of the subject where you can find it. With all due respect to the people who suffer, the people who die, there are a lot of deaths in this book is strictly nonfiction is a lot of death and i respect that. But still, i did not won this book tv just a painful gruesome duty just an important scary book i also wanted it to be a pleasurable reading experience i wanted to be a page turner to have moments of suspense, have mystery and discovery moments of heroism by some of these scientists who are studying this type of thing and even some moments of humor. Its not a very funny book. But i hope it might be the funniest book about a bully you ever read. [laughter] as i said, some of these books, when they pass into humans are harmless. But often they are not. If the zillah gnosis passes into humans and causes mayhem there, we call it a zoonotic disease and 60 of the Infectious Diseases of humans are zoonotic diseases for the other 40 , everything comes of zoonotic origin in the broader sense. For instance, measles. That is only a disease of humans. Where did it come from . It probably came from a virus that causes a disease and hoofed animals in africa. But it has been in humans long enough it has evolved and become adapted specifically to humans. It is different enough that its considered and functions as a uniquely human virus. But, the 60 that are considered zoonotic, are passing back and forth or passing from animals to humans on either a continuing basis or have done that very recently. And that includes things like a ebola, marburg, all of the influences, west nile virus, hiv i talk at some length in the book about the ecological origin of the aids pandemic. We now know the pandemic strain of hiv passed from a single chimpanzee to a single human and a fairly small corner of southeastern cameroon and central africa. In 19 oh eight or earlier give or take a margin of your how do we know that . Because are some wonderful scientists who worked on the genetics of the viruses that are precursors to hiv, the viruses that are in chimps and monkeys and the genetic diversity of hiv1 group m which is the pandemic strain of hiv these scientists have managed to locate the spillover event with a high degree of confidence theres always a certain provision albion science with a high degree of confidence they have located to southeastern cameroon, one chance and jen chimpanzee presumably a chimpanzee who kille the human who killed the chimpanzee got a cut on his head in his butchering the chimp for food. Very early part of the 20th century, sometime around or before 19 oh eight. Michael wore a bee and beatrice hawn are the scientists who with their colleagues and labs have done that work. So, there are these diseases, they spillover, they are zoonotic. One other slightly technical term i want to familiarize you with reservoir host in which the bug, virus, whatever it is lives endemic, permanently inconspicuously without causing disease, without causing mayhem in that particular creature, why does it live there can immensely . Why does that live there nondestructively . Probably because its been and that species for millions of years and in accommodation has evolved. So a virus in its reservoir host replicates but it does not replicate cataclysmic leak. It tends to replicate slowly and it does not generally cause symptoms. So its invisible it hides in its reservoir host. And then something happens, humans kill and eat that reservoir host, the coming contact with it somehow maybe ill tell you couple stories of ways this can happen. That reservoir host sheds virus and that virus gets into humans and then it becomes a zoonotic disease. One of the things the scientists do as they study this field and as they focus on these different diseases, one of the very first things they do is identify the reservoir host. A new disease spills over in malaysia. It is killing pigs then its killing pigs farmers and pig butchers and pork sellers, where did it come from . They isolate a virus and human victims, and in the pigs. Same virus in the human victims and in the pigs. This is a true case it happened in 1998, they named me back virus after a particular village in malaysia. Then they went looking for the reservoir host where was it . They found it in large fruit bats large fruit pads that are called flying foxes in asia. How did the spillover occurred . The disease detectives finall