Question none of what happened in the trial would happen today. It does matter that question and this is the originating moment. This is the originating thing of 100 years really of injustice. Thank you all so much for listening. [applause] anyone to read a book as prose is 25 off and he will sign it for you right now. Think so much for coming. [applause] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] that was Patrick Phillips with blood at the root that i will tell you a little bit about how we at Publishers Weekly choose their list of best books each year. There are eight of us in the reviews department and at the end of the year a pool of freelancers who do the reviews asked them what they think are the best books and in the course via we read as many of them as we can ourselves. One that i personally have read and really enjoyed as a textbook by ed yong i contain multitudes which is about the largely unexplored world of the microbiome. [inaudible conversations] thank you all for coming. You are in a panel called is a Science Writer should start out by pointing out that viruses are microbes as well but itwe makes sense to call this because of our two riders and we have here. This is ed yong he is a writer for the atlantic author of a new book a great new book called i contain multitudes about the mu microbiomes and the panel and here is carl zimmer a Science Writer for the near times in the author of many books including most recently a planet ofir viruses. I am sonia shah the author of a book called pandemic about how microbes cause pandemics and all of these books are going to be b for sale by barnes noble and we will be signing him after this session at signing table h so i hope you guys can come and join us to have more discussion. D like to ask if anyone here actually in microbiologist. We have four. So, cant make anything up. You guys can correct us we get anything wrong. That will just be me. A its really interesting time to talk about microbuyol because theres been a bare paradigm shift in recent years. Sense the late 19th century, we thought about microbes mostly as these mall live rent bruters and i call that approach, microbial seen xenophobia. And it made because the first microscope we could detect would grow in a dish in a lab, and those are often the ones were responsible for, fairly dramatic diseases, but whaty we you know is that microbes are everywhere. Theyre all around us. Its really their planet. Four billion years. They were here before with got here. So all of our interactions have evolved in the context of a microbial world now. We knock from our immind processes and dietary prefer reps are linked to the interaction between microbes need. A new we of think about the microbial world and our place it in which i why the work that they do is so important right now to get all of to us understand the science and what it means. And i think theres a real urgency to that question. Because i think we can all agree that microbe ya xenophobia as a paradigm has failed. We have seen increasing emergence of highly resistant bacterial pathogens, including some that can resist every single class of antibiotics, so that chemical onslaught is creating a worse problem in many ways. And then over the last 50 years we have had over 300 knew pathogens emerge. Like ebola and zika, and these microbes ebola comes out of bats and a couple years ago it killed 11,000 people in west africa. So well talk a little bit up here for maybe half an hour and then have a conversation with you guys. Want to start with carl. Every time we have a new microbe on the scene i feel like our responses range from either both expressions of powerlessness and its either panic and hysteria or denial and dismissal. So sell us about zika virus and where should we fall on that continuum . Yeah. So, zika virus is one of these emerging diseases that has gone from being sort of completely unknown to something that we just talk about at the water cooler. Within just a matter of months. The familiar routine were going through are that theres viruses like mers that no one now about and its interesting when youre work agoen a book about viruses, so the First Edition of my book came out in 2011, and when you write a book you try to get up to date as much as you and can then kind of hope it can stand the test of time. And then in 2014, my editor dropped me an email and said, barely say anything about ebola in this book itch think people are going to want to know about ebola. So i had the opportunity to write about ebola and sort of update the book in general. So the second edition came out in 2015 and there i made sure i oh, theres going to be ebola. Because of the Ebola Outbreak was Something Like we had never seen before. Ebola had first emerged in 1976 but relatively small outbreaks. Affecting a few hundred people in various parts of central africa, and then it looks like in december of 2013, there was a begin the first person to get sick was in west africa and it really didnt sort of become something people were aware of until spring of 2014, and then by october 2014 it had peaked and wasnt until june 2016 that the last case was recorded. Just a few months without a case of ebola in west africa. So this has been years of an outbreak, way bigger than anything before. There will over 28,000 cases, over 11,000 people died. So like 40 mortality rate. That terrifying. And i mean issue dont know what your thoughts are but i think that this was kind of this is an opportunity to see how modern Public Health could handle something we have been anticipating for a while and i dont think we did very well at all. The monitoring was terrible. The Vaccine Development was particularly show there had been a vaccine that was in the works for years but nobody want to pay to do mow research because like, who gets sick with ebola. And so actually, there was a great spurring to go on and actually put the experiments into humans and try to get a vaccine for humans ready. And they actually started really doing serious testing on until spring 2015. Way after the peak of the epidemic. A lot of people died. And many of those deaths would have been avoided with a vaccine. So now just in these last few flareups, people are getting what is called ring vaccination where you are vices nateed in the area around vaccinate an youre around the outbreak to keep it from spreading further. Thats great. Why didnt we have that three years ago . So, i tried to get as much as i could of that into the second edition but could i do a third edition because were looking at zika virus, and the story of zika virus is eerily similar too ebola weapon knew about zika virus in the 40s. Identified in a monkey in uganda, and then it turned out that people in the area had antibodies to zika which suggested they were being exposed to it. But people didnt pay attention. One of many, many, many obscure viruses that are just youve go into thunder textbooks and find them and thats it. It gradually emerged, transplantation milted by mosquitoes as opposed to ebola, and then only in 2007 there was someone actually really registered an outbreak, and this was in polynesia. Not ugoonda. Uganda. So it had gotten around the world. A couple more outbreaks, relatively small, involving a few hundred people layear when it showed up in brazil, and then things just exploded. So, as of now, 2515 outbreak that started has year, 55 countries now that have zika, that didnt have it before. We have it in puerto rico, miami, and throughout the new world, except for chile, uruguay and canada, probably because anywhere not good for mosquitoes that carry it. And its i dont think people are aware enough of how bad things are already. In this outbreak. Even in the United States. So in port reek cove its special port reek cove especially about. Over 14,000 cases. Not sure how many of those cases of birth defected that come with zika have been caused. Probably in hundreds. We now realize zika causes the babies to develop very, very small brains. And in the United States the latest count is 43 locally acquired cases, and this just happened recently. So theyre trying to stop it in miami bus theres no reason to think its going to work very well. This thing how have we done with zika . Not terribly well. Here it is in the United States. Theres been Animal Research on vaccines. This is the kind of thing you can vaccinate for but were probably going to Start Testing veeps maybe in january. Vaccines maybe in january. Here in the United States were not we cant even put out the money to control it. There are things we can do, like Mosquito Control and research on vaccines. Congress is stuck in political games and is not giving out the money. Bear in mine its been estimated that taking lifetime cost tore faking care of keyed with microcephaly, 10 million. So were being incredibly penny wise and pound foolish, not even penny wise, just foolish. That what were looking at again. And i think the other parallel that i fine really striking here is that this just shows yet again just how remarkable viruses are. Ed may give us a reason to feel happy and warm and cuddly being the microbial world. Aisle here to frequent you out. The zika has ten genes, ebola had seven genes and theyre running rings around us. We have immune systems we have evolved for billions of years. They find a way around it. Theyre thriving, spreading all over the world. And what is happening is that there are all these viruses in the Animal Kingdom and spill ought as we are basically moving further and further into the zika system, and disturbing the homes of bats, monkeys, and other wildlife, and they are finding a very nice new abundant host and its us, and im not totally fatalistic about this. Just a couple weeks ago, a great man named d. A. Hen doorson dep her down side. He led the erat indication of smallpox can which i is way worse. It killed billions of people. And we wiped it out from the blame. So, if we have a dedication, we can actually fight these things, but we cant just ignore them and pretend theyll take care of themselves. So you were going to do kind of a Good Cop Bad Cop thing. Hes the bad cop. Ed is going to tell us the good side of this. What is interesting is that were seeing these knew microbes and the beginning is really horrible, right . Zika virus comes into a human population totally susceptible and you see all this sickness. What happens over time . Over time, we get used to certain virus. We start to live with them they become part of our eecology and thats the research you have been covering is focusing on. Yes. Think i am def lift any the good cop. I dont want to contradict any of the concerns that carl has raised but the book i wrote is about the more beneficial side of the microbial world, and talk about how microbes have been with us for the longest time. We evolved in an microbial world and to this date we depend on my microbes for health, immunities, development. Every human body contains trillions of tens of trillions of bacteria, and they help to build and calibrate our immune system. They die just ore food and protect us from disease and infection that i may even help to shape our behavior. And even viruses contain many order of magnitude, more virus than bacterial cells and most of those actually infect and kill bacteria. Theyre part of the teaming echo system win it. We are in fact three large teaming, thriving worlds. And i talk about how these microbes arent just passengers. They do important things in our lives. I talk below the roles they play in humans. But if you look broader in the Animal Kingdom you see all kind of incredible super powers they convey. They allow worms, flatworms to regenerate their entire bodies. There are birds call which paints their eggs in antibacterial paste. And microbe rich fluids that help to protect the chicked win from infection. There are even very wasps that use viruses encoded within their own dna to kill, to diffuse the immune system of the pathogens. One thing i want to talk about now is a case where humans have actually engineered a relationship between an animal and a microbe, to help us, to improve our health. This actually ties into one of the stories carl was talking about. The story begins in 1924, when a couple of microbiologists discovered a new type of bacteria that lived in the cells of infants. They found it in a mosquito, a brown mosquito, which they checked near boston. And for ages no one knew what this thing was. They didnt know whether it was common or what it was. And it took the scientists 12 years to give it a name and one named it after his friend and called it and it took many decade for nip anyone to work out what it did but in 60s and 0s, scientists realited this thing was everywhere. It is in ants, beetles, in Something Like 40 of species of insects and other. E are the most diverse and numerous planets the plane. That makes it one of the most successful bacteria in the world. You can think of it as one of the greatest pandemics in the history of life. And what it does veries from host to host. Sometimes its a parasite and is harmful. It doesnt like males because it passes from the mother to daughter. Sometimes kills them outright. Imsometimes transforms the females. Sometime allows the female to reproduce a sexually by cloning. Thes so have no need for males but sometimes it is an ally. It is a mutual it benefits its host in bedbugs, for example, it provides something missing from the blood. Acteds like a living some caterpillars use it to stop leaves from turning red in the from turning red in the autumn so that they can go to eat even as the world together dies around it. Av but humans have a useful back here as well. For 25 years they tried to introduce this into a species of insect and that is which spreads the fever, yellow fever and seek seek. The reason they found this twofold. One, when the mosquito for some reason becomes really bad spreading the virus is tied to these diseases. So it is effectively dangue or zika. Because it is good at manipulating and the way that ive talked about is really good at spreading through the populations of the idea is if you release a small number of the mosquitos into the wild, when there is a few generations in their time, the entire population should carry this microbe and be unable to transmit these diseases. This has been tested in simulated in the mathematical models, and it was tested i think in 2011 for the first time in a couple of australian suburbs where the mosquitoes were released into the wild and very quickly in the span of months you solve the problem went from zero to 100. So now the Organization Called to eliminate and has been testing it in Different Countries around the world. They are testing the approach in brazil, colombia, indonesia and via tom to release the mosquitoes but it has millions of people to see if the same approach can indeed work at the larger scales whether they will spread or dominate as much as they expect it to and whetherr that can then drive down the transmission that causes it. I think the approach has a lot of advantages in theworld he organization. It is cheap unlike insecticides that can be toxic and need to be re be sprayed. The communities reject those kind of approaches. And it seems that it stops the spread of th viruses through different routes stimulating the system in many ways and that is, reassuring because we have a habit of running rings around us and since no biologist would back an approach assuming it wouldnt get the better of us at some point or another but if the bacterium allows them in many different ways that many different types of resistance you would need which would be hard. Y so, here we have a reallys interesting approach to. The point i want to make is thad all of it started with some basic curiosity about the4 the microbial world. They couldnt possibly have predicted that this is where it would be. O. In fact, one of them that lend his name to the bacteria died in the 50s before anyone realized how common it was. He couldnt possibly have foreseen where this would lead now, and in many ways that is the study in a nutshell. For the longest time, we ignored and neglected microbes thinking of them to be irrelevant to us and then we went through a period we are reaching an era of exploration and appreciation of realizing the crucial role that they play in our lives and the entire kingdom and we are starting to manipulate those thp partnerships for our own and our attempt at doing so there is tremendous potential and that is where it will leave us in the future that excites me so much and why i felt compelled to write a book about it. The curiosity that led to theevd study. Its interesting we want to think of them and u as are theyd or are they bad. We have this dichotomy that we are trying to push them into. The same microbe can behave differently and in the same context. There is no same thing as a good or bad microbe. They are germs that we need to destroy and i think also what ik wrong. It comes in many streams in some would argue species. Obviously the relationships are very contextual and dynamic and we all need ways of keeping the relationships happy. When there is a conflict of interest between the microbes we are encountering like zika, smallpox and ebola. For anything living inside something else, if its activities spill off its host too soon, thats bad news. Its going to become extinct because its basically burned on down its own house. But if you can raise a big family and say its time we find a different house and then burn it down it would be okay. So, so actually these viruses and other pathogens evolve at Different Levels of deadliness and sometimes you can actually see this when in the wild so foo example they took offense at how are we going to control this and indicates that there there is a terrible virus that killed hairs in europe. It started killing them off like crazy and then it started to become less deadly. It didnt get rid of the rabbits. The virus actually sort of evolved and adjusted its deadliness to begin to get to host to host the most efficient way of making the viruses. We think of things as being good or bad in a very egocentric way. But these things are evolving to a. Of a coopted them and used them to make proteins in the placenta and these are crucial proteins just recently we discovered that viruses were also harnessed for muscle so basically there are proteins that are to be generated from a virus