Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking. Hey everybody, and welcome to Forward Thinking, the
Speaker 1: podcast that looks at the future and says, I love
Speaker 1: what you do, but I know that you're toxic. I'm
Speaker 1: Joe McCormick and I'm Lauren voc Obama. Jonathan Strickland is
Speaker 1: not with us today. He's at its c E S.
Speaker 1: So we are flying solo. Right. He is roaming the
Speaker 1: floors searching the world for the technology of the future,
Speaker 1: to bring that knowledge to you and tell you how
Speaker 1: it's gonna work. So you might have already seen Jonathan
Speaker 1: and his first video from c E S. There is
Speaker 1: going to be another one next week. Um. But so
Speaker 1: while he's out of town, Lauren and I figured we
Speaker 1: would talk about some topics that interested us. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: so we landed immediately upon mosquitoes, right, because they're awesome,
Speaker 1: not because they're horrible. They're horrible, they're useless. So I
Speaker 1: love nature, and I love all the critters of the
Speaker 1: forest and all of the species that exist on this
Speaker 1: wonderful planet. But I think maybe I could make an
Speaker 1: exception and just put aside by nature protecting attitude and
Speaker 1: say mosquitoes suck. Literally, they're horrible, and I want to
Speaker 1: destroy them. And I'm not even sure if I should
Speaker 1: feel bad about that. Yeah, usually we're pretty we're pretty
Speaker 1: tree huggy, circle of life kind of people around here.
Speaker 1: But I think that, yes, this is one example of
Speaker 1: which we just kind of go, well, you know, they
Speaker 1: caused some six hundred and twenties seven thousand deaths from malaria,
Speaker 1: and so maybe they're just not good for anything. I
Speaker 1: think it's a conclusion at the end of that. Well, okay,
Speaker 1: so maybe we shouldn't go so far as to say
Speaker 1: we'll just completely eliminate mosquitoes, but it is fair to
Speaker 1: say we are in a war with mosquitoes. We are
Speaker 1: fighting a battle for our lives, lives for the lives
Speaker 1: of many human beings who are put greatly at risk
Speaker 1: by the diseases that mosquitoes spread um and of course
Speaker 1: malaria is the chief among those. So what are the
Speaker 1: numbers on this? How many people are are put at
Speaker 1: risk by malaria? And there's some two hundred and seven
Speaker 1: million cases worldwide, and in anyway, these are the newest
Speaker 1: numbers that we've got from the World Health Organization WHO
Speaker 1: in and you know, the mortality rates from the disease
Speaker 1: have have fallen some forty five since the year two
Speaker 1: thousand due to a whole bunch of new technologies that
Speaker 1: have come out, which which is fabulous, but there's still that,
Speaker 1: I mean, there's still hundreds of thousands of people dying
Speaker 1: of this disease every year. And and that's you know,
Speaker 1: you've also got West Nile virus, lots of other things
Speaker 1: that skit is spread. But okay, so what is malaria?
Speaker 1: Malaria is a disease caused by parasites from the genus Plasmodium. Right.
Speaker 1: It's not just a normal bacteria or virus, is it right? Right? Um?
Speaker 1: And only five of these specific uh species of Plasmodium
Speaker 1: parasites have been known to cosmolarian humans. They different strains
Speaker 1: cosmlarian and other animals as well. One is a new
Speaker 1: recent crossover from monkeys, which is pretty exciting. These parasites
Speaker 1: are spread through the bites of infected mosquitoes. Yeah, apparently
Speaker 1: all of the species of mosquito that transmit the malaria
Speaker 1: parasite are found within the genus and awfulies And that's
Speaker 1: a name which comes from the Greek which literally means useless,
Speaker 1: without advantage, or good for nothing. So it's like literally
Speaker 1: part of their very etymological identity that they must be destroyed.
Speaker 1: They're good for nothing, I mean they're they're probably good
Speaker 1: for feeding some species of birds or spiders. Perhaps. Again
Speaker 1: I'm not I'm not advocating complete extermination of the genus.
Speaker 1: But again, this is war. It is it is and Okay,
Speaker 1: So so rates of infection depend on a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of different things things. Yeah, it's it's from the species
Speaker 1: of mosquitoes, specific lifespan um. It's it's taste for human
Speaker 1: blood because some mosquitoes are more bloodthirsty than others. Um Uh.
Speaker 1: Climate and weather conditions like rainfall, temperature, and humidity can
Speaker 1: affect this and also um different populations can have different immunity.
Speaker 1: Over the years of exposure to small amounts of this parasite,
Speaker 1: you can build up an immunity. Um. And so when
Speaker 1: the climate changes earlier I'm sorry, when the weather changes
Speaker 1: in the climate slowly kind of fills stuff in. Different
Speaker 1: populations of humans that are perhaps less immune to the
Speaker 1: disease can can catch it, and it can run pretty rampant. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it tends to come in sort of like boom
Speaker 1: and fade cycles, right like during the rainy seasons and
Speaker 1: the warm seasons, malaria booms exactly. Yeah, Um. And the
Speaker 1: basic way that it works is that, UM, it's a
Speaker 1: single celled parasite and it gets into your blood cells
Speaker 1: and reproduces until it kills the cell, which then releases
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of toxins and more parasites and repeats
Speaker 1: the process. So um, you know, eventually, like in with
Speaker 1: short term it will cause kind of flu like symptoms,
Speaker 1: but in the long term it can cause organ failures,
Speaker 1: brain problems, cardiovascular problems, pulmonary problems, you know, just basically
Speaker 1: shut you down. Okay, So is there a way to
Speaker 1: deal with the disease itself? Like if we just know
Speaker 1: that mosquitoes are here to stay, is there a malaria vaccine? Well, okay, UM.
Speaker 1: Vaccines are tricky here because the parasite changes a bunch
Speaker 1: of it grows so fast in your bloodstream that that
Speaker 1: it's changing and mutating and building up drug resistance pretty quickly.
Speaker 1: So there's no current vaccine that's effective. One isn't testing UM.
Speaker 1: It's it's against the most common and deadly of those parasites,
Speaker 1: p falciparum or falciparum. I'm not sure. My latin is
Speaker 1: really rusty, and and it's it's currently being administered as
Speaker 1: part of a research trial in Africa. Results aren't expected
Speaker 1: until late and uh for possible use, you know, if
Speaker 1: it seems legit in starting in sometime, but you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's still in testing. People are hoping thing that
Speaker 1: this one is going to work out. It's tricky because
Speaker 1: the genomes of both the parasite and of mosquitoes, of
Speaker 1: the mosquitoes that carry it have been mapped. But you
Speaker 1: know that's as we've talked about before on the show,
Speaker 1: a genome is a whole lot of information to pour over. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you can't really vaccinate it yet, what do they
Speaker 1: do to treat it? The best treatment for the disease
Speaker 1: right now is uh it's called art missenan based combination
Speaker 1: therapy or a CT, which acts kind of like a
Speaker 1: like a punch kick combo of of drugs that helps
Speaker 1: prevent the parasite from developing resistance. UM, but it can
Speaker 1: still the pears I can still develop resistance to this
Speaker 1: stuff over time. And also it's pretty expensive, so it
Speaker 1: sounds like the disease itself is pretty hardy and difficult
Speaker 1: to fight, So maybe the best thing to do in
Speaker 1: this case would be something that's called vector control. And
Speaker 1: this is when there are diseases that are zoonotic, they're
Speaker 1: fed to us through an animal carrier, where you attack
Speaker 1: the animal carrier rather than the disease itself. So if
Speaker 1: it's a disease spread by rats, you'd try to control
Speaker 1: the rat population rather than dealing with the disease. In
Speaker 1: this case, it's spread by mosquitoes. So what do you do?
Speaker 1: Go to war with mosquitoes, like I've been saying, all right,
Speaker 1: and this is tricky too, because only about one percent
Speaker 1: of the mosquito population is capable of carrying these parasites
Speaker 1: UM and mosquitoes are pretty sturdy. They've been around for
Speaker 1: like over three hundred million years UM. And furthermore, only
Speaker 1: female mosquitoes are the ones that spread this disease. So
Speaker 1: you have to get really tough and specific against this
Speaker 1: mosquito problem. It's it's not you know, you can't just
Speaker 1: like go knock on their door at night and take
Speaker 1: them to mosquito jail, mosquito chaniel. I'm trying to picture
Speaker 1: that it's made of legos, I don't know clearly, carbon
Speaker 1: nano tubes. I'm not sure. Okay, Well, I do know
Speaker 1: that we have a bunch of different ways of trying
Speaker 1: to fight and control mosquito infection. UM and I think
Speaker 1: the most low tech and the most widespread is probably
Speaker 1: mosquito nets. Right, Yeah, as far as I can tell,
Speaker 1: they've been around for a good couple hundred years, possibly
Speaker 1: thousands of years, although I'm not sure. I'm not sure
Speaker 1: about the veracity of that one. UM. And in the
Speaker 1: eighties or so, we started treating mosquito nets with pesticides,
Speaker 1: which is pretty effective. I mean, I mean mosquito nets
Speaker 1: themselves can reduce the cases of malaria in a population
Speaker 1: by about forty and treated nets by something like so
Speaker 1: that's awesome. I mean, you know that's but that's still
Speaker 1: leaving hundreds of thousands of people susceptible. Yeah, and I'd
Speaker 1: imagine the mosquito net. I mean, that's something you can
Speaker 1: sleep over, but you can't, like live inside it. I
Speaker 1: mean you've got to get up and go do your things.
Speaker 1: I mean you could, I guess if you made yourself
Speaker 1: a suit of mosquito netting, but that wouldn't really be
Speaker 1: effective impractical, yes, um so so, but I was talking
Speaker 1: about UM treating the nets with insecticides. Yeah, yeah, we've
Speaker 1: got lots of poison. Humans are pretty good at creating
Speaker 1: place and as it turns out, yeah, okay. So there's
Speaker 1: one major example that'd be d d T SO d
Speaker 1: d T S and insecticide that has been highly effective
Speaker 1: at eliminating disease carrying mosquito populations before um as in
Speaker 1: the United States after World War Two. UH. This is
Speaker 1: actually direct quote from the CDC's history on this. The
Speaker 1: National Malaria Eradication Program UH. Let skip a bit consisted
Speaker 1: primarily of d d T application to the interior surfaces
Speaker 1: of rural homes or entire premises in counties for malaria
Speaker 1: was reported to have been prevalent in recent years. UH
Speaker 1: and so by the end of nineteen nine, more than
Speaker 1: four point six million house spray applications have been made.
Speaker 1: It also included drainage, removal of mosquito breeding sites, and
Speaker 1: UH spraying from aircraft of insecticides. So basically, within a
Speaker 1: few years the country was declared malaria free by the
Speaker 1: use of d DT. So it's effective, why not just
Speaker 1: spray the entire world with d d T problem solved. Right, Well,
Speaker 1: that problem is solved, however, Yeah, it's d d T.
Speaker 1: You've probably heard of d d T before, maybe in
Speaker 1: conjunction with a book called Silent Spring. D d T
Speaker 1: was the subject of controversy and ensuing decades and the
Speaker 1: sixties and seventies, and it was eventually banned, possibly with
Speaker 1: very good reason. Uh. It's toxic to the environment in
Speaker 1: all kinds of ways. Uh. And it's got nasty, persistent
Speaker 1: effects throughout the biosphere. So it's lipophili becaus I believe
Speaker 1: the word it. It bonds in a friendly way with
Speaker 1: fat cells, so it stays in organic tissue for a
Speaker 1: long time. Yeah. Um. And then there there are questions
Speaker 1: about its toxicity to humans. It's been suggested with links
Speaker 1: to various diseases and humans, though I think it has
Speaker 1: not necessarily been proven as a carcinogen. And then finally,
Speaker 1: you've got the problem of insect resistance. Right. You use
Speaker 1: a poison long enough on insect populations is going to
Speaker 1: kill a lot of them. But in the same problem
Speaker 1: we have with the overuse of antibiotics, if you continue
Speaker 1: using it, you're going to get some resistant insects. You'll
Speaker 1: eventually select for insects that are resistant. Right now, you
Speaker 1: have super insects who aren't harmed by d d T,
Speaker 1: and you've basically destroyed your environment by spraying it with
Speaker 1: poison that is maybe killing you. And then you'll have
Speaker 1: mosquito population surge back later, right. Yeah, So, and this
Speaker 1: is the problem with with all insect sides. Really when
Speaker 1: you get down to it, um, you know, you also
Speaker 1: get UM D D E T, which is a little
Speaker 1: bit safer than d d T, but also i'd imagine
Speaker 1: a good bit safe. I think most things are good
Speaker 1: but safer than d d T UM. But but it's
Speaker 1: still slightly toxic to h to lots of wildlife, more
Speaker 1: so non mammals than mammals. But um, you know, even
Speaker 1: though it's been classified as safe to use on humans
Speaker 1: in accordance with the district, the instructions on on any
Speaker 1: package labeling that you may find, it can still be
Speaker 1: slightly toxic to us as well if it's used improperly.
Speaker 1: So I was reading somewhere about that there's like a
Speaker 1: future DEET, like a hyperdet that could be coming to
Speaker 1: the market that's way more effective. Well, so the whole.
Speaker 1: One of the things, one of the weird things about
Speaker 1: DEET is that we're still not sure exactly how it works. Um.
Speaker 1: It either confuses mosquito sense of smell or it smells
Speaker 1: really yucky to them. So it's it's not like d
Speaker 1: d T. It's not like a poison. It's not a poison. No,
Speaker 1: it's it's a repellent. UM and and there are other
Speaker 1: repellents that are in development right now. UM. One really
Speaker 1: promising one is called and this is snappy vu A
Speaker 1: A one that stands for the Vanderbilt University um allosteric
Speaker 1: agonist number one. And basically what this does is is
Speaker 1: overload mosquito sense of smell, thus preventing them from tracking
Speaker 1: down tasty, tasty human blood. Sounds like an agonist, right, Um.
Speaker 1: And it's a it's a molecule that triggers a mosquito's
Speaker 1: olfactory nerves switchboard. Um, it's a it's a little thing
Speaker 1: called the called the orco, and the ORCO transmits signals
Speaker 1: from the bugs odorant receptors to its brain, letting it
Speaker 1: know what it's smelling. Um. But but when you trigger
Speaker 1: the whole switchboard at once, it causes a sensory overload.
Speaker 1: It's a basically a thing that smells like everything simultaneously,
Speaker 1: which if you think about that, that's terrible Like that,
Speaker 1: I would like no one to ever you know, not
Speaker 1: not that we've got similar switchboards and humans, but at
Speaker 1: any rate, Um, yeah, it's currently in testing, but don't
Speaker 1: they say that in trials it's like a thousand times
Speaker 1: more effective than deet or something like yeah, yeah, some
Speaker 1: some huge amount. I don't have the number right in
Speaker 1: front of me, but um, but really quite effective and
Speaker 1: and also probably you know, I'm making up a number here, essentially,
Speaker 1: but millions of times more effective than, for example, is
Speaker 1: cit Tranella candle um, which really only confuses a particular
Speaker 1: odor recept or and not the whole switchboard. Okay, um,
Speaker 1: what about this kite patch I was hearing about? Is
Speaker 1: that another chemical solution? Yeah, this is a this is
Speaker 1: a similar repellent sort of thing. Um that. This was
Speaker 1: a crowdfunded anti mosquito patch called kite. It just just
Speaker 1: in fall of met like seven dtent of its goal
Speaker 1: on Indigo Go, which is wonderful. They raised over five
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty thousand dollars um and uh, okay, so,
Speaker 1: so one of the other ways that mosquitoes detect humans
Speaker 1: is with carbon dioxide receptors. You know, we we exhale
Speaker 1: the stuff and so they can they've learned how to
Speaker 1: smell it. And the chemicals on this patch mess with mosquitoes.
Speaker 1: Carbon dioxide sent receptors in um. Uh, those in particular,
Speaker 1: and maybe there are other odor receptors in general. The
Speaker 1: kite patch makers have up to this point been understandably
Speaker 1: a little bit fuzzy wuzzy on the on the details
Speaker 1: of it, since it's still in development. But um, but
Speaker 1: in general, um, someone wearing the kind of thing on
Speaker 1: their clothing should be invisible to the bugs for up
Speaker 1: to forty eight hours. Okay, so the bug, the bug
Speaker 1: can't smell your breath. But at the same time, it's
Speaker 1: not using like a toxic chemical to confuse it, right exactly,
Speaker 1: it should be non toxic. It's pretty inexpensive and um.
Speaker 1: So it's currently with all of this money that they
Speaker 1: grabbed from Indigo go in testing in Uganda. So uh,
Speaker 1: we're going to see how that goes. Cool. Well, good
Speaker 1: luck to them. So that sounds like a good future
Speaker 1: avenue there. Yes, Well, I want to talk about some
Speaker 1: more things that are currently being used and might be
Speaker 1: used in the future. I want to talk about traps. Traps.
Speaker 1: Did you ever play that game when you're kid? The
Speaker 1: board game, the mouse trap game? Yeah, where I'm not
Speaker 1: sure if it was actually a game as much as
Speaker 1: it was just like a thing to set up and
Speaker 1: look at. Well, you have to move around the board
Speaker 1: and hit certain spaces in order to set the pieces up, supposedly,
Speaker 1: but I'm not sure that I ever played that way.
Speaker 1: I think that I just constructed the Rube Goldbergesque machine
Speaker 1: and did it well. I never even played the game.
Speaker 1: I just saw the commercial and wanted it really bad
Speaker 1: because of the traps. It's good. Traps are very satisfying
Speaker 1: if you're trying to eliminate pests, that there's sort of
Speaker 1: this deep down natural human urge to trap things you
Speaker 1: don't want near you and slay them. Slay them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like slaying mosquitoes. That's much more fun than slaying mice,
Speaker 1: which is kind of sad um. Yes, mice are cute.
Speaker 1: I had a pet mouse once. Never had a pet mosquito,
Speaker 1: because mosquitoes are attracted to heat, carbon dioxide, stinky human smell.
Speaker 1: If we know what they're attracted to. Seems like we
Speaker 1: might be able to make traps where we can lure
Speaker 1: them in, put them in a bag, send them off
Speaker 1: somewhere bad, and we're done. Send them to a mosquito jail. Yeah. Right.
Speaker 1: So here's one example, just a consumer mosquito trap that
Speaker 1: you can go on the internet and buy. This is
Speaker 1: what it's called the mosquito magnet, and a lot of
Speaker 1: traps work like this. Basically, they attract mosquitoes with a
Speaker 1: combination of c O two and water vapor and that's
Speaker 1: created by burning a little flame from a pro propane tank. Okay,
Speaker 1: so so you've got so you've got the heat, you've
Speaker 1: got the CEO two uh yeah, and the water vapor
Speaker 1: two and so it simulates the human breath that you
Speaker 1: were talking about, just like what they're attracted to. The
Speaker 1: kite patch messes up and then when it attracts the insects. Uh,
Speaker 1: these kinds of traps suck the insects up into a
Speaker 1: collector device with an electric fan or a vacuum or
Speaker 1: something like that. So it's it's doing the breath, it's
Speaker 1: getting them in there. Um. The video for this particular
Speaker 1: product is kind of hilarious because some guy keeps telling
Speaker 1: you to join his family. Yeah, that the announcer, and
Speaker 1: it is very enthusiastic. Uh, and I recommend it. So
Speaker 1: the machine looks more expensive than I can afford, but
Speaker 1: if I could afford it, it would be really cool. Um. Uh,
Speaker 1: just get rid of all those those skeeters. Bye bye.
Speaker 1: Skeeters is the scientific term, by the way, Yes, here
Speaker 1: in the South it is right science South science. Um.
Speaker 1: But is there a better way? I wonder is there
Speaker 1: anything that's more attractive to them than this combination of
Speaker 1: CEO two and water vapor? Something that that like is
Speaker 1: just a really distracting smell that they would love. And
Speaker 1: if you could just put some of the smell away
Speaker 1: from where the people are, would draw all the mosquitoes away. Okay,
Speaker 1: So I I heard on the internet that, um that
Speaker 1: mosquitoes really like cheese, like stinky, stinky, stinky cheese. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: So the question is what do you what if you
Speaker 1: could create a diversion for mosquitoes that would draw them
Speaker 1: away from humans and scientists have been thinking about this
Speaker 1: for a while. In the nine nineties, of researcher named
Speaker 1: Barton Knoles figured out that Hey, it looks like mosquitoes
Speaker 1: love limburger cheese just as much as they like the
Speaker 1: human smell. Um, And this could actually lead to improve
Speaker 1: mosquito traps, drawing the insects away from the humans with
Speaker 1: irresistible piles of cheesy bait. Um. So you could just
Speaker 1: leave piles of cheese in the jungle somewhere and say
Speaker 1: the world right. Yeah, well maybe not quite, but it
Speaker 1: but it was a step in the right direction. The
Speaker 1: research has been considered useful, even if it's not like
Speaker 1: the solution to the world mosquito problem. The paper was
Speaker 1: called on Human Odor, Malaria, Mosquitoes and Limburger Cheese, published
Speaker 1: in nine and I think Noel's eventually won an ig
Speaker 1: Nobel Prize for his research. Um, but so what other
Speaker 1: smells do? They love stinky feet, They love stink in
Speaker 1: whatever form. So malaria infected mosquitoes. If you put like
Speaker 1: a nasty stocking that you've been wearing for about forty
Speaker 1: eight hours in a jar, the mosquitoes will flock to it.
Speaker 1: They love it. No, no, you said malaria infested mosquitoes specifically, right,
Speaker 1: that that's actually what this next study is. One that's
Speaker 1: called malaria infected mosquitoes expressed enhanced attraction to human odor,
Speaker 1: and that was actually published just last year in almost
Speaker 1: said this year. Okay, but what it found is that
Speaker 1: malaria infected mosquitoes, in particular above regular mosquitoes are three
Speaker 1: times more attracted to stinky foot odors than uninfected mosquitoes are. Wow. Okay. So,
Speaker 1: so what you're basically saying is that that the for somehow,
Speaker 1: this this uh, this parasitic infection is driving the mosquitoes
Speaker 1: to be more attracted to humans than they otherwise would
Speaker 1: be right, And the important thing about this research is
Speaker 1: it actually has two reasons it's really important. One is
Speaker 1: that it might help us better understand how to create
Speaker 1: lures for these mosquitoes to draw them off the trail
Speaker 1: or invite them into traps. But it also is helping
Speaker 1: us understand the behavior of the parasite itself. So we
Speaker 1: don't just have to understand the mosquito, but we understand
Speaker 1: how the malaria parasite controls the mosquito's behavior. And the
Speaker 1: more we know about that, the better we are fighting this,
Speaker 1: especially in terms of vector control. So the question comes up,
Speaker 1: why it's better limburger cheese or stinky socks. Um. James Logan,
Speaker 1: who is one of the authors of the Stinky Feet paper,
Speaker 1: was quoted in an interview with the Huffington Post and
Speaker 1: he said this, Uh, mosquitoes aren't attracted to cheese because
Speaker 1: they've evolved to know the difference. So you have to
Speaker 1: get the mixture of the ratios and concentrations of those
Speaker 1: chemicals exactly right. Otherwise the mosquito won't think it's a human.
Speaker 1: So he's coming down and saying stinky socks are a
Speaker 1: better bait than Limburger cheese. That's that's slightly disappointing to me,
Speaker 1: because I was envisioning this, this gorgeous future where where
Speaker 1: all the cities are made of cheese, that the American
Speaker 1: tail had it right all along, and the streets will
Speaker 1: be paved. I see a flaw in your vision there,
Speaker 1: because you wouldn't want the cities made of cheese. That
Speaker 1: would just draw all the mosquitoes to it. What you
Speaker 1: want is to find a place where nobody wanted to
Speaker 1: live and put all of the cheese there. Joe, I
Speaker 1: really appreciate that that is your problem with my logic here, Okay,
Speaker 1: But it turns out there's another flaw, which is we
Speaker 1: shouldn't put the ease out there. We should put huge
Speaker 1: piles of stinky socks out there right right, Uh, faux
Speaker 1: cities made of stinky socks. Yes, Or an even better
Speaker 1: alternative would be as if we could create a really
Speaker 1: cheap synthetic version of the stinky sock smell. And that's
Speaker 1: one of the things that might come out of this
Speaker 1: research in the future, is that we can make better
Speaker 1: mosquito bait, thus more attractive mosquito traps, get more of
Speaker 1: those suckers in there, and take them away from people
Speaker 1: so they don't infect them. Right and hypothetically, especially since
Speaker 1: you're putting these stinky sock generating machines, you know, not
Speaker 1: very near to human populations. You're you're you're not you're
Speaker 1: not poisoning anything. I mean, oh well, I mean yeah,
Speaker 1: so you're not using a poison at all, so that
Speaker 1: that wouldn't harm other wildlife and it wouldn't lead to
Speaker 1: an adapted resistance among the mosquitoes, or if it did
Speaker 1: lead to an adapted resistance, it wouldn't be a poison resistance.
Speaker 1: It would just mean mosquitoes that didn't like the smell
Speaker 1: of b O which would probably be a good thing
Speaker 1: to begin with, right, Okay, I'm gonna blow your mind
Speaker 1: with a really bizarre solution. Okay, do it blast them
Speaker 1: Empire style, what like pup you like like pup you
Speaker 1: pupu the mosquitoes to death. We are talking about mosquito lasers.
Speaker 1: It is that. That is literally the mosquito laser. This
Speaker 1: is a real solution proposed by real people, not dudes
Speaker 1: on the internet, like people who actually make stuff and
Speaker 1: make money doing it. Okay, Okay, I've heard about this,
Speaker 1: and I hear that it's actually kind of sort of
Speaker 1: the fault of Bill Gates is correct. Okay, So here's
Speaker 1: the story. Apparently, back in the mid two thousands, Bill
Speaker 1: Gates asked former Microsoft executive Nathan mirror Vold to use
Speaker 1: his invention company, Intellectual Ventures Else to come up with
Speaker 1: a new way to battle the spread of malaria. So
Speaker 1: Mirrorvold and some associates brainstormed, and the result was the
Speaker 1: mosquito laser. Uh So, the mosquito laser was originally the
Speaker 1: idea of an astrophysicist and named Lowell Wood, who was
Speaker 1: associate he had with the Strategic Defense Initiative in the eighties,
Speaker 1: you know, the Star Wars Star program. It all comes
Speaker 1: back to okay, alright. The idea there, I think is like,
Speaker 1: if the Soviets shoot missiles at us, we have satellites,
Speaker 1: they're going to peep them out of the sky with lasers.
Speaker 1: You can see that this guy has like maybe similar
Speaker 1: thought kind of yeah, no, that's probably not fair. He's
Speaker 1: probably actually a genius, but let's make fun of him
Speaker 1: because you know, um so Mirrabalds back right, Mirrabalds group,
Speaker 1: including a guy named Jordan's Care, built a prototype of
Speaker 1: a mosquito laser death ray out of parts bought on eBay.
Speaker 1: Um Mirrable demonstrated this live at a Ted talk in
Speaker 1: two thousand and ten, and if you watch the footage,
Speaker 1: it is it'll make you feel like a sadist, but
Speaker 1: it is so pleasing to just watch mosquito wings vaporized
Speaker 1: into smoke and like legs get blasted off in slow
Speaker 1: motion where this insect that it fills you with. Hate
Speaker 1: to see it blown up into this huge size on
Speaker 1: a monitor because you know it's going to bite you
Speaker 1: and it's it's cousins are probably killing people somewhere. But
Speaker 1: they blast it with a laser and it just sort
Speaker 1: of like the thorax erupts with little plumes of smoke
Speaker 1: and the wings disintegrate and it falls slowly and gracefully.
Speaker 1: So yeah, they're shooting mosquitoes with lasers. I I have
Speaker 1: to say that, as as peace loving as I am,
Speaker 1: that does sound. Doing research for this episode was really
Speaker 1: was one of the rougher episodes for me, because every
Speaker 1: single article feels it necessary to put a giant picture
Speaker 1: of of a mosquito at the top, like usually a
Speaker 1: blood filled mosquito, like actively drinking from human skin, mosquito Thanksgiving,
Speaker 1: and I that is so I was. I was unhappy
Speaker 1: about that. Yeah, okay, so the well, so the payoff
Speaker 1: is pretty Yeah, you can go watch these videos and
Speaker 1: you will get your sadest jollies out of it. Okay,
Speaker 1: but so, so how how effective is this really? I mean,
Speaker 1: I mean, do they have any any even prototypes? Oh?
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah yeah, the most recent products, so they've had several.
Speaker 1: They had a handheld version. The most recent prototype works
Speaker 1: based on a photonic fence, uh photonic like photons, So
Speaker 1: there's a wall of infrared light between two fence posts.
Speaker 1: When an insect interrupts the barrier. The system uses a
Speaker 1: non lethal laser ping, so it kind of just like
Speaker 1: pops it with a laser pointer um to determine what
Speaker 1: kind of insect it is and make sure nothing's in
Speaker 1: the way and stuff like that. So you determine and
Speaker 1: it gets data back, of course from that ping to
Speaker 1: say like, Okay, it's an insective about this size and
Speaker 1: its wings are beating at this frequency and there's nothing
Speaker 1: in the way. And if the message it gets is
Speaker 1: this is a female mosquito because male and female mosquitoes
Speaker 1: have a different wing rate I believe, yeah, that their
Speaker 1: wings beat at different frequencies. The females are bigger, I believe, um,
Speaker 1: And it detects the Okay, this is one of the
Speaker 1: bad guys. It's a female mosquito. It then issues the
Speaker 1: killing blow in the four arm of a photon stream
Speaker 1: from a blue laser, which is actually the same kind
Speaker 1: of laser in your Blu ray player. Yeah. So, how
Speaker 1: is the photonic fence best used. Well, it's probably best
Speaker 1: at a perimeter around buildings, like especially hot spots like
Speaker 1: hospitals and clinics, But technically you could just put one
Speaker 1: around your backyard if you wanted, and it should be
Speaker 1: highly effective. Um your old claim. This thing could shoot
Speaker 1: down about a hundred mosquitoes per second. Uh it wonderful.
Speaker 1: Jordan Care, who worked on the project, actually published an
Speaker 1: article with instructions on how people can build their own
Speaker 1: mosquito laser fence out of consumer electronics. In the I
Speaker 1: Tribolie Spectrum article uh in two thousand and ten, I
Speaker 1: quote directly from him for this interesting fact. He says,
Speaker 1: the average flying altitude varies among mosquito species, but it's
Speaker 1: usually only about two meters, and they'll fly over obstacles
Speaker 1: when necessary, even into an upper story window. But if
Speaker 1: your virtual fence is three to five meters high, you
Speaker 1: can catch almost all mosquitoes that fly by because they're
Speaker 1: not expecting anything, right that they think they can just
Speaker 1: float through right there. Yeah, so these cocky mosquitoes get
Speaker 1: caught in the net like Sandra Bullock and then bam
Speaker 1: they're dead. Okay, So the benefit is is probably much
Speaker 1: less of a threat to the environment than simply spreading
Speaker 1: pesticides brays around, and pesticides brays killed a wider range
Speaker 1: of animals, while the mosquito laser can attack only the
Speaker 1: culprits you want, all right, if a b or something
Speaker 1: else that was perhaps useful to our environment floated floated
Speaker 1: flu past, then right, it can leave them alone. It
Speaker 1: can tell the difference between a female mosquito and a
Speaker 1: b um. And so this is really cool, but there
Speaker 1: are a few problems to actually implementing something like this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was gonna say that this sounds all too good
Speaker 1: to be true, Like set me up with lasers in
Speaker 1: my backyard for mosquitoes immediate lane. Well, I mean, nobody's
Speaker 1: got a factory making these yet what they what these
Speaker 1: people came up with was a prototype, and that's to
Speaker 1: their stated goal is about that. They're like, we're going
Speaker 1: to put the ideas out there, but we're not going
Speaker 1: to manufacture this on a large scale. Um. So there's
Speaker 1: a big question about can it really be cost effective, um,
Speaker 1: you know, to put one of these at every building
Speaker 1: or whatever. The other question is is it feasible to
Speaker 1: implement some places that don't have abundant grid electricity Because
Speaker 1: it's powered, right, you can spray DDT wherever you want,
Speaker 1: but this thing needs electricity and a continual stream. It's
Speaker 1: and well, I mean, you know, at a certain point,
Speaker 1: you're going to uh destroy the mosquito population enough that
Speaker 1: it will collapse. You know, if you have too many
Speaker 1: too many males to not enough females, and you know,
Speaker 1: things will go wonky and eventually it won't work out
Speaker 1: well for them, which is basically what what D d
Speaker 1: T did here in the United States. But uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: so well, obviously we still have mosquitoes, right, but we
Speaker 1: we just don't have a malaria problem really in the
Speaker 1: United States. Um and so yeah, so so this the
Speaker 1: laser is maybe the coolest thing I researched, but I
Speaker 1: don't know if it's the most practical. Um. But I
Speaker 1: want to talk about one more thing. Okay, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: you've you've got here in your notes. So, and what
Speaker 1: this sounds like is is people going like, okay, so
Speaker 1: mosquitoes are kind of going to be around. It's really
Speaker 1: difficult to get rid of them entirely. Uh can we
Speaker 1: put them to use? Somebody had this idea. It's called
Speaker 1: the Flying Syringe, which is not a kung fu movie
Speaker 1: like the Flying Guillotine or anything. I would watch that
Speaker 1: kung fu movie The Flying are In. Yeah. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: should make that kung fu movie. Yeah, okay that they're
Speaker 1: all listening. In two thousand eight, the Bill and Melinda
Speaker 1: Gates Foundation, which they've come up a couple of times now,
Speaker 1: they're they're very much into malaria, fighting malaria around the world.
Speaker 1: Right there, They're not into malaria, Yes, they're exactly the opposite.
Speaker 1: They're against malaria. They awarded a hundred thousand dollar research
Speaker 1: grant to Hiroyuki Matsuka of Gichi Medical University in Japan,
Speaker 1: and the idea was to develop flying syringes. That was
Speaker 1: this person's idea. Uh, and what these would be. They
Speaker 1: would be genetically modified mosquitoes that are engineered to inject
Speaker 1: hosts with life saving vaccines instead of diseases through their
Speaker 1: saliva um. Obviously, one can imagine this would be really
Speaker 1: helpful in getting vaccines to people in remote and impoverished
Speaker 1: locations because most of the time, if you transport vaccines,
Speaker 1: they have to be kept refrigerated. But this can make
Speaker 1: it really hard to get them to remote places. Right.
Speaker 1: Oh sure. Yeah. Also, you've got just a just a
Speaker 1: manpower problem and and monetary restraints, all kinds of stuff
Speaker 1: like that, right, So vaccines delivered by mosquitoes could save
Speaker 1: more lives um, so far, the transgenic mosquito doesn't seem
Speaker 1: to have been created. I read an article about this
Speaker 1: research grant from two thousand and eight, and then I
Speaker 1: saw Matsuka gave a presentation on the research at a
Speaker 1: symposium in two thousand nine. But other than that, I
Speaker 1: don't know if it's gone anywhere. But I think that's
Speaker 1: a really cool idea. Yeah, well, I mean I don't know, like, like,
Speaker 1: to me, it sounds like there's so much there's so
Speaker 1: many ways out there that we have of killing mosquitoes
Speaker 1: that that if you're just creating really expensive mosquitoes, I'm
Speaker 1: not sure if anyone's going to want to fund that research.
Speaker 1: Oh that's true. Would be horrible if like a million
Speaker 1: dollar mosquito flew into the photonic fence really impressive laser trap. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's you would just everyone would cry, I think, Okay,
Speaker 1: the tears of scientists would be would be shed. Well.
Speaker 1: I think the bottom line is that while we're not
Speaker 1: necessarily for total eradication of these mosquito species, we are
Speaker 1: sort of acknowledging that there is a struggle we must win,
Speaker 1: and that we've got a lot of tools already, and
Speaker 1: we've got some even better tools on the way for
Speaker 1: fighting this, especially to save all these lives around the world.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's not just a backyard grilling, you know,
Speaker 1: slap in your leg. It's not just itchy. It's it's
Speaker 1: really quite terrifying. Um. But but no, I'm but I'm
Speaker 1: so excited about and all of this research that that
Speaker 1: I was reading about. Anyway, seems like people are talking about,
Speaker 1: you know, if this presents a solution, that it's going
Speaker 1: to be presented within the next like two or three years,
Speaker 1: not that like twy to fifty that we hear about
Speaker 1: with so many things, but kind of kind of soon. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So I think that just about wraps up our conversation. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think so. Yeah. So, thank you guys so much
Speaker 1: for listening. Um. If you would like to get in
Speaker 1: touch with us about anything, UM, head over to fw
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