WEBVTT - Rabies: When Monsters are Real 0:00:02.040 --> 0:00:05.840 Here's the story about rabies in three sentences. You get 0:00:05.840 --> 0:00:09.319 bitten by a rabbit animal, you lose control of your mind, 0:00:09.840 --> 0:00:13.800 and then you die. So it is not surprising that 0:00:13.960 --> 0:00:17.919 Raby's terrified humanity for thousands of years. Why do you 0:00:17.920 --> 0:00:20.040 write a book about Raby's, gosh? 0:00:20.320 --> 0:00:24.680 I have always thought Rabi's was so interesting in terms 0:00:24.720 --> 0:00:28.560 of its biology, the way it hijacks the brain to 0:00:28.760 --> 0:00:32.120 ensure that it'll continue its own spread, the way it 0:00:32.120 --> 0:00:35.159 affects the relationship between people and animals, which, since I'm 0:00:35.159 --> 0:00:37.760 a veterinarian, is pretty central to my life. 0:00:38.080 --> 0:00:41.199 Monica Murphy is a veterinarian and the co author with 0:00:41.320 --> 0:00:45.280 Bill Wasick of Rabbit, a Cultural History of the world's 0:00:45.320 --> 0:00:49.680 most diabolical virus. I should mention that Monica also happens 0:00:49.720 --> 0:00:51.640 to be my neighbor and a friend of mine. 0:00:51.840 --> 0:00:56.800 I think the stories that my rabbit Google alert turns 0:00:56.920 --> 0:01:00.760 up every week, you know, Bobcat's like coming into a 0:01:00.800 --> 0:01:04.160 bar and like assaulting someone at a pool table, or 0:01:04.800 --> 0:01:09.840 raccoons attacking people's trucks. All that stuff is just really 0:01:09.959 --> 0:01:14.640 interesting and scary and the stuff of nightmares. But I 0:01:14.680 --> 0:01:16.680 love that science has an answer for all of that 0:01:17.720 --> 0:01:18.039 in the. 0:01:18.000 --> 0:01:22.440 Developed world, almost nobody gets rabies anymore. In the United States, 0:01:22.440 --> 0:01:25.600 it's fewer than ten people a year. Even our dogs 0:01:25.600 --> 0:01:28.200 are safe from the disease for the most part. And 0:01:28.240 --> 0:01:30.600 the reason for this, the reason we don't have to 0:01:30.640 --> 0:01:33.679 worry that every barking dog we see might bite us 0:01:33.680 --> 0:01:35.720 and kill us, goes back to one of the most 0:01:35.760 --> 0:01:39.640 important scientists in the history of both viruses and vaccines, 0:01:40.400 --> 0:01:45.920 Louis Pasteur. I'm Jacob Goldstein, and this is Incubation, a 0:01:45.959 --> 0:01:49.639 show about viruses. We're delighted to be launching season two today. 0:01:49.920 --> 0:01:52.520 We have lots more viruses to talk about this season, 0:01:52.640 --> 0:01:55.360 and we're starting with rabies. In the first half of 0:01:55.400 --> 0:01:57.880 the show, we'll be talking to Monica about rabies and 0:01:57.920 --> 0:02:00.760 the work of Louis Pasteur. Second after the show, we'll 0:02:00.760 --> 0:02:04.120 talk to a scientist who's fighting rabies in wildlife in 0:02:04.160 --> 0:02:12.920 a really surprising way. So let's talk about rabies. What 0:02:13.040 --> 0:02:13.560 is rabies? 0:02:14.120 --> 0:02:20.720 So rabies is an RNA virus. It is special because 0:02:21.200 --> 0:02:26.280 it is transmitted through bites, primarily unlike the sort of 0:02:26.280 --> 0:02:29.799 transmission pattern we see with other viruses. In rabies, at 0:02:29.800 --> 0:02:33.560 the site of the bite, the virus is looking to 0:02:33.600 --> 0:02:38.160 interact with a nerve, and once it has engaged the nerve, 0:02:38.880 --> 0:02:41.440 it kind of ratchets its way up the central nervous 0:02:41.440 --> 0:02:45.520 system from the bite site through peripheral nerves up into 0:02:45.560 --> 0:02:47.800 the spine, and from the spine up into the brain. 0:02:48.400 --> 0:02:51.960 It takes a while. It's a slow, slow process. 0:02:52.040 --> 0:02:55.200 It's like a centimeter a day or There is a. 0:02:56.600 --> 0:03:00.400 Real sort of relationship between how far away the is 0:03:00.440 --> 0:03:04.000 from the brain and how long it takes to develop rabies, 0:03:04.000 --> 0:03:07.160 although it's not strict, and it does mean that if 0:03:07.200 --> 0:03:11.760 you're bitten on the face, you are likely to come 0:03:11.800 --> 0:03:14.160 down with rabies faster than if you're bitten on the toe, 0:03:14.880 --> 0:03:18.919 and not every bite from a rabbit animal will result 0:03:18.960 --> 0:03:23.079 in transmission something like twenty percent to your round number. 0:03:23.760 --> 0:03:27.080 And once the virus does make it into the brain, 0:03:27.680 --> 0:03:32.000 you're going to develop symptoms of rabies. They're horrible, and 0:03:32.040 --> 0:03:35.640 then you're going to die. It's practically speaking, one hundred 0:03:35.640 --> 0:03:39.280 percent fatal, like wo really rotten. And the way it works, too, 0:03:39.800 --> 0:03:42.120 which is pretty horrifying if you think about it, is 0:03:42.160 --> 0:03:44.600 it's hijacking the brain to ensure that it's going to 0:03:44.600 --> 0:03:46.160 be spread to another individual. 0:03:46.200 --> 0:03:51.280 And you say, what do you mean so in especially in. 0:03:51.200 --> 0:03:54.520 The species it's adapted to, let's say, dog rabies. In 0:03:54.560 --> 0:03:59.360 the dog, it is going to stimulate parts of the 0:03:59.400 --> 0:04:02.440 brain that kind of rev up that dog's sort of 0:04:02.640 --> 0:04:05.960 social emotional state, make it much more prone to violence 0:04:06.200 --> 0:04:11.320 and biting incidents with other dogs. So that meanwhile it's 0:04:11.360 --> 0:04:14.880 being secreted in the saliva. It's really increasing the likelihood 0:04:14.880 --> 0:04:16.720 that it's going to make it into another dog and 0:04:16.920 --> 0:04:18.719 continuous life cycle, which is. 0:04:18.680 --> 0:04:21.680 Kind of amazing, right, Like it's just a virus, yeah, 0:04:21.760 --> 0:04:26.000 and it's essentially evolved to like change the behavior of 0:04:26.040 --> 0:04:30.000 this complex mammal to make it bite other mammals so 0:04:30.080 --> 0:04:32.599 that the virus will spread. Like that is a wild 0:04:32.720 --> 0:04:33.640 feet of evolution. 0:04:34.000 --> 0:04:40.440 Yeah. Yeah, it's really really scary. In places where humans 0:04:40.560 --> 0:04:43.840 are frequently in contact with rabbit animals, the sort of 0:04:44.080 --> 0:04:47.760 behavioral changes that occur in the human Rebe's victim are 0:04:47.800 --> 0:04:53.360 also really messy. You know, a human with Rabe's might 0:04:53.440 --> 0:04:55.799 not actively try to bite you, unless they're a little kid. 0:04:56.520 --> 0:04:59.400 They might punch you in the nose or just scream 0:04:59.440 --> 0:05:00.200 curses at you. 0:05:00.600 --> 0:05:03.440 In general, people become more hostile. 0:05:03.080 --> 0:05:06.480 More violent, yeah, or sext up uh huh. 0:05:06.520 --> 0:05:11.000 So just like more id. Yeah, terrifying. You're being attacked 0:05:11.080 --> 0:05:14.960 by your own brain, right, somehow, You're like your own 0:05:15.160 --> 0:05:16.520 thoughts are attacking you. 0:05:17.000 --> 0:05:17.440 Yeah. 0:05:17.640 --> 0:05:21.240 Yeah, I mean so you talk with respect to that 0:05:21.520 --> 0:05:26.120 in the book about kind of rabies and mythology, right, 0:05:26.240 --> 0:05:29.640 rabies and were wolves, rabies and vampires, Like, tell me 0:05:29.680 --> 0:05:30.200 about that. 0:05:30.600 --> 0:05:34.120 There's at least a deep resonance between these stories of 0:05:34.520 --> 0:05:39.320 a sort of contagious you know, contagious zombieism or werewolf 0:05:39.400 --> 0:05:43.600 ism or vampirism where the bite the bite. Yeah, and 0:05:43.600 --> 0:05:46.200 there's the association with bats and vampires and. 0:05:46.240 --> 0:05:51.040 Both and both bats and wolves are historical vectors of rabies, 0:05:51.160 --> 0:05:55.200 just to be clear. So this is kind of rabies. 0:05:55.240 --> 0:06:01.200 It's this ancient disease. It is terrifying where crazed animals 0:06:01.279 --> 0:06:05.080 bite people and turn people into crazed animals who then die. 0:06:05.520 --> 0:06:10.400 It's basically the state of play rabis forever. And then 0:06:11.160 --> 0:06:14.880 onto the stage of history walks our hero, Louis Pasteur. 0:06:15.000 --> 0:06:17.000 That's right, tell me about Pasteur. 0:06:17.520 --> 0:06:19.920 Most folks know at least a little bit about Louis 0:06:19.960 --> 0:06:23.960 Pastor because he had a long scientific career. He was 0:06:24.000 --> 0:06:30.400 trained as a physicist and chemist, and he grew into 0:06:30.680 --> 0:06:35.960 more of a microbiological concentration in his work. Along the way, 0:06:36.080 --> 0:06:38.440 he established germ theory. 0:06:38.760 --> 0:06:42.400 Yes, that people thought was like a crazy idea, And 0:06:42.440 --> 0:06:45.880 this is like a mid to late eighteen hundreds, right, 0:06:46.279 --> 0:06:49.960 and the world already had the smallpox vaccine at this point. 0:06:49.760 --> 0:06:53.159 But I do feel like it's worth remembering here that 0:06:53.160 --> 0:06:55.400 that was sort of this lucky break, right, where like 0:06:55.640 --> 0:06:58.320 there just happened to be this mild disease, cowpox, that 0:06:58.400 --> 0:07:03.120 made people immune to this terrible disease, to smallpox. And Pasteur, 0:07:03.160 --> 0:07:05.640 as you write in the book, he decides that he's 0:07:05.680 --> 0:07:09.080 going to apply this germ theory to vaccines. Right, He's 0:07:09.160 --> 0:07:12.360 actually going to use science to create a vaccine, So 0:07:13.240 --> 0:07:14.000 tell us about that. 0:07:14.560 --> 0:07:18.480 What Louis Prestor sought to do and succeeded in doing 0:07:18.560 --> 0:07:23.680 for the first time ever is manipulating microbes to sort 0:07:23.720 --> 0:07:27.120 of move them away from their wild state into an 0:07:27.160 --> 0:07:31.440 attenuated a week in state and induce immunity using. 0:07:31.360 --> 0:07:35.360 Those right, So okay, So Pasteur he develops a few 0:07:35.560 --> 0:07:38.880 animal vaccines in this way, and then he decides that 0:07:38.920 --> 0:07:41.480 the first human vaccine he's going to make is going 0:07:41.520 --> 0:07:44.440 to be a rabies vaccine, you know, a vaccine for 0:07:44.480 --> 0:07:48.360 this terrifying disease. So what does he actually have to do? 0:07:49.000 --> 0:07:52.760 So, because there's no way to grow rabies inside of 0:07:52.760 --> 0:07:56.440 a test tube, he had to maintain a population of 0:07:56.520 --> 0:07:57.680 rabbit animals in his lab. 0:07:57.800 --> 0:07:58.360 Terrifying. 0:07:58.760 --> 0:08:02.960 Yeah awful, I mean really gruesome and scary for the 0:08:02.960 --> 0:08:06.760 people he worked with. They would harvest the saliva and 0:08:06.960 --> 0:08:10.160 introduce it into more dogs or into rabbits. 0:08:10.520 --> 0:08:13.400 How do you harvest the saliva from a rabid dog 0:08:14.040 --> 0:08:16.840 really carefully? Right, I walked into that. 0:08:16.840 --> 0:08:19.120 But yeah, involving like a high pet Oh my god. 0:08:19.160 --> 0:08:23.240 Yeah, in the mouth of a rabbit dog. Yeah, yeah, 0:08:23.280 --> 0:08:26.360 I'm gonna die. Yeah, I'm afraid. So so you've got 0:08:26.400 --> 0:08:30.480 step one, find the nasty disease. Step two, seemingly the 0:08:30.520 --> 0:08:33.320 harder part, turn that nasty disease into a thing that 0:08:33.360 --> 0:08:36.200 will induce some immunity without causing disease. 0:08:36.400 --> 0:08:38.400 Right, they can't see the microbe. They know it's in 0:08:38.440 --> 0:08:43.360 the nervous tissue, So they start dissecting out nervous tissue 0:08:43.679 --> 0:08:49.679 from animals with rabies, specifically rabbits, and they aged it. 0:08:50.240 --> 0:08:52.960 They age the tissue in a sort of desiccating tray. 0:08:53.559 --> 0:08:58.360 And determined that with sufficient aging, it weakens it. 0:08:58.600 --> 0:09:01.120 Just leave it sitting on the shell for a while. 0:09:01.640 --> 0:09:05.280 Yeah, except they ultimately arrived at a method that was 0:09:05.320 --> 0:09:09.480 a lot more complex. They had a sort of well 0:09:09.559 --> 0:09:13.600 whole sort of assembly line of tissues at various stages 0:09:13.640 --> 0:09:16.199 of aging. So you know, you've got your your rabbit 0:09:16.240 --> 0:09:19.000 spinal quarter over here that's aged fourteen days, and here's 0:09:19.000 --> 0:09:21.840 a thirteen day one, and okay, et cetera. The ones 0:09:21.880 --> 0:09:24.480 that are oldest are least virulent. The ones that are 0:09:24.600 --> 0:09:28.840 newest are most virulent and too dangerous to put right 0:09:28.880 --> 0:09:31.520 into a person right out of the gate. So they 0:09:31.600 --> 0:09:36.040 start with an injection of the longest aged nervous tissue, 0:09:36.120 --> 0:09:39.480 the weakest the weakest one, and then over they think 0:09:39.480 --> 0:09:43.559 of a ten days the initial protocol. They inject thirteen 0:09:43.600 --> 0:09:49.079 injections with progressively stronger that is, newer tissue. 0:09:49.120 --> 0:09:51.960 And so is the basic idea, like the weakest one 0:09:52.640 --> 0:09:55.640 induces some immune response so that you can then tolerate 0:09:55.720 --> 0:09:57.920 a slightly stronger one, and you're kind of going up 0:09:57.920 --> 0:09:59.680 a staircase of immunity. 0:10:00.080 --> 0:10:02.160 That's how he developed it, And of course today we 0:10:02.280 --> 0:10:05.880 just have a single strength. Rayby's vaccine in use. So 0:10:06.080 --> 0:10:09.000 his method wasn't the only way to induce immunity, but 0:10:09.040 --> 0:10:11.040 it's you know, they were dealing with a one hundred 0:10:11.040 --> 0:10:14.720 percent fatal disease, I think understandably nervous about introducing it 0:10:14.760 --> 0:10:18.760 into people. And they realized both that they can They 0:10:18.800 --> 0:10:21.760 can do pre exposure vaccination so that the dog can't 0:10:21.800 --> 0:10:26.520 get infected with Rabi's. Uh huh, hold that thought. That's 0:10:26.559 --> 0:10:29.240 not put into use right away. But then they also 0:10:29.480 --> 0:10:34.240 can start a series of vaccine after the dog has 0:10:34.320 --> 0:10:36.520 been exposed to Raby's and prevent him from coming down 0:10:36.520 --> 0:10:37.080 with the disease. 0:10:37.679 --> 0:10:40.280 So they figure this out, and then we have this 0:10:40.600 --> 0:10:43.960 moment when it's time to try it on a person 0:10:44.080 --> 0:10:46.480 for the first time. What is that moment? 0:10:47.120 --> 0:10:51.800 So a case was brought to Louis Pester's attention that 0:10:51.920 --> 0:10:55.880 seemed sufficiently concerning to take a chance on this vaccine 0:10:56.400 --> 0:11:01.679 and involved a young boy who was bitten by the 0:11:01.720 --> 0:11:06.559 grocer's dog who had had undergone a suspicious behavior change 0:11:06.559 --> 0:11:11.240 and was marauding the neighborhood. The bites were extensive, and 0:11:11.679 --> 0:11:14.560 so that's another potential risk factor for development of Rabi's. 0:11:14.559 --> 0:11:17.480 We talked about, meaning he got lots of places, you know, 0:11:17.559 --> 0:11:21.040 lots of places really deeply, so, lots of places where 0:11:21.040 --> 0:11:24.160 the virus could have encountered a nerve, making it likely 0:11:24.200 --> 0:11:26.000 that he was going to come down with rabies at 0:11:26.000 --> 0:11:29.319 some point. They were very pessimistic about the boy's chances, 0:11:29.520 --> 0:11:34.440 and so they sent him to Paris, to. 0:11:35.080 --> 0:11:38.120 Louis Pestor's lab, where he had this vaccine that he 0:11:38.120 --> 0:11:40.040 had not yet tested on a human being. 0:11:40.160 --> 0:11:42.199 Yeah, he had been thinking about testing it on himself. 0:11:42.360 --> 0:11:44.880 Uh huh, a kind of tradition in science. 0:11:44.640 --> 0:11:48.480 Yes, But before he had a chance to test on himself, 0:11:48.520 --> 0:11:51.520 he was persuaded by the physicians caring for this boy 0:11:51.559 --> 0:11:54.760 that this kid might very likely to die if he 0:11:54.760 --> 0:11:59.200 doesn't get the vaccine, and so Pastor went ahead with 0:11:59.240 --> 0:11:59.920 his process. 0:12:00.240 --> 0:12:04.240 So the boy gets this experimental vaccine, and now Pastor 0:12:04.360 --> 0:12:07.199 has to just wait right wait to see what happened. 0:12:07.240 --> 0:12:09.560 So what's going on with Pastor while he's, you know, 0:12:09.640 --> 0:12:11.559 waiting to see whether the boy survives. 0:12:12.480 --> 0:12:18.920 Well, Pastor was sleepless. He was just in a state 0:12:18.960 --> 0:12:22.280 of agonized waiting and was having health problems related to that. 0:12:22.440 --> 0:12:24.720 He traveled a little bit for his health. Well, he 0:12:25.120 --> 0:12:26.480 sort of ticked down the days. 0:12:26.679 --> 0:12:27.680 What happens with the boy? 0:12:28.120 --> 0:12:31.800 The boy does great. He remains healthy during the ten 0:12:31.880 --> 0:12:34.800 day process where he could see inoculations, and once a 0:12:34.840 --> 0:12:37.520 few months had passed, at the point at which you know, 0:12:37.559 --> 0:12:39.600 I was believed he would have come down with rabies 0:12:39.640 --> 0:12:42.800 by now, if not because of the because of the bytes, 0:12:42.840 --> 0:12:47.520 perhaps because the vaccine was dangerous, he continued to thrive. 0:12:47.960 --> 0:12:52.120 Okay, so the vaccine works. What like, how does it play? 0:12:52.400 --> 0:12:55.360 People were excited around the world. I mean, the vanquishing 0:12:55.360 --> 0:12:58.959 of rabies was big news, just as Pistar had calculated, 0:13:00.520 --> 0:13:05.920 not immediately embraced by everyone. There were physicians everywhere who 0:13:06.120 --> 0:13:08.240 had been following the science and sort of got it 0:13:08.280 --> 0:13:10.679 and were eager to put it to use. 0:13:11.000 --> 0:13:13.280 And in the in the sort of long run, in 0:13:13.320 --> 0:13:18.280 the you know, one hundred year arc. What what does 0:13:18.440 --> 0:13:23.240 pastors work mean? Both for rabies and for you know, 0:13:23.520 --> 0:13:25.160 disease research and treatment more. 0:13:25.040 --> 0:13:30.200 Generally, His lab is often credited with developing the science 0:13:30.240 --> 0:13:34.520 of immunology and furthermore lead the foundations just with the 0:13:34.520 --> 0:13:37.480 basic idea that like, you can take infectious agents and 0:13:37.559 --> 0:13:39.240 you can figure out a way to make them weaker. 0:13:39.720 --> 0:13:44.960 That is the basis on which all modern vaccine science works. 0:13:45.440 --> 0:13:50.720 So let's let's talk about rabies today. What is the 0:13:50.760 --> 0:13:52.160 status of rabi's today. 0:13:52.880 --> 0:13:57.079 So rabies is still a problem in many parts of 0:13:57.120 --> 0:14:01.080 the world who have not yet eliminated dog rabies. But 0:14:01.080 --> 0:14:04.880 we're really lucky here that the use of the pre 0:14:05.040 --> 0:14:10.040 exposure vaccine and dogs eliminated dog rabies. We no longer 0:14:10.160 --> 0:14:12.280 have to like look as scance at our pet dogs 0:14:12.480 --> 0:14:16.320 and worry that contact with them could kill us. The 0:14:16.920 --> 0:14:20.160 parts of the world where that is not true, where 0:14:20.200 --> 0:14:23.400 dog brabies is still endemic, places like India and parts 0:14:23.400 --> 0:14:26.280 of Africa, there are still a lot of human rabies deaths. 0:14:27.760 --> 0:14:31.520 I think the who uses the number sixty thousand rabies 0:14:31.720 --> 0:14:34.680 deaths are still happening every year around the world. That 0:14:34.800 --> 0:14:39.040 numbers is really contested. It's been a real challenge getting 0:14:39.440 --> 0:14:42.800 the vaccines and the other products that fight brabies to 0:14:42.920 --> 0:14:46.240 the people who need them most. But those products are 0:14:46.600 --> 0:14:51.720 prohibitively expensive. So rabies is considered a neglected disease by 0:14:51.800 --> 0:14:56.280 the international health authorities, but people are still dying of rabies. 0:14:56.280 --> 0:14:59.400 And then in parts of the world like Europe and 0:14:59.440 --> 0:15:02.800 the United States where dog rabies is not the issue, 0:15:02.800 --> 0:15:04.960 we do still have wildlife rabies, So. 0:15:04.960 --> 0:15:08.240 Like in the US, what wild animals have rabies? 0:15:08.760 --> 0:15:16.400 There's rabies adapted to foxes, skunks, raccoons, and a whole 0:15:16.440 --> 0:15:19.160 lot of bats in the United States. 0:15:18.920 --> 0:15:21.760 Right, I read that, like, if you wake up and 0:15:21.800 --> 0:15:24.800 there's a bat in your room, you should probably get 0:15:24.800 --> 0:15:26.640 a rabies shot because bats can bite you and you 0:15:26.840 --> 0:15:27.600 don't even know us. 0:15:27.680 --> 0:15:30.280 Yes, there's an argument for getting Raby's vaccine if you 0:15:30.320 --> 0:15:32.240 wake up in a room with a bat, although you 0:15:32.240 --> 0:15:33.960 know you should consult your local health guard. 0:15:34.280 --> 0:15:38.040 Did writing the book change the way you think about 0:15:38.400 --> 0:15:40.600 the relationship between humans and animals? 0:15:40.760 --> 0:15:43.200 I do think that there is a way in which 0:15:43.680 --> 0:15:47.120 our relationship with dogs and cats, especially, you know, the 0:15:47.200 --> 0:15:49.760 sort of pure sweetness of it that a lot of 0:15:49.840 --> 0:15:53.080 us experience now, like it had a darker side in 0:15:53.120 --> 0:15:54.760 the pre vaccine era. 0:15:55.200 --> 0:15:57.960 Your dog could turn into a monster and kill you 0:15:58.160 --> 0:16:00.680 or your child. Yes, that was like a real thing 0:16:00.720 --> 0:16:02.200 that could definitely have It was a. 0:16:02.160 --> 0:16:05.480 Real thing, and that was that made it really hard 0:16:05.760 --> 0:16:08.560 to like love and baby our dogs in quite the 0:16:08.600 --> 0:16:11.080 same way as we do today. 0:16:11.400 --> 0:16:15.240 So like this modern phenomenon of the dog being to 0:16:15.520 --> 0:16:18.120 what is arguably a weird extent a part of the family, 0:16:18.440 --> 0:16:21.800 and I include my own family as you know, in 0:16:21.880 --> 0:16:25.240 that that like, you couldn't really have that without pasteur 0:16:25.280 --> 0:16:26.560 without the rabies vaccine. 0:16:26.600 --> 0:16:31.040 It certainly doesn't reach its sort of completion without that. 0:16:31.960 --> 0:16:35.120 I mean, it's wonderful for those of us who love dogs. 0:16:36.080 --> 0:16:37.720 Thank you, Monica. That was delightful. 0:16:38.160 --> 0:16:40.280 Yeah. Thanks. 0:16:41.480 --> 0:16:44.880 Monica Murphy is the co author with Bill Wassick, of Rabbit, 0:16:45.160 --> 0:16:49.240 a Cultural History of the world's most diabolical virus. Their 0:16:49.280 --> 0:16:53.360 most recent book is Our Kindred Creatures, How Americans came 0:16:53.400 --> 0:16:56.760 to feel the way they do about animals. We'll be 0:16:56.800 --> 0:16:58.880 back in a minute to talk about the surprising way 0:16:58.960 --> 0:17:03.120 that wildlife bilegious are fighting rabies in America right now. 0:17:10.920 --> 0:17:13.119 By the early part of the twenty first century, the 0:17:13.200 --> 0:17:17.439 rabies vaccine had almost entirely eliminated rabies from people and 0:17:17.520 --> 0:17:20.760 dogs in the United States, but the disease has persisted 0:17:20.840 --> 0:17:25.160 in wild animals. I talked about this with Kathy Nelson 0:17:25.680 --> 0:17:26.040 years ago. 0:17:26.119 --> 0:17:28.760 When I was in Vermont. We used to operate a 0:17:29.040 --> 0:17:31.320 rabies hotline in the state. It would get calls in 0:17:31.359 --> 0:17:33.480 from the public and we would sometimes go out to 0:17:33.560 --> 0:17:37.960 investigate them, and we had a skunk that was trying 0:17:38.000 --> 0:17:40.960 to bite the gas cap off of a lawnmower, and 0:17:41.440 --> 0:17:45.760 they'll just bite anything that's in sight, because that's one 0:17:45.800 --> 0:17:49.000 of the fascinating parts about the virus is that it's 0:17:49.359 --> 0:17:51.760 designed to tell the brain to bite things. 0:17:52.200 --> 0:17:56.080 Kathy is the wildlife biologist and the operations supervisor for 0:17:56.160 --> 0:18:00.000 the National Rabies Management Program with the US Department of Agriculture. 0:18:00.720 --> 0:18:03.040 For the past twenty six years, she's been part of 0:18:03.080 --> 0:18:05.919 a federal program that has been fighting rabies in a 0:18:05.920 --> 0:18:08.359 way that that I have to say, I found delightful. 0:18:09.240 --> 0:18:12.280 So tell me about the first time you went up 0:18:12.320 --> 0:18:16.719 in the air, too, fleeing rabies vaccines at the ground. 0:18:17.200 --> 0:18:21.760 Yeah, I still remember. It was so exciting. You you know, 0:18:21.800 --> 0:18:24.800 you help load all these baits onto a plane. You 0:18:25.119 --> 0:18:27.720 walk up the little steps of the small plane, you 0:18:27.760 --> 0:18:30.119 get in it, someone closes the hatch on you. You know, 0:18:30.200 --> 0:18:34.440 the engines start, you take off. You're flying over beautiful 0:18:34.640 --> 0:18:39.760 terrain and landscape, just beautiful agricultural forested land, and you know, 0:18:39.840 --> 0:18:43.000 the person up front says, okay, machine on and you know, 0:18:43.080 --> 0:18:45.199 baits are going down this little belt and I'm just 0:18:45.280 --> 0:18:48.439 moving them around looking out the window, seeing moose, deer, 0:18:48.640 --> 0:18:51.760 you know, all kinds of wildlife. I could literally could 0:18:51.800 --> 0:18:53.600 not believe that I was getting paid to do a 0:18:53.680 --> 0:18:54.199 job like this. 0:18:55.320 --> 0:18:56.560 What kind of plans were you going up? 0:18:56.560 --> 0:18:58.960 Then they have a single wing, two engines. 0:18:59.320 --> 0:19:01.000 How many seats? It's like, how small is it? 0:19:01.240 --> 0:19:03.440 If there were seats in them, there probably would be. 0:19:03.840 --> 0:19:05.800 There would probably be about a dozen seats. 0:19:05.920 --> 0:19:10.600 You're basically fly that cargo van. Yeah, so these baits 0:19:10.800 --> 0:19:15.800 are falling from the sky. Maybe this is a dumb question, 0:19:15.920 --> 0:19:17.960 but like, is there ever any word they're going to 0:19:18.040 --> 0:19:19.119 hit somebody on the head. 0:19:19.480 --> 0:19:22.000 Yeah, No, not a dumb question at all. Yeah, So 0:19:22.160 --> 0:19:25.080 the navigator in the front seat, not the pilot, but 0:19:25.119 --> 0:19:28.639 the other person who is a USDA wild Life Services employee. 0:19:28.920 --> 0:19:31.360 They have an on off switch, So anytime we're approaching 0:19:31.440 --> 0:19:34.399 a house or a road or a major body of water, 0:19:34.760 --> 0:19:37.919 that switch goes off so that baits aren't distributed. You know, 0:19:37.960 --> 0:19:40.160 over the course of a twenty five year program, we've 0:19:40.280 --> 0:19:44.680 hit a roof for two. But fortunately, you know, once 0:19:44.720 --> 0:19:48.920 folks learn about our program, they're generally really really accepting 0:19:48.960 --> 0:19:51.200 of it, and you know, they're not too mad. 0:19:51.560 --> 0:19:54.720 Is it happening like literally today is it happening this, 0:19:54.880 --> 0:19:57.800 you know, we're talking in August of twenty twenty four. 0:19:58.520 --> 0:19:59.840 Is there a plane in the air today? 0:20:00.200 --> 0:20:03.600 There is? Literally I got a text this morning saying 0:20:04.040 --> 0:20:06.560 all five aircraft are taxing for run ups and take 0:20:06.600 --> 0:20:09.120 off in Watertown. That's Watertown, New York. 0:20:09.560 --> 0:20:12.240 Tell me about the baits, like, what's one of them 0:20:12.520 --> 0:20:14.199 look like? Taste like? 0:20:15.080 --> 0:20:18.280 So we use different vaccine types. One of them looks 0:20:18.320 --> 0:20:21.119 like kind of like a little ketchup packet with a 0:20:21.160 --> 0:20:23.919 slight oil on the outside and attached to that oil 0:20:24.000 --> 0:20:25.160 or tiny little fish. 0:20:25.000 --> 0:20:31.680 Mail crumbs fishmeal sounds delicious to a raccoon, I'm sure, yeah, Okay. 0:20:31.240 --> 0:20:34.280 So the other company they make a sweet bait, and 0:20:34.320 --> 0:20:38.520 it's a sugary, sweet, like marshmallow kind of sweet vanilla 0:20:38.560 --> 0:20:39.200 based bait. 0:20:39.560 --> 0:20:41.720 Presumably you can't just like fling these things out of 0:20:41.720 --> 0:20:45.040 an airplane over a city, right, So how do you 0:20:45.040 --> 0:20:46.920 do it? In you know, urban areas. 0:20:47.119 --> 0:20:50.800 Primarily we drive around in trucks. You know, someone's driving 0:20:50.840 --> 0:20:52.960 another person has the window down in the passenger seat. 0:20:53.240 --> 0:20:58.000 They're tossing a couple baits down. We record the location 0:20:58.080 --> 0:21:00.560 of all of these baits with a GPS unit, so 0:21:00.600 --> 0:21:04.080 that we know where we've baited. Our biggest struggle right 0:21:04.119 --> 0:21:08.080 now is because there's so many other food sources, you know, 0:21:08.680 --> 0:21:11.119 trying to pull them away from a dumpster full of 0:21:11.160 --> 0:21:15.119 pizza to eat one of our baits is a real challenge. 0:21:15.359 --> 0:21:17.960 I have literally feed a raccoon in Prospect Park in 0:21:18.000 --> 0:21:21.000 Brooklyn eating a whole slice of It's. Yeah. 0:21:21.200 --> 0:21:23.680 They I mean, they're omnivores, so they're going to eat 0:21:23.960 --> 0:21:26.920 anything you know around. But we have done a ton 0:21:26.960 --> 0:21:31.920 of research in urban areas looking at movement patterns, home 0:21:32.000 --> 0:21:33.919 range sizes, because you have to get them right in 0:21:33.920 --> 0:21:35.840 the right spot for them to even find them. 0:21:36.080 --> 0:21:39.160 So let's talk about the scope of the project now, 0:21:39.240 --> 0:21:42.000 Like what is the range of where you where you 0:21:42.080 --> 0:21:42.400 do this. 0:21:42.840 --> 0:21:47.280 We have a band of vaccine distribution zone that goes 0:21:47.320 --> 0:21:51.480 from Maine kind of across the Canada border down to 0:21:51.600 --> 0:21:55.240 Ohio and then pretty much straight down from Ohio to Alabama, 0:21:55.520 --> 0:21:58.720 and that's designed to stop the westward spread of raccoon 0:21:58.800 --> 0:22:01.080 Raby's and the northward spread into Canada. 0:22:01.600 --> 0:22:04.600 Oh interesting, it's like a line of defense. 0:22:04.880 --> 0:22:06.200 Yep, exactly. 0:22:06.960 --> 0:22:10.480 Was that the notion when you started was the issue like, oh, 0:22:10.560 --> 0:22:16.160 rabies is spreading let's defend against the spread of rabies. 0:22:16.480 --> 0:22:18.960 Yes, So the story of raccoon rabies is a really 0:22:19.000 --> 0:22:22.520 interesting one. Raccoon rabies was first sort of documented in 0:22:22.600 --> 0:22:25.760 the late nineteen forties in Florida. But then there were 0:22:25.800 --> 0:22:30.720 some raccoon hunters from West Virginia, Virginia area who wanted 0:22:30.760 --> 0:22:33.560 to replenish their raccoon supply. They went down It was 0:22:33.600 --> 0:22:36.840 real commonplace back then to move raccoons around for raccoon hunting, 0:22:36.840 --> 0:22:40.560 so they went down south, got some raccoons, released them 0:22:40.640 --> 0:22:44.240 into an area on the Virginia West Virginia line and 0:22:44.640 --> 0:22:48.280 inevitably released some rabid raccoons without knowing it, and then 0:22:48.680 --> 0:22:55.360 raccoon rabies exploded from there. It reached most Northeastern states 0:22:55.359 --> 0:22:56.600 by the early nineties. 0:22:57.280 --> 0:23:01.560 And is there risk of raccoons passing rabies to humans? 0:23:02.320 --> 0:23:05.080