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Speaker 1: Welcome to have to Blow Your Mind from stop work

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Speaker 1: dot Com. Hey, welcome to stept about your Mind. My

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Speaker 1: name is Robert Lamb and my name is Christian Sager.

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Speaker 1: So I think both of us share a favorite intro

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Speaker 1: scene to a movie. We're talking about The Thing John

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Speaker 1: Carpenter's remake of The Thing at the beginning. Yeah, not

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Speaker 1: the not the recent one from What Was It Like?

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Speaker 1: Which also had the dog in it and I and

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Speaker 1: I have to admit I enjoyed that sequel prequel remake. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I didn't hate it as much as some other people did.

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Speaker 1: But that movie opens with a dog running across an

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Speaker 1: Arctic landscape, but the helicopter chasing it, and people shooting

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Speaker 1: from the helicopter at the dog, trying to kill this

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Speaker 1: dog desperately, and it arrives at an American camp and

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Speaker 1: they can't figure out why. I believe they're Norwegian, right,

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Speaker 1: people shotting in Norwegian, raging about this dog, trying to

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Speaker 1: kill it, and uh, yeah, it's a it's a factless

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Speaker 1: opening scene because it's you start with the chase. Everyone's

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Speaker 1: interested in a chase, and then it seems so bizarre,

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Speaker 1: like what why is this poor innocent dogg Eve, there's

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Speaker 1: a point where they aren't They like thrown grenades at

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Speaker 1: it from a helicopter. I've seen it. I definitely remember

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Speaker 1: the shooting. Yeah yeah, so, Uh. The reason why we're

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Speaker 1: bringing this up is because, of course we're big horror

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Speaker 1: monster fans here, and what we're gonna talk about today

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Speaker 1: is probably the closest thing in real life we have

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Speaker 1: to a horrific monster like the Thing, uh that infects

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Speaker 1: human bodies and apparently can now infect dog bodies just

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Speaker 1: like the Thing did. Yeah, we see a similar situation

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Speaker 1: playing out with the guinea worm because in the Thing,

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Speaker 1: of course, uh, this parasitic shape shifting organism from another

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Speaker 1: world or another string of world has been almost defeated

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Speaker 1: at this Norwegian outpost and it's fled to the place

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Speaker 1: in this dog and this is it's it's vessel to

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Speaker 1: try and reach another place of safety, and they're trying

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Speaker 1: to kill it first. Uh. And we we actually see

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Speaker 1: this scenario taking place to a certain extent with the game.

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Speaker 1: One of my favorite things about this which you covered

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Speaker 1: this previously for How Stuff Works now and in a

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Speaker 1: short video that you you out there can find both

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Speaker 1: on now do How Stuff Works dot com, but also

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Speaker 1: on our social media channels we shared it. You did

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Speaker 1: an article in a video, and this is sort of

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Speaker 1: our deeper dive into that. But you have this great

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Speaker 1: sentence in there that I loved. You said, man maybe

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Speaker 1: may indeed be the warmest hiding place, but man's best

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Speaker 1: friend will do in a pinch. That's that's my favorite

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Speaker 1: tagline for this. Well, because man is the warmest hiding

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Speaker 1: place is from the thing, Yeah yeah, yeah, And indeed

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Speaker 1: that's kind of what's going on here. Yeah. So it

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Speaker 1: also reminds me the guinea worm and this it just

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Speaker 1: brought up a bunch of horror movie sci fi kind

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Speaker 1: of possibilities to me when we started really researching how

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Speaker 1: this thing works. Also made me think of Alien three

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Speaker 1: uh in in one of the cuts. There's two different

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Speaker 1: cuts of that movie, but in one of them, the

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Speaker 1: xenomorph infects a dog instead of a human, right, and

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Speaker 1: that that is supposed to explain why it takes this

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Speaker 1: more Canine the sweeker for like a uh morphology, it

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Speaker 1: has a different biology somehow because uh, the parasite grew

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Speaker 1: in a dog, uh and burst out of a dog,

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Speaker 1: And we are talking today about a parasite that also

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Speaker 1: grows in a dog and burst out of it. Although

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Speaker 1: from all the research we've done, it doesn't seem like

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Speaker 1: there's a ton of real, like journal published science about

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Speaker 1: the dog infestation with guinea worms. So we're not quite

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Speaker 1: sure actually if the guinea worms that come out of

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Speaker 1: these dogs are all that different, uh, physically than they

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Speaker 1: are when they come out of human beings. But the

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Speaker 1: the process is certainly different. Yeah. Indeed, so let's let's

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Speaker 1: back up. We'll just talk for a minute about the

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Speaker 1: organism itself and then we'll get more into this human

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Speaker 1: versus guinea worm fight. We're talking about the guinea worm

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Speaker 1: drachen Kulis medinansis, which is a nematode or round worm uh.

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Speaker 1: And we're talking about a pretty ancient critter here, a

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Speaker 1: lineage of organisms that that are honed by up to

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Speaker 1: eight billion years of evolution. Now that this is the

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Speaker 1: actual estimates here very dependent on who's doing the research.

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Speaker 1: But OSU zoologist George point Air, who literally wrote the

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Speaker 1: book on nematodes uh, says that the oldest known nematodes

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Speaker 1: are from around four hundred million years ago. But he

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Speaker 1: but he theorizes that they probably date back around a

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Speaker 1: billion years, meaning that they'd be be one of the

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Speaker 1: oldest of all life forms, emerging before almost all other

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Speaker 1: animals and just after bacteria, protozoa and fun guy. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: so one thing that I read said that the ancient

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Speaker 1: Egyptians were dealing with this we we we know that

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Speaker 1: we found it in their in their eatings, and they

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Speaker 1: had some terrible treatments for how to deal with what

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Speaker 1: we today called guinea worm disease, one of which involved

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Speaker 1: eating goat feces. They assumed that eating that would somehow

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Speaker 1: make the worm come out. Well, yeah, it was probably

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Speaker 1: used in a combination with other elements because, as Joe

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Speaker 1: and I explored in the Tears of Ray episode, Uh,

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Speaker 1: they dealt with the ancient Egyptian use of honey. They

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Speaker 1: had a lot of the us to honey. They used

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Speaker 1: honey and wax and a lot of their medicinal treatments. Uh.

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Speaker 1: There was one example of crocodile feces being used in contraceptives,

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Speaker 1: and nfecs also pops up in traditional Chinese medicine from

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Speaker 1: time to time, to say nothing of of modern fecal transplants.

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Speaker 1: So I don't want to demonize. Oh, I wouldn't know.

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Speaker 1: And and and let's be honest here, like we're while

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Speaker 1: we're we're gonna get into it. We're on the verge

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Speaker 1: of eradicating the guinea worm, actually, but it's taken us

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Speaker 1: as a as a species a very long time to

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Speaker 1: kind of figure out how this whole process works and

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Speaker 1: how to attack it, because they're they're a hearty adapt

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Speaker 1: of organism. Nematodes themselves. You can find them, you can

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Speaker 1: find them on mountaintops, you can find cold around deep

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Speaker 1: sea thermal vents. So the nematodes as a whole are

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Speaker 1: highly successful, and the guinea worm has also managed to

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Speaker 1: cling onto its position as a as a human parasite.

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Speaker 1: I actually read that nematodes in general may comprise nine

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Speaker 1: percent of all life that's on the ocean floor, and

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Speaker 1: there may be up to ten million different species overall.

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Speaker 1: But when we're talking about the ones that quote unquote

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Speaker 1: infect humans, there's only a hundred and thirty eight, Only

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Speaker 1: a hundred and thirty eight of the ten million climb

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Speaker 1: inside of us and and burst back out in somewhere

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Speaker 1: other I'm pretty certain I didn't follow this tangent, but

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Speaker 1: as I was researching this and doing some searches. Occasionally

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Speaker 1: I forget reach one of those topics where you absolutely

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Speaker 1: cannot search it with without Google scholar on because you

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Speaker 1: start getting stuff. Yeah yeah, and uh, and this was

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Speaker 1: one because I think I found more than a couple

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Speaker 1: of instances where people are saying nematodes are actually aliens. Um,

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Speaker 1: and you'll find the same thing with like fun Guy,

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Speaker 1: I bet that's a topic that our producer, Knowl's other show,

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Speaker 1: Uh stuff they don't watch, should probably cover more that

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Speaker 1: they might have covered before. The idea that nematodes are aliens. Yeah, okay,

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Speaker 1: I'll buy it for now. We've already connected it to

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Speaker 1: the movie Alien and the movie The Thing. So from there,

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Speaker 1: I mean, logically it has to be abled. All we

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Speaker 1: have to do is then connect these ancient aliens to

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Speaker 1: the Old Testament. And Uh. The weird thing about these

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Speaker 1: about nematodes in particular, is we have entire departments at

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Speaker 1: universities that are dedicated to studying these things, but they're

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Speaker 1: dedicated to studying how to kill them because of the

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Speaker 1: issues like guinea worm disease. And then also a number

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Speaker 1: of nematodes are also crop concerns too. Yeah, so you

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Speaker 1: have a definite health and uh and food interest in

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Speaker 1: eradicating them, not so much studying them and learning from

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Speaker 1: them exactly or like where they came from and and

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Speaker 1: like what their influences on our ecology. And I immediately

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Speaker 1: started thinking about the recent episode we did on mosquito factories,

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Speaker 1: and we started reading about how to eradicate an entire

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Speaker 1: species like the guinea worm. I thought, well, what's the

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Speaker 1: effect going to be on the local ecology? Um? And

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Speaker 1: that doesn't seem to be something people are very concerned

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Speaker 1: about in this literature. They want to get rid of

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Speaker 1: this thing or explore though in this episode you do

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Speaker 1: see an unbalancing when you start messing with the organism.

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Speaker 1: The organism messes back. One other thing about the ancient

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Speaker 1: history of the guinea worm. They show up in the

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Speaker 1: Old Testament. That's how old they are, how long we've

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Speaker 1: been dealing with them, And they're referred to as fiery

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Speaker 1: serpents in there, I would imagine because of the burning

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Speaker 1: sensation when they exit the human body. But instead of

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Speaker 1: being thought of as a worm, they were thought of

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Speaker 1: as a serpent. So all right, that's sort of the

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Speaker 1: background history of how long we've been dealing with it, Robert,

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Speaker 1: how what's the life cycle of this thing? So like

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Speaker 1: let's talk about it as if like this was like

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Speaker 1: a xenomorph infection. Okay, so like how's it get in,

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Speaker 1: how's it breed, how's it reproduced? And then how's it

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Speaker 1: get out? Well, luckily, this one's pretty pretty straightforward. I'm

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Speaker 1: always interested in parasites, and I'm especially interested in those

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Speaker 1: life cycle charts you always see for them when you

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Speaker 1: look them up on CDC or or other sources. Like

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Speaker 1: that's that's like a standard graphic in any kind of

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Speaker 1: explanation of how these things work. And some of them

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Speaker 1: are really byzantine with multiple um you know, with with

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Speaker 1: multiple host organisms with different different phases and different branches.

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Speaker 1: This one is is a pretty simple circle, although it

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Speaker 1: doesn't go directly into human beings, does it. No, it

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Speaker 1: basically what will happen. We're gonna start with the water here,

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Speaker 1: so you're gonna have some compromised water, and the larva

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Speaker 1: have already infected tiny fresh water copa pods. Yeah they're small,

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Speaker 1: but they're small, and that we can filter them out.

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Speaker 1: We'll talk about that later. There's some strategies for how

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Speaker 1: to do such a thing. Yeah, So you you end

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Speaker 1: up drinking in unfiltered drinking water that contains the coca pods.

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Speaker 1: Then the copa pods wind up in your stomach and

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Speaker 1: that's when they the larva breakout of their their previous host.

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Speaker 1: Then they tunnel their way through the stomach and intestinal

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Speaker 1: walls and they mature and breed inside the human abdominal cavity.

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Speaker 1: So they turn your abdominal cavity basically into a sex

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Speaker 1: came right, Yeah, And so we're talking about males and

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Speaker 1: females because they're breeding, and the female is what's important

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Speaker 1: here because that's the the version of the guinea worm

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Speaker 1: that makes its way out of your body. Right once,

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Speaker 1: once the male has has finished um making sweet nematode

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Speaker 1: love inside your abdominal cavity, it dies in your abdominal cavity. Man,

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Speaker 1: So it's just all it knows is that copa pod

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Speaker 1: is a baby. And then just the inside of our

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Speaker 1: abdoms right, that the rest of the universe is m

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Speaker 1: is just unknown to the male limato, but the fertilized female,

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Speaker 1: because fertilized to this foot point, she migrates to the

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Speaker 1: surface of the host skin and they typically surface on

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Speaker 1: the lower body, generally on the legs or the feet,

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Speaker 1: and they cause a painful, painful blister um. And when

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Speaker 1: the host dips this painful blister into the water for

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Speaker 1: a little relief, the two generally two foot or longer

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Speaker 1: female worm possibly since it's a change in temperature, and

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Speaker 1: bursts out into the water where she then excretes her

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Speaker 1: larva to begin the cycle into The larva then infests

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Speaker 1: copa pods and then someone drinks them in. Yeah. And

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Speaker 1: one of the biological facts I read about them as well,

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Speaker 1: that again was very strange and stunning, is that apparently,

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Speaker 1: compared to the relative body size of a guinea worm,

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Speaker 1: the uterus and a female is huge, and that's how

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Speaker 1: it can store so many larva and spew them out.

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Speaker 1: What it immediately made me think of is a show

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Speaker 1: that we've covered on on stuff to blow your mind before,

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Speaker 1: the Strain and uh, sometimes the vampires and that will

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Speaker 1: just like they're basically the vampires and that if you

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Speaker 1: if you haven't seen it, go listen to our podcast episode.

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Speaker 1: But it's full of spoilers. Uh. They basically are created

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Speaker 1: by by parasitic worms and there's some scenes where the

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Speaker 1: vampires just like vomit out these worms like just like

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Speaker 1: spew like hundreds of worms out. And that's what the

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Speaker 1: guinea worm made me think of. It's like, if you

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Speaker 1: were looking at the whole thing with a microscope, it

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Speaker 1: would probably be like that. Yeah, if you if you

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Speaker 1: dig wormy parasites and monsters, um, the strain is well

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Speaker 1: worth checking out. Like, whatever your misgivings may be about

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Speaker 1: any of the other elements in the show, I I,

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Speaker 1: in my estimation, they're worth putting up with. Yeah, it's yeah.

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Speaker 1: I'm currently binge watching the second season and uh I

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Speaker 1: keep coming back from the monsters and the worms. All right, well,

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Speaker 1: speaking of coming back for the monsters and the worms,

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Speaker 1: let's take a quick break, and when we come back,

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Speaker 1: we will breakdown how this life cycle affects the human host,

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Speaker 1: how it manifests in the form of guinea worm disease.

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Speaker 1: All right, we're back. So okay, so we've described how

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Speaker 1: the guinea worm infects a human host, how it pops out,

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Speaker 1: but what are the what's the impact on us, what's

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Speaker 1: the impact on our bodies? And also like human society

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Speaker 1: as it's infected by these things. Right, So, the the

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Speaker 1: entire human portion of the life cycle here we've discussed

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Speaker 1: takes about a year, and after a year that's when

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Speaker 1: you begin to experience symptoms as a host. And the

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Speaker 1: typical symptoms are fever, itching, nausea, of vomiting, diarrhea, dizziness.

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Speaker 1: So you know these can be bad, but this is

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Speaker 1: nothing like super crippling at this point, right, right, But

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Speaker 1: think about it, like, you have no idea what happened,

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Speaker 1: because it's been a year since you drank that, so

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Speaker 1: you just all of a sudden start feeling terrible. It

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Speaker 1: could be that those are all symptoms of I don't know,

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Speaker 1: like having a bad flu, rather than it seems like

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Speaker 1: it's harder to put one and two together in terms

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Speaker 1: of when you might have picked up the infection. Now,

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Speaker 1: if this weren't bad enough, and it's pretty bad already,

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Speaker 1: the problem, the real problem here is a secondary bacterial

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Speaker 1: infection commonly results in painful disability. They can disrupt the

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Speaker 1: person's ability to work, to attend school, to care for

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Speaker 1: family members, and according to the Centers for Disease Control

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Speaker 1: Prevention UH, this disability typically last eight and a half weeks,

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Speaker 1: but it can sometimes prove permanent. So this is where

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Speaker 1: we get into the just really horrific aspect of guinea

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Speaker 1: worm disease because it takes you out of I mean,

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Speaker 1: at least for eight and a half weeks. Can you

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Speaker 1: imagine just being being crippled. I'm able to go to

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Speaker 1: work there for loved ones, uh, etcetera, for for that

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Speaker 1: space of time. Um. And this this is a point

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Speaker 1: I really want to hammer home before we dive even

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Speaker 1: further into it. The guinea worm disease is currently only

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Speaker 1: occurring in the poorest ten percent of the world's population,

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Speaker 1: and that's because they don't have access to clean drinking

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Speaker 1: water or modern healthcare. Um. So not only is it

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Speaker 1: a symptom of poverty of being poor, but itself causes

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Speaker 1: poverty through the disability that we're talking about here. If

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Speaker 1: you're out, you can't work for eight and a half sorry, yeah,

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Speaker 1: eight eight and a half weeks. Uh, Well, that's going

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Speaker 1: to impact your livestock you're farming, right, which is how

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Speaker 1: most of the people in these areas are making a living.

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Speaker 1: And I also want to emphasize on this burning that

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Speaker 1: we talked about, right, We mentioned the fiery serpent, So

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Speaker 1: it I mean I haven't had this before. But the

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Speaker 1: way that it's described as literal burning, as if like

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Speaker 1: you're on fire or something which makes you the host

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Speaker 1: want to go to the water. You're talking specifically about

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Speaker 1: the blister here, Yeah, and the blister of the time

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Speaker 1: forms on the lower part of your body. So all

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Speaker 1: you have to do is put maybe the blisters on

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Speaker 1: your foot, put your foot in some water. Uh. We

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Speaker 1: believe that it's because the nematode senses this temperature change

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Speaker 1: of the water that's what causes it to burst out.

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Speaker 1: I was immediately thinking like, oh, I wonder if like

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Speaker 1: one way to do this is just like put your

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Speaker 1: foot in like a bucket of ice and in the

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Speaker 1: worm will just like come out. But clearly that's not

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Speaker 1: the case, because the actual removal of these worms is. Man,

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Speaker 1: this is some grizzly stuff. Like this is one of

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Speaker 1: those episodes where I get like a little like grossed out.

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Speaker 1: To remove the worm, it's not only very painful, it's

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Speaker 1: also time consuming. It's not like you can just take

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Speaker 1: a pair of tweezers and yank this thing out. It's

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Speaker 1: two to three ft long inside your body. Uh. So

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Speaker 1: then the other the other problem here is that if

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Speaker 1: it breaks during the removal, the remaining part of the

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Speaker 1: female worm will withdraw back into the human body degrade,

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Speaker 1: and that's going to cause even more pain and swelling.

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Speaker 1: It will then spill it's larvae into your tissues, which

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Speaker 1: can lead to more infection and even possibly death. So

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Speaker 1: here's how they remove these worms. They get the uh

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Speaker 1: top end out of the blister, and they wind that

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Speaker 1: around a piece of gauze or a small stick, and

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Speaker 1: they manually extract it slowly. And when I say slowly,

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Speaker 1: I don't mean like an hour or two. It can

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Speaker 1: take days or weeks to get one of these things

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Speaker 1: out of a human body. And without proper care, the

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Speaker 1: warm wound itself can become infected by bacteria like you

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Speaker 1: you mentioned before. So you've not only got to worry

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Speaker 1: about the bacteria that can possibly happen from it just

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Speaker 1: bursting out, but then there's the potential infection that comes

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Speaker 1: if it breaks while you're pulling one out, and then

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Speaker 1: there's the potential infection of just not having the wound cleaned. Uh.

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Speaker 1: So there's a lot of complications. These can result in

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Speaker 1: all kinds of post symptoms, boils, lockjaw, sepsis, and more so,

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Speaker 1: the disease causes severe disability, so much so that when

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Speaker 1: they've people like the Carter Center have done the math

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Speaker 1: on this, they've figured out that it's worth millions of

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Speaker 1: dollars each year in farm work that isn't done because

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Speaker 1: of people that are infected by this. So it's difficult

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Speaker 1: to move around because of the pain. Subsequently they can't

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Speaker 1: do their work. Uh, it's it's really you know, it

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Speaker 1: doesn't kill these people most of the time, but it's

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Speaker 1: fairly traumatizing both to their lifestyle and physically, and I

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Speaker 1: would imagine mentally. All Right, so let's talk about the

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Speaker 1: war on the guinea worm. If you go back to

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Speaker 1: the nineteen eighties, um backs the around nineteen eight six,

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Speaker 1: you would find a pretty bad situation in terms of

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Speaker 1: guinea worm infection. Twenty one African and Asian countries at

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Speaker 1: the time we're experiencing a combined at three point five

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Speaker 1: million cases of an of guinea worm infection. So this

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Speaker 1: E d C launched the guinea worm Eradication Program in

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Speaker 1: night and the Carter Foundation soon took the lead. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and we should mention we're here in Atlanta recording the

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Speaker 1: Carter Center's just down the road from US I drive

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Speaker 1: by it every day on my way to work. And UH,

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Speaker 1: in grad school, spent a lot of time over there

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Speaker 1: and in the Carter Library, UM because I was studying

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Speaker 1: presidency in rhetoric. And one of the things I really

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Speaker 1: wanted to mention here, I don't want to be political,

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Speaker 1: but Jimmy Carter's post presidency work is absolutely stunning and inspiring.

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Speaker 1: Like if every president left office and did like he did,

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Speaker 1: I think it would just be like a huge role

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Speaker 1: model to people going forward. I think he's been building houses,

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Speaker 1: fighting guinea worm. He's even vowed to make sure that

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Speaker 1: the last guinea worm dies before he does. And he's

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Speaker 1: been diagnosed with cancer in the last like two years, right,

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Speaker 1: I think he beat that. He's in remission, I believe, yeah,

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Speaker 1: But cancer can't stop him exactly anyone. Um. And And

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Speaker 1: I just want to point out to one of the

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Speaker 1: things that I learned when I was doing research over there.

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Speaker 1: His farewell addressed UH when he left the presidency is

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Speaker 1: pretty interesting because he basically spells out all the things

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Speaker 1: that he went on to do for forty years after

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Speaker 1: he left office. UM or almost forty years but he

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Speaker 1: he kind of said, like, these are the things that

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Speaker 1: are important to me, and then he goes out and

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Speaker 1: he sticks to it, you know, like he's just he's

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Speaker 1: a real interesting guy. But without the Carter Center, the

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Speaker 1: we wouldn't be as close to eradicating uh, this being

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Speaker 1: this this some people call it an alien. Some people

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Speaker 1: think it's an alien, the nematode guinea worm from the

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Speaker 1: face of the planet. I mean, they've really made it

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Speaker 1: their mission and invested millions of dollars in this. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: by twenty fifteen, eradication efforts and we'll go into we're

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Speaker 1: going to get into some of the specifics of it

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Speaker 1: here in a second, but the the overall eradication efforts

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Speaker 1: have reduced infections by nine He just yeah, there were

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Speaker 1: just twenty two cases in four different countries, and as

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Speaker 1: of right now, or at least as of earlier this

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Speaker 1: week when I was researching it, only seven cases. It

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Speaker 1: popped up in twenty and that's despite the dog thing

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Speaker 1: that we're going to talk about later that the twists. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: there's still only seven and those four countries, by the way,

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Speaker 1: South Sudan, Molly, Chad, and Ethiopia. So I want to

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Speaker 1: hammer this home as well. This is considered when when

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Speaker 1: it happens, if they are eradicated, it will be the

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Speaker 1: biggest medical triumph, one of them in modern history. The

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Speaker 1: only thing even close to this is when we ended smallpox. Uh.

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Speaker 1: And it's estimated that the Carter Center has averted eighty

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Speaker 1: million cases of guinea worm disease with their campaign. So

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Speaker 1: I mean that's fantastic. Yeah. I mean when you think

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Speaker 1: of the just the collective amount of suffering that has

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Speaker 1: been reduced by this effort, it's pretty many. Yeah, there's that.

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Speaker 1: And then again there's the part of me that has

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Speaker 1: been doing this show for a while and thinks, yeah,

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Speaker 1: but what about like we're going to eradicate an entire

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Speaker 1: species off the face of the planet. I wonder what

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Speaker 1: the results of that are going to be well, which

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Speaker 1: we may be seeing now with their entry into canine exactly.

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Speaker 1: So some of these key the key tactics involved here

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Speaker 1: in fighting ginny worm and the and these uh, these

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Speaker 1: tactics come from CDC and the and the Carter Foundation. Uh.

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Speaker 1: The big one, of course is managing the drinking water.

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Speaker 1: That means making sure that that you have safe drinking

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Speaker 1: water sources such as borehole wells and dug wells or

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Speaker 1: springs with productive walls around them and caps to prevent

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Speaker 1: to prevent infected people with worms emerging from waiting and

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Speaker 1: contaminating the water. You want flowing water sources, water treatment

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Speaker 1: mesh to filter out those infected coke pods. That's this

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Speaker 1: is really one of the huge area. So a lot

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Speaker 1: of these efforts have been involved with just managing water sources.

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Speaker 1: So I spent all day yesterday researching this for the epoch.

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Speaker 1: So and uh, we use a brit of filter, one

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Speaker 1: of those like kind of things, you know, you fill

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Speaker 1: fill it up in the sink, sits in your fridge filters,

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Speaker 1: and then you drink the water. And I drink a

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Speaker 1: lot of water during the day while I'm working, and

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Speaker 1: I was just pouring it out and just thinking, like

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Speaker 1: what what's in here? But like like there's the filter

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Speaker 1: on this thing, but I don't know what what's in

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Speaker 1: here that I'm drinking and swallowing and getting into me

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Speaker 1: right now. And then I thought, you're in You're lucky.

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Speaker 1: You're in the first world society. You probably don't have

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Speaker 1: to worry about uh drech um kuliasis. Yeah, now on

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Speaker 1: the subject of filters, one of the more notable filter

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Speaker 1: methods out there is something known as life straw. So

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Speaker 1: it was produced by Vestor Guard in cooperation with the

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Speaker 1: Carter Foundation. Work started on it and around nineteen and

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Speaker 1: this is basically originally they were looking at a cloth

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Speaker 1: filter system, but then it evolved into a simple straw

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Speaker 1: like it's basically a personal uh water filtration system where

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Speaker 1: you you put the strong the water, you suck the

429
00:24:00,920 --> 00:24:03,359
Speaker 1: water up into your mouth and it filters out the

430
00:24:03,359 --> 00:24:07,040
Speaker 1: infected copa pods UM and and they since evolved this

431
00:24:07,080 --> 00:24:09,520
Speaker 1: into a number of different filteration systems like you know,

432
00:24:09,680 --> 00:24:15,399
Speaker 1: family size, larger implementations of it. And I believe the

433
00:24:15,440 --> 00:24:17,480
Speaker 1: stuff you should know even did an episode on the

434
00:24:17,520 --> 00:24:21,960
Speaker 1: Live Strap back in check that out and more about it.

435
00:24:22,000 --> 00:24:25,199
Speaker 1: But it's just one of several different different efforts that

436
00:24:25,240 --> 00:24:27,679
Speaker 1: have been put forth to combat anywhere. I picture it

437
00:24:27,760 --> 00:24:30,359
Speaker 1: is kind of like UM giver have urban mate before,

438
00:24:30,400 --> 00:24:33,600
Speaker 1: and like the traditional way like urban mate is supposed

439
00:24:33,640 --> 00:24:37,280
Speaker 1: to be presented in UM like a specific kind of

440
00:24:37,280 --> 00:24:40,600
Speaker 1: wooden cup and then you take a metal straw and

441
00:24:40,640 --> 00:24:43,960
Speaker 1: it has a filter on the pod. It's a little

442
00:24:44,000 --> 00:24:47,040
Speaker 1: different than green tea. It's it's um, I believe Brazilian

443
00:24:47,240 --> 00:24:50,760
Speaker 1: or maybe maybe Argentineans at all. Oh, it's great stuff.

444
00:24:50,760 --> 00:24:53,320
Speaker 1: I I like it quite a bit. But one year

445
00:24:53,359 --> 00:24:55,360
Speaker 1: my wife got me because I like it. She got

446
00:24:55,359 --> 00:24:58,920
Speaker 1: me the straw and the the cup, the traditional cup

447
00:24:58,960 --> 00:25:01,159
Speaker 1: that you put the stuff in. And that's what I

448
00:25:01,200 --> 00:25:03,000
Speaker 1: think of when I think of the lifestra, although I

449
00:25:03,040 --> 00:25:05,240
Speaker 1: don't think the filter in an urban mate stra is

450
00:25:05,320 --> 00:25:11,040
Speaker 1: quite like powerful enough to get rid of copa pods.

451
00:25:11,080 --> 00:25:15,440
Speaker 1: So on top of filtration, vector control is important health

452
00:25:15,600 --> 00:25:20,800
Speaker 1: education and community mobilization, like just educating people about what

453
00:25:20,960 --> 00:25:24,320
Speaker 1: these things are and where the risks associated with them

454
00:25:24,320 --> 00:25:27,760
Speaker 1: are to be found. Case containment is big. A case

455
00:25:28,240 --> 00:25:31,560
Speaker 1: of guinea worm disease is considered to be contained when,

456
00:25:31,760 --> 00:25:34,240
Speaker 1: first of all, the person is identified within twenty four

457
00:25:34,320 --> 00:25:37,880
Speaker 1: hours of the worm emerging, um the person has not

458
00:25:38,080 --> 00:25:40,960
Speaker 1: entered any water source since the worm has emerged, the

459
00:25:41,040 --> 00:25:44,480
Speaker 1: person receives proper treatment and case management by a local

460
00:25:44,520 --> 00:25:48,280
Speaker 1: health provider, and within seven days of the worm emerging,

461
00:25:48,400 --> 00:25:52,800
Speaker 1: a guinea worm Eradication program supervisor determines that all the

462
00:25:52,840 --> 00:25:55,880
Speaker 1: above criteria have been met in the case is truly

463
00:25:56,240 --> 00:25:59,280
Speaker 1: taken care of. So the thing here that the Carter

464
00:25:59,359 --> 00:26:01,800
Speaker 1: Center is really have to struggle with is that it's

465
00:26:01,880 --> 00:26:04,520
Speaker 1: not about as much of like that they're going around

466
00:26:04,600 --> 00:26:07,560
Speaker 1: like with flamethrowers killing guinea worms right Like, It's not

467
00:26:07,720 --> 00:26:11,480
Speaker 1: like that. It's more about community based intervention where you're

468
00:26:11,600 --> 00:26:14,840
Speaker 1: educating people and changing their behavior in these areas that

469
00:26:14,880 --> 00:26:17,879
Speaker 1: are so heavily affected. So they mainly teach people to

470
00:26:17,920 --> 00:26:21,880
Speaker 1: filter out their water and prevent transmission. They distribute things

471
00:26:21,960 --> 00:26:24,320
Speaker 1: like the life straw we are just speaking of. Especially

472
00:26:24,359 --> 00:26:27,000
Speaker 1: if you have an emerging worm, they want you to

473
00:26:27,080 --> 00:26:29,760
Speaker 1: know the last thing you should do is go near

474
00:26:29,800 --> 00:26:31,960
Speaker 1: water because it's gonna make it worse for everybody else

475
00:26:32,000 --> 00:26:35,240
Speaker 1: in your community. Um, and they have a number of partners.

476
00:26:35,280 --> 00:26:37,800
Speaker 1: I just really want to quickly cover this because it's

477
00:26:37,840 --> 00:26:40,679
Speaker 1: it's it's a huge global effort that's gone into this.

478
00:26:41,080 --> 00:26:44,800
Speaker 1: So the countries that we mentioned before, South Sudan, Molly, Chad,

479
00:26:44,840 --> 00:26:48,760
Speaker 1: and Ethiopia, all their national ministries of health are involved

480
00:26:49,000 --> 00:26:51,960
Speaker 1: and they oversee elimination programs and have the staff that

481
00:26:52,040 --> 00:26:54,479
Speaker 1: kind of go out and interact with the communities. Then

482
00:26:54,520 --> 00:26:58,040
Speaker 1: the World Health Organization is also involved and it certifies

483
00:26:58,119 --> 00:27:01,719
Speaker 1: countries when they're worm free. I'm not quite sure how

484
00:27:01,760 --> 00:27:03,680
Speaker 1: they measure that, but there there's got to be some

485
00:27:03,760 --> 00:27:08,160
Speaker 1: kind of quantification measurement in place. I don't know. They've

486
00:27:08,240 --> 00:27:12,399
Speaker 1: analytics they use UM. And then we've talked about the

487
00:27:12,400 --> 00:27:14,639
Speaker 1: c d C, the u S Centers for Disease Control

488
00:27:14,680 --> 00:27:19,000
Speaker 1: and Prevention also here in Atlanta. UM they provide technical

489
00:27:19,040 --> 00:27:23,159
Speaker 1: assistance identifying the worms on site trying because sometimes worms

490
00:27:23,160 --> 00:27:27,000
Speaker 1: burst out of people's blisters and they're not actually guinea worms. Remember,

491
00:27:27,040 --> 00:27:30,640
Speaker 1: there's all those other nematodes that are capable of infecting you. UM,

492
00:27:30,680 --> 00:27:33,080
Speaker 1: so there's that as well. And then Unit SEF is

493
00:27:33,160 --> 00:27:36,520
Speaker 1: also involved and they assist by providing clean drinking water

494
00:27:36,600 --> 00:27:39,919
Speaker 1: to these communities. A couple of corporations have also been involved,

495
00:27:39,920 --> 00:27:43,760
Speaker 1: and they've donated more than four million dollars of non

496
00:27:43,960 --> 00:27:47,439
Speaker 1: toxic larvae side to kill the copa pods themselves that

497
00:27:47,520 --> 00:27:50,520
Speaker 1: carry the larvae UM. So they're basically like blasting the

498
00:27:50,560 --> 00:27:53,920
Speaker 1: water with this stuff. Uh. And they've also donated nylon

499
00:27:54,280 --> 00:27:57,440
Speaker 1: and then the life straws as well. The corporations with

500
00:27:57,480 --> 00:28:00,280
Speaker 1: those filters to make sure that the risk of disease

501
00:28:00,440 --> 00:28:03,560
Speaker 1: isn't coming from the natural water. Sources so much, and

502
00:28:03,640 --> 00:28:06,919
Speaker 1: this work is so important for the following reason. This

503
00:28:07,000 --> 00:28:10,120
Speaker 1: is a statistic on getting worm disease. If you miss

504
00:28:10,520 --> 00:28:15,040
Speaker 1: just one case, that can lead to eighty more infections

505
00:28:15,080 --> 00:28:17,840
Speaker 1: the following year. Remember it takes a year to just date.

506
00:28:18,040 --> 00:28:21,680
Speaker 1: So you miss one case, worm bursts into the water,

507
00:28:21,920 --> 00:28:25,919
Speaker 1: spews out its larva, somebody goes along and drinks the water,

508
00:28:26,920 --> 00:28:29,399
Speaker 1: and you've got eighty more cases a year later. And

509
00:28:29,440 --> 00:28:31,640
Speaker 1: they don't know that they're infected until a year later

510
00:28:31,720 --> 00:28:34,280
Speaker 1: when they start getting the blisters. It drives home just

511
00:28:34,320 --> 00:28:37,280
Speaker 1: how important the persistence here is. Like the scenario I

512
00:28:37,359 --> 00:28:41,160
Speaker 1: keep imagining, it's like a a really well organized Roman

513
00:28:41,240 --> 00:28:45,480
Speaker 1: legion with their shield walls and and their spears going

514
00:28:45,560 --> 00:28:49,680
Speaker 1: up against like an any human whore, you know. And

515
00:28:49,720 --> 00:28:52,160
Speaker 1: as long as they are persistent, if they keep, they keep,

516
00:28:52,200 --> 00:28:55,600
Speaker 1: they stay disciplined, they stay in formation, and they have

517
00:28:55,720 --> 00:28:58,040
Speaker 1: they keep, they keep their focus on the long fight,

518
00:28:58,400 --> 00:29:01,760
Speaker 1: they are going to persevere a win. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

519
00:29:01,800 --> 00:29:06,480
Speaker 1: And it's and it's again like it's so complicated because

520
00:29:06,480 --> 00:29:09,760
Speaker 1: it involves you know what it is. It involves a

521
00:29:09,760 --> 00:29:15,480
Speaker 1: lot of wicked problems, including economic scale, national boundaries, healthcare,

522
00:29:16,040 --> 00:29:19,320
Speaker 1: all that stuff. Plus education. I'm sure that there's language

523
00:29:19,360 --> 00:29:22,600
Speaker 1: boundaries here that are an issue as well. Uh yeah.

524
00:29:22,680 --> 00:29:24,640
Speaker 1: And then on top of that, as we're going to

525
00:29:24,680 --> 00:29:35,920
Speaker 1: discuss after a quick break, sometimes nature throws you a curveball. Alright,

526
00:29:35,960 --> 00:29:38,600
Speaker 1: we're back. Yeah, And so, as Robert alluded to right

527
00:29:38,600 --> 00:29:41,880
Speaker 1: before a break, uh, this is a case of the

528
00:29:41,920 --> 00:29:47,400
Speaker 1: old Jurassic Park adage. Sometimes life finds a way, uh

529
00:29:47,440 --> 00:29:50,280
Speaker 1: and it and it has. Uh. So it turns out

530
00:29:50,360 --> 00:29:52,600
Speaker 1: that despite all of the work of the Carter Center

531
00:29:52,640 --> 00:29:56,400
Speaker 1: and others trying to eradicate the guinea worm, we have

532
00:29:56,640 --> 00:30:00,320
Speaker 1: just found well not just found, but it's it's just

533
00:30:00,360 --> 00:30:04,640
Speaker 1: been identified as a major problem. They're infecting dogs as

534
00:30:04,640 --> 00:30:07,880
Speaker 1: well as human beings. Now, yeah, I first read about

535
00:30:07,880 --> 00:30:11,000
Speaker 1: this as reported by NPR and the reports they did.

536
00:30:11,080 --> 00:30:13,560
Speaker 1: The worms that have been popping up in dogs and

537
00:30:13,640 --> 00:30:18,320
Speaker 1: chad since since around sometimes to the tune of sixty

538
00:30:18,480 --> 00:30:22,760
Speaker 1: or more parasites per hopes. Okay, let's stop for a

539
00:30:22,760 --> 00:30:25,760
Speaker 1: second and think about that. That is that's the thing

540
00:30:25,960 --> 00:30:28,080
Speaker 1: out of all of this research that just made me

541
00:30:28,440 --> 00:30:33,640
Speaker 1: absolutely go oh my god. Um, because I mean, let's

542
00:30:33,720 --> 00:30:36,200
Speaker 1: let's back up for a second. Each one of these

543
00:30:36,200 --> 00:30:38,920
Speaker 1: worms is two to three ft long or one about

544
00:30:38,960 --> 00:30:41,440
Speaker 1: a meter because it's not a small worm and it's

545
00:30:41,440 --> 00:30:45,600
Speaker 1: not a whole like spaghetti bowl of worms? Did the

546
00:30:45,720 --> 00:30:49,800
Speaker 1: dogs are just choked full of Imagine how painful that

547
00:30:49,880 --> 00:30:53,280
Speaker 1: must be for these poor dogs. And and uh, they're

548
00:30:53,320 --> 00:30:56,440
Speaker 1: just I mean their body mass compared to ours. So

549
00:30:56,640 --> 00:30:58,040
Speaker 1: I think I mentioned this at the top. One of

550
00:30:58,040 --> 00:30:59,600
Speaker 1: the things we haven't been able to figure out from

551
00:30:59,640 --> 00:31:03,200
Speaker 1: the research is do the worms grow at a rate

552
00:31:03,320 --> 00:31:06,800
Speaker 1: comparative to the size of their host? Right? So like

553
00:31:06,880 --> 00:31:10,280
Speaker 1: the like the xenomorm example, right, Like do they are

554
00:31:10,320 --> 00:31:12,680
Speaker 1: they smaller because they're in dogs? I don't know. The

555
00:31:12,720 --> 00:31:15,440
Speaker 1: other thing is, from what we've read so far, only

556
00:31:15,520 --> 00:31:19,760
Speaker 1: one female bursts out of the human host. In this case,

557
00:31:20,040 --> 00:31:24,920
Speaker 1: they're finding sixty worms. This isn't sixty larva, it's sixty worms.

558
00:31:25,400 --> 00:31:29,640
Speaker 1: So it's just absolutely mind blowing. It's it's heartbreaking to

559
00:31:29,640 --> 00:31:32,800
Speaker 1: think about these poor dogs too. Now, that's the important

560
00:31:33,400 --> 00:31:35,120
Speaker 1: I think that to keep in mind too about the

561
00:31:35,480 --> 00:31:38,680
Speaker 1: dogs is that if you've ever if you have traveled

562
00:31:38,840 --> 00:31:41,480
Speaker 1: to other countries, or you have you have family and

563
00:31:41,520 --> 00:31:45,080
Speaker 1: other countries or family origins and other countries, you you

564
00:31:45,120 --> 00:31:49,080
Speaker 1: may realize that the way that dogs are treated in

565
00:31:49,120 --> 00:31:51,760
Speaker 1: the United States. It is different from a lot of

566
00:31:51,800 --> 00:31:54,080
Speaker 1: places in the world, like the care. We treat them

567
00:31:54,120 --> 00:31:58,520
Speaker 1: as as members of our family, and we really spend

568
00:31:58,560 --> 00:32:01,640
Speaker 1: a ridiculous amount of time and energy and money on

569
00:32:01,840 --> 00:32:05,600
Speaker 1: sustaining their health. Oh absolutely, I mean I talk about

570
00:32:05,640 --> 00:32:07,520
Speaker 1: my dogs on the show sometimes. I'm very much a

571
00:32:07,560 --> 00:32:11,520
Speaker 1: dog person. I've got two pit bull mixes, and I

572
00:32:11,520 --> 00:32:14,520
Speaker 1: immediately started thinking about them when I was doing this research,

573
00:32:14,640 --> 00:32:17,120
Speaker 1: just thinking like, oh, I can't imagine if one of

574
00:32:17,160 --> 00:32:20,640
Speaker 1: my dogs was infected with sixty of these worms, you know.

575
00:32:20,920 --> 00:32:23,200
Speaker 1: And but your dogs are like that they stay inside

576
00:32:23,240 --> 00:32:27,120
Speaker 1: and they go outside and they're outside the yard. Yeah. Well,

577
00:32:27,520 --> 00:32:30,240
Speaker 1: in many places in the world, and especially and Chad,

578
00:32:30,320 --> 00:32:33,360
Speaker 1: which is the main country of focus here, the dogs

579
00:32:33,400 --> 00:32:36,600
Speaker 1: are a little more loose, you know. They're they're running

580
00:32:36,600 --> 00:32:38,880
Speaker 1: around there on their own and they come back to

581
00:32:38,920 --> 00:32:41,240
Speaker 1: the house. They're probably not sleeping in the house. They're

582
00:32:41,240 --> 00:32:43,520
Speaker 1: not getting they're not being chained up or restrained, and

583
00:32:43,520 --> 00:32:46,360
Speaker 1: they think that's just how how life is. Yeah. They're

584
00:32:46,360 --> 00:32:50,080
Speaker 1: more like, uh, like part of the farm, right like

585
00:32:50,200 --> 00:32:52,920
Speaker 1: as any other like sort of agricultural animal would be

586
00:32:52,960 --> 00:32:56,040
Speaker 1: on the property. They're they're kept there to protect the crops,

587
00:32:56,120 --> 00:32:58,600
Speaker 1: mainly from baboons. From what I was reading, Yeah, you

588
00:32:58,600 --> 00:33:00,560
Speaker 1: could think of them as all I mean, I hate

589
00:33:00,560 --> 00:33:02,560
Speaker 1: to throw fare all around. You can almost think of

590
00:33:02,600 --> 00:33:04,480
Speaker 1: them as sort of semi farrell because they kind of

591
00:33:04,480 --> 00:33:07,800
Speaker 1: have their own community going on. Um, they don't so

592
00:33:07,920 --> 00:33:15,320
Speaker 1: much as live within human society as along the Yeah, um, yeah,

593
00:33:15,360 --> 00:33:16,680
Speaker 1: I saw a lot of that, you know, Like I

594
00:33:16,680 --> 00:33:19,840
Speaker 1: grew up overseas and um lived in Singapore and traveled

595
00:33:19,840 --> 00:33:22,280
Speaker 1: around Southeast Asia a lot, and I saw a lot

596
00:33:22,320 --> 00:33:26,720
Speaker 1: of stray dogs, um, but not dogs in this sense

597
00:33:26,760 --> 00:33:28,920
Speaker 1: where they're like they're part of the community, like they

598
00:33:28,960 --> 00:33:32,920
Speaker 1: serve a function. Um. So I'm sure like in some

599
00:33:32,960 --> 00:33:35,560
Speaker 1: cases these people are invested in having these dogs on

600
00:33:35,600 --> 00:33:37,640
Speaker 1: their property or keeping them alive. But at the same time,

601
00:33:37,680 --> 00:33:39,800
Speaker 1: they're not building them doghouses. They're taking them to the

602
00:33:39,880 --> 00:33:43,240
Speaker 1: vet and giving them treats and teaching them to sit. Right.

603
00:33:43,280 --> 00:33:47,960
Speaker 1: They probably don't have extensive span neuter programs, right yeah, yeah,

604
00:33:48,040 --> 00:33:50,160
Speaker 1: and that's part of the problem because if if there

605
00:33:50,160 --> 00:33:52,479
Speaker 1: weren't the worms are in the dogs, then what are

606
00:33:52,480 --> 00:33:57,240
Speaker 1: we doing to control the dog population? The dog problem

607
00:33:57,280 --> 00:34:00,160
Speaker 1: that of course has been that is mentioned in with

608
00:34:00,200 --> 00:34:01,880
Speaker 1: the literature, the idea like, well, what if you just

609
00:34:01,960 --> 00:34:04,440
Speaker 1: wiped out all the dogs? Yeah, and that would be

610
00:34:04,800 --> 00:34:09,440
Speaker 1: cost prohibitive and also it's not a great like public relation,

611
00:34:09,520 --> 00:34:12,719
Speaker 1: pretty bad pr move on half of I mean, I

612
00:34:12,760 --> 00:34:15,000
Speaker 1: don't know what organization would be in charge of doing that.

613
00:34:15,040 --> 00:34:17,799
Speaker 1: I suppose it would be one of these nations health ministries,

614
00:34:17,840 --> 00:34:20,919
Speaker 1: but uh, they've actually made it clear like they're not

615
00:34:21,000 --> 00:34:24,319
Speaker 1: going to do that. Euthanizing these dogs would be not

616
00:34:24,440 --> 00:34:28,920
Speaker 1: only would it be ethically a problematic for them, but

617
00:34:29,120 --> 00:34:32,279
Speaker 1: it's also it would be the largest what is called

618
00:34:32,280 --> 00:34:36,879
Speaker 1: a culling project of any animal in history. There's over

619
00:34:37,000 --> 00:34:39,360
Speaker 1: ten thousand of these dogs in these countries, and a

620
00:34:39,480 --> 00:34:42,560
Speaker 1: chat in particular, I believe, so they would have to

621
00:34:42,680 --> 00:34:46,799
Speaker 1: kill ten thousand dogs to eradicate this. And then what

622
00:34:46,920 --> 00:34:48,799
Speaker 1: we're going into is a little bit later. It's not

623
00:34:48,920 --> 00:34:52,600
Speaker 1: just dogs, um so, it's it's mammals in general. So,

624
00:34:52,760 --> 00:34:56,359
Speaker 1: but the dogs, the dogs alongside humans, they're they're they're

625
00:34:56,400 --> 00:34:59,239
Speaker 1: in close proximity to humans. And you could probably make

626
00:34:59,280 --> 00:35:06,360
Speaker 1: an argument the dog population is an essentially invasive, unbalanced population,

627
00:35:06,480 --> 00:35:10,160
Speaker 1: much like the humans. Oh yeah, certainly. Yeah. Um so

628
00:35:10,200 --> 00:35:14,480
Speaker 1: instead of eradicating them. What are they doing? Well, the

629
00:35:14,520 --> 00:35:19,880
Speaker 1: Carter Foundation is supplying people with callers chains and twenty

630
00:35:20,480 --> 00:35:24,200
Speaker 1: twenty incentive payments to tie their dogs up away from

631
00:35:24,239 --> 00:35:27,279
Speaker 1: the water supply for a two week period and that's

632
00:35:27,600 --> 00:35:30,879
Speaker 1: enough time for the female worms to emerge and die

633
00:35:30,960 --> 00:35:33,440
Speaker 1: on dry land. Yeah, and I would imagine twenty dollars

634
00:35:33,600 --> 00:35:37,560
Speaker 1: is a long way in these communities. Um. And the

635
00:35:37,600 --> 00:35:39,640
Speaker 1: idea here is if they're chained up, they're not going

636
00:35:39,680 --> 00:35:41,920
Speaker 1: to be able to contaminate the water sources and then

637
00:35:41,920 --> 00:35:44,879
Speaker 1: spread the parasite all over again. So yeah, So there

638
00:35:45,040 --> 00:35:48,920
Speaker 1: is research that shows that it is in other mammals,

639
00:35:48,920 --> 00:35:50,400
Speaker 1: and I'm going to talk about that in a second.

640
00:35:50,600 --> 00:35:53,879
Speaker 1: But the dogs themselves, because they're living, like we said,

641
00:35:53,920 --> 00:35:58,240
Speaker 1: adjacent to these communities, they're more likely to infect humans

642
00:35:58,400 --> 00:36:00,680
Speaker 1: and start this process all over again them. Now, one

643
00:36:00,680 --> 00:36:03,840
Speaker 1: thing we haven't really mentioned is how the dogs specifically

644
00:36:03,880 --> 00:36:08,960
Speaker 1: are picking up the infection. Yeah, and this is entirely Yeah.

645
00:36:09,000 --> 00:36:12,239
Speaker 1: I mean, we could assume that it might be from

646
00:36:12,239 --> 00:36:15,360
Speaker 1: a water source. However, there there have been two guesses

647
00:36:15,440 --> 00:36:17,799
Speaker 1: and this leads directly into the paper I'm about to

648
00:36:17,840 --> 00:36:23,839
Speaker 1: talk about eating tadpoles or eating fish cuts um from

649
00:36:24,040 --> 00:36:27,200
Speaker 1: these water sources as well. I think most dog owners

650
00:36:27,200 --> 00:36:29,759
Speaker 1: and people who have been around dogs, they can sympathize

651
00:36:29,800 --> 00:36:32,319
Speaker 1: that the dog is that an extreme disadvantage since most

652
00:36:32,320 --> 00:36:35,720
Speaker 1: dogs will we'll go drink just about any water, uh huh,

653
00:36:35,760 --> 00:36:39,920
Speaker 1: and and it at least knows around in just about anything.

654
00:36:41,040 --> 00:36:43,839
Speaker 1: My dogs. Um, it's been raining here a little bit lately,

655
00:36:43,840 --> 00:36:46,160
Speaker 1: and the mosquitoes have been worse this summer than ever before,

656
00:36:46,600 --> 00:36:49,359
Speaker 1: as we talked about in the Mosquito fatri So, and

657
00:36:49,440 --> 00:36:52,280
Speaker 1: my dogs will go around the yard and drink anytime

658
00:36:52,280 --> 00:36:54,840
Speaker 1: there's like an indent in the dirt and the water,

659
00:36:55,200 --> 00:36:59,040
Speaker 1: uh you know, little pocket forms. My dog will drink that.

660
00:36:59,160 --> 00:37:01,400
Speaker 1: And I'm just thinking like, oh, there's so many mosquito

661
00:37:02,000 --> 00:37:05,040
Speaker 1: larva in that, But you know whatever, it's protein for them.

662
00:37:05,040 --> 00:37:09,920
Speaker 1: I guess it's biomas it is. Yeah, So okay. There

663
00:37:10,000 --> 00:37:13,880
Speaker 1: is a paper published in six uh in the journal

664
00:37:13,920 --> 00:37:17,960
Speaker 1: Emerging Infectious Diseases, and it's called the possible role of

665
00:37:18,000 --> 00:37:23,400
Speaker 1: fish and frogs as para tenetic hosts of dragon Coolest medinensis.

666
00:37:23,640 --> 00:37:27,440
Speaker 1: So that's the Latin term again for anywhere in this study.

667
00:37:27,560 --> 00:37:31,160
Speaker 1: The researchers purposely fed these infected copa pods that we've

668
00:37:31,200 --> 00:37:35,719
Speaker 1: been talked talking about two fish and two tadpoles. Specifically,

669
00:37:35,760 --> 00:37:40,480
Speaker 1: the fish were nile talapia and fat head minnow. Those

670
00:37:40,640 --> 00:37:45,800
Speaker 1: did not develop larva inside of them, but the tadpoles

671
00:37:46,120 --> 00:37:49,520
Speaker 1: did harbor small amounts. So this was connected to the

672
00:37:49,520 --> 00:37:51,920
Speaker 1: whole dog thing. Is well, if they're eating these, maybe

673
00:37:51,920 --> 00:37:55,759
Speaker 1: that's how they're getting them. They said. Uh, So, the

674
00:37:55,800 --> 00:38:00,359
Speaker 1: fact that the fish didn't actually demonstrate larva may not

675
00:38:00,400 --> 00:38:04,000
Speaker 1: be indicative of the fact that the fish are incapable

676
00:38:04,120 --> 00:38:06,520
Speaker 1: of passing them onto a host. It may just be

677
00:38:06,680 --> 00:38:10,759
Speaker 1: that they didn't infect them with enough larva to do so.

678
00:38:10,760 --> 00:38:13,680
Speaker 1: So what was their next step? This is also upsetting

679
00:38:13,719 --> 00:38:17,080
Speaker 1: to me as an animal owner. Uh. They then fed

680
00:38:17,120 --> 00:38:20,719
Speaker 1: the fish and the tadpoles to two ferrets to test out.

681
00:38:21,000 --> 00:38:23,040
Speaker 1: I used to own ferrets. I had four ferrets at

682
00:38:23,040 --> 00:38:27,359
Speaker 1: one time. Uh. One that was fed fish, it did

683
00:38:27,400 --> 00:38:30,279
Speaker 1: not develop larva. However, the one that was fed the

684
00:38:30,320 --> 00:38:34,040
Speaker 1: tadpoles did have larva. And if they did an autopsy

685
00:38:34,080 --> 00:38:37,080
Speaker 1: on this ferret and they found the yeah, so the

686
00:38:37,200 --> 00:38:40,760
Speaker 1: um guinea worm larva passed on and in the ferret

687
00:38:40,800 --> 00:38:42,800
Speaker 1: it probably would have grown into a worm and burst

688
00:38:42,840 --> 00:38:45,360
Speaker 1: out as it as it does in humans and now dogs,

689
00:38:45,760 --> 00:38:49,600
Speaker 1: so we know the species can survive in tadpoles as

690
00:38:49,640 --> 00:38:53,920
Speaker 1: hosts as well. Now, the study confirms their suspicions that

691
00:38:54,120 --> 00:38:57,440
Speaker 1: mammals in the area in general have been getting affected

692
00:38:57,440 --> 00:39:01,560
Speaker 1: with a worm. So we're talking about domestic fair it's cats, dogs,

693
00:39:01,800 --> 00:39:05,040
Speaker 1: as well as monkeys in the area to um they

694
00:39:05,040 --> 00:39:07,680
Speaker 1: can all serve as hosts for the worm. Now, as

695
00:39:07,680 --> 00:39:13,080
Speaker 1: we mentioned earlier, the dogs themselves are are more adjacent

696
00:39:13,120 --> 00:39:15,360
Speaker 1: to the communities, so they're more of a concern. But

697
00:39:15,719 --> 00:39:19,439
Speaker 1: according to other research has been done, researchers have known

698
00:39:19,480 --> 00:39:23,640
Speaker 1: for decades that dogs, leopards, and other mammals are in

699
00:39:23,680 --> 00:39:27,719
Speaker 1: the area can acquire similar infections, but they thought it

700
00:39:27,800 --> 00:39:31,319
Speaker 1: was from a different species of dragon coolest, not the

701
00:39:31,360 --> 00:39:35,280
Speaker 1: guinea worm. In the case of the dogs, researchers definitely

702
00:39:35,360 --> 00:39:39,440
Speaker 1: think they're spreading the worms to humans, which presumably hasn't

703
00:39:39,520 --> 00:39:42,200
Speaker 1: been proven yet. With these other mammals we're talking about here,

704
00:39:42,239 --> 00:39:45,319
Speaker 1: I mean, the leopards got a guinea worm by it right, Like,

705
00:39:45,400 --> 00:39:47,240
Speaker 1: we're not going to hang out next to a leopard.

706
00:39:47,680 --> 00:39:51,440
Speaker 1: We're probably not taking drinking the same water. Hopefully right right,

707
00:39:51,440 --> 00:39:54,520
Speaker 1: And I'm thinking the leopard population would also be significantly

708
00:39:54,560 --> 00:40:00,440
Speaker 1: smaller your farm dog population. So this this is all

709
00:40:00,920 --> 00:40:04,280
Speaker 1: rather concerning because it means that all these these efforts,

710
00:40:04,360 --> 00:40:08,359
Speaker 1: this these this decade spanning war against the guinea worm

711
00:40:08,680 --> 00:40:12,359
Speaker 1: is potentially in jeopardy because the worms have been able

712
00:40:12,400 --> 00:40:16,600
Speaker 1: to find refuge in dogs but killing other animals as well,

713
00:40:16,960 --> 00:40:21,520
Speaker 1: and therefore they're always going to have a base camp

714
00:40:21,600 --> 00:40:24,759
Speaker 1: from which to assault the human population. Again. Yeah, and

715
00:40:24,840 --> 00:40:27,200
Speaker 1: the thing that's very concerning about this, as we said,

716
00:40:27,320 --> 00:40:29,359
Speaker 1: they don't know where the dogs are getting these from,

717
00:40:29,480 --> 00:40:34,280
Speaker 1: which means that somewhere out there, probably in a water source,

718
00:40:34,640 --> 00:40:39,720
Speaker 1: there's still lots of guinea worm larvae. So the dogs

719
00:40:39,719 --> 00:40:42,640
Speaker 1: are acquiring it somehow. Where are they acquiring it from,

720
00:40:42,680 --> 00:40:44,960
Speaker 1: How are they acquiring it? Where are these tadpoles that

721
00:40:45,000 --> 00:40:47,600
Speaker 1: they might be eating, you know, or maybe they're passing

722
00:40:47,640 --> 00:40:49,719
Speaker 1: to something other than tadpoles or fish. They just don't

723
00:40:49,760 --> 00:40:52,120
Speaker 1: know yet. There there's still has is a lot of

724
00:40:52,160 --> 00:40:54,320
Speaker 1: research to be done here. You have to be interested

725
00:40:54,360 --> 00:40:56,040
Speaker 1: to see how this plays out, because that does it

726
00:40:56,160 --> 00:40:59,520
Speaker 1: mean that we can still absolutely break the cycle and

727
00:40:59,560 --> 00:41:03,600
Speaker 1: therefore or break the species, or does it mean, we're

728
00:41:03,640 --> 00:41:05,640
Speaker 1: never going to break the species. All we can do

729
00:41:05,920 --> 00:41:09,239
Speaker 1: is just it eliminated from the human population by just

730
00:41:09,920 --> 00:41:15,840
Speaker 1: remaining remaining persistent, like basically the Roman soldiers, and in

731
00:41:15,920 --> 00:41:18,480
Speaker 1: the metaphor here, they're gonna have to just keep fighting

732
00:41:18,520 --> 00:41:21,680
Speaker 1: forever and just not let their guard down. Or if

733
00:41:21,719 --> 00:41:24,520
Speaker 1: we circle back to the Thing as their metaphor, they're

734
00:41:24,560 --> 00:41:26,279
Speaker 1: just going to have to burn everything down to the

735
00:41:26,320 --> 00:41:31,040
Speaker 1: ground until that's just Kurt Russell and Keith David just

736
00:41:31,280 --> 00:41:33,759
Speaker 1: hanging out with a bottle of whiskey, just waiting to

737
00:41:33,800 --> 00:41:35,560
Speaker 1: see which one of them has a guinea worm that's

738
00:41:35,560 --> 00:41:38,000
Speaker 1: going to erupt from them first. This is this is

739
00:41:38,040 --> 00:41:39,560
Speaker 1: good that we've come back around to the to the

740
00:41:39,600 --> 00:41:41,879
Speaker 1: Thing here, because I've been thinking about a lot. I've

741
00:41:41,880 --> 00:41:44,560
Speaker 1: been writing a little bit about the Thing for the

742
00:41:44,680 --> 00:41:49,400
Speaker 1: upcoming Monster Science episodes, and I've been I've been thinking

743
00:41:49,400 --> 00:41:51,799
Speaker 1: about that whole scenario of like what happens when the

744
00:41:51,840 --> 00:41:55,920
Speaker 1: Thing reaches the rest of the population. It's it's proposed

745
00:41:56,239 --> 00:41:58,200
Speaker 1: in the movie if I remember correctly, and I believe

746
00:41:58,239 --> 00:42:00,480
Speaker 1: there's a comic series that did this as well, where

747
00:42:00,480 --> 00:42:05,319
Speaker 1: basically it's like out of control biomass explosion of things

748
00:42:05,480 --> 00:42:08,120
Speaker 1: if it gets to a major populationship. Right, the way

749
00:42:08,160 --> 00:42:10,279
Speaker 1: they showed in the movie is Wilfred Brimley has that

750
00:42:10,320 --> 00:42:13,759
Speaker 1: little like Commodore sixty four like projection, and it's like

751
00:42:14,040 --> 00:42:16,880
Speaker 1: it's like do do do? It shows like one vector

752
00:42:16,920 --> 00:42:19,680
Speaker 1: like touched as another vector, and then it's just like boom,

753
00:42:19,680 --> 00:42:22,920
Speaker 1: It just like spreads super fast. Yeah. It's like the

754
00:42:23,080 --> 00:42:24,880
Speaker 1: only reason why they were able to keep it at

755
00:42:24,880 --> 00:42:28,760
Speaker 1: bay is because they're in an isolated area. I guess

756
00:42:28,800 --> 00:42:31,080
Speaker 1: the same could be said here, right, is that like

757
00:42:31,160 --> 00:42:36,080
Speaker 1: because these are such impoverished nations that aren't really uh

758
00:42:36,440 --> 00:42:39,720
Speaker 1: connecting or networking in the same way as first world

759
00:42:39,800 --> 00:42:43,719
Speaker 1: nations are. Uh, that's keeping the warrant from spreading even

760
00:42:43,719 --> 00:42:48,439
Speaker 1: further as well. Although we also, I mean, if let's say,

761
00:42:48,440 --> 00:42:52,120
Speaker 1: like on the off chance, like one of us got infected, uh,

762
00:42:52,360 --> 00:42:54,520
Speaker 1: we would go to a doctor, the doctor would recognize

763
00:42:54,520 --> 00:42:56,759
Speaker 1: what it was, and we would be taking care of

764
00:42:56,800 --> 00:42:59,000
Speaker 1: in like a hospital or something like that. Right, Like,

765
00:42:59,239 --> 00:43:01,920
Speaker 1: we have a healthcare system in place and they would

766
00:43:01,920 --> 00:43:04,160
Speaker 1: know how to deal with it. Plus we have clean

767
00:43:04,239 --> 00:43:08,200
Speaker 1: drinking water. Yeah yeah, and also like your your first

768
00:43:08,600 --> 00:43:11,640
Speaker 1: method of treating the blister just sort of dealing with

769
00:43:11,680 --> 00:43:13,360
Speaker 1: the pain would not be to go down to the

770
00:43:13,360 --> 00:43:16,960
Speaker 1: local stream. You're probably going to back up. Yeah. Um. Now,

771
00:43:16,960 --> 00:43:20,200
Speaker 1: as far as the thing goes, I think when when

772
00:43:20,200 --> 00:43:23,320
Speaker 1: I try and think about it reaching the major population centers,

773
00:43:23,840 --> 00:43:27,560
Speaker 1: I think that either a, it's only going to do

774
00:43:27,640 --> 00:43:29,880
Speaker 1: what it has to do to get hold of a

775
00:43:29,920 --> 00:43:34,359
Speaker 1: spaceship and leave the plants. Who Yeah, so that's one possibility.

776
00:43:34,520 --> 00:43:37,279
Speaker 1: The second possibility is that it just goes crazy and

777
00:43:37,360 --> 00:43:41,960
Speaker 1: just takes over the biomass of everything, or it reaches

778
00:43:42,200 --> 00:43:47,960
Speaker 1: parasitic equilibrium, like like other creatures in our world that infiltrates,

779
00:43:47,960 --> 00:43:51,440
Speaker 1: say an aunt colony or some other kind of community

780
00:43:51,520 --> 00:43:53,480
Speaker 1: or system. Yeah, you can only go so far with it.

781
00:43:53,800 --> 00:43:56,799
Speaker 1: You don't want to kill the host. We talked about

782
00:43:56,800 --> 00:43:59,360
Speaker 1: this in the episode that we did on the physics

783
00:43:59,360 --> 00:44:03,279
Speaker 1: and science behind vampires drinking blood, that there's only so

784
00:44:03,280 --> 00:44:06,960
Speaker 1: far that vampires could go before they basically eradicated themselves. Right. So,

785
00:44:07,080 --> 00:44:09,000
Speaker 1: and you see that in successful parasites. You can't be

786
00:44:09,040 --> 00:44:13,279
Speaker 1: a successful parasite if you just wipe out the ship

787
00:44:13,400 --> 00:44:16,520
Speaker 1: that you need for your journey. Yeah, that's a good point.

788
00:44:16,719 --> 00:44:19,400
Speaker 1: And then back to the management thing, I wonder if

789
00:44:19,400 --> 00:44:23,400
Speaker 1: there's a fourth scenario in which the thing infects the

790
00:44:23,520 --> 00:44:26,640
Speaker 1: population at large and we realize, hey, we just got

791
00:44:26,640 --> 00:44:28,759
Speaker 1: to manage the heck out of this, so we're gonna

792
00:44:28,760 --> 00:44:33,000
Speaker 1: implement buddy systems. You can never be alone or or

793
00:44:33,040 --> 00:44:34,960
Speaker 1: maybe it's like a only you have to be three

794
00:44:35,000 --> 00:44:38,440
Speaker 1: people together the same point, because there's that scene in

795
00:44:38,520 --> 00:44:42,640
Speaker 1: the in the prequel remake where like, doesn't it infect

796
00:44:42,680 --> 00:44:45,040
Speaker 1: two people at the same time by just like smushing

797
00:44:45,120 --> 00:44:47,360
Speaker 1: up against one person and then that was like the

798
00:44:47,400 --> 00:44:50,080
Speaker 1: big special effect from that movie where like two people

799
00:44:50,120 --> 00:44:52,360
Speaker 1: were merged together and kind of crawling around like a

800
00:44:52,400 --> 00:44:55,080
Speaker 1: scorpion on the floor. Yeah, they had to reverse engineer

801
00:44:55,200 --> 00:44:59,279
Speaker 1: the that weird corpse that they um. Well, maybe it

802
00:44:59,320 --> 00:45:02,240
Speaker 1: just means that that every day, like twice a day,

803
00:45:02,280 --> 00:45:04,960
Speaker 1: everybody at your work or in your home has to

804
00:45:04,960 --> 00:45:07,040
Speaker 1: do that blood do the blood test where you burn

805
00:45:07,080 --> 00:45:11,600
Speaker 1: their blood. Yeah, if only finding guinea worm larvae was

806
00:45:11,640 --> 00:45:14,040
Speaker 1: as easy as just burning your blood and making it

807
00:45:14,120 --> 00:45:18,839
Speaker 1: a jump up and attack you. All Right, Well, there

808
00:45:18,880 --> 00:45:22,839
Speaker 1: you have it. If you have thoughts about guinea worm

809
00:45:23,000 --> 00:45:26,160
Speaker 1: or the thing, right into us. We're get in touch

810
00:45:26,200 --> 00:45:28,600
Speaker 1: with us. We're always happy to talk about that, and hey,

811
00:45:28,600 --> 00:45:31,120
Speaker 1: If you want to learn more about the Carter Center's

812
00:45:31,200 --> 00:45:34,799
Speaker 1: efforts Carter Foundations efforts against guinea worm, head on over

813
00:45:34,840 --> 00:45:38,080
Speaker 1: to uh Carter Center dot org. UH they have a

814
00:45:38,080 --> 00:45:41,399
Speaker 1: pretty pretty awesome website. It's pretty easy to find well worth.

815
00:45:41,440 --> 00:45:44,839
Speaker 1: Any of their programs are ongoing. Yeah, and one other

816
00:45:45,000 --> 00:45:47,000
Speaker 1: quick plug I want to mention here on the show,

817
00:45:47,400 --> 00:45:50,000
Speaker 1: we are about to do one of our first live

818
00:45:50,040 --> 00:45:53,719
Speaker 1: events with Joe, Robert and myself. It's gonna be at

819
00:45:53,760 --> 00:45:57,680
Speaker 1: the upcoming convention in early September in New York City.

820
00:45:57,760 --> 00:45:59,480
Speaker 1: So if you're in the area and you're a Star

821
00:45:59,520 --> 00:46:01,920
Speaker 1: Trek and we are going to be at Star Trek

822
00:46:01,960 --> 00:46:05,799
Speaker 1: Mission New York, and we're gonna be talking about planetary

823
00:46:05,840 --> 00:46:09,080
Speaker 1: contamination while we're there. So if you want to meet us,

824
00:46:09,120 --> 00:46:12,279
Speaker 1: you want to come see the show live, or maybe

825
00:46:12,320 --> 00:46:15,239
Speaker 1: you've got friends who are just into planetary contamination and

826
00:46:15,239 --> 00:46:17,239
Speaker 1: are also Star Trek fans that are gonna be there.

827
00:46:17,640 --> 00:46:20,480
Speaker 1: Let them know that's where we're gonna be and we're

828
00:46:20,520 --> 00:46:22,680
Speaker 1: looking forward to It's gonna be a blast. Yeah, and

829
00:46:22,719 --> 00:46:27,120
Speaker 1: we may institute fiery blood tests, yeah, I think everybody.

830
00:46:27,120 --> 00:46:29,080
Speaker 1: I think that's how we'll kick it offs. Have everybody

831
00:46:29,120 --> 00:46:31,200
Speaker 1: do a blood test if they you have to use

832
00:46:31,239 --> 00:46:33,080
Speaker 1: like a hot wire, though you can't just use like

833
00:46:33,080 --> 00:46:36,440
Speaker 1: a lighter or something like that. Uh. The other way

834
00:46:36,480 --> 00:46:38,880
Speaker 1: to get in touch with this, of course, after you've

835
00:46:38,920 --> 00:46:40,880
Speaker 1: gone to the website, after you've gone to the social

836
00:46:40,880 --> 00:46:43,520
Speaker 1: media is you can always write us the old fashioned

837
00:46:43,560 --> 00:46:56,000
Speaker 1: way at blow the mind at how stuff works dot com.

838
00:46:56,040 --> 00:46:58,520
Speaker 1: Well more on this than pathands of other topics. Because

839
00:46:58,640 --> 00:47:15,319
Speaker 1: how stuff Works dot Com I think the Big Four

840
00:47:15,440 --> 00:47:19,600
Speaker 1: start proper part far f