Buzzkill

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[3] We like to think we get to make our own history, that we did this as human beings.

[4] And that's not necessarily the case.

[5] We have to look back at history and, you know, take away some of the human elements to look at what What is really going on?

[6] And it is mosquito -borne disease that is the game changer or decides the fate of these certain historical events, not human agency.

[7] We've seemed to be fighting a losing battle throughout our existence.

[8] It's still the animal that kills more human beings on the planet than any other animal to this day, and that's including other humans.

[9] You're listening to ThruLine from NPR.

[10] Will we go back in time to understand the present?

[11] Hello.

[12] Hi, is this Omar?

[13] Hi.

[14] Yes, hi.

[15] This is Rund.

[16] I'm one of the hosts of the show, and I think Rompin.

[17] Hi, hello.

[18] Hey.

[19] Awesome.

[20] Technology.

[21] It's amazing how much we've continued doing this show, despite the fact that we're all in isolation.

[22] It's probably safe to say that right now, you're not thinking much about mosquitoes.

[23] With all the coronavirus talk going on it now, I thought you guys would focus mostly on coronavirus, but mosquitoes are just as important, I would argue.

[24] This is Omar Akbari.

[25] He's an associate professor at the University of California, San Diego.

[26] And he spends a lot of time studying mosquitoes in his lab.

[27] One thing to think about with coronavirus is that you can actually socially distance yourself and protect yourself, right?

[28] But with mosquito -fectured pathogens, how are you going to isolate yourself?

[29] How are you going to protect yourself?

[30] It's difficult, right?

[31] Omar says mosquitoes are without a doubt humanity's greatest predator, past and present.

[32] You know, as of right now, just thinking about malaria, there's about 1 ,000 people dying every single day, and those are mostly children under the age of 5.

[33] And if you calculate it, it's a child dying every two minutes, right?

[34] And dengue fever, you get about 390 million infections.

[35] And those mosquitoes that are transmitting those pathogens are becoming more abundant, and they're spreading to new places because of climate change and global warming.

[36] New places, like, for example, California.

[37] In California, which is where I live, prior to 2013, there were no 80 to Giptae or 80 -tel -pictus mosquitoes.

[38] And those are the kinds of mosquitoes that transmit dengue, Zika, yellow fever, chicken guinea.

[39] They're nasty mosquitoes.

[40] And they weren't in California prior to 2013, but in seven years, they spread throughout all of California, and they're going to continue to populate the United States.

[41] And we're just going to continue to see this happen over and over again.

[42] Omar is part of a community of scientists from all over the world, trying to come up with a plan to fight the mosquito before things get worse.

[43] Now, this might seem like an impossible task, right?

[44] Battling millions upon millions of mosquitoes across the globe.

[45] But consider this.

[46] Most mosquitoes are completely harmless.

[47] There's over 3 ,000 species of mosquitoes on the earth, but only a handful of them actually transmit pathogens that affect us.

[48] Those few outliers, the ones that transmit pathogens, the ones that can kill, those are the mosquitoes Omar and other researchers care about.

[49] Their goal is to find ways to prevent those mosquitoes from passing on deadly viruses.

[50] And really, these consist of what I would call population replacement or population suppression.

[51] Let's break that down really quickly.

[52] So population replacement means scientists modify the genetic code of mosquitoes so they can no longer transmit deadly diseases, in effect, overriding natural selection and choosing which genes are passed on.

[53] Population suppression takes an even more extreme approach.

[54] The goal with that is to get rid of those species that transmit these pathogens, right, completely from populations.

[55] In other words, eliminate the deadly mosquitoes all.

[56] Now, that's a little more complicated because whenever you totally get rid of something in the wild, it can disrupt the ecosystem.

[57] So far, Omar and others have only had success in the lab.

[58] In our lab, we have actually engineered mosquitoes that are unable to transmit dengue virus and Zika virus.

[59] And there are other groups that have engineered mosquitoes that cannot transmit the malaria parasites.

[60] So we know we can engineer mosquitoes that are unable to transmit pathogens.

[61] The next step is figuring out how to get those engineered mosquitoes into the real world.

[62] And the biggest challenge there is speed.

[63] Viruses adapt fast.

[64] So they need to make sure that the mosquitoes can spread these modified genes across the wild population before the viruses evolve and make those genes obsolete.

[65] While scientists are making progress every day, the pressing question is, will they solve this puzzle fast enough?

[66] It's a race against time.

[67] It's a race against evolution.

[68] These viruses are rapidly evolving in the wild.

[69] It's just a matter of time before the next Zika -type virus, you know, comes onto the radar.

[70] So we need to develop better technologies now to protect ourselves in the future, just like we need to do for coronaviruses.

[71] Mosquitoes were on Earth long before humans arrived and have played an outsized role in our history from the start.

[72] This tiny insect has tipped the scales in crucial bad.

[73] changed the fate of empires, and even altered our DNA.

[74] In total, mosquitoes are thought to have killed roughly half of all humans who have ever lived.

[75] That's an estimated 52 billion people.

[76] So on this episode, we're going to focus on three stories.

[77] Stories that will remind us how much of human history was shaped by something out of our control, something so small yet so deadly.

[78] and give us a clue about how it might shape our future.

[79] This is Tish Thomas and Rick Pinell chasing cattle around the pasture in Rushville, Missouri.

[80] And we love to listen to through line.

[81] Support for this podcast and the following message come from Wise, the app that makes managing your money in different currencies easy.

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[86] Support for NPR and the following message come from Carnegie Corporation of New York, working to reduce political polarization through philanthropic support for education, democracy, and peace.

[87] More information at carnegie .org.

[88] The Pontine creates fear and horror.

[89] Before entering it, you cover.

[90] your neck and face well before the swarms of large blood -sucking insects are waiting for you in this great heat of summer.

[91] Between the shade of the leaves, like animals thinking intently about their prey.

[92] Here you find a green zone, putrid, nauseating, where thousands of insects move around, where thousands of horrible marsh plants grow under a suffocating sun.

[93] roughly 310 square miles of marshland, just east of Rome.

[94] Essentially, throughout history, they were one of the malarial hotbeds of Europe.

[95] In fact, Europeans generally call malaria the Roman fever.

[96] Ancient scribes recorded the symptoms of this Roman fever.

[97] So it's a very cyclical time frame of when you get chills, fever, sweat, feel fine.

[98] And starts all over again.

[99] Chills fever, sweat.

[100] You're stuck in bed.

[101] Feel fine.

[102] Alternating between pain.

[103] Chills, fever, sweat.

[104] feel fine.

[105] But eventually you get what they call cerebral malaria, which is essentially swelling of the brain, and then you go into a coma and you die.

[106] I'm Dr. Tim Weingard.

[107] I'm a history professor at Colorado Mason University, also the head coach of the hockey team, being Canadian.

[108] And I wrote the book, The Mosquito, A Human History of Our Deadliest Predator.

[109] It was the year 264 BC in ancient Rome.

[110] The Roman Republic had by then conquered the Italian peninsula and expanded throughout the Mediterranean, just beginning their rise to power.

[111] But this also meant that the Republic was in a state of constant warfare as they fended off sieges from neighboring enemies.

[112] They were able to maintain their stronghold, in part thanks to the Pontine marshlands that surrounded the city.

[113] After the fall of Alexander the Greats Empire, there's two vying superpowers, if you will, who are vying to control trade in the Mediterranean region, and that's Carthage and Rome.

[114] Carthage was an ancient city in North Africa in what's today called Tunisia.

[115] It was one of the wealthiest and most advanced cities in the Mediterranean.

[116] It had a navy that could actually threaten Rome.

[117] And eventually they're going to butt heads to control trade.

[118] And one way to control trade was to wage war.

[119] Why trade when you can invade, right?

[120] This began more than a century of conquest.

[121] between the two powers, which came to be known as the Punic Wars.

[122] The first Punic War lasted 23 years, ending with a devastating defeat for the Carthaginians.

[123] Legend has it, after the loss, one of Carthage's generals went home humiliated and did something that would change the future for his city.

[124] He made his son, his heir, dip his hands in blood, and swear an oath of hatred against Rome.

[125] That child would grow up to be called Hannibal of Carthage.

[126] When he became a military commander, Hannibal began a campaign to avenge the loss of the first Punic war.

[127] He marched his army across the Pyrenees and the Alps.

[128] So he comes into Italy and he defeats the Romans battle after battle after battle.

[129] Hannibal's march towards Rome culminated in the epic battle of, Canaan.

[130] And at the Battle of Canai, he absolutely annihilates the Roman legions.

[131] After that battle, the doorstep to Rome is wide open for Hannibal to essentially attack the Eternal City, take Rome and end the Punic Wars.

[132] But he doesn't.

[133] Hannibal stopped his invasion of Rome.

[134] One of the main reasons, the Pontine Marshes.

[135] In order to lay siege to Rome, you cement yourself in these Pontine Marshes and Hannibal was already very familiar with malaria.

[136] In fact, he lost his right eye to the fevers of malaria.

[137] His troops had contracted malaria in northern Italy.

[138] His wife and son had already died of malaria.

[139] It might seem a little harsh to say this, but it's important to note that a sick soldier is more draining on the military machine than a dead one.

[140] Dead soldiers need to be replaced in the line, no question.

[141] But a sick soldier also needs to be replaced in the line, but they also continue to consume valuable resources.

[142] So they're actually a drain on the military machine and they're a handicap.

[143] So he wasn't willing to sacrifice his army essentially to the malaria's mosquitoes of the Pontine marshes.

[144] With that, Hannibal's campaign for Rome came to an end.

[145] And century after century, those mosquitoes and the marshes held off invader after invader.

[146] The pontine marshes were like a biological moat that protected Rome.

[147] But mosquitoes don't favor sides in war.

[148] They infect without prejudice.

[149] And Rome itself fell victim.

[150] Endemic malaria starts to suck and bleed the vitality of Rome because everybody's sick all the time.

[151] You don't have enough farmers to farm your crops.

[152] You don't have enough farmers to work in the mines.

[153] You don't have enough traitors.

[154] So your society starts to collapse upon itself because your manpower is continuously rotating through sickbay, if you will.

[155] So that's when people came up with the obvious solution.

[156] Drain it.

[157] In 300 BC, this land had been a fever -stripen swamp.

[158] All efforts to cultivate it and failed.

[159] Nero, the Caesars, the popes, even Napoleon I. For centuries, people tried and failed.

[160] And it wasn't until the early 20th century that someone finally managed to do it.

[161] So eventually Mussolini successfully reclaims these pontine marshes.

[162] The battle for land was a project started in 1928 by Benito Mussolini, Italy's fascist dictator.

[163] His goal was to turn the marshes into farmland.