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Rabies: When Monsters are Real…from Incubation · What's Your Problem?

• 0:15
  Speaker 1: Pushkin. Hey, it's Jacob. If you want more podcasts about
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: creative people solving high stakes technical problems, I've got good
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: news for you. A new season of a show called
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: Incubation is out now. Incubation is a show about viruses.
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: I'm the host of the show, and the people I
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: interviewed for this season have been full of insight and delight,
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: and I have learned a ton. So basically, I think
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: if you like What's Your Problem, you will like Incubation.
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: Here is the first episode of the new season of
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: the show, and if you do like it, you can
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: listen to more episodes wherever you're listening to this. Here's
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: the story about rabies. In three sentences, you get bitten
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  Speaker 1: by a rabbit animal, you'll lose control of your mind,
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  Speaker 1: and then you die. So it is not surprising that
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  Speaker 1: Raby's terrified humanity for thousands of years. Why do you
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  Speaker 1: write a book about Raby's, gosh?
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  Speaker 2: I have always thought Rabi's was so interesting in terms
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  Speaker 2: of its biology, the way it hijacks the brain to
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  Speaker 2: ensure that it'll continue its own spread, the way it
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  Speaker 2: affects the relationship between people and animals, which since I'm
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  Speaker 2: a veterinarian is pretty central to my life.
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  Speaker 1: Monica Murphy is a veterinarian and the co author with
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  Speaker 1: Bill Wasick of Rabbit, a cultural History of the world's
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  Speaker 1: most diabolical virus. I should mention that Monica also happens
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: to be my neighbor and a friend of mine.
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  Speaker 2: I think the stories that my rabbit Google alert turns
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  Speaker 2: up every week. You know, bobcats like coming into a bar,
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  Speaker 2: and like assaulting someone at a pool table, or raccoons
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  Speaker 2: attacking people's trucks. All that stuff is just really interesting
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  Speaker 2: and scary and the stuff of nightmares. But I love
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  Speaker 2: that science has an answer for all of that.
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  Speaker 1: In the developed world, almost nobody gets rabies anymore. In
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  Speaker 1: the United States, it's fewer than ten people a year.
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  Speaker 1: Even our dogs are safe from the disease for the
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  Speaker 1: most part. And the reason for this, the reason we
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  Speaker 1: don't have to worry that every barking dog we see
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  Speaker 1: might bite us and kill us, goes back to one
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  Speaker 1: of the most important scientists in the history of both
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  Speaker 1: viruses and vaccines, Louis Pasteur. I'm Jacob Goldstein, and this
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  Speaker 1: is Incubation, a show about viruses. We're delighted to be
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  Speaker 1: launching season two today. We have lots more viruses to
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  Speaker 1: talk about this season, and we're starting with rabies. In
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  Speaker 1: the first half of the show, we'll be talking to
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  Speaker 1: Monica about rabies and the work of Louis Pasteur. In
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  Speaker 1: the second half of the show, we'll talk to a
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  Speaker 1: scientist who's fighting rabies in wildlife in a really surprising way.
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: Talk about rabies. What is rabies?
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  Speaker 2: So, Rabies is an RNA virus. It is special because
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  Speaker 2: it is transmitted through bites, primarily unlike the sort of
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  Speaker 2: transmission pattern we see with other viruses. In rabies, at
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  Speaker 2: the site of the bite, the virus is looking to
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  Speaker 2: interact with a nerve, and once it has engaged the nerve,
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  Speaker 2: it kind of ratchets its way up the central nervous
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  Speaker 2: system from the bite site through peripheral nerves up into
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  Speaker 2: the spine, and from the spine up into the brain.
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  Speaker 2: It takes a while. It's a slow, slow process.
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  Speaker 1: It's like a centimeter a day.
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  Speaker 2: There is a real sort of relationship between how far
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  Speaker 2: away the bite is from the brain and how long
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  Speaker 2: it takes to develop rabies, although it's not strict, and
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  Speaker 2: it does mean that if you're bitten on the face,
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  Speaker 2: you are likely to come down with rabies faster than
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  Speaker 2: if you're bitten on the toe, and not every bite
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  Speaker 2: from a rabbit animal will result in transmission something like
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  Speaker 2: twenty percent your round number. And once the virus does
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  Speaker 2: make it into the brain, you're going to develop symptoms
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  Speaker 2: of rabies. They're horrible, and then you're going to die.
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  Speaker 2: It's practically speaking one hundred percent fatal, like really rotten.
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  Speaker 2: And the way it works too, which is pretty horrifying
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  Speaker 2: if you think about it, is it's hijacking the brain
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  Speaker 2: to ensure that it's going to be spread to another individual.
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  Speaker 1: And you say, what do you mean, So in especially
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  Speaker 1: in the.
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  Speaker 2: Species it's adapted to, let's say dog rabies. In the dog,
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  Speaker 2: it is going to stimulate parts of the brain that
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  Speaker 2: kind of rev up that dog's sort of social emotional state,
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  Speaker 2: make it much more prone to violence and biting incidents
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  Speaker 2: with other dogs. So that meanwhile it's being creeded in
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  Speaker 2: the saliva. It's really increasing the likelihood that it's going
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  Speaker 2: to make it into another dog and continuous life cycle,
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  Speaker 2: which is.
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  Speaker 1: Kind of amazing, right, Like it's just a virus, yeah,
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  Speaker 1: And it's essentially evolved to like change the behavior of
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  Speaker 1: this complex mammal to make it bite other mammals so
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  Speaker 1: that the virus will spread. Like that is a wild
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  Speaker 1: feet of evolution.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's really really scary. In places where humans
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  Speaker 2: are frequently in contact with rabbit animals, the sort of
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  Speaker 2: behavioral changes that occur in the human Rebee's victim are
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  Speaker 2: also really messy. You know, human with Raebe's might not
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  Speaker 2: actively try to bite you, unless they're a little kid.
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  Speaker 2: They might punch you in the nose or just scream
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  Speaker 2: curses at you.
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  Speaker 1: In general, people become more hostile.
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  Speaker 2: More violent, yeah, or sexed up.
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  Speaker 1: Uh huh so just like more id Yeah, terrifying. You're
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  Speaker 1: being attacked by your own rain right, somehow, You're like
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  Speaker 1: your own thoughts are attacking you. Yeah, yeah, I mean
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  Speaker 1: so you talk with respect to that in the book
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  Speaker 1: about kind of rabies and mythology, right, rabies and were wolves,
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  Speaker 1: rabies and vampires, like, tell me about that.
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  Speaker 2: There's at least a deep resonance between these stories of
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  Speaker 2: a sort of contagious you know, contagious zombieism or werewolf
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  Speaker 2: ism or vampirism where the bite the bite. Yeah, and
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  Speaker 2: there's the association with bats of vampires and.
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  Speaker 1: Both and both bats and wolves are historical vectors of rabies,
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: just to be clear. So this is kind of rabies.
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  Speaker 1: It's this ancient disease. It is terrifying where crazed animals
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  Speaker 1: bite people and turn people into crazed animals who then die.
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  Speaker 1: Basically the state of play rabies forever. And then onto
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  Speaker 1: the stage of history walks our hero, Louis Pasteur. That's right,
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  Speaker 1: tell me about Pasteur.
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  Speaker 2: Most folks know at least a little bit about Louis
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  Speaker 2: Pastor because he had a long scientific career. He was
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: trained as a physicist and chemist, and he grew into
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  Speaker 2: more of a microbiological concentration in his work. Along the way,
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  Speaker 2: he established germ theory.
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  Speaker 1: Yes, that people thought was like a crazy idea. And
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  Speaker 1: this is like a mid to late eighteen hundreds, right,
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  Speaker 1: and the world already had the smallpox vaccine at this point.
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  Speaker 1: But I do feel like it's worth remembering here that
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  Speaker 1: that was sort of this lucky break, right, where like
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  Speaker 1: there just happened to be this mild disease, cowpox, that
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  Speaker 1: made people immune to this terrible disease to smallpox, and Pasteur,
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  Speaker 1: as you write in the book. He decides that he's
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  Speaker 1: going to apply this germ theory to vaccines, right, He's
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  Speaker 1: actually going to use science to create a vaccin So
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  Speaker 1: tell us about that.
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  Speaker 2: What Louis Prester sought to do and succeeded in doing
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  Speaker 2: for the first time ever is manipulating microbes to sort
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  Speaker 2: of move them away from their wild state into an
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  Speaker 2: attenuated week in state and induce immunity using.
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  Speaker 1: Those right, So okay, so pasteur. He develops a few
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  Speaker 1: animal vaccines in this way, and then he decides that
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  Speaker 1: the first human vaccine he's going to make is going
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  Speaker 1: to be a rabies vaccine, you know, a vaccine for
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  Speaker 1: this terrifying disease. So what does he actually have to do?
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  Speaker 2: So, because there's no way to grow rabies inside of
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  Speaker 2: a test tube, he had to maintain a population of
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  Speaker 2: rabbit animals in his lab.
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  Speaker 1: Terrifying.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah awful, I mean really gruesome and scary for the
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  Speaker 2: people he worked with. They would harvest the saliva and
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  Speaker 2: introduce it into more dogs or into rabbits.
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  Speaker 1: How do you harvest the salon from a rabid dog
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  Speaker 1: really carefully? Yeah? Right, I walked into that.
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  Speaker 2: But yeah, involving like a high pet.
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  Speaker 1: Oh my god, in the mouth of a rabbit dog. Yeah, yeah,
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  Speaker 1: I'm gonna die. Yeah, I'm afraid. So so you've got
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  Speaker 1: step one, find the nasty disease. Step two, seemingly the
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  Speaker 1: harder part, turn that nasty disease into a thing that
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  Speaker 1: will induce some unity without causing disease.
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  Speaker 2: Right, they can't see the microbe, they know it's in
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  Speaker 2: the nervous tissue. So they start dissecting out nervous tissue
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  Speaker 2: from animals with rabies, specifically rabbits, and they aged it.
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  Speaker 2: They aged the tissue in a sort of desiccating tray
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  Speaker 2: and determined that with sufficient aging it weakens it.
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  Speaker 1: Just leave it sitting on the shelf for a while.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, Except they ultimately arrived at a method that was
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  Speaker 2: a lot more complex. They had a sort of well
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  Speaker 2: whole sort of assembly line of tissues at various stages
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  Speaker 2: of aging. So you know, you've got your your rabbit
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  Speaker 2: spinal quarter over here that's aged fourteen days, and here's
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  Speaker 2: a thirteen day one, and okay, et cetera. The ones
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  Speaker 2: that are oldest are least virulent. The ones that are
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  Speaker 2: newest are most virulent and too dangerous to put right
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: into a person right out of the gate. So they
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  Speaker 2: start with an injection of the longest aged nervous tissue,
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  Speaker 2: the weakest, the weakest one, and then over they think
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  Speaker 2: of his ten days the initial protocol, they inject thirteen
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  Speaker 2: injections with progressively stronger that is, newer tissue.
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  Speaker 1: And so is the basic idea, like the weakest one
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  Speaker 1: induces some immune response, so that you can then tolerate
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  Speaker 1: a slightly stronger one, and you're kind of going up
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  Speaker 1: a staircase of immunity.
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  Speaker 2: That's how he developed it. And of course today we
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: just have a single strength Maybe's vaccine in use. So
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  Speaker 2: his method wasn't the only way to induce immunity, but
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  Speaker 2: it's you know, they were dealing with a one hundred
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  Speaker 2: percent fatal disease, is I think understandably nervous about introducing
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  Speaker 2: it into people, and they realized both that they can
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  Speaker 2: they can do pre exposure vaccination so that the dog
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  Speaker 2: can't get infected with Rabi's.
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  Speaker 1: Uh huh, hold that thought, that's.
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  Speaker 2: Not put into use right away, But then they also
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  Speaker 2: can start a series of vaccine after the dog has
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  Speaker 2: been exposed to Raby's and prevent him from coming down
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  Speaker 2: with the disease.
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  Speaker 1: So they figure this out, and then we have this
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  Speaker 1: moment when it's time to try it on a person
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  Speaker 1: for the first time. What is that moment?
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  Speaker 2: So a case was brought to Louis Pester's attention that
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  Speaker 2: seemed sufficiently concerning to take a chance on this vaccine
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  Speaker 2: and involved a young boy who was bitten by the
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  Speaker 2: grocer's dog who had had undergone a suspicious behavior change
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  Speaker 2: and was marauding the neighborhood. The bites were extensive, and
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  Speaker 2: so that's another potential risk factor for development.
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  Speaker 1: Of Rabi's we talked about, meaning he got bit.
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  Speaker 2: Lots of places, you know, lots of places really deeply,
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  Speaker 2: so lots of places where the virus could have encountered
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  Speaker 2: a nerve, making it likely that he was going to
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: come down with rabies at some point. They were very
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: pessimistic about the boy's chances, and so they sent him
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: to Paris to.
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: Louis Pestor's lab, where he had this vaccine that he
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: had not yet tested on a human being.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, he had been thinking about testing it on himself.
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  Speaker 1: Uh huh, a kind of tradition in science.
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  Speaker 2: Yes, But before he had a chance to test on himself.
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  Speaker 2: He was persuaded by the physicians caring for this boy
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  Speaker 2: that this kid might very likely to die if he
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  Speaker 2: doesn't get the vaccine, and so Pastor went ahead with
• 12:56
  Speaker 2: his process.
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  Speaker 1: So the boy gets this experimental vaccine, and now Pastor
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: has to just wait right wait to see what happened.
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: So what's going on with Pastor while he's waiting to
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: see whether the boy survives?
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  Speaker 2: Well, Pastor was sleepless. He was just in a state
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  Speaker 2: of agonized waiting and was having health problems related to that.
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: He traveled a little bit for his health. Well, he
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: sort of ticked down the days.
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  Speaker 1: What happens with the boy?
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  Speaker 2: The boy does great. He remains healthy during the ten
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: day process where he could see innoculations, and once a
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: few months had passed, at the point at which you know,
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  Speaker 2: it was believed he would have come down with rabies
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  Speaker 2: by now, if not because of the because the bytes,
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: perhaps because the vaccine was dangerous, he continued to thrive.
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  Speaker 1: Okay, so the vaccine works, what like, how does it play?
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  Speaker 2: People were excited around the world. I mean, the vanquishing
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: of rabies was big news. Just as Pistar had calculated,
• 13:57
  Speaker 2: not immediately embraced by everyone. There were physicians everywhere who
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: had been following the science and sort of got it
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: and were eager to put it to use.
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: And in those sort of long run in the you know,
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: one hundred year arc What what does pastors work mean
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: both for rabies and for you know, disease research and
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: treatment more generally, His lab.
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: Is often credited with developing the science of immunology and
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: furthermore lead the foundations just with the basic idea that, like,
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: you can take infectious agents and you can figure out
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: a way to make them weaker. That is the basis
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: on which all modern vaccine science works.
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: So let's talk about rabies today. What is the status
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: of rabies today?
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  Speaker 2: So rabies is still a problem in many parts of
• 14:54
  Speaker 2: the world who have not yet eliminated dog rabies. But
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  Speaker 2: we're really lucky here that the use of the pre
• 15:02
  Speaker 2: exposure vaccine and dogs eliminated dog rabies. We no longer
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: have to like look askance at our pet dog and
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: worry that contact with them could kill us. The parts
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: of the world where that is not true, where dog
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: rabies is still endemic, places like India and parts of Africa,
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: there are still a lot of human rabies deaths. I
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: think the who uses the number sixty thousand rabies deaths
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: are still happening every year around the world. That numbers
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: is really contested. It's been a real challenge getting the
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: vaccines and the other products that fight rabies to the
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: people who need them most. But those products are prohibitively expensive.
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: So raebies is considered a neglected disease by the international
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: health authorities. But people are still dying of rabies. And
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: then in parts of the world like Europe and the
• 15:56
  Speaker 2: United States where dog rabies is not the issue, we
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: do still have wildlife rabies.
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: So like in the US, what wild animals have rabies?
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: There's rabies adapted to fox, skunks, raccoons, and a whole
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: lot of bats in the United States.
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  Speaker 1: Right, I read that, like, if you wake up and
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: there's a bat in your room, you should probably get
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: a rabies shot because bats can bite you and you
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: don't even know us.
• 16:24
  Speaker 2: Yes, there's an argument for getting raby's vaccine if you
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: wake up in a room with a bat, although you
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: know you should consult your local.
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: Health Stuard writing the book change the way you think
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: about the relationship between humans and animals.
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: I do think that there is a way in which
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: our relationship with dogs and cats especially, you know, the
• 16:44
  Speaker 2: sort of pure sweetness of it that a lot of
• 16:46
  Speaker 2: us experience now, like it was it had a darker
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: side in the pre vaccine era.
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: Your dog could turn into a monster and kill you
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: or your child. Yes, that was like a real thing
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: that could definitely happen.
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: It was a real thing, and that was that made
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: it really hard to like love and baby our dogs
• 17:05
  Speaker 2: in quite the same way as we do today.
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: So like this modern phenomenon of the dog being, to
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: what is arguably a weird extent, a part of the family,
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: and I include my own family as you know, in
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: that that like, you couldn't really have that without pasteur,
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: without the rabies vaccine.
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: It certainly doesn't reach its sort of completion without that.
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: I mean, it's wonderful for those of us who love dogs.
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: Thank you, Monica, That was delightful.
• 17:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Thanks.
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: Monica Murphy is the co author with Bill Wassick of Rabbit,
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: a cultural history of the world's most diabolical virus. Their
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: most recent book is Our Kindred Creatures. How Americans came
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: to feel the way they do about animals. We'll be
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: back in a minute to talk about the surprising way
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: that wildlife biologists are fighting rabies in America right now.
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: By the early part of the twenty first century, the
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: rabies vaccine had almost entirely eliminated rabies from people and
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: dogs in the United States, but the disease has persisted
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: in wild animals. I talked about this with Kathy Nelson
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: years ago.
• 18:23
  Speaker 3: When I was in Vermont. We used to operate a
• 18:26
  Speaker 3: rabies hotline in the state. It would get calls in
• 18:28
  Speaker 3: from the public and we would sometimes go out to
• 18:30
  Speaker 3: investigate them, and we had a skunk that was trying
• 18:35
  Speaker 3: to bite the gas cap off of a lawnmower. And
• 18:38
  Speaker 3: they'll just bite anything that's in sight, because that's one
• 18:42
  Speaker 3: of the fascinating parts about the virus is that it's
• 18:46
  Speaker 3: designed to tell the brain to bite things.
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  Speaker 1: Kathy is the wildlife biologist and the operations supervisor for
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: the National Rabies Management Program with the US Department of Agriculture.
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: For the past twenty six years, she's been part of
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: a federal program that has been fighting rabies in a
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: way that I have to say I found delightful. So
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: tell me about the first time you went up in
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: the air to fling rabies vaccines at the ground.
• 19:14
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I still remember it was so exciting. You you know,
• 19:18
  Speaker 3: you help load all these baits onto a plane. You
• 19:22
  Speaker 3: walk up the little steps of the small plane, you
• 19:24
  Speaker 3: get in it, someone closes the hatch on you. You know,
• 19:27
  Speaker 3: the engines start, you take off. You're flying over beautiful
• 19:31
  Speaker 3: terrain and landscape, just beautiful agricultural forested land. And you know,
• 19:36
  Speaker 3: the person up front says, okay, machine on and you know,
• 19:40
  Speaker 3: baits are going down this little belt and I'm just
• 19:42
  Speaker 3: moving them around, looking out the window, seeing moose, deer,
• 19:45
  Speaker 3: you know, all kinds of wildlife. I couldn't literally could
• 19:48
  Speaker 3: not believe that I was getting paid to do a
• 19:50
  Speaker 3: job like this.
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: What kind of planes were you going up?
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: Then?
• 19:54
  Speaker 3: They have a single wing, two engines.
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: How many seats? Like, how small is it?
• 19:58
  Speaker 3: If there were seats in them, there probably would be
• 20:00
  Speaker 3: it would probably be about a dozen seats.
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: You're basically flying at a cargo van. Yeah, so these
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: baits are falling from this. Maybe this is a dumb question,
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: but like, is there ever any word they're going to
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: hit somebody on the head.
• 20:16
  Speaker 3: Yeah, No, not a dumb question at all. Yeah, So
• 20:19
  Speaker 3: the navigator in the front seat, not the pilot, but
• 20:22
  Speaker 3: the other person who is a USDA wild Life Services employee.
• 20:26
  Speaker 3: They have an on off switch. So anytime we're approaching
• 20:28
  Speaker 3: a house or a road or a major body of water,
• 20:31
  Speaker 3: that switch goes off so that baits aren't distributed. You know,
• 20:35
  Speaker 3: over the course of a twenty five year program, we've
• 20:37
  Speaker 3: hit a roof for two. But fortunately, you know, once
• 20:41
  Speaker 3: folks learn about our program, they're generally really really accepting
• 20:46
  Speaker 3: of it, and you know, they're not too mad.
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: Is it happening like literally today? Is it happening this?
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: You know, we're talking in August of twenty twenty four.
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: Is there a plane in the air today?
• 20:57
  Speaker 3: There is? Literally I got a text this morning saying
• 21:01
  Speaker 3: all five aircraft are taxing for run ups and take
• 21:03
  Speaker 3: off in Watertown. That's Watertown, New York.
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: Tell me about the baits, Like, what's one of look like?
• 21:10
  Speaker 3: Tastes like, so we use different vaccine types. One of
• 21:15
  Speaker 3: them looks like kind of like a little ketchup packet
• 21:17
  Speaker 3: with a slight oil on the outside and attached to
• 21:20
  Speaker 3: that oil or tiny little fishmeal crumbs.
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: Fishmeal sounds delicious to a raccoon, I'm sure.
• 21:27
  Speaker 3: Yeah, Okay, So the other company they make a sweet
• 21:30
  Speaker 3: bait and it's a sugary, sweet like marshmallow kind of
• 21:34
  Speaker 3: sweet vanilla based bait.
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: Presumably you can't just like fling these things out of
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: an airplane over a city, right, So how do you
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: how do you do it? In you know, urban areas.
• 21:44
  Speaker 3: Primarily we drive around in trucks. You know, someone's driving,
• 21:47
  Speaker 3: another person has the window down in the passenger seat.
• 21:50
  Speaker 3: They're tossing a couple of baits down. We record the
• 21:54
  Speaker 3: location of all of these baits with a GPS unit
• 21:57
  Speaker 3: so that we know where we've baited. Our biggest struggle
• 22:01
  Speaker 3: right now is because there's so many other food sources,
• 22:04
  Speaker 3: you know, trying to pull them away from a dumpster
• 22:07
  Speaker 3: full of pizza to eat eat one of our beats
• 22:10
  Speaker 3: is a real challenge.
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: I have literally, say, a raccoon in Prospect Park in
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: Brooklyn eating a hole slice of.
• 22:16
  Speaker 3: It's h yeah. They I mean, they're omnivores, so they're
• 22:20
  Speaker 3: gonna eat anything you know around. But we have done
• 22:23
  Speaker 3: a ton of research in urban areas looking at movement patterns,
• 22:28
  Speaker 3: home range sizes, because you have to get them right
• 22:30
  Speaker 3: in the right spot for them to even find them.
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: So let's talk about the scope of the project now,
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: like what is the range of where you where you
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: do this.
• 22:39
  Speaker 3: We have a band of vaccine distribution zone that goes
• 22:44
  Speaker 3: from Maine kind of across the Canada border down to
• 22:48
  Speaker 3: Ohio and then pretty much straight down from Ohio to Alabama.
• 22:52
  Speaker 3: And that's designed to stop the westward spread of raccoon
• 22:55
  Speaker 3: rabies and the northward spread into Canada.
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: Oh. Interesting, it's like a like a line of defense.
• 23:01
  Speaker 3: Yep, exactly.
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: Was that the notion when you started was the issue, like, oh,
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: rabies is spreading, let's defend against the spread of rabies.
• 23:13
  Speaker 3: Yes. So the story of raccoon rabies is a really
• 23:16
  Speaker 3: interesting one. Raccoon rabies was first sort of documented in
• 23:19
  Speaker 3: the late nineteen forties in Florida. But then there were
• 23:22
  Speaker 3: some raccoon hunters from West Virginia, Virginia area who wanted
• 23:27
  Speaker 3: to replenish their raccoon supply. They went down It was
• 23:30
  Speaker 3: real commonplace back then to move raccoons around for raccoon hunting,
• 23:33
  Speaker 3: so they went down south, got some raccoons, released them
• 23:37
  Speaker 3: into an area on the Virginia West Virginia line and
• 23:41
  Speaker 3: inevitably released some rabid raccoons without knowing it, and then
• 23:45
  Speaker 3: raccoon rabies exploded from there. It reached most Northeastern states
• 23:52
  Speaker 3: by the early nineties.
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: And is there risk of raccoons passing rabies to humans? Yeah?
• 23:59
  Speaker 3: Absolutely. Over the years, there have been humans that have
• 24:02
  Speaker 3: contracted raccoon rabies. Certainly, human health and safety is always paramount.
• 24:08
  Speaker 3: Also animal health and safety. You know, every year there's
• 24:12
  Speaker 3: there's about three hundred cats in the US that die
• 24:15
  Speaker 3: from rabi's. There's about fifty dogs that die from rabi's.
• 24:19
  Speaker 3: It's a cost benefit sort of program where what it
• 24:22
  Speaker 3: costs us to manage our program is significantly less than
• 24:26
  Speaker 3: what it costs the American public to live with rabies
• 24:29
  Speaker 3: every year, just in terms of healthcare costs, you know,
• 24:33
  Speaker 3: public education, post exposure, prophylaxis, all of that adds up
• 24:37
  Speaker 3: really fast.
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: So the program started in the nineties to stop the
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: spread of raccoon raybis. Has it worked? Did it stop
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: the spread of raccoon raybis?
• 24:48
  Speaker 3: It did. After we distribute baits, about a month after,
• 24:51
  Speaker 3: we go back into an area and we use live
• 24:54
  Speaker 3: traps to catch raccoons. We take a blood sample from them,
• 24:57
  Speaker 3: pull a tooth, weigh them, sects them, take some general
• 25:01
  Speaker 3: notes on you know, their condition, and that blood sample
• 25:04
  Speaker 3: get sent off to the lab and that tells us
• 25:06
  Speaker 3: ultimately whether or not they have antibodies. Again, and the
• 25:10
  Speaker 3: tooth gives us their age and also tells us whether
• 25:13
  Speaker 3: or not they ate the bait because the bait has
• 25:15
  Speaker 3: a biomarker that stains their tooth. So that whole process,
• 25:19
  Speaker 3: that's our monitoring program, along with all the surveillance we
• 25:21
  Speaker 3: do where we do pick up dead raccoons off the
• 25:25
  Speaker 3: road and test them for rabies. The Centers for Disease
• 25:28
  Speaker 3: Control CDC has documented a seventy seven percent decline in
• 25:34
  Speaker 3: raccoons with raccoon variants since our program began in nineteen
• 25:37
  Speaker 3: ninety seven, so we know it's working. We've made significant
• 25:41
  Speaker 3: progress in being able to move that zone to the
• 25:45
  Speaker 3: east toward the ocean, which is what you know, our
• 25:48
  Speaker 3: ultimate goal is that bait zone of containment, and then
• 25:52
  Speaker 3: just keep marching it toward the ocean till, you know,
• 25:54
  Speaker 3: till you've eliminated the variant.
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: Right when you get to the sea, you're done. You're
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: like marching to the sea.
• 26:01
  Speaker 3: Yep, you're done.
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: So, so you've been doing this a long time. You
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: are a wildlife biologist by training. I'm curious if your
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: career has changed the way you feel about wildlife, about
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: the relationship between humans and wildlife.
• 26:16
  Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean I love all wildlife, you know. When
• 26:19
  Speaker 3: I was in college getting my degree, you know, like
• 26:23
  Speaker 3: any wildlife professional, I think you dream of, you know,
• 26:26
  Speaker 3: working with polar bears or mountain lions or you know
• 26:29
  Speaker 3: some some big charismatic megafauna and you know, and I
• 26:33
  Speaker 3: landed on raccoons, but I wouldn't change it for anything.
• 26:36
  Speaker 3: They're so smart. They have not made a trash can
• 26:40
  Speaker 3: yet that they can't get into, or they're just you know,
• 26:46
  Speaker 3: if you have ever seen one up close or I
• 26:49
  Speaker 3: you know, I would encourage any listeners if they have
• 26:52
  Speaker 3: the opportunity and they see one dead on the road.
• 26:54
  Speaker 3: It sounds crazy, but just stop and look at it.
• 26:57
  Speaker 3: They're fascinating animals. They have little hands, just like we do.
• 27:01
  Speaker 3: They have an opposable thumb. Genetically, they're closer in origin
• 27:06
  Speaker 3: to bears than they are to like cat and dogs
• 27:09
  Speaker 3: and those kind of things. So they're just really smart animals.
• 27:14
  Speaker 3: They think about what they're doing. We have a National
• 27:16
  Speaker 3: Wildlife Research Center, and they did a side study where
• 27:20
  Speaker 3: they would put a marshmallow in the tub of water
• 27:22
  Speaker 3: and the raccoons would learn that all they had to
• 27:24
  Speaker 3: do was keep putting more rocks in the water till
• 27:26
  Speaker 3: that marshmallow rose to the top and they could reach
• 27:29
  Speaker 3: in and eat it. So that's just one example of
• 27:32
  Speaker 3: how smart they are and how if they're given enough time,
• 27:34
  Speaker 3: they'll figure something out.
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much for your time. It was great
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: to speak with you.
• 27:39
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you too, Thanks for having me.
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: Kathy Nelson is a wildlife biologist with the US Department
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: of Agriculture. Thanks to both my guests today, Kathy Nelson
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: and Monica Murphy. Next week on Incubation, I met on
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: my mind that I have to go do it, but
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: at the same time I was going to deal with
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: the beasts, which means I may not come back home alive.
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: Incubation is a co production of Pushkin Industries and Studio
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: at iHeartMedia. It's produced by Kate Furby and Brittany Cronin.
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: The show is edited by Lacey Roberts. It's mastered by
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: Sarah Bruguier, fact checking by Joseph Friedman. Our Executive producers
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: are Lacey Roberts and Matt Romano. I'm Jacob Goldstein. Thanks
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: for listening.