Kind: captions
Language: en
this is a story that began long ago in a
small forest in Uganda on the banks of a
great lake a story about something so
tiny that it lived in the belly of a
mosquito yet loomed large in the
imagination of a little boy named Andrew
Hardo who learned of it from his
grandfather's
Tales Andrew grew up to be a scientist
who studies
insects and this tiny something grew
into a terrible
Force an epidemic we call
zika and when it left the forest to
spread harm around the
earth Andrew found himself in the middle
of a science
mystery that began on a day long before
he was born April of 1947 the original
isolation of zika virus made by dick
kitchen and my grandfather Alexander
John Hado he went by
Alec Andrew's grandfather Alec had
discovered zika during a decades long
hand for yellow fever in the rainforest
of East Africa here's a picture of my
grandfather I mean he looks like a
pirate he kind of just did his own
thing the tales of his Adventure
inspired Andrew as a young boy stories
of my grandfather going out into the
bush about elephants and Wildlife and
everything so exciting to a little kid
sometimes there were medical Mysteries
numerous bed time stories involving
viruses his favorite the stories about
zika I think why zika appealed to me was
this idea of the
tower this mythical giant steel Tower
Alec had designed this Tower to conduct
experiments in and above the tropical
forest canopy of Uganda so you know to a
four or 5-year-old that's pretty cool
catching mosquitoes and studying
monkeys the tower had various
platforms they put monkeys up in the
canopy to get beaten by mosquitoes in
experiments designed to examine the
spread of yellow fever in the
jungle if a monkey became sick they
tested its blood they were actually
looking for yellow fever
virus one day when a beaten monkey
became ill sentinol reesus monkey mr766
their tests for yellow fever came up
Negative they didn't know what they had
they just knew that they had something
and it turned out it was a new virus as
is often the custom in virology
discoveries are named after where they
are found and Soo and his team named the
virus after the forest in Uganda where
their towers stood zika the lugan
spelling has two eyes over the course of
their expedition the team identified and
studied about a dozen viruses in all yet
the discovery of zika Drew little notice
I don't think they thought much of it it
wasn't associated with human illness and
so the virus slipped Into Obscurity in
the half century that
followed but Andrew never forgot about
zika since I you know was 3 or 4 years
old I wanted to be a researcher I didn't
exactly know at the time what a
researcher was but I knew I wanted to do
that and he did in 2009 Andrew came to
the University of Texas Medical Branch
to work with doctors Scott Weaver and
Robert Tash in one of the few places
studying the zika virus you could count
them on one hand the number of
Laboratories doing anything with
zika they had the w world's largest
collection about 30 strains of the virus
including one that was very important to
Andrew the Prototype strain the original
isolation of zika your grandfather's
virus from his hand in a sense to my
hand starting at zika's Origins with the
very strain that his grandfather
discovered strain ibh
3656 Nigeria 1968 Andrew set out to Lear
everything he could about this virus
that was about to spread throughout the
world for over half a century zika was
mostly confined to the tropics through
Africa India and Southeast Asia it was a
virus so rare that only 14 confirmed
cases of zika illness had ever been
documented in
humans but a series of unexpected events
would challenge everything they thought
thought they knew about the
virus starting here on Yap Island a very
small island only about 7,000 people
lived there but more than half of them
became infected with zika virus it was
just who you know zika's causing an
outbreak like an like a big outbreak but
the outbreak was still uh characterized
by very mild disease fever rash nothing
particularly serious or so they thought
zika had gone back into hiding
for
now but two years later Andrew would
again cross paths with the virus and it
would reveal a bizarre secret something
very strange with this virus something
that I don't think anybody can
anticipate it was a medical mystery that
Andrew Came Upon and solved in a chance
meeting the diagnosis was made in a bar
over a beer in a bar in
Sagal it all started in the summer of
2009 when I met Kevin calinski and we
started having a conversation Kevin's my
graduate student he's in Australia right
now Hey Kevin Hey Brian hey Andrew we're
talking about you and Andrew in the bar
in senagal excellent after we talked um
about our various projects right right
Kevin sorted to describ an illness that
he and Brian came down with the year
earlier Brian and Kevin W Sago working
on a project collect mosquitoes out of
people's huts and when they flew back to
Fort Collins Colorado where they lived
they started to feel sick Brian and I
started having similar symptoms symptoms
like a rush headache and joint pain and
then we had our blood drawn and called
up the CDC the Centers for Disease
Control conducted a series of tests dang
fever for The Usual Suspects and the
results negative negative negative
negative the most common ones were ruled
out they still didn't know what they had
been infected with Kevin briyan and the
CDC were confounded by this mystery
illness so stuck our serum samples in
the freezer and and left it for another
day and that day came when Kevin and
Andrew had their chance meeting in Sagal
a year later we're at this bar having
this discussion and um the picture
became a lot more clear first words out
of your mouth was our symptoms sounded
just like zika zika at least that was
Andrew's Theory what else is there but
he needed proof it's like my God we've
got to get these samples like I so
wanted their blood he said that the
laboratory that he was working at could
perform the antibody test have Dr Tesh
run it then Kevin takes a sip of beer
and says well there's one more
thing Brian's wife got sick too his wife
started having the rash and feeling bad
and swelling in her joints same signs
and symptoms very interesting and she
was not in Southeastern Sagle no she was
not what picked their interest was this
the mosquitoes that transmit zika live
in warm places like the tropics if this
was in fact a zika infection how could
Brian's wife have possibly contracted
the disease in Colorado it's a tropical
virus that can be transmitted by the
mosquitoes in Northern Colorado they
ruled out other means of transmission as
well the smoking gun seemed to be a
rather unusual set of symptoms Brian
experienced prostatitis and
hematospermia which is blood in the
semen and and inflamed
prostate that's when we became excited
about the possibility of it being uh
sexually transmitted sexually
transmitted a very novel and risky
hypothesis totally out there indeed it
was believed that the only way people
could get an infection like this was
through mosquitoes sexual transmission
if it were the case would be a
revolutionary finding like saying a car
can drive on Square Wheels but of course
they were getting ahead of themselves we
had no idea what what we actually even
had so they hadn't yet identified what
the virus was well I have here the
serologic results then Dr Tesh revealed
his findings Kevin ran and Brian's wife
he had zika I was like holy cow zika
great father would be so
proud Andrew's diagnosis zika was
correct mystery solved but not much was
made of their discovery of sexual
transmission no because at this point
zika was thought to be an obscure and
Mild virus it at least was something
that we needed to be aware of and maybe
kind of keep on our radar that this
virus could do weird
things yet Andrew could not be prepared
for what was about to unfold old zika
resued in a tremendous outbreak here in
French Polynesia about 200,000 people
living in that area and more than half
of them became infected with zika virus
an epidemic in the tropics the final big
red flag all those people infected many
of them traveling by
air the virus spread all over the South
Pacific virus in the fall of
zika struck hard in
Brazil as he tore through the country
zika revealed its darkest secret yet the
zika virus appears to be a lot scarier
than first thought all of a sudden we
start getting reports of neurological
problems congenital
infections a devastating birth defect
baby's being born with microsopy M mic
microsopy a devastating bath effect
where a baby's brain is smaller than
normal the result of improper
neurological
development that zika could be
responsible seemed almost unbelievable
to Andrew at first
microsopy can't be causing that no one's
ever heard of anything like this for one
of these viruses most virologists remain
skeptical until a group of Brazilian
pediatricians observe the connection
between zika and these neurological bath
defects they LED that charge that maybe
zika is causing microsopy and it turned
out they were
correct now everyone looked at the virus
in a whole new light I'm thinking about
this virus as a very mild virus is to
now thinking it's one of the most
dangerous was just so sad and
overwhelming to see what this virus is
doing to the most innocent population
children you know it was this cool kind
of mythical virus doesn't hurt anyone
nothing bad
happens so a door just slammed on the
forest and the
towers it's just kind of like
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gone a public health emergency of
international concern take a look at
this map you see the outbreak moving
North Air Travelers returned to the
United States get infected by the virus
Miami Texas Illinois Utah California
Ohio and Hawaii all showing cases and
now we've seen local mosquito born
transmission by mosquitoes right here in
the US Dr Weaver expanded his team's
efforts to investigate how the virus
could have turned into such a monster to
understand the disease process of micros
and to search for a cure developing
antiviral drugs as well as vaccine
zika virus spread through sex Brian has
returned to his research on sexual
transmission of the virus the question
is how important how prevalent it is
relative to Mosquito born
transmission and Andrew continues to
investigate the mysterious virus his
grandfather discovered in Uganda so long
ago people are counting on all of us to
get an answer quickly no one knows if
zika will again cause such a widespread
crisis yet another in long line of viral
outbreaks that seemingly emerge from
nowhere there are probably a lot of
viruses out there that aren't being
discovered because field studies around
the world have really Fallen by the
wayside in the last few
decades it may be that the best path
forward in preparing for future
epidemics is a return to the practices
of virus Hunters like
alado we realize today they were ahead
of the game scientists who sashed the
tropical forests of the
world in a race to find
viruses before they found us anded young
imaginations with a well spun tail or
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two
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