Translator: Michele Gianella Reviewer: Nicoletta Pedrana
Good afternoon.
This afternoon I'll talk about pandemics,
these terrible threats that really are around the corner,
and I'll also try to persuade you
that a different approach to pandemics is now possible.
Pandemics aren't something we can only endure:
we as citizens can do something
to enhance our own health services and these of the rest of the world
For as I will show you,
we are living through the globalization era
and we are quite interconnected;
and viruses take advantage of this.
This map shows what you might call fake news.
Fake news! Here we go again!
Now the bird flu, the mad cow disease,
and then the hantaviruses,
these diseases affecting navajos in America.
They really aren't fake news.
They are not fake news
because of thousands of people working around the globe
in an effort to turn them into ...fake news!
That is, not letting them harm you
and create extremely serious situations
that might subsequently affect
everyone's health, and the economy as well.
Many of these illness, according to journals like Nature,
come from animals.
Why? Because animals and humans share the same receptors.
Therefore, even if we deem ourselves superior,
from a receptor's point of view, from a pathogen's point of view,
we are not that different from animals;
and over the last 20 years
a succession of these pathogens have come to knock on our doors:
some have caused devastating consequences,
such as HIV, which comes from monkeys;
others, luckily, were stopped before spreading.
We think that, after all,
we have antibiotics, drugs, we have everything...
so we shouldn't worry much about diseases.
That's absolutely not true!
The occurrences of emerging infectious diseases
are increasing and have increased over the last years.
And what ought to be understood
is that the pathogens use
the very same globalized systems
that bring goods and people around.
And pathogens are far smarter than one can imagine,
as they always are looking for a new niche, a new space to occupy,
to live and thrive,
which in turn sickens or kills the host.
For instance, what do they exploit?
If we look at the global population growth trend,
we can notice that in some areas, especially Asia and in Africa,
the population growth
follows an exponential trend.
What do these population want,
what do they expect in the future?
First of all, they expect to eat meat,
as the speaker before me said.
Much like we did after the war,
the Western world
did invest in modern zootechnics,
they will want to eat more and more meat and animal proteins, also.
Looking at the meat expected consumption in developing countries,
we notice that it is far greater than in developed countries.
And in order to eat animal products,
one has to breed animals,
and the animals are bred they way they are bred.
They use their breeding techniques,
such as these Thai geese,
risen in rice fields
because geese eat rice parasites,
so the goose is fed and the rice is saved;
but clearly these animals live in contact with wild ones,
and are bred in hygienic conditions that are quite far
from the hygienic conditions of the Western farms.
These too are bird farms in Asia.
Bird farms
are quite important in Africa as well,
as birds are both a source of meat
and a source of eggs,
so one can get a protein source
without killing the animal.
Here you can see different species mingling
and that's completely wrong from a biosafety point of view.
as these environment can host and propagate infections.
This picture was taken in Vietnam:
I call this the flu pandemic factory,
as the flu virus is "born" in birds,
then gets to humans through a passage in pigs.
This kind of farm,
which has been designed to contain costs
is also the perfect instrument
for a flu virus to reach an host
that is very dangerous for us.
Clearly these meats, these products, these animals
must be transported
And that's how they are shipped:
let's see how they are being moved across the planet.
These are transcontinental meat routes.
You like eating steaks from Argentina as much as I do, probably.
Clearly that steak must come from Argentina,
which implies that animals are slaughtered in Argentina,
loaded on a ship and shipped to Europe.
And high quality products,
originating from better farms,
ship along with uncontrolled ones.
For instance, these chicken claws - please note their conditions -
are a delicacy in Asia.
Unimaginable things happen in Africa;
for instance, one of those things is the hunting of primates,
as their meat is part of the diet
and they're also used
in etnical rituals and practices.
But there's clearly a contact
between people, as the hunter shown in this picture,
and animals' blood,
so they come in contact with the blood of a primate,
which really can carry anything.
I wonder if anyone here knows what this is.
That's the map of the ships sailing around the world right now.
You understand, this thing is absolutely impossible to stop,
and these ships, as I said before, may have anything onboard:
live endangered animals,
that shouldn't be traded in the first place,
as well as some completely unexpected clandestines.
How many among you own one of these?
I do!
These should be bamboo plants,
used to decorate the domestic environment -
except, first of all, this is not bamboo.
Secondly, they come from China,
where they are farmed, harvested and loaded on ships;
these ships carry containers
holding hundreds of thousands of plants,
and maybe you have noticed
a test tube at the bottom of these plant.
This test tube is used to keep the roots wet,
so it contains water.
But in China one can find insect larvas in the water.
When these containers are opened, guess what happens?
Swarms of insect come out
that may carry exotic insects,
and a number of diseases with them.
And clearly, among these insect are some blood eating ones,
that can bite humans
and infect them with pathogens once deemed tropical.
So, what should be done, where should we look?
We should try and stop
the transmission of diseases from animals to humans.
Why?
Because once a pathogen has gotten
to the poorest people
it only needs to enter a school and climb the social ladder a little
before it jumps on a plane and gets everywhere.
Now I'll give you some examples
about the things these viruses are able to do
by taking advantage of globalization's devices.
For those who aren't vets - is there a veterinarian among us?
This is an horse,
an apparently healthy one but in fact -
He isn't exactly healthy,
this horse is Italy's first certified case of West Nile Fever,
The West Nile is the so called "Fever of the Nile valley",
it's a disease carried by blood eating insect
that causes, in horses and humans,
a kind of encephalitis that can, at times, be severe.
This disease is now in Italy and where do you think it flocked to?
It flocked to a swamp, the delta of the Po river.
And that makes sense:
if you were a mosquito in Italy, you'd go nowhere but in the Po delta!
And this disease, the West Nile,
was deemed an exotic disease until not long ago,
and in fact little effort were spent in trying to contain it.
Look at what happened in USA
and look at the years' counter.
This disease was introduced in New York
and then spread, up until 2008, all over America
but in Maine, that's the one on the top.
So you can understand
that if Americans failed to stop it,
we will hardly succeed.
This is - I have spared you,
because this is a picture of monkey smallpox -
I spare you the face of the patient.
You may think "Why should I care about monkey smallpox?"
Well, in America they do lots of odd things:
they took some rats from Gambia, imported them as pets,
the infections spread to the praire dogs
and infected some childrens;
Thankfully it was contained,
but we could have failed at that.
Now two things about flu pandemics.
What do we know about the origins of these diseases?
We know they come from animals, there's no doubt about it.
Two things about the pig flu:
I'd first like to tell you
that this infection is caused by a virus
that could be seen as a harlequin of the globalized era,
for its genes come from two hemispheres and three species of animals:
it's the first time in history.
And now I'll ask you: do you think it was a pandemic?
First, what does "pandemic" mean?
Pandemic does not mean that it will kill millions of humans,
but that it is an epidemic that tends to spread everywhere,
and will affect the whole population.
Let's see what happened:
the virus was identified last April in Mexico,
the pink ones are the countries affected
and the red ones are the lethal cases.
Diagrams were plotted at a two months distance:
you see how this infection
has spread like wildfire all over the world.
And I can tell you we were lucky:
had the virus been slightly more aggressive,
we would have been in a far different situation.
So I dare say,
the moment these viruses are able to pass
from an animal reservoir to other animals and then to humans,
what will the next disease be?
What will the behaviour of the next virus be like?
In addition to the trade routes
in the case of flu, we must also account for migratory routes
that greatly complicate the paths of transmission of these viruses.
Let's look at the future:
what could we do not to make mistakes again?
How can we face these problems?
We are able to send a starship to Mars,
we are able to decide at what exact time it will get there,
we are able to predict the weather forecasts for Mars,
which really seems to me -
I won't say useless, but let's talk about that.
And here's the end of my presentation,
for I found myself in something far bigger than me,
I have made a mess I didn't think it was a mess,
I thought it was plain common sense,
I found myself caught in a huge vortex
that, however, changed many things.
Speaking about Nigeria, the scarcity of available proteins,
the fact that children must eat meat,
my lab had diagnosed Nigeria's first bird flu case
and WHO asked me to store the sequence,
the genetic code of the virus, let's say its "digital fingerprint",
into a reserved access database.
I refused and said:
"Excuse me, we must all work together,
it's a problem for everybody,
so I'll put my genome into a public access database!"
You can't imagine what a mess I made!
I ended up on half the world's frontpages.
Still, we have changed many things,
as the three international organizations
involved in public human and animal health,
OIE, the World Organization for Animal Health,
has now advanced a resolution,
indeed it approved it,
that mandates to those labs who deal with these diseases
to deposit the sequences in a public access database,
for all the researchers in the world
must be able to study those viruses,
not just a handful of rich and famous ones.
The WHO, initially, didn't take it well,
also because it didn't cut a particularly good figure,
but now says:
"We acknowledge the importance of data transparency
and the significance of sharing information
in public health improvement".
And FAO,
United Nations' body for agricolture, for the food sector,
is also championing the concept
of sharing informations.
But why is that so important?
It's not just about the flu,
it's because we don't know what the future has in store,
so the flu model could be used
to create a network of laboratories
sharing information
and helping us all in fighting these infections.
And let me tell you:
I am slightly disappointed to see the Dutch government doing that,
for we could have done that first.
Well, it doesn't really matter.
But in the wake of my strong stance,
the government of Netherland asked WHO
to take a position
and say:
"With regard to microbes' genetic data
that cause relevant problems and threaten public health,
what does WHO want to do?
Is WHO finally affirming that there ought to be more transparency,
does WHO want to create cooperation networks?"
So we have made a significant step ahead
as the issue has been called and dealt with.
The process will take its due time,
but a significant step ahead was taken.
So this is my messagge:
our main challenge, in this globalization era,
is harnessing the informations at our disposal.
There's no more time
for locking genomes, sequences in a drawer,
saying "I will own these informations, so I will publish the study.
Too bad if some people will die, as long as my work is published."
I wrap up with this,
and I urge you to remember these concept,
at least until the next speaker starts,
for at the end of the day, we make the difference
and we, as citizens,
can push for a different vision of public healthcare.
Thank you.
(Applause)