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00:14this believe it or not is a mosquito factory in Brazil that's right a mosquito
00:23factory they breed and release 100 million mosquitoes a week each one of these little
00:32containers contains about 160,000 mosquitoes which means that across this entire room
00:38they're over 7 million but who needs more mosquitoes what brought me here is the fascinating story of
00:52humanity's biggest battle against our deadliest foe mosquitoes have actually been responsible
00:58for more human death than anything else more than war and conflict more than starvation or
01:04natural disasters mosquitoes have influenced the rise and fall of empires from the Greek
01:10Empire of Alexander the Great to the Roman Empire and the problem today is they're gaining on us
01:18and they're coming after you
01:24but don't worry we are not trying to ruin your summer hey we might even help you outsmart them your
01:34first
01:35one is here we might need to because around the world mosquitoes are changing fast mosquitoes aren't
01:41too bad are they cool oh last summer I learned the hard way who mosquitoes like to target a prob
01:57so how's it going you worked up a sweat there eh gang's already here oh yeah sorry about the
02:04mosquitoes mosquitoes mosquitoes love the smell of sweat oh hey come on up I brought a cheese plate oh
02:14for everyone so I appreciate it yeah you can grab a seat oh hey guys how's it going you brought
02:26beer
02:34you brought your appetites hungry oh yeah cool they like all blood types but may have their preferences oh
02:47yeah you guys like the bugs are bad do you guys want to go inside yeah forget this this is
02:58a lot
03:04you got it here's a mosquito cheat sheet first there's a lot of them like a lot more than 3500
03:18species
03:18globally but surprisingly most don't bite they feed on nectar but some species not most need blood to
03:29nourish their eggs so only the females bite they're just being good moms most of us like to avoid
03:37mosquitoes but not everyone yeah this is full of larvae there are thousands of larvae right here and this
03:46thing goes all the way down there's got to be several million mosquitoes here just for me this is
03:55Bob Hancock of the Metropolitan State University in Denver Colorado and he's got a nickname the mosquito
04:01man here we go I'm pretty darn sure that I've fed purposefully over a million mosquitoes and he's happy to
04:11demonstrate I think you can see why they love my ears they love my forehead I'm looking at extraordinary
04:20creatures that spend the beginning of their lives as aquatic worms the scuba divers and then they
04:32transition into these flying creatures that have to mate they have to find nourishment and of course the
04:39risk that they have to take to make babies is extraordinary they have to go and feed on a giant
04:46animal and perhaps be swatted and killed to complete their lives I bow to their greatness every day his
04:56enthusiasm is contagious his students work on everything from identifying pathogens to studying
05:01mosquito love lives everybody over there ready let's see undoubtedly mosquitoes are expanding their range
05:11and that is due to changes in our climate when I first started making an effort to film 80s
05:24Egypti mosquitoes they weren't in the state of California and that was 14 years ago now they're in the suburbs
05:36of San Francisco
05:37and it doesn't take a lot that's the crazy thing about climate little increments can tremendously impact a
05:47mosquito's ability to become established in a new part in a new place she's greedy she's going back for more
05:56whether they're nectar feeders or blood feeders Hancock thinks they're gaining on us biologically if an
06:06organism's victory is based on how many individuals of a species occur in a given place at a given time
06:14or in in the globe at a given time
06:18they're waning big time there are mosquitoes that are adapting that's really the way if they're
06:26expanding but they're not only expanding they're they're not disappearing in places that we're working
06:31super hard to try to control at the American Natural History Museum in New York City dr. Jessica Ware not
06:41only has a
06:42big job she's got a big mosquito so we're here at the American Museum of Natural History and we have
06:50a big
06:50example of a larger-than-life mosquito mosquitoes actually have a very neat way of feeding especially
06:58for female mosquitoes which require a blood meal in order for her to lay her eggs she will actually have
07:04two of her stylets that she uses to deliver something to the victim mosquitoes will give us
07:10something that is a pain reliever and they also will give us an anticoagulant and that will make the
07:16blood flow very quickly up through her silence into her mouth and hopefully she can get that blood meal
07:21going before we swat it away dr. Ware who is chair of the Department of Invertebrate Zoology says the
07:28mosquito isn't trying to make us sick its feeding system has been hijacked the mosquito is responsible
07:37for a lot of death you know the most deaths worldwide for things like malaria but it's not actually the
07:43mosquito that's responsible for the death it's actually a pathogen that is kind of hijacked the
07:49feeding system of mosquitoes so mosquitoes are sometimes called vectors because what that means
07:54is that they're taking a pathogen and they're entering it into our system and so the pathogens
07:59things like protozoans little small microorganisms they basically have their own evolutionary pathway
08:06they've kind of hijacked the mosquitoes feeding system they travel in with the pain reliever and the
08:13anticoagulant and that's how they invade our bodies so it's not the mosquitoes fault really they're
08:19just kind of along for the ride you know growing up in Canada I spent a lot of time with
08:26my maternal
08:26grandparents up in northern Ontario we spent a lot of time on Lake Muskoka and swimming and canoeing you
08:33see insects all the time I was just kind of fascinated by how many different insects there were one thing
08:40that I think has become so common is this idea that you can exist as a person in your backyard
08:47in the
08:47summer in the absence of insects and that that's a good thing feel like that's a real detachment with
08:52reality insects have been around for hundreds of millions of years before humans we're just kind of
08:57like in their world often what people do is they spray these companies will spray broad-spectrum
09:04insecticides not only does it kill mosquitoes and black flies but it also will kill all the other
09:09things that are living in the soil insects are living in the soil insects are using your lawn as a
09:14natural habitat all of these other animals are going to be impacted and affected I've tracked down dr.
09:24Timothy Weingard a Canadian historian whose book on mosquitoes made it to the top of the New York Times
09:31best-seller list place swarming with mosquitoes there's a lot yeah and a dusk what do you think
09:43it is they like so much about this place dusk if you want a crash course on mosquito warfare this
09:50is
09:50your guy you have called mosquitoes an apex predator and you know I got a point out you know tigers
09:57lions
09:58wolves orca whale like there's a ton of animals why are mosquitoes the apex predator mosquitoes have
10:06killed more humans than any other animal throughout our history by far humans are second and we don't
10:12even we don't even come close there's some estimates that mosquito-borne pathogens have killed half of every
10:19human being that's ever lived half of humanity so is there evidence in the historical record of the
10:26impact that mosquitoes have had on us oh absolutely mosquitoes were certainly feeding on dinosaurs and
10:32they were transmitting parasites and pathogens to dinosaurs mosquitoes have not just been a problem for
10:38humans they've been a problem for all kinds of animals then it shadowed our own evolutions the great
10:45apes all have malaria reptiles have malaria amphibians birds mosquitoes have influenced the rise and fall of
10:52empires from the greek empire of alexander the great to the roman empire they've decided the
10:59outcome of numerous wars including the greco-persian wars the american revolution general cornwallis for
11:07example surrenders at yorktown because of malaria it's not anything george washington and the americans
11:13did or lafayette did with with his french forces but when cornwallis surrenders he says i have 35
11:20percent of my troops uh who can stand to post the rest are sick dead or dying of malaria so
11:27the anopheles
11:28mosquito is a founding mother of the united states and should maybe be on mount rushmore uh in between the
11:34loving glances of thomas jefferson and george washington yeah well you said half of all humans how many humans are
11:41mosquitoes killing today roughly so today it's still over a million every year a million people and that's to die
11:47from
11:48mosquito-borne pathogens not who are infected or um recover and go through a horrible torment and sickness
11:55whether that's malaria or dengue or um chikungunya um to name but a few they can evolve and adapt very
12:03quickly which is also why humanity's been battling both mosquitoes and their pathogens for eternity
12:13i guess i never really considered the idea that mosquitoes aren't just a pest to us right they
12:18they feed on other animals as well they bite all animals most other animals have some form of mosquito
12:24borne pathogens as well in the arctic of canada they hibernate and when there's the brief thaw in the
12:32arctic they're ravenous and they bite caribou at a bite rate of 9 000 per minute and actually bleed young
12:40caribou to death what so imagine sitting here for one minute and getting 9 000 mosquito bites there's
12:50not enough afterbite in the world what are some of the best tools we've got at our disposal like what's
12:54in our arsenal so historically we've been trying everything uh the ancient egyptians bathed in human
13:01urine uh they wore an amulet around their neck with the word abracadabra to try to ward off malaria
13:07wait are you being serious right that's where that's a real strategy well it doesn't work
13:11obviously i don't suggest suggest bathing in human urine we have tried i mean chipmunk brain poultices
13:19there are so many things that we've tried to to thwart specifically malaria um but also mosquitoes
13:27this is obviously the oldest one is fire smoke and fire they don't want to be near the heat
13:35the americans poured tons of money and r d into this malaria project and ddt is one of the things
13:41that came about in the in the second world war you all know her name anopheles annie the malaria mosquito
14:17it's the reason we don't have um malaria in canada anymore or malaria in the united states anymore it is
14:25ddt it cut uh malaria rates in italy by over 90 percent wow so that's amazing that's a huge win
14:33yeah edt's banned in 1972 by the united states and in other you know countries around the world the ban
14:39comes about partially because of the environmental movement and the science and the degradation of
14:45of the environment from ddt and cancer and everything else but mostly because it didn't work anymore
14:50so why doesn't it work anymore because whether we're talking about mosquitoes or malaria vaccines
14:56or malaria pills whether it's chloroquine or adabrine we do human trials with these drugs
15:07and we expose the malaria parasite to these drugs and so by the time these drugs get approval which takes
15:15years the malaria parasite has already been exposed to the drug and has already adapted so they don't
15:20work anymore wow so a lot of that quickly yes um i mean that's one reason why the mosquito is
15:28the
15:28biggest killer of humanity and has been across our existence is because it is a universal animal
15:34there's only antarctica iceland and a handful of pacific islands across our planet that don't have mosquitoes
15:42and just a few weeks after our camping trip there came some unwelcome news from iceland
15:48scientists have confirmed something that shouldn't have happened the first sighting of a mosquito
15:53in iceland the news sent a buzz around the world it was a surprise because it was the only country
15:59in the world that was mosquito free the mosquito has been doing a lot of traveling lately often on cargo
16:08ships
16:08the new york times publishes a major story by its global health reporter stephanie nolan so in 2023 i set
16:35out to write what i thought was going to be a quick story about some new innovations that were coming
16:39and how we can fight mosquitoes and what i found pretty quickly was actually that there was a much
16:44bigger story unfolding and that was that in the long struggle between people and mosquitoes
16:49the mosquitoes had the upper hands they were winning
16:55one of the places i went reporting on this is a city called diridewa
16:58in ethiopia near the border with jibouti and somalia i met a nurse in a clinic who described
17:06this extraordinary phenomenon that had happened the year before which is that she'd come into the
17:10clinic one morning and it had been packed full of sick students and she's looking at them and she's
17:15thinking these kids have all the symptoms of malaria but diridewa is not a malarial area it's in the
17:20highlands of ethiopia it's never had malaria these kids hadn't traveled anywhere there was no way for
17:25them to have malaria she does the malaria test anyway and sure enough that's what they have
17:33eventually it's thousands of students and they can't figure this out a couple of ethiopian entomologists
17:41come to town and try to figure out what's happened and they realize that there's a whole new species
17:46of mosquito that has been known historically in asia never been found in africa but a couple years
17:53before had turned up in djibouti and now had made its way to the city and actually had been the
17:59source
17:59of this whole outbreak it's a mosquito called anopheles defense eye and among some entomologists
18:08who work on this problem it's more commonly just known as steve steve is a time bomb malaria has been
18:18largely a rural disease not urban but steve is flexible anopheles defense eye is very happy in a
18:29rural area but also very happy to establish itself in an urban area it can breed in a bottle cap
18:36it
18:37doesn't mind if it's very very wet also doesn't mind very very dry it prefers to feed on livestock but
18:43it'll also feed on humans it bites during the daytime when people are moving around and it's what we call
18:50a very competent vector of malaria it's very good at spreading the disease and it's resistant to every
18:57insecticide we've tried to use against it i think what happened in djibouti and what now seems to be
19:03happening in ethiopia with steve is a really good illustration of the kind of threat that mosquitoes pose in
19:11terms of how quickly they can adapt and how quickly they evolve and how quickly they can establish
19:18in places they haven't historically been and present a public health threat in ways that we haven't seen
19:23them do that before if you look at what's happened with just this one species in this one place it
19:29can
19:29give you an idea of the scale of the threat that we could be looking at in a lot of
19:35other places
19:35if the mosquito gets established it's going to present an absolutely terrifying public health
19:42problem over one and a half billion people live in africa malaria kills over 600 000 each year mostly
19:52children and here in uganda a thousand kilometers away from the highlands of ethiopia entomologists
19:59like crystal burunji are worried that steve will get into africa's huge cities if an awfully stevensai
20:06starts to establish itself in the cities then we face a potential huge spike in malaria cases
20:13that we're just not equipped to handle if you consider the fact that this species survives really well
20:18in varying temperature locations then it actually could be a danger to other continents as well that
20:25managed to wipe out malaria malaria can devastate a family given the fact that malaria often affects
20:31young children the children are not able to walk to the health center so it does mean that the mother
20:36will carry these children one mosquito can infect the entire family so that means you'll be there will
20:42be cases where multiple children in the family are sick at once and all these children have to be carried
20:47to the health center wherever it happens to be while malaria is the top killer it's not the only one
21:00the next most common is dengue which can easily turn deadly even if you survive it won't go easy on
21:08you
21:09chikungunya can bring on fevers that last for months yellow fever was a tropical scourge
21:15that's been slowed with an effective vaccine and recently there have been worrying episodes of zika
21:21west nile and encephalitis
21:27an ocean away in south america another mosquito burn illness nears epidemic proportions brazil is on
21:35high alert amid a surge in cases of dengue fever dengue fever might not kill you but it can definitely
21:43make you feel like you're dying several states have already deployed emergency measures they're
21:50spreading uh larvicide in hard to reach areas to try to get rid of the mosquitoes
21:55a story that i've been reporting on quite a bit over the past few years is an absolute explosion of
22:01dengue
22:02cases in latin america by the middle of this year there had already been about 25 percent more cases than
22:08there were last year we're into the millions and millions of cases and in brazil argentina the
22:15countries that have seen the worst impact you have health systems that are completely overloaded the way
22:20that we saw during covet for example dengue is really painful and miserable uh as a thing to live through
22:29but again this also has an economic toll when you have all kinds of people having to take six weeks
22:34off work because they can't get out of bed because their joints are excruciatingly painful there's an
22:40economic cost to that as well daniel peach studies mosquitoes at the savannah river ecology lab at the
22:49university of georgia and he thinks the comparisons to covet 19 are not a stretch the next global pandemic
22:57very well could be carried by mosquitoes and we have things that are ongoing right now which sort of
23:02borderline on that already so for instance dengue virus in the americas primarily south and central
23:07america there's more dengue currently than there ever has been historically but malaria and dengue are
23:15tropical diseases surely the howling winds and snows of the global north are a barrier i mean doesn't
23:21winter kill them there's a saying out there that winter is an excellent cure for tropical diseases
23:28um but it's not a perfect shield so historically even in canada there were cases of malaria there
23:34were a couple of hundreds of people that got malaria during the construction of the riddell canal
23:39there are historical cases from southern british columbia around the turn of the 19th century
23:44mosquitoes are found all the way up into the high arctic the northern tip of uh greenland northern
23:48to bellesmere island there are things that can survive that far north the asian tiger mosquito
23:54arrived in north america in used tires tires can contain water and so these mosquitoes came in and
24:00laid their eggs in a tire with water in it this tire was then moved from point a to b
24:05and arrived in
24:06north america and once they filled up with water the eggs hatched and mosquitoes came out and established
24:12it's it's not uncommon for mosquitoes to be in airplanes or in people's cars but as our climate
24:16changes it just makes it easier and easier for it to establish were it ever to make that jump and
24:22the
24:22same is true for for many many pathogens out there so who's watching out how do we know if an
24:29unwanted species shows up in a northern climate you can feel them bite you like they you can't feel
24:36them until they're like boom their frost kisses in you're like oh yeah meet the mosquito guardians a team
24:42of biology students and ordinary citizens who comb through the fields and swamps and forests of nova
24:48scotia collecting samples and monitoring for invasive species that carry disease so we're going to start
24:54loading up across continents scientists are comparing notes and mapping the mosquitoes advance
25:06a lot of people kind of think well maybe they're just gone in the winter and they come back in
25:10the
25:10spring but i promise you they're there and waiting just in a few different ways what happens in the fall
25:15is
25:15mom takes a blood meal she lays her eggs likely in vegetation or perhaps around the banks of a water
25:23body that kind of thing where the eggs are going to spend the winter waiting for things like snow melt
25:29for water levels to rise in the spring floods those kinds of things to then initiate growing in the spring
25:38other mosquitoes will overwinter as adults so some of our culex species for instance overwinter in that
25:44adult stage she's going to take these ones um we're going to overwinter a generation that comes from
25:48these guys and then look at length of the gonotrophic cycle at different temperatures you'll often see
25:55mosquitoes hanging out for instance in people's unheated basements or sometimes in sheds barns those
26:01kinds of things there are are over 3 000 species of mosquitoes across the world and here in canada we
26:11have
26:11about 80 species or so it's really something that we actually need to keep a very proactive approach
26:17towards the west nile virus was introduced into north america in the late 90s and spread into canada
26:24from the united states largely we think through migratory birds so that's one that we keep our eye on
26:30we see a longer warmer fall season then we see less severe temperatures through the winter and as well
26:37we're seeing shorter winters so what that's doing is kind of releasing some of that pressure that used
26:43to keep some species out of our more northern latitudes and allowing new species to now move in
26:49so these are the defenders and there are teams like this all over the world
26:58so the first strategy is vigilance but the next strategy is attack
27:05can we eliminate the worst mosquitoes i'm off to the front line in brazil where some people
27:12are trying to eliminate dengue fever
27:17you might find this next part hard to believe whoa this is amazing
27:33curitiba brazil home to the biggest mosquito producing facility in the world this is the world
27:40mosquito program's newest high-tech factory part lab part mosquito assembly line i'm here to see how this
27:48tiny army is being built to help stop a massive public health problem
27:53dengue zika and chikungunya are a big huge problem brazil uh dengue is around 40 years already in this
28:01country but more and more we are seeing lots of uh outbreaks in places that we never had before
28:08we are seeing mosquitoes moving uh towards the south of brazil even argentina paraguay other countries
28:16and and diseases spreading like crazy so you can transmit because if you don't see the field
28:23right and the mosquito bites you can just transfer the virus to another person so how dangerous is it
28:31i mean does it kill the last year in brazil was the worst epidemics uh so far the record more
28:37than 10
28:38million people had dengue and i think it was 6 000 people died or even more 10 000
28:45died of dengue so it can you can have complications because of disease and and then you you you die
28:55which i mean considering the context makes me pretty nervous every week more than 100 million mosquitoes
29:03are bred here and infected with a naturally occurring bacterium called walbachia and that simple
29:10biological twist is enough to stop mosquitoes from transmitting disease how many mosquitoes are in
29:17this room right now yeah in this room we have about 5 million mosquitoes adult mosquitoes and in each of
29:25these cages we have 160 000 uh that's incredible the walbachia bacterium which is harmless to humans
29:35essentially takes up room in the cells of the mosquito where the dengue would be but now there's no room
29:42for the virus to move in now when the walbachia mosquitoes bite someone with dengue and then bites a healthy
29:50person they won't transmit the disease
29:52i love these doors wow look at this so this is where you have our adults right so in every
30:04cage of this can
30:05holds up to 150 or 160 mosquitoes thousand mosquitoes 150 000 mosquitoes yeah exactly that is simultaneously
30:13really cool and kind of a nightmare
30:30i want to see if they come to my hand
30:37oh yeah they almost started to get me already
30:43this is easily the most mosquitoes i've ever seen in my life
30:47this is probably the same amount as i've seen across my lifetime
30:57these have got to be eggs then right exactly so those are the eggs every really small black dot of
31:04this really tiny is one egg you mean like the little the little specks of dirt those are eggs exactly
31:09those are the eggs the mosquitoes eggs those are tiny so then how many eggs are on this whole thing
31:13on one strip of this we have around 50 000 50 000 eggs and you can have strips with 100
31:21200 000
31:22eggs it depends on how many eggs they have laid but this is for one group i can't believe how
31:27many
31:27eggs are there yeah that's hard to believe that's why we expect to produce 100 million eggs per week
31:33the mosquitoes the mosquitoes start as eggs hatch into larvae and then grow into pupae
31:42finally emerging as an adult mosquito all in about a week
31:49i feel like i feel like i'm in the future hey guys how's it going oh sure look at that
31:56oh
31:56oh what is this these are the females uh the females are going straight to the cages there's a
32:05different proportion uh one male for three females per cage they use a sorting machine to divide male
32:13male and female mosquito pupae because the males are smaller they fall to the bottom
32:27the female transmits to their progeny through the eggs so that's makes wolbachia very uh common in
32:36nature around 60 percent of all insect species carry wolbachia wow so it's really common very common
32:44and so then if i understand you properly wolbachia in the cells of mosquitoes means that dengue can't
32:51replicate there because they're kind of fighting correct for there are some uh studies scientific
32:57studies showing that there are lots of uh components inside the cell that the mosquitoes uh the virus
33:03has to use but wolbachia is already using them so there is a competition there and wolbachia wins this
33:10fight inside the the cell amazing so basically like the dengue tries to get into a hotel but there's no
33:16rooms
33:16left correct okay that's amazing after 10 years of uh collecting evidences like scientific evidences we
33:25showed that wolbachia was able to block dengue and for instance there was a study in indonesia
33:32showing 77 percent less disease happening there we and then went to other countries in australia more
33:41than 90 percent reduction in colombia also more than 90 percent and we have very positive results in brazil too
33:48this is amazing this is a huge success story after the eggs have been exposed to wolbachia here
33:55they're shipped to community stations around brazil like these where they're grown into adult mosquitoes
34:25so you're not just making mosquitoes for joinville you're you're exporting them yeah for the other city
34:32wow
34:32near here so there are other cities that are paying you to bring mosquitoes to them they want more
34:38mosquitoes yeah crazy business
34:44okay here thank you the jars have mosquitoes yep a lot yeah a lot of mosquitoes i drain yeah
34:59right look at that but this is just the beginning next the wolbachia infected mosquitoes are going on the trip
35:08of a lifetime okay so what's our first stop in gloria gloria yeah neighborhood nearby
35:20okay all right all right all right i guess we're we're off i can hop in yeah okay cool
35:26thank you so much for the tour we're gonna carry on the good work take care hi
35:35i gotta say a road trip with 20 000 mosquitoes not on my bingo card for today
35:51we arrive in gloria an area hard hit by dengue and it's time for the mosquitoes to get to work
36:00the walbachia mosquitoes will breed with the wild mosquitoes so that their offspring will carry
36:05walbachia and now when these walbachia mosquitoes bite someone infected with dengue and then bite a
36:12healthy person they won't transmit the virus world mosquito program releases up to 200 000
36:21of these mosquitoes a day in the hardest hit areas and it seems to be working
36:29dengue cases have fallen up to 90 percent in some locations
36:40so the walbachia method seems promising but it's expensive and it only works on 80s egypti
36:48the mosquito that carries dengue it doesn't work at least not yet on the mosquito that carries malaria
36:57back in new york dr jessica ware is watching what they're doing here but cautiously i mean if i had
37:04to choose between using wobbachia and using insecticides i would use wobbachia because insecticides have
37:11really um even the ones that we tend to think of as being very targeted for for a particular order
37:17or
37:17particular family we often find 10 years 20 years down the line that they end up having these really
37:23much more broader effects there's another idea that scientists are testing in their labs and it's
37:29controversial genetic modification change the mosquitoes through a gene drive jessica ware worries
37:37that if we release that genie from its bottle we'll never get it back in but actually we as humans
37:44have
37:44been genetically modifying things for as long as we've had agriculture that's why our corn looks
37:48the way it does that's why bananas look the way that they do inserting particular genes that is new
37:54and we don't exactly what we've seen when when we have had genetically modified organisms things like
38:01crops like corn for example is that it tends to spread to all of the plants in the local area
38:08so if we're doing that with mosquitoes the chances of those genetically modified parts or components
38:16spreading to other mosquitoes flies or going further out to other insects in the population
38:22wouldn't be a surprise and that is a concern i think that's the big concern that people have is
38:26that once it's out there it's it's on its own evolutionary trajectory
38:33once you release genetically modified mosquitoes they're out there in a population you can have
38:39one country that says yes i want to do it and another country that says no i don't but you're
38:43not
38:43going to turn those mosquitoes back at the border right um and nothing like it has been done before
38:49people when you talk to them bring up the jurassic park analogy all the time right i wouldn't say
38:55that people are that there's a sort of homogeneously um opposed opinion but there is definitely caution
39:02and anxiety but in uganda crystal burunji not only supports genetic modification she works for target
39:10malaria an international consortium that is actively developing it so the biggest concern that you'll hear
39:17environmentally when people think about genetically modified mosquitoes is this misconception that we're
39:23going to wipe out all the mosquitoes in the world and then there will be an effect on the environment
39:27and
39:28it will be terrible but actually genetically modified mosquitoes are very precise because we are targeting a
39:36fertility gene in a specific species that is spreading malaria and only that species and because it's spread
39:42through reproduction and most of these species do not actually reproduce with each other it's most likely
39:48only going to remain within the targeted species if you look at the insecticides that we are currently
39:53using at the nets they're all aimed at reducing mosquito numbers but unlike genetic modification insecticides
40:00will kill everything that is just how they work every insect in the area will just be annihilated because
40:07that's how they work but we can't stop using them because the other side is children dying
40:14while crystal burunji has high hopes for genetic solutions stephanie nolan of the new york times has seen
40:21other fronts crumbling one of the challenges in the response to malaria and other mosquito-borne
40:27illness is that it mostly affects poor people the recent events the one a lot of people have been
40:35focused on is the trump administration's decision to end most of its foreign assistance to shut down
40:41its agency for international development usa id and to end its participation in most big multilateral
40:48funding organizations since the us was far and away the biggest funder of global health initiatives
40:53that has created absolute chaos across the developing world you know you have all kinds of the
41:00frontline community health workers who do malaria response who've lost their jobs the researchers many
41:06many of the people that i interviewed when i was doing my project on this have all lost their jobs
41:10they've
41:10lost their funding those projects have shut down i would like to think that as a global community
41:17we look at something like malaria deaths we look at 650 000 children dying of a treatable preventable
41:23illness and we think that's not okay and we're going to do something about it if you're lucky enough
41:30to live in a place that doesn't have a big mosquito-borne illness problem it might be comforting to think
41:37well this doesn't have anything to do with me you might want to look at the experience of covid which
41:43reminded us all that pathogens and mosquitoes don't respect borders reality is with a canadian climate we
41:51are very unlikely to see an established threat from any of the the mosquito-borne illnesses that we're
41:59most familiar with right now but mosquitoes can change the the level of threat they pose quite quickly
42:11but how can you protect yourself from being bitten well for the average person we are more commonly
42:18using something called deet you might use citronella and they're all doing the same thing making it so
42:25that mosquitoes have a harder time smelling where you are so they have a harder time finding you
42:32wear thick loose clothing i very unfashionably tuck my pants into my socks obviously avoiding them by
42:43being in screened in rooms travel with a bed net i always have a bed net over my bed
42:51but if they find you they will still bite you
43:00well in canada we are lucky we live in a place that doesn't have a big mosquito-borne illness problem
43:10not yet anyways so you don't have to scrap your summer camping or cottage plants
43:16but perfect cast a grateful eye to scientists and citizens like laura ferguson's team in nova scotia
43:25who monitor our wetlands and forests
43:30because in a rapidly changing world they also stand on guard for us
43:40so
43:50so
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