Dr. Nathan Wolfe
Some of the most punishing pandemic diseases to hit human health come from the wild. A local hunter deep in the rain forest brings down a beast, butchers it, its blood mingling with his own, and a virus is passed.
Enough mingling of the wrong virus over time, and a pandemic is born. Scientists think HIV and then AIDS leached into the human population this way decades ago.
Field biologist Nathan Wolfe is on the hunt for the next viral killers, to stop them before they decimate entire populations. He’s tracking them down in the rainforests of Cameroon, in Malaysia, in China and beyond, and to the blood of hunters who kill wild game.
This hour, On Point: Into Africa, and beyond, with the virus hunters.
-Tom Ashbrook
Guests:
Nathan Wolfe joins us from Stanford, California. He is director of the Global Viral Forecasting Initiative, a pandemic warning system which works with more than 100 scientists and staff around the world, including in Cameroon, China, and Malaysia. He is a field biologist and visiting professor of human biology at Stanford University. He has spent more than eight years in Southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa tracking the movement of viruses.
Joining us from Yaounde, Cameroon, is Matthew LeBreton, ecology coordinator for the Global Viral Forecasting Initiative in Cameroon, where he has been since 2000. He has a staff of roughly 30 that works on multiple sites, collecting blood samples and offering education on how viruses, including HIV, spread.
More Links:
The Global Viral Forecasting Initiative site offers in-depth descriptions of its work in Cameroon, China, Malaysia, Congo, Madagascar, and Laos, including images from the field. At the bottom of this page is a graphic photo of a blood-soaked hunter and his kill.
“Deep in the Rain Forest, Stalking the Next Pandemic” — a recent profile of Nathan Wolfe in The New York Times.
“The Plague Fighters: Stopping the Next Pandemic Before It Begins” — Wired magazine featured this article on Nathan Wolfe’s work, including photos and video.
Tags: global health, health, science
Could your guest, Dr. Wolfe, comment on the book “The River” by Ed Hooper which makes the claim that the spread of AIDS from monkeys to humans was, in fact, due to experimental oral polio vaccines administered in Central Africa during the late 1950s. Thank you for the fascinating topic!
Posted by Trey, on October 28th, 2008 at 11:19 am EDTWhat is the potential role the exotic pet trade in the spread of viruses?
Posted by Kate, on October 28th, 2008 at 11:21 am EDTDo pathogens have any natural enemies? And, do they survive so readily because there are so many hosts to support them?
Posted by George Gropper, on October 28th, 2008 at 11:44 am EDTWhat about H5N1? That nations are Not honestly disclosing cases, (for “political and economic” pressure reasons) not covering the “Rapid Response and Containment” of human-to-human H5N1 clusters in the past few years, not sharing samples, and, public awareness, preparation, and plans remain totally inadequate, despite as much or more threat from H5N1 now, isn’t getting coverage.
We don’t have an effective vaccine, (nor currently the capacity to make enough if we had one) MA did not buy enough antivirals, which are the only things saving H5N1 cases, and H5N1 remains “unprecedentedly” high.
Wasn’t the close call last Dec. (when someone flew from NYC to his brothers in then Northwest frontier of Pakistan, and back to NYC) bad enough?
Pandemic Preparedness should have been a campaign issue. The public hasn’t even read the individual’s page on pandemicflu.gov that’s been up the past 3 years; because human cases and clusters are being kept out of the news, they don’t understand this is more a threat than the switch to Digital TV, or the other issues in the presidential campaign, which will become moot if we wake up to a state of (long) emergency some day.
See GetPandemicReady.org
Posted by cr, on October 28th, 2008 at 11:52 am EDTSince the viruses are passed through the hunting or farming of animals and then human consumption, doesn’t it make sense to simply adopt a vegan diet? Humans have been surviving for centuries on such diets. It really seems unfair that beings around the world suffer, simply due to the unnecessary meat-based satisfaction of some human pallets.
Posted by Kim, on October 28th, 2008 at 5:06 pm EDT[...] read more | digg story [...]
Posted by Hunting Viruses In The 21st Century « The NPR Fanboy, on October 29th, 2008 at 7:59 pm EDTWe welcome comments from all of our listeners.
Please stay on topic, be civil, and be brief.
These comments are moderated by On Point and WBUR, but you are solely responsible for the content of your comments. On Point and WBUR cannot verify the accuracy of comments posted here.
This site supports Gravatars.