Speaker 1: Happy Saturday.
Speaker 2: Since render pest came up in our recent episode on measles,
Speaker 2: we have our episode on the eradication of render pest
Speaker 2: is Today's Saturday Classic. This, of course, was recorded before
Speaker 2: the research we talked about in the measles episode, which
Speaker 2: concluded that measles may have diverged from render pest as
Speaker 2: long as twenty six hundred years ago.
Speaker 1: This episode also came out on April eighth of twenty twenty,
Speaker 1: so just a few weeks into the COVID nineteen pandemic,
Speaker 1: during the period of stay at home orders and school
Speaker 1: closures and travel bands, so it already feels like kind
Speaker 1: of an early pandemic time capsule day. You can tell
Speaker 1: it's totally consumed our entire consciousness. We sound shell shocked
Speaker 1: with pandemic.
Speaker 2: And an update on the other eradication efforts that we
Speaker 2: mention at the end of this episode. There were just
Speaker 2: thirteen cases of dracunculiasis also called guinea worm disease in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty three, and twelve confirmed cases of wild polio,
Speaker 2: but there has been an increase in cases of unvaccinated
Speaker 2: people contracting a strain of polio that mutated from the
Speaker 2: ones used in oral vaccines. Even with that in mind,
Speaker 2: the Global Polio Eradication Initiative now hopes to eradicate polio
Speaker 2: by twenty twenty six.
Speaker 1: So enjoy Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class,
Speaker 1: a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V.
Speaker 1: Wilson and I'm Holly Fryan.
Speaker 2: Holly, you and I've been talking recently about how it
Speaker 2: feels weird to do topics that aren't somehow relevant to
Speaker 2: what's happening in the world right now, and yet also
Speaker 2: it feels like it could become really fatiguing for us,
Speaker 2: send for listeners to just be in a state of
Speaker 2: dire crisis all the time on this show.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I am. It's making a subject selection a very
Speaker 1: weird process for me, because I am like, on the
Speaker 1: one hand, hey, wouldn't it be nice to talk about
Speaker 1: something else and have an escape episode, right? And on
Speaker 1: the other uh, it's hard to feel like you're doing
Speaker 1: justice to the time we're living in by escaping it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's tricky. So we're in this weird place. We're trying
Speaker 1: to pick topics that you know, folks will want to
Speaker 1: listen to because we understand people listen to our podcast
Speaker 1: for fun, but at the same time, like the pandemic
Speaker 1: is influencing our thought process, and that is bringing us
Speaker 1: to today's episode, which is another one that's inspired by
Speaker 1: this pandemic but not directly related to it. And also,
Speaker 1: if you're just like man, I cannot deal with some
Speaker 1: more pandemic stuff right now. This is also a story
Speaker 1: that has some traumatic stuff in the middle, but it's
Speaker 1: ultimately positive and hopeful because it involves the total eradication
Speaker 1: of the disease in question. Back in twenty thirteen, when
Speaker 1: we did our episode on Edward Jenner and the smallpox vaccine,
Speaker 1: we said that smallpox was the only disease to be
Speaker 1: eradicated through human activity. However, just two years before we
Speaker 1: recorded that episode, a second disease had also been declared eradicated,
Speaker 1: and that disease was render Pest. Render Pest's eradication was
Speaker 1: so recent at that point that none of our sources
Speaker 1: referenced it, Like there were all these things that just
Speaker 1: very confidently, even recently published things very confidently saying smallpox
Speaker 1: is the only thing to ever be eradicated, And at
Speaker 1: that point render Pest also just had also Colly and
Speaker 1: I obviously were both alive in twenty eleven. This was
Speaker 1: not something that really stuck with people when it was
Speaker 1: announced in twenty eleven unless they had a person or
Speaker 1: professional connection to it in some way. For the most part,
Speaker 1: so this declaration that render pest had been eradicated was
Speaker 1: less than ten years ago. That's way more recent than
Speaker 1: the history we typically talk about on the show. But
Speaker 1: render Pest's history as the disease, goes back way farther
Speaker 1: than that, obviously, and the process of eradicating the disease
Speaker 1: really illustrates how it required a very coordinated international effort
Speaker 1: to do it. Render pest is caused by a virus
Speaker 1: in the genus morbilivirus. This genus includes other viruses that
Speaker 1: you may have heard of, including human measles and canine distemper.
Speaker 1: There are morbiliviruses that can infect marine life as well,
Speaker 1: including dolphins and whales, and render pest specifically has been
Speaker 1: around for a long time, perhaps as long as ten
Speaker 1: thousand years, dating back to the first domestication of Oryx,
Speaker 1: which are a now extinct type of wild ox in
Speaker 1: southwestern Asia. Before its eradication, render pest and affected domestic
Speaker 1: animals like cattle, sheep, and goats, as well as at
Speaker 1: least forty other hoofed mammals, specifically even towed ungulates like wildebeest, antelope, deer, buffalo,
Speaker 1: and giraffe. It did not infect human beings, although that
Speaker 1: wasn't necessarily always true. Render Pest's nearest relative is human measles,
Speaker 1: and these two diseases appear to have diverged only about
Speaker 1: a thousand years ago, so it's possible that before that
Speaker 1: point there was a strain of render pest virus that
Speaker 1: could infect both humans and hoofed mammals. The name render
Speaker 1: pest comes from the German word for cattle plague. It's
Speaker 1: also been known as stepmurin Meurin being another word for pestilence,
Speaker 1: and step coming from its prevalence in the steps of
Speaker 1: Asia and southeastern Europe. It was known as Sedoka in
Speaker 1: some parts of Africa and Pushima on the Indian subcontinent,
Speaker 1: and at various points it has also been named for
Speaker 1: where affected communities thought the disease had come from. For example,
Speaker 1: in parts of seventeenth century Europe, people called it the
Speaker 1: Russian disease because it was believed to have been introduced
Speaker 1: through cattle that were traded from Russia. Render pest was
Speaker 1: mostly spread through close contact among infected animals, with the
Speaker 1: virus being present in their nasal, oral, ocular, and fecal secretions. Basically,
Speaker 1: if it made a secretion, there's probably render pest in there.
Speaker 1: Infected dung could also contaminate food and water sources and
Speaker 1: spread the disease that way. It wasn't as common for
Speaker 1: things like pasture land to become infected because the virus
Speaker 1: broke down in sunlight, so it was gone from a
Speaker 1: sunny pasture in about six hours.
Speaker 2: It could last a.
Speaker 1: Lot longer in more shady areas, though. In terms of
Speaker 1: how the illness progressed after being exposed, animals went through
Speaker 1: an eight to eleven day incubation period and then they
Speaker 1: would develop a fever. Early symptoms of the acute illness
Speaker 1: included watery discharges from the eyes and nose, causing the
Speaker 1: animal to look like they were crying. From there, they
Speaker 1: would develop intense diarrhea that lasted for a day or two.
Speaker 1: Animals could shed the virus for a couple of days
Speaker 1: before developing symptoms, but they shed the virus in huge
Speaker 1: amounts once they had become visibly sick.
Speaker 2: Animals that managed to survive this diarrheal stage typically recovered
Speaker 2: and they went on to have a lifelong immunity to
Speaker 2: render past, but most of the time it just wasn't survivable.
Speaker 2: That diarrhea led to dehydration and death. A typical strain
Speaker 2: of render pest could cause a mortality rate of up
Speaker 2: to ninety percent in susceptible animals.
Speaker 1: There were some exceptions. Some strains of the virus weren't
Speaker 1: as lethal, but they could have other effects. For example, koudoos,
Speaker 1: which are antelopes with spiral horns, could survive milder forms
Speaker 1: of render pest, but tended to develop blindness because the
Speaker 1: virus infected their eyes. The Mongol Empire's Asian gray step
Speaker 1: oxen tended to be resistant to the virus, but they
Speaker 1: were still able to spread it to other animals. Although
Speaker 1: this virus may have existed for as long as ten
Speaker 1: thousand years, its presence in recorded history isn't quite that long.
Speaker 1: Cattle plagues of various sorts are documented going back to
Speaker 1: about three thousand BCE in ancient Egypt, but a lot
Speaker 1: of those earliest descriptions don't match up with the symptoms
Speaker 1: of render past. The earliest historical accounts of what was
Speaker 1: probably render pest took place in the Roman Empire between
Speaker 1: the years three seventy six and three eighty six, and
Speaker 1: then that disease spread through the empire's war with the Goths.
Speaker 1: From there, render pest outbreaks frequently followed in the wake
Speaker 1: of war. As we noted earlier, the Mongol Empire's oxen
Speaker 1: spread the illness to less resistant animals during the Mongol
Speaker 1: invasion of Europe starting in the thirteenth century. From there,
Speaker 1: armies that used even towed ungulates as pack animals or
Speaker 1: food sources carried render pest with them, or victorious armies
Speaker 1: unknowingly took infected animals with them as spoils of war,
Speaker 1: thus spreading the disease to their own animals when they
Speaker 1: got home. Render pest also followed trading routes, both through
Speaker 1: the trade of food animals and the use of pack
Speaker 1: animals to carry other trade goods. The spread of the
Speaker 1: disease in this way really increased starting in about the
Speaker 1: seventeenth century, as long distance trade involving livestock and pack
Speaker 1: animals became more and more widespread. Even though render pest
Speaker 1: didn't directly infect humans, the disease could still cause huge
Speaker 1: loss of human life. Large render pest outbreaks could leave
Speaker 1: communities without their sources of meat or milk, without the
Speaker 1: animals that they needed to cultivate the land, without the
Speaker 1: dung that they needed to fertilize it, and without transportation
Speaker 1: to try to find other sources of food elsewhere.
Speaker 2: In seventeen o nine, a major render pest epizootic started
Speaker 2: in Europe. An epizootic is basically an epidemic, but involving
Speaker 2: non human animals. This lasted for decades and led to
Speaker 2: the deaths of a as many as two hundred million
Speaker 2: livestock animals in Europe. It also led to a lot
Speaker 2: of people studying the disease and trying to figure out
Speaker 2: how to stop it spread. In seventeen eleven, Johann Kennold
Speaker 2: of Prussia noted that livestock that had survived render pest
Speaker 2: were resistant to later exposure. That same year, Pope Clement
Speaker 2: the eleventh appointed physician Giovanni Maria Lanchesi to study render
Speaker 2: pest and try to find some way to control it.
Speaker 2: In seventeen fifteen, Lanchesi published a treatise based on this work,
Speaker 2: which was called De Bavilla Peste. In general, Lanchiesi's infection
Speaker 2: control guidelines still hold up pretty well. He recommended restricting
Speaker 2: livestock movements, quarantining infected animals, slaughtering animals that had been
Speaker 2: exposed to reduce the spread of the disease, and burying
Speaker 2: the carcasses in lime. He also recommended a number of
Speaker 2: general sanitation procedures and meat inspections. In the seventeen teens,
Speaker 2: the practice of very elation to prevent smallpox started to
Speaker 2: be used more frequently in Europe. Variolation was common in India, China,
Speaker 2: and Africa before this point, but it became more widely
Speaker 2: known in England and other parts of Europe thanks to
Speaker 2: Lady Mary Warley Montague, whose husband had been ambassador to
Speaker 2: the Ottoman Empire. Variolation involved deliberately exposing someone to smallpox,
Speaker 2: often by inserting smallpox infected material through a puncture in
Speaker 2: their skin. There is more about this in our prior
Speaker 2: episode on Edward Jenner and the smallpox Vaccine. As the
Speaker 2: practice of variolations spread in Europe, people in both England
Speaker 2: and the Netherlands started trying to come up with a
Speaker 2: similar method to do the same basic thing with render pest.
Speaker 2: They were not successful at doing this, but while doing
Speaker 2: this research, Renders and Petros vun Campen realized that calves
Speaker 2: whose mothers had survived render pest were resistant to their
Speaker 2: attempted inoculations. This is one of the first document recordings
Speaker 2: of the idea of maternal immunity. In seventeen sixty one,
Speaker 2: the world's first veterinary school was established in Lyon, France,
Speaker 2: with one of its major objectives involving teaching veterinarians Giovanni
Speaker 2: Maria Lenciesi's methods of preventing render pest. We talk about
Speaker 2: this veterinary school in our episode called a Brief History
Speaker 2: of Veterinary Medicine.
Speaker 1: Throughout all of.
Speaker 2: This public health practices for humans were being developed and
Speaker 2: refined in response to what people were doing with render
Speaker 2: pest in animals. Aside from the idea of slaughtering exposed
Speaker 2: animals to prevent the spread of the disease, most of
Speaker 2: the methods for controlling and epizootic and animals also applied
Speaker 2: to an epidemic in humans. This included establishing cordon senataire
Speaker 2: or sanitary barriers around infected populations. The fight against render
Speaker 2: pest also involved the first use of thermometers to try
Speaker 2: to detect fevers as part of an infection control regimen.
Speaker 1: In spite of these advances, though, some of the world's
Speaker 1: most devastating render pest outbreaks were still to come, and
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about that after we first have
Speaker 1: a sponsor break.
Speaker 2: Although people had made important advancements in infection control and
Speaker 2: veterinary medicine leading up to the nineteenth century, the eighteen
Speaker 2: hundred saw some really devastating render pest outbreaks. We're going
Speaker 2: to focus on just two of them in particular, but the.
Speaker 1: First in June of eighteen sixty five, render pest was
Speaker 1: reintroduced to the island of Great Britain. It affected livestock
Speaker 1: populations all over the island, although the Highlands and Islands
Speaker 1: of Scotland were mostly spared. The most likely source of
Speaker 1: the infection was cattle that had been imported from Estonia.
Speaker 1: The British response to this outbreak was really not great.
Speaker 1: It had been more than a century since render pest
Speaker 1: had been present on the island, so there was nobody
Speaker 1: there who had firsthand knowledge or memory of what it
Speaker 1: looked like, and even though people knew that render pest
Speaker 1: was endemic in parts of continental Europe, there was this
Speaker 1: really weird sense or maybe just wishful thinking, that maybe
Speaker 1: this was some other disease instead and not render pest.
Speaker 1: The anti contagion movement that we talked about in our
Speaker 1: recent episode on maxivon Pettenkofer was connected to all of
Speaker 1: this as well, as people kind of questioned whether, like
Speaker 1: some pathogen could really be causing render pest. It wasn't
Speaker 1: until the end of July eighteen sixty five that the
Speaker 1: outbreak was officially confirmed as render pest, and orders in
Speaker 1: Council started to be issued to try to stop it spread.
Speaker 1: Those orders included ones that required people to quarantine sick
Speaker 1: animals and to cull potentially diseased livestock, but some of
Speaker 1: the orders were also relatively vague and contradictory, and they
Speaker 1: didn't have much enforcement power built into them. Farmers, cattle
Speaker 1: traders and others owned livestock resisted calls to destroy their animals,
Speaker 1: and there was really not a strong legal mechanism to
Speaker 1: address this. To add another complication, British physician Charles Murchison
Speaker 1: published a paper suggesting that necropsies of affected animals showed
Speaker 1: signs that were more similar to smallpox than render pest.
Speaker 1: The smallpox vaccine for humans had been introduced in seventeen
Speaker 1: ninety six, and the UK had made smallpax vaccination mandatory
Speaker 1: in eighteen fifty three, so people just latched onto the
Speaker 1: idea that what was happening to the cattle might really
Speaker 1: be smallpox or something similar instead of render pest, and
Speaker 1: a massive vaccination campaign got under way in September of
Speaker 1: eighteen fifty five. That same month, Queen Victoria authorized an
Speaker 1: additional prayer in which congregations of the Church of England
Speaker 1: would ask for God's mercy and that he quote, stay
Speaker 1: we pray thee this plague by Thy word of power.
Speaker 1: Tens of thousands of cattle in Britain were vaccinate for
Speaker 1: smallpox between September of eighteen sixty five and January of
Speaker 1: eighteen sixty six. So many vaccines were administered that health
Speaker 1: officials ran out of the lymph that was used to
Speaker 1: make them. Murchison and his supporters offered up various explanations
Speaker 1: for why vaccinated animals continued to get sick and die.
Speaker 1: When the real reason was that the disease that was
Speaker 1: at work was render pest, not smallpox.
Speaker 2: Belgian doctor Lewis Vellums had also developed a method of
Speaker 2: inoculating cattle against a different disease called contagious bovine plurineumonia.
Speaker 2: This involved threading infected material through the end of the
Speaker 2: animal's tail, and in the case of plurineumonia, this made
Speaker 2: the animal immune to the disease, with the most serious
Speaker 2: side effect being potentially the loss of some or all
Speaker 2: of the animal's tail. So people try to do the
Speaker 2: same basic thing with render pest. That did not work.
Speaker 2: It just spread the disease farther. In mid February of
Speaker 2: eighteen sixty six, the Cattle Plague Commission finally announced that
Speaker 2: the smallpox vaccination effort was not working, and they recommended
Speaker 2: the infection control and quarantine procedures that had been developed
Speaker 2: back in the early seventeen hundreds. The Cattle Disease Prevention
Speaker 2: Act was passed in February eighteen sixty six and required
Speaker 2: the culling of infected herds, with some financial compensation to
Speaker 2: people who lost their livestock as a result. It was
Speaker 2: not until eighteen sixty seven that this outbreak was controlled. However,
Speaker 2: there was worse still to come. Less than twenty years later,
Speaker 2: what may have been the biggest and most destructive render
Speaker 2: pested outbreak in history started when the disease was introduced
Speaker 2: into Sub Saharan Africa for the first time.
Speaker 1: This was during the.
Speaker 2: Scramble for Africa, when European nations divided the African continent
Speaker 2: up among themselves, establishing and expanding their colonies there. In
Speaker 2: addition to all the political, social, and human rights issues
Speaker 2: that we have talked about in a number of other
Speaker 2: episodes on the show, this also introduced and expanded European
Speaker 2: style farming and animal husbandry methods into the African continent.
Speaker 2: The likely source of this outbreak was probably cattle that
Speaker 2: Italy had imported into Africa from the Indian subcontinent. Africa's
Speaker 2: indigenous peoples already had their own established methods of animal
Speaker 2: husbandry and veterinary care, but this was a disease African
Speaker 2: people had no prior experience with, and their established practices
Speaker 2: either weren't effective or they made the situation worse. Often,
Speaker 2: white farmers and ranchers didn't have any personal experience with
Speaker 2: it either, and some of them assumed that what was
Speaker 2: happening was a unique African illness rather than render pest,
Speaker 2: and this led some of them to try Villam's tail
Speaker 2: inoculation that we talked about a moment ago, rather than
Speaker 2: culling their exposed herds. After render pest was introduced into
Speaker 2: sub Saharan Africa, as much as ninety percent of the
Speaker 2: domestic cattle there died. The disease also spread to domestic
Speaker 2: sheep and goats, and infected wild buffalo, giraffes, wildebeests, and
Speaker 2: other animals. In general, the major source of the disease
Speaker 2: spread was domestic herd animals, spreading it to wild animals.
Speaker 2: The population density of wild animals like wildebe typically just
Speaker 2: wasn't enough to really keep the disease going. Other factors
Speaker 2: made the situation much worse, including droughts that led large
Speaker 2: numbers of animals to cluster around watering holes and warfare
Speaker 2: among African nations. Many African herders were nomadic, which both
Speaker 2: spread the illness to other animal populations and made the
Speaker 2: disease even harder to track. Plus, colonial governments tried to
Speaker 2: protect their own interests over those of local Africans. Including,
Speaker 2: for example, destroying all the African owned he herds while
Speaker 2: leaving their own herds untouched, regardless of whether either of
Speaker 2: these herds was showing signs of exposure. White farmers and
Speaker 2: ranchers living in European colonies tried to protect their herds
Speaker 2: rather than calling them, including doing things like trying to
Speaker 2: hide evidence of a possible infection. Meanwhile, the colonized African
Speaker 2: people's distrusted colonial efforts to stop the disease for obvious reasons. Basically,
Speaker 2: all the various human populations in Africa at the time
Speaker 2: were working against one another, and that allowed the disease
Speaker 2: to spread farther and then in many places, the devastation
Speaker 2: brought on by the outbreak made it easier for European
Speaker 2: powers to exploit African people and resources. The result of
Speaker 2: all this was known as the Great African render pest
Speaker 2: pan zootic, and a widespread famine followed in its wake.
Speaker 2: In many parts of Sub Saharan Africa, between half and
Speaker 2: two thirds of the human population died of starvation, disease
Speaker 2: are animal attacks. In many African nations, the entire social
Speaker 2: order was upended, both because of the massive death toll
Speaker 2: and because the cattle which had represented wealth and status
Speaker 2: in these societies had all died, the render passed panzootic
Speaker 2: and colonial authorities response to it was also one of
Speaker 2: the factors that led to the Second Matabili War in
Speaker 2: what's now Zimbabwe in eighteen ninety six.
Speaker 1: The entire ecosystem was disrupted in many parts of the
Speaker 1: African continent. Grazing animals had kept grass under control. Without
Speaker 1: those grazing herds, grass formed thickets, which became breeding grounds
Speaker 1: for sisiflies, which caused an epidemic of African sleeping sickness.
Speaker 1: Rodents and insects like locusts and caterpillars also flourished. As
Speaker 1: both domestic and wild animals died, predators lost access to
Speaker 1: their regular prey and started attacking people.
Speaker 2: In South Africa, the Deber's Company invited bacteriologist Robert Cooch
Speaker 2: to Kimberly to study the disease and to try to
Speaker 2: develop a vaccine. By this point, it was well known
Speaker 2: that animals that managed to recover from render pest were
Speaker 2: immune to the disease afterward, so first Coke tried to
Speaker 2: use the blood of recovered animals to make a vaccine.
Speaker 2: Although that did provide a brief immunity. That immunity eventually faded,
Speaker 2: and the method also had the potential to spread other
Speaker 2: bloodborne diseases. Eventually, Coke and veterinarian Arnold Thyler developed a
Speaker 2: method of using bile from infected animals. They got this
Speaker 2: idea from a method that farmers in the Orange Free
Speaker 2: State had developed that involved using sponges soaked in bile
Speaker 2: implanted under the skin of livestock. Coke and Thyler's method
Speaker 2: involved killing an animal that was infected with render pests
Speaker 2: and then harvesting enough bile to create an injection that
Speaker 2: could treat about twenty five healthy animals. This method was
Speaker 2: not totally fool proof, but it did seem to confer
Speaker 2: some immunity, and others in and around South Africa continued
Speaker 2: to refine the formula and the method, along with the
Speaker 2: other infection control methods that we've talked about earlier in
Speaker 2: the episode. This vaccine helped slow the spread of render
Speaker 2: pest on the African continent. However, the panzootic lasted until
Speaker 2: about eighteen ninety seven, and then smaller scale epizootics continued afterward.
Speaker 1: We're going to get to how the disease was eventually
Speaker 1: eradicated after we take another quick sponsor break.
Speaker 2: By the start of the twentieth century, render pest outbreaks
Speaker 2: regularly threatened livestock, wild animals, and people in various parts
Speaker 2: of Europe, Africa, and Asia. Many countries where render pest
Speaker 2: was not present had passed laws that banned the import
Speaker 2: of livestock or meet from the places where render pest
Speaker 2: was endemic. In some cases, countries also banned cargo ships
Speaker 2: that had carried livestock from those trees. In spite of
Speaker 2: these kinds of precautions, render pest was introduced in Brazil
Speaker 2: in nineteen twenty one and in Australia in nineteen twenty three.
Speaker 2: Although it was quickly contained in both of those places,
Speaker 2: it might have been introduced into North America at some point.
Speaker 2: If it was, it was contained so quickly that it's
Speaker 2: not really clear whether that was really what was happening
Speaker 2: or if it was something else. By this point, we
Speaker 2: knew a little more about render pest than we had
Speaker 2: in the nineteenth century. Maurice Nicole and Mustafa Adilbay had
Speaker 2: demonstrated that it was caused by a virus. In nineteen
Speaker 2: oh two, Previously, people had thought that render pest was bacterial.
Speaker 2: In nineteen twenty, render pest was accidentally reintroduced into Belgium.
Speaker 2: The most likely source for this was zebus from India
Speaker 2: that were being sent to Brazil and had passed through
Speaker 2: Belgium on the way there. From there, render pest spread
Speaker 2: to other parts of Europe that had previously been render
Speaker 2: pest free for decades, and this led to an international
Speaker 2: effort to try to radicate the disease entirely. In the
Speaker 2: nineteen twenties, J. T. Edwards developed a vaccine using a
Speaker 2: technique called serial passage. This was similar to what Louis
Speaker 2: Pest and Emil rou had done to develop a vaccine
Speaker 2: for rabies in eighteen eighty five. For Edward's render pest vaccine,
Speaker 2: he used goats, exposing one to render pest, allowing the
Speaker 2: disease to incubate, and then using that incubated virus to
Speaker 2: infect the next goat. After doing this repeatedly, he had
Speaker 2: a strain of the virus that was more adapted to
Speaker 2: goats than to cattle, and then he used that virus
Speaker 2: to vaccinate the cows. This method was fairly effective, but
Speaker 2: it did have some drawbacks. It took a lot of
Speaker 2: goats and a lot of time to cultivate a strain
Speaker 2: of the virus that would work for this purpose, and
Speaker 2: then sometimes that strain would revert back to being more
Speaker 2: lethal for the cattle. In nineteen twenty four, during a
Speaker 2: render pest outbreak in France, the Office Internacionale de Eposotes
Speaker 2: or OIE was established. It would later become the World
Speaker 2: Organization for Animal health, and it was a major part
Speaker 2: of the global effort to stop render pest. In the
Speaker 2: nineteen fifties, veterinary scientist Walter Plowright and his colleagues developed
Speaker 2: a new render pest vaccine. They used tissue cultures rather
Speaker 2: than serial passage through living goats, to create an attenuated
Speaker 2: strain of the virus. They patterned their work after research
Speaker 2: that was being done on a human measles virus vaccine.
Speaker 2: Their vaccine gave animals lifelong immunity against all known strains
Speaker 2: of render pest with just one injection. However, the vaccine
Speaker 2: had to be kept cold from the time it was
Speaker 2: made to when it was administered, and this just wasn't
Speaker 2: feasible for a large scale global vaccination campaign. That was
Speaker 2: especially true in places that were very hot, very remote,
Speaker 2: or both. In nineteen fifty four, India started its National
Speaker 2: render Pest Eradication Program, which vaccinated twenty six alien cattle
Speaker 2: every year. India soon went from seeing thousands of outbreaks
Speaker 2: a year which infected hundreds of thousands of animals, to
Speaker 2: more like three hundred outbreaks per year. So this campaign
Speaker 2: definitely helped control render pest in India, but it did
Speaker 2: not totally eradicate the disease there. People had been trying
Speaker 2: to control render pest in Africa from the time that
Speaker 2: it was introduced, but when it came to a coordinated
Speaker 2: international effort to eradicate it completely that started in nineteen
Speaker 2: sixty three. This effort was known as Joint Project fifteen
Speaker 2: or JP fifteen, and it involved twenty two different African nations,
Speaker 2: seventeen of which had ongoing render pest outbreaks. By the
Speaker 2: end of nineteen seventy nine, Sudan was the only nation
Speaker 2: involved that was still reporting cases of render pest. However,
Speaker 2: the dramatic reduction in render pest had led to a
Speaker 2: sense of complacency as well as a lack of funding,
Speaker 2: so the campaign ended without actually eradicating the disease, which then,
Speaker 2: of course resurged that happened dramatically in the nineteen eighties.
Speaker 2: To backtrack just a bit, in nineteen sixty nine, a
Speaker 2: render pest outbreak in Afghanistan spread to multiple other nations
Speaker 2: from there, including Bahrain, Iran, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Turkey, and Yemen.
Speaker 2: The pattern of render past being spread through warfare continued
Speaker 2: as well, including through the Israeli and Syrian armies in
Speaker 2: the nineteen seventies and through Indian troops in Sri Lanka
Speaker 2: in nineteen seventy eight. In the nineteen eighties and nineteen nineties,
Speaker 2: tests were developed that detected both active render pest infections
Speaker 2: and immunity to the disease. It was also established that
Speaker 2: the antibodies passed from mother to offspring lasted for about
Speaker 2: eleven months. These discoveries made it possible to confirm whether
Speaker 2: animals were immune and to establish guidelines for how old
Speaker 2: an animals should be before it was vaccinated. International efforts
Speaker 2: to eradicate renderest continued from there. The Pan African render
Speaker 2: Pest campaign began in nineteen eighty six under the auspices
Speaker 2: of the African Union Inter African Bureau of Animal Resources
Speaker 2: and people were also refining the render pest vaccine. At
Speaker 2: this point, Tuff's University School of Veterinary Medicine and the
Speaker 2: US Department of Agriculture developed a vaccine called thermovaxin nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety two. This vaccine had a thirty day shelf life
Speaker 2: that did not require refrigeration during that time. In nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety four, the UN Food and Agricultural Organization launched its
Speaker 2: Global render Pest Eradication Program it's GRIP or g REP.
Speaker 2: From the beginning, it set a sixteen year timeline for
Speaker 2: eradicating render pest. Although most of the funding came from
Speaker 2: European nations, most of the countries where render pest outbreaks
Speaker 2: were still occurring were in Asia, Sub Saharan Africa, and
Speaker 2: the Middle East. A critical part of the GP was
Speaker 2: working with community based animal health workers. These are people
Speaker 2: who personally owned livestock and were also selected by their
Speaker 2: communities to be part of this program. They got trained
Speaker 2: in animal care program methods and vaccine administration, and then
Speaker 2: they would take that knowledge back to their own communities.
Speaker 2: This is a totally different mindset from sending in veterinarians,
Speaker 2: academics and government officials from outside the community to try
Speaker 2: to sort of impose a vaccine program. Much of this
Speaker 2: work involved figuring out which animals needed to be vaccinated
Speaker 2: to have the greatest effect, because it wasn't always possible
Speaker 2: to vaccinate every animal. For example, in Ethiopia, migratory herders
Speaker 2: moved their cattle between the lowlands and the highlands depending
Speaker 2: on the season, but there were also herds in the
Speaker 2: highlands that remained there year round. As it became clear
Speaker 2: that the migratory herds were carrying the disease to the
Speaker 2: highlands rather than contracting the disease from the highland herds,
Speaker 2: animal health workers focused their immunization efforts on eliminating the
Speaker 2: disease from the migratory population. In nineteen ninety six, the
Speaker 2: Food and Agricultural Organization identified seven regions of the world
Speaker 2: that could act as a reservoir for the virus. This
Speaker 2: included parts of Asia, the Indian subcontinent, the Middle East,
Speaker 2: and Eastern Africa. Eradication efforts were tightly focused in these
Speaker 2: regions that in nineteen ninety nine, the FAO intensified the
Speaker 2: program under the slogan of seek, Contain, Eliminate. After a
Speaker 2: few outbreaks were connected to the weakened form of the
Speaker 2: virus that was used in the vaccine. The FAO also
Speaker 2: set standards for when to stop vaccinating animals once immunity
Speaker 2: had been established. One by one, as nations had no
Speaker 2: new cases of render pest, they were declared render pest free.
Speaker 2: The last render pest outbreak on Earth was reported in
Speaker 2: Sudan in two thousand and one. The last vaccination programs
Speaker 2: ended in two thousand and six. Surveillance to make sure
Speaker 2: the disease didn't recur continued for the next few years
Speaker 2: until render pest was cleared globally eradicated on May twenty fifth,
Speaker 2: twenty eleven, ten years after the last outbreak. The United
Speaker 2: Nations has estimated that the total cost of eradicating render pest,
Speaker 2: including all the money spent between nineteen forty five and
Speaker 2: twenty eleven, was five billion dollars. And articles about the eradication,
Speaker 2: doctor Peter Rhader, the secretary of the FAO Global Render
Speaker 2: Pest Eradication Program, was quoted as saying, quote, at first,
Speaker 2: I thought that's quite a lot. Then I thought the
Speaker 2: last royal wedding cost eight billion dollars.
Speaker 1: This was cheap.
Speaker 2: To be clear, I think the previous royal wedding to
Speaker 2: this was was William and Kate. It did not cost
Speaker 2: eight billion dollars, like, even if you factor in the
Speaker 2: total cost of things like the public holidays that were
Speaker 2: around the West r Like, the super highest estimate that
Speaker 2: I've seen, including all those like intenangible's side effects, was
Speaker 2: like five billion dollars. The actual wedding cost was in
Speaker 2: the millions with an M, not the billions with a B.
Speaker 2: But this is still a great quote.
Speaker 1: Now I'm trying to think about what an eight billion
Speaker 1: dollar wedding would look like. And also, please, don't anyone
Speaker 1: spend eight billion dollars on a wedding. That's just my
Speaker 1: own personal thought. In November of twenty eighteen, the OIE
Speaker 1: and the FAO announced a global action plan to prevent
Speaker 1: the reemergence of render pest. Basically, there are a lot
Speaker 1: of labs in the world that still have samples of
Speaker 1: the virus or old vaccine stock. The organizations have called
Speaker 1: for safe destruction of these materials or transfer to an
Speaker 1: approved render pest holding facility to prevent the risk of
Speaker 1: these viruses escaping or being released through accident or criminal activity.
Speaker 1: Even though render pest and human measles are really closely related,
Speaker 1: they have some similar traits. Measles is not anywhere close
Speaker 1: to being erratic. It has been declared eliminated in some
Speaker 1: parts of the world. That means that it is not
Speaker 1: being continuously transmitted among the population of those places anymore.
Speaker 1: But even nations where measles has been eliminated can continue
Speaker 1: to have outbreaks periodically, particularly among unvaccinated people. However, there
Speaker 1: are two other diseases that are close to eradication, dracunculiasis
Speaker 1: or guinea worm disease, with fifty four reported cases in
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen, and polio, which had ninety four reported cases
Speaker 1: in twenty nineteen, although that is a significant increase over
Speaker 1: the twenty eighteen total of thirty three cases.
Speaker 2: So that is a story of how render pest was
Speaker 2: eradicated from the planet. Hooray it caused a lot of
Speaker 2: the devastation successful international eradication program. Yeah which for joining
Speaker 2: us on this Saturday. Since this episode is out of
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