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