Predicting the Next Outbreak

  • The program is supposed to identify new viruses in animals before they spread to humans. (Photo courtesy of the US Fish and Wildlife Service)

A new coalition wants to set up an
early warning system for diseases
that pass between animals and humans.
Samara Freemark reports
some research institutions and conservation
groups are launching the PREDICT program:

Transcript

A new coalition wants to set up an
early warning system for diseases
that pass between animals and humans.
Samara Freemark reports
some research institutions and conservation
groups are launching the PREDICT program:

Organizers hope the program will help prevent the spread of diseases like avian flu, ebola, and swine flu. PREDICT researchers will work in disease ‘hotspots’ overseas.

Program director Stephen Morse is an epidemiologist at Columbia University in New York. He says the program will identify new viruses in animals before they spread to humans.

“We don’t even know how may emerging viruses, let alone other infectious organisms there are out there in nature, but the number must be large.”

The PREDICT program will also create better global disease warning systems.

“This is really essential to our survival as well as something very important to understand if we want to be able to control infections in the future.”

Morse hopes the program will help governments stop local outbreaks before they become global pandemics.

For The Environment Report, I’m Samara Freemark.

Related Links

The Great Vaccination Debate

  • There are parts of the country where up to 20% of families are saying ‘no’ to vaccines. (Photo by Bill Branson, courtesy of the National Cancer Institute)

Babies and young children get a lot more vaccines today than they did ten years ago. To most parents, it’s a chance to protect their children from more diseases. But there are pockets of places where lots of people are opting out of vaccines. Julie Grant reports that it has the Centers for Disease Control concerned:

Transcript

Babies and young children get a lot more vaccines today than they did ten years ago. To most parents, it’s a chance to protect their children from more diseases. But there are pockets of places where lots of people are opting out of vaccines. Julie Grant reports that it has the Centers for Disease Control concerned:

Heather Waltz has a five month old daughter. Most Americans her age have already started a series of vaccinations – to prevent everything from Hepatitis B, to Diphtheria, to Polio.

But Waltz’s little girl isn’t going to get those shots. Her mom worries they could cause things like autism, juvenile diabetes and even cancer.

“I think the jury’s still out, as far as what the research says. But there is enough anecdotal sort of stuff to make me aware and decide that, really, right at this point, vaccinating wasn’t what I wanted to do.”

Waltz is among a small, but growing number of parents who are becoming skeptical of vaccines.

Lance Rodewald is director of immunization services at the Centers for Disease Control.

He says more than 90% of American children are vaccinated. But there are parts of the country where up to 20% of families are saying ‘no’ to vaccines.

“And that’s getting to a rate of lack of protection of children that really can be a fertile ground for the spreading of diseases like measles. And we actually saw that last year.”

In one case last year, Rodewald says a child who wasn’t vaccinated caught the measles in Switzerland and brought it back to Arizona.

“The parents didn’t realize that the child had measles – brought him to the pediatricians office where there were babies that were too young to be vaccinated that got measles. And then that particular outbreak went through four generations of spread, from child to child to child to child before it was able to be contained.”

Measles can cause more than just a nasty rash. In rare cases, it can lead to death. Measles still causes 200,000 deaths around the world. But it’s been almost eradicated in the U.S. because of vaccines.

Rodewald says many parents are concerned about vaccines today because of a ten-year old scientific article that linked the vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella to autism. Rodewald says the science in that article proved to be wrong.

“The authors withdrew their names from the article. But this particular study set off a whole series of concerns about vaccines and autism that, to this day, is still talked about.”

Rodewald says many studies have been done and found no association, no cause and effect, between vaccines and autism.

It’s tough for parents to wade through all the information that’s out there these days. And there are so many vaccines to try to understand. Back in the mid-1990s, children were given 6 vaccines. Today, they’re supposed to get more than twice that many.

Mother Heather Waltz tries to keep up with it all and says she still plans to avoid vaccines.

Waltz: “For every bit of research and every article I find sort of helping me support my point, there’s a million other bits of research and articles saying that I’m a bad parent, or saying that I’m somehow damaging the health of the entire United States by not vaccinating my child. Just this idea that she could be a measles monster and just running around and infecting her classmates with measles or something like that, and that would be a terrible thing.”

Grant: “What do you think when you see that?”

Waltz: “It doesn’t make logical sense to me. Because to me, if you have 30 kids in a classroom, and my one isn’t vaccinated, wouldn’t my child be the one at risk? Not the public’s.”

But even if Waltz’s daughter doesn’t get vaccinated, she’ll probably be safe from these diseases. With so many other kids getting inoculations, most of the U.S. is not fertile ground for them to regain traction.

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

Related Links

A Treatment for Bleeding Fish Disease?

  • Signs of VHS, from the Michigan DNR (Photo courtesy of the US Fish and Wildlife Service)

A common treatment in fish hatcheries may slow – or even stop –

the spread of an invasive virus that’s killing fish across the Great Lakes.

Jonathan Brown has more:

Transcript

A common treatment in fish hatcheries may slow – or even stop –

the spread of an invasive virus that’s killing fish across the Great Lakes.

Jonathan Brown has more:

It’s called Viral Hemorrhagic Septicemia. Humans can’t catch it, but it
causes internal bleeding in fish.

The virus is hurting the region’s multi-billion-dollar sport fishing industry.

Now, researchers are finding that adding iodine – a common practice in fish
hatcheries – could prevent the virus from spreading.

Steve LePan is a biologist for the state of New York. He says a study at
Cornell University found Walleye eggs treated with an iodine solution were
not infected with VHS.

“We can’t say for sure that it’s exclusively the iodine that kills it. There may
be other things we do to the eggs that also affect the virus, as well.”

Those ‘other’ treatments include bathing Walleye eggs in Tannic Acid for a
few minutes before incubation.

LePan says there’s still a lot to learn about VHS, but he’s cautiously
optimistic that hatcheries can breed fish uninfected by the disease.

For The Environment Report, I’m Jonathan Brown.

Related Links

Color Changing Bacteria Detector

  • A team at Tufts University is working on sensors that could change color to tell you if a bag of lettuce has dangerous bacteria in it. (Photo by Ken Hammond, courtesy of the USDA)

Researchers are working on a tool
that could tell you if your food is safe
to eat before you break open the bag.
Rebecca Williams has more:

Transcript

Researchers are working on a tool
that could tell you if your food is safe
to eat before you break open the bag.
Rebecca Williams has more:

A team at Tufts University is working on sensors that could change color to
tell you if a bag of lettuce has dangerous bacteria in it.

The special ingredient is silk. They boiled silkworm cocoons. And made a
thin silk film out of the proteins. The silk film has color changing properties
– like a butterfly’s wing.

Fio Omenetto is the lead researcher. He says it could be possible to activate
the film so it detects the presence of E. coli. Then the film could be put in a
bag of spinach.

“So immediately by looking at color change you will be able to tell whether
the spinach is good to eat or not.”

Omenetto says this is still pretty futuristic at this point. He says it’ll
probably be at least five years before you might see this at the grocery store.

For The Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

Related Links

West Nile Virus Here to Stay

  • USGS Wildlife Veterinarian testing an American crow for previous exposure to the West Nile Virus (Photo courtesy of US Geological Survey)

We’re heading into West Nile virus season.
Rebecca Williams reports experts say it’s now a
seasonal epidemic:

Transcript

We’re heading into West Nile virus season.
Rebecca Williams reports experts say it’s now a
seasonal epidemic:

West Nile virus is at its peak between mid-July and mid-September.

You can get infected from a single mosquito bite.

Most people who get infected won’t get a serious case of it. But people
over 50 have a higher risk of getting really sick. The virus can cause
high fever, paralysis and even death.

Dr. Lyle Petersen is with the Centers for Disease Control. He says West
Nile Virus is here to stay. And he says even if your area hasn’t had an
outbreak recently, that doesn’t mean it won’t happen.

“We really can’t predict exactly when and where these outbreaks are
going to occur so everybody needs to take precautions.”

He says you should use insect repellants, repair window screens, and
drain standing water around your house.

For The Environment Report I’m Rebecca Williams.

Related Links

Fish Disease Spreads to New Waters

  • Signs of VHS, from the Michigan DNR (Photo courtesy of the US Fish and Wildlife Service)

Despite efforts to stop it, there’s a new
indication a nasty fish virus is spreading. Christina
Shockley has the latest:

Transcript

Despite efforts to stop it, there’s a new
indication a nasty fish virus is spreading. Christina
Shockley has the latest:

The name even sounds scary: viral hemorrhagic septicemia. It causes fish to bleed to
death.

VHS has been in the Great Lakes for at least three years. Officials have been trying
to confine it to the Great Lakes basin, but now it’s spread into central Ohio.

Elmer Heyob is with the Ohio Department of Natural Resources.

He says the worst-case scenario is that VHS could get into a hatchery that stocks fish
for lakes and streams, and that cloud hurt the region’s economy.

“First the hatcheries, then the fishery, then the people that support the fishery, the
boating industry, it just goes on and on.”

Heyob says to stop VHS from spreading, you shouldn’t move fish from one lake to
another, and you should clean boating and fishing equipment before you move to a
different lake.

Researchers believe eventually fish build up immunity to the disease.

VHS does not pose a threat to people.

For The Environment Report, I’m Christina Shockley.

Related Links

Fish Disease Spreads to New Waters

  • The external bleeding on this freshwater drum fish is a result of VHS. The disease is spreading beyond the eastern Great Lakes region. (Photo by John Lumsden, University of Guelph)

A virus that’s been killing fish in the Great Lakes is spreading to
other waterways in the US. Chuck Quirmbach reports:

Transcript

A virus that’s been killing fish in the Great Lakes is spreading to
other waterways in the US. Chuck Quirmbach reports:


Viral hemorrhagic septicemia has been limited to the eastern Great
Lakes region, but now it’s gotten into a forty-mile long lake in
Wisconsin. Lake Winnebago draws anglers from a wide area.


Mike Schmal is a local tourism official. He says the fish-killing
virus could be very disruptive.


“There’s numerous bait shops and numerous businesses that depend on the
lake and this is our summer leisure season… when the boating season
begins and when sportfishing begins.”


Scientists say it appears to be impossible to get the virus out of
infected waters, so natural resource officials are trying to stop VHS
from being spread to more lakes and rivers in other states.


It’s not clear how VHS got into the US, though contaminated
ballast water from international ships is one possibility.


For the Environment Report, I’m Chuck Quirmbach.

Related Links

Viral Disease Killing Great Lakes Fish

  • Commercial fishers and biologists are concerned about the impact a viral disease will have on the Great Lakes fishery. There have been some large fish kills. Live fish commerce has been restricted to help prevent the spread of the disease.

A disease is spreading, causing large fish kills in the Great Lakes.
Biologists and fishery officials are working to prevent further spread of
the disease, but there’s a conflict between government agencies. Lester
Graham reports there’s also a cost to businesses that deal in live fish:

Transcript

A disease is spreading, causing large fish kills in the Great Lakes. Biologists and
fishery
officials are working to prevent further spread of the disease, but there’s a conflict
between government agencies. Lester Graham reports there’s also a cost to businesses
that deal in live fish:


The disease that’s killing fish is called Viral Hemorrhagic Septicemia — or VHS. Jim
Diana is a fish biologist at the University of Michigan who’s been looking into what
it
does to fish…


“So, it’s a virus that the fish pick up and the virus causes really kind of a
general systemic
deterioration. Most notable, sometimes they’ll develop sores or lesions on the
outside of
the body, but they often will die without really external evidence at all.”


Basically, the fish die from internal bleeding. For several years there have been
die-offs
in the St. Lawrence River, which connects the Great Lakes to the Atlantic Ocean. But
researchers weren’t able to confirm the cause was VHS. Then this past summer in Lake
Saint Clair — the lake near Detroit that lies between Lake Huron and Lake Erie —
Jim
Diana says fish die-offs were confirmed to be caused by VHS.


“And since then, they’ve found it in quite a few other species, something like 20
other
species, so it’s quite widespread.”


It’s not clear how the virus got here. But… it originated in Europe. Researchers
guess
that infected fish hitchhiked in the ballast tanks of a ship… or a live fish shipment
escaped into the St. Lawrence River and it’s spread from there by ship.


Biologists say the spread of VHS is not good. It’s not expected to wipe out fish in
the
Great Lakes. But it is causing some real concern.


“We’re not talking about a couple of fish here, we’re talking about large fish
kills. And
VHS is present in those and implicated in the deaths of those fish.”


Marc Gaden is with the Great Lakes Fishery Commission. Gaden says because stocking
fish is a big industry… there’s a lot of fish shipped between the U.S. and Canada and
between one state and another.


“So, in the Great Lakes basin there is a movement of fish, fish eggs and other fishery
related things like water that’s used in the fish stocking trucks, things like that.
There’s
aquaculture that occurs, fish farms in the Great Lakes basin. The Departments of
Natural Resources harvest fish eggs to use in their stocking programs and the fish
themselves are stocked. So, there’s movement of fish and fish eggs throughout the
Great
Lakes basin just as a normal part of fisheries management and commerce that occurs.”


So the chance that the virus can be spread by all those fish moving around is
significant.
The federal government thought it was such a risk that it banned all fish shipments.
The
states quickly appealed that. They said it was overkill. They persuaded the feds
that they
were doing enough testing that the chances that VHS would be spread were slim.


So, the feds backed off a bit. But restrictions are still causing some problems. For
example… live fish that are not going to be put back into the lakes… live fish that
are
headed for dinner plates at restaurants still have to be tested. And VHS poses no
risk to
human health.


Ted Batterson is the director of the North Central Regional Aquaculture Center at
Michigan State University. He says he knows one fish farmer whose business is
supplying rainbow trout to restaurants.


“Well, now to be able to do that, he has to have the certification that these are
VHS-free.
It takes him currently, with the laboratory he’s been sending these to, up to 90
days to
get the certification that these are disease free. Well, that is not timely because
these
people who want fish at the other end need them in essence like yesterday, not 90 days
down the road.”


Another business hit by the restrictions on moving live fish is the bait industry.
If the
bait industry has to test –for example—one out of every 50 fish… and the test costs
about
50-dollars… no one will be able to afford to sell bait fish.


The states and the feds are still trying to figure out how to prevent the spread of
VHS…
without hurting the businesses that rely on live fish shipments any more than
necessary.
But… some businesses are already feeling the squeeze.


For the Environment Report, this is Lester Graham.

Related Links

Watching Wild Birds for Avian Flu

The US government is testing wild migratory birds for a deadly strain of avian flu. The GLRC’s Rebecca Williams reports, so far, no wild birds have tested positive:

Transcript

The US government is testing wild migratory birds for a deadly strain of
avian flu. The GLRC’s Rebecca Williams reports, so far, no wild birds have
tested positive:


Researchers have tested 13,000 wild birds in Alaska. They’re worried
that wild birds could carry the deadly H5N1 strain of avian flu as they
migrate from Asia to North America and infect other birds in Alaska. The
virus has killed more than 140 people in Asia, Europe and Africa.


Gale Kern is with the US Department of Agriculture’s Wildlife Services
Program:


“We still don’t know how effective wild birds are at carrying the virus long
distances. I think we need to remain diligent and really keep up our
surveillance efforts because we just really don’t know a lot about this
particular strain yet.”


Kern says biologists will now focus on testing birds in the lower 48 states
as fall migration south begins.


Agencies also consider poultry imports and smuggled pet birds ways the virus
could get into the States.


For the GLRC, I’m Rebecca Williams.

Related Links

Scientists Propose Sharing Bird Flu Data

A group of flu scientists and health officials want to end secrecy over avian flu data. The group says some scientists and governments are keeping flu data hidden. The GLRC’s
Lester Graham reports:

Transcript

A group of flu scientists and health officials want to end secrecy over avian flu data. The
group says some scientists and governments are keeping flu data hidden. The GLRC’s
Lester Graham reports:


Some data on avian flu outbreaks are restricted by governments, or kept private within small
groups of researchers, or the information hoarded for years by scientists who want to be
the first to publish in academic journals, according to correspondence published online by
the journal Nature.


Seventy top flu scientists and health officials propose sharing all data through what
they’re calling the Global Initiative on Sharing Avian Influenza Data. The consortium
and its data will be open to all scientists provided they agree to share their own research.


Any articles published in academic journals would have to credit the use of other
researchers’ data. The idea is to more quickly allow scientists and health officials world-
wide to better understand how avian flu viruses spread and evolve before they reach
pandemic levels.


For the GLRC, this is Lester Graham.

Related Links