May 2, 2025 • 16 mins
After being eradicated in the US in the 1980s, the screwworm could be back as soon as this summer.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Deadly parasite threatens US cattle ranchers too young to remember
It by Madison Derbyshire, red by Stephanie Spencer. On an
April afternoon in Fort Worth, Texas, dozens of ranchers wearing
tall hats, boots, and pressed shirts milled around outside a
conference room. The next panel discussion at the annual Cattle
Raisers Convention wasn't slated to start for another twenty minutes,
(00:24):
but the cowboys were worried about finding seats. Everyone was
anxious to talk about a parasite whose larvae feed on
the flesh of living animals. The title of the panel
was New World screw Worm. The threat returns a flying
piranha that eats its host from the inside out. The
screw worm is capable of killing a full grown steer
in just ten days. It was a relentless, deadly blight
(00:47):
on America's livestock for decades from the nineteen thirties, costing
ranchers and the US economy hundreds of millions of dollars
each year. Now, after being eradicated from the US since
the early nineteen eighties and largely forgotten, top veterinarians expect
the screw worm could be back as soon as the summer.
As the panel began, doctor Burke Heeley, a brutally direct
(01:09):
livestock veterinarian with a thick handlebar mustache, laid out the facts.
More than nine hundred and fifty cases have been reported
in Mexico so far this year, including one within miles
of a livestock checkpoint and chop us. A resurgence in
the US would have devastating consequences for farm animals and
wildlife deer, feral hogs, squirrels, raccoons, and even birds, and
(01:32):
could spread like wildfire. I'm now very nervous, Heeley, the
senior leader for policy and operations for the USDA Animal
and Plant Health Inspection Service, told the room in a
deep Oklahoma accent, almost to the point of being scared.
The screw worm, whose scientific name Koclomea homnivorix means man eater,
(01:53):
is actually a fly. It lays its eggs on the
wounds as well as noses, eyes, utters, and umbilical cord
stuf umps of living mammals. It mostly feeds on animals,
but can infect and kill human beings, taking root in
abrasions as small as tick bites. The eggs hatch into larvae,
which burrow or screw deep into the host's flesh. The
(02:15):
larvae eat around and down until there is a hole
inside the animal the size of your fist, said Rick Tait,
a lifelong rancher from Marfa, Texas. After three to five days,
the larva pewpates into a fly and begins to reproduce,
starting the cycle over again. Tate, born in nineteen forty five,
remembers a childhood roping cattle to check for the screw
worm infections that cowboys could often smell before they could see.
(02:38):
Texas was famous for producing the country's top rodeo champions
during this era because ranch hands spent all day every
day roping and cutting cattle out of herds on horseback
to inspect and treat for screw worms. But where cowboys
could monitor livestock, there was no one looking after the
region's wildlife. The screw worm decimated local deer populations. In
(03:00):
the southern US, an estimated eighty percent of white tailed
deer fawns died every year. In the late nineteen thirties,
two USDA entomologists, Edward Kipling and Raymond Bushland hypothesized that
the screw worm's sex life might prove its undoing. Female
screw worms mate only once in their lifetime, but male
flies are promiscuous. If they could sterilize enough male screw worms,
(03:24):
they could ensure the eggs laid by females were non viable.
World War II interrupted their research, but by the nineteen
fifties they were using airplanes to drop hundreds of millions
of sterilized flies per week over areas infected with screw worms.
The sterile flies would mate with and overwhelm the reproduction
of native flies, essentially rendering the population infertile. The program
(03:46):
was initially ridiculed as wasteful federal spending and became a
target for politicians campaigning on combating Washington waste, but it
was effective, pushing the screw worms west out of Florida
and then further south. The effort saved them ayer and
consumer more than one billion dollars every year on beef
by nineteen seventy four, around six point five billion dollars today,
(04:07):
according to calculations by the Oklahoma State Department of Agriculture.
Wildlife bounced back two The white tailed deer population quickly
rebounded six hundred percent According to the Texas Parks and
Wildlife Department, the sterile fly technique was heralded as groundbreaking.
It's refreshing to learn that this single most original thought
(04:28):
of our time has nothing to do with thermonuclear annihilation
or even astrophysics, but relates instead to control of a
fly that bothers Texas livestock, The New York Times wrote
in nineteen seventy, despite the sterile fly program success, the
screw worms had yet to be completely controlled. By the
mid nineteen sixties, a two thousand mile border of sterile
(04:49):
flies had been established between the US and Mexico, with
a new sterile fly production plant set up outside Mission Texas.
To fully eliminate the screw worm, it has to be
wiped out from ocean to ocean. The parasite will not
fly over water, but maintaining the sterile flies was a
five million dollars per year. Uphill battle cases still surge
north into the southwestern US every season. In July nineteen
(05:14):
sixty six, President Lyndon Johnson signed a bill partnering with
Mexico to push the worms deeper into Central America, where
the space between oceans was much narrower. The effort, which
later included a sterile fly production plant in Mexico, exemplified
the spirit of cooperation and warm friendship between the countries,
Johnson wrote. By nineteen eighty two, the screw worm was
(05:35):
gone from the US, and by two thousand, the USDA
established a barrier of sterile flies in the narrowest part
of Central America, then a little known jungle in Panama
called the Darien Gap. The US and Panama joined forces
on a Panamanian plant producing screwworms ninety percent funded by
the US. Today, the Panama United States Commission for their
(05:56):
Eradication and Prevention of Screwworm COPEG plant producers between twenty
million and one hundred million steril screw worms each week
to attempt to maintain the border. Once screw worm production
moved to Mexico and then Panama, the US shut down
its domestic sterile fly production outside Mission Texas in nineteen
eighty one. The Mexican plant was turned over to Mexico
(06:17):
in twenty twelve, with no domestic need, it was also decommissioned.
The screw worm soon became the stuff of legend and
then a faint memory. Kipling once regarded as a scientist
on the same plane as galileo and pasture faded into obscurity.
In the decades that followed, if a single screw worm
case was reported, the USDA would drop hundreds of millions
(06:39):
of flies over a wide radius where the infected animal
was found. There were fewer and fewer cases, and a
twenty sixteen outbreaking deer in the Florida Keys, likely transported
by a passenger car, was quickly dealt with. But things
changed after what scientists called a perfect storm almost three
years ago. Veterinarians who worked with co OPEG noted that
(07:01):
during the pandemic, staffing for inspectors of cattle crossing the
screwworm border was diminished. Copaiq's sterile fly production also struggled
with supply chain issues. At the same time, the illegal
transport of cattle across borders increased bypassing checkpoints where screwworm
cases would be detected, and millions of people began moving
northward through the Darien Gap, indelibly changing the landscape of
(07:24):
the region. Suddenly, a significant number of screw worms started
breaching the sterile flyborder. Since then, the screw worm has
been detected in Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, Belize, Elsavador,
and Mexico. Most of the new infections have been in cattle,
but screw worms have also been found in pigs, sheep, horses,
(07:44):
more than a dozen dogs, and at least one goat,
according to the USDA, They've also infected humans. In twenty
twenty four, screw worms were found in the leg of
a Canadian man after a trip to Costa Rica. Experts
said that the US grew complacent about its solved screwworm problem,
not imagining that the threat could return, dismantling its domestic
(08:06):
means of defense, antagonizing Latin American partners, and most recently,
slashing jobs in the government agencies responsible for responding. Early
retirement has been offered to anyone at USDA over fifty
years old, those with the most experience battling the screwworm.
We took our hands off the wheel for the past
thirty years, said Neil Wilkins, president and chief executive of
(08:28):
The East Foundation, which promotes ranching through science and education
in Southwest Texas. He was involved in getting Texas Congressman
Tony Gonzalez to submit a bipartisan letter to Congress in
March calling for action to protect against the screwworm. We
thought we were over it. Derek Philpott, a USDA spokesman,
said that the closure of the production facility in Mission,
(08:50):
Texas was a deliberate, science based decision that reflected the
success of eradication efforts. He said the USDA's readiness to
combat the New Worlds screw has never diminished, adding that
USDA is actively evaluating a staged response to strengthened domestic readiness.
The April conference was hosted by the Texas and Southwestern
(09:12):
Cattle Raisers Association TSCRA, an industry body. Panel discussions addressed
chronic drought, oil and gas rights, and generational estate planning,
with live demonstrations on how to handle cattle to reduce stress.
Every cow pie released by a stressed out cow before
it gets weighed by meat processors amounts to six dollars
(09:32):
in lost profit. On the minds of both speakers and
attendees was the chaos emanating from Washington, d C. Financial
markets had just spent the past week in a whipsaw,
and there was little sense that the screw worm was
anywhere on the radar of elected officials. Whether the US,
which paid for much of the sterile fly program, still
has the same appetite for international cooperation and stewardship was
(09:56):
also an open question. Peyton Schumann, Senior director of Government
Relations at TSCRA is too young to remember the screw worm,
but he's from a ranching family and heard the stories.
The ranchers who remember it have almost all passed on,
he said. TSCRA is advocating to reopen the sterile screw
worm plant and mission. Given Washington's increasingly isolationist attitudes, it
(10:21):
seems prudent to have a domestic means of production. They
estimate the effort would take two to three years and
cost upwards of three hundred and fifty million dollars, money
and time that ranchers don't have. The USDA said in
a statement it was actively evaluating building a domestic insect
dispersal center to help combat the screwworm. Ranchers also said
(10:43):
the screw worm would be much deadlier if it were
to return because of a lack of labor. We can't
fight it like we did in the sixties. We can't
go out and rope every head of cattle and put
a smear on every open wound. Schumann said Texas has
significantly more cattle today twelve million compared with seven million
in the nineteen seventies. Even a modest reinfestation in Texas
(11:04):
alone could cause close to one point eight billion dollars
in damage to the state's economy. The TSCRA said a
chunk of that will come from deer hunting, which now
generates an estimated annual one point two billion dollars for Texas,
according to the States Parks and Wildlife Department. Warmer winters
also mean that the screw worm has fewer natural enemies
and a wider potential reach. Many parasites are already showing
(11:28):
up in places we've never seen them before, and we
know part of that is climate change, said doctor Grace Vanhoy,
a veterinarian and assistant professor of Clinical livestock Medicine and
Surgery at University of California Davis. While the USDA committed
one hundred and sixty five million dollars in emergency funding
to fight the screw worm in December, people with knowledge
(11:48):
of the matter said that field staffing has been impacted
as part of a widespread government hiring freeze. The screw
worm cannot be solved by sterile flies alone. Veterinarians warned
inspecting animals one by one at border checkpoints is vitally important.
We take for granted in this country how safe our
food is, and there are a lot of people who
work to make that happen, said doctor Mira Heller, a
(12:10):
veterinarian and professor of livestock Medicine also at UC Davis.
She has been teaching her students to recognize screwworms as
a looming reality rather than an anecdote in the history
of veterinary medicine. In November, a single case of screw
worms reported in Mexico was enough to close the US
border to livestock, while the USDA scrambled to ramp up
inspection protocols. The border was reopened in late January, but
(12:35):
since then reported cases have continued to climb. More than
nine hundred and fifty cases have been reported in Mexico
so far this year, and those involved doubt whether they
are hearing the true total. Relationships with Mexico have been strained.
On April twenty sixth, Brooke Rawlin's Secretary of the USDA,
sent a letter to the Mexican government accusing the Mexican
(12:55):
authorities of impeding the US funded effort to contain the
screwworm in southern in Mexico. Every delay in granting full
operational authority and eliminating customs barriers undermines our collective ability
to carry out this emergency response, she wrote. Mexico's Secretary
of Agriculture and Rural Development, Julio Berdegae, rebuked the letter
(13:17):
on x shortly afterward, stating, we collaborate, we cooperate, but
we never subordinate ourselves to US demands. Experts say they
will need at least three times as many flies as
can currently be produced to fight back, and will need
to fly three times as many flights over Mexico to
drop them. The USDA has been forced to treat smaller
(13:37):
regions in the middle of the infected zone rather than
from the north in Mexico, with the aim of pushing
the screw worms south. It's just like fighting a fire
as it's working its way up the country. We gotta
be on the front edge and control it, contain it,
and then start pushing it back into itself, said Healley
of the USDA. The road ahead is going to be
(13:58):
long and expensive. It's he's going to be a ten
to twenty year process to get it back to where
we once were. He said, I'm no big fan of
big government. Wilkins at the East Foundation said, but a
problem like this is what the government is for. We
should have the government. We need to handle this moment,
and we don't. Public policy has a famously short memory.
(14:19):
It's more politically expedient to focus on looming crises rather
than reopen old wounds. Forgetting the screw worm may also
be a uniquely American response. Americans tend to be kind
of optimistic people because in many senses, Americans are kind
of the winners of history, said Martha Lincoln, a medical
and cultural anthropologist and a professor at San Francisco State
(14:42):
University in California. So the vigilance or anxious paranoia that
you need in order to make sure that a solution
is forever is not a big part of our cultural makeup.
Doctor T. David Greer, a rancher in Clay County with
a shock of white hair, was born in nineteen thirty eight.
He still rem remember the smell of the greasy ointment
He and his dad used to smear on the rancid
(15:04):
screw worm infections in their cattle. How hard it was
to get off his hands at night, and then one
day it just got better. The sterile fly was an
absolute miracle, he said. It just shut the spigot off.
Greer also survived the measles, and after a long career
as a physician, he is struggling to understand how the
twin threats from his childhood, both huge American success stories,
(15:27):
have returned. I feel deja vus, and it breaks my heart,
he said. More than six hundred cases of measles have
been reported in Texas since January. Two children have died.
To see the measles come back in Texas when we
have a preventative vaccine and here we are again with
the screw worm. We had something that worked, but it's
(15:47):
starting all over again, he said. When things are not there,
people tend to forget and say, oh, well, it's not
a problem anymore. It's unfortunate that we can't learn from
the past, from the successes of our past, he said.
Doctor Greer asked the final question of the panel, standing
slowly to grasp the microphone. He wanted to know why
there was no panic. Why wasn't the US rushing to
(16:10):
reopen the Texans Sterile Fly facility tomorrow? When were the
screw worms going to arrive? This is coming, you haven't
said it's not, he said to the panelists. So I'd
like to know when to get ready for the screw
worm
Deadly parasite threatens US cattle ranchers too young to remember
It by Madison Derbyshire, red by Stephanie Spencer. On an
April afternoon in Fort Worth, Texas, dozens of ranchers wearing
tall hats, boots, and pressed shirts milled around outside a
conference room. The next panel discussion at the annual Cattle
Raisers Convention wasn't slated to start for another twenty minutes,
(00:24):
but the cowboys were worried about finding seats. Everyone was
anxious to talk about a parasite whose larvae feed on
the flesh of living animals. The title of the panel
was New World screw Worm. The threat returns a flying
piranha that eats its host from the inside out. The
screw worm is capable of killing a full grown steer
in just ten days. It was a relentless, deadly blight
(00:47):
on America's livestock for decades from the nineteen thirties, costing
ranchers and the US economy hundreds of millions of dollars
each year. Now, after being eradicated from the US since
the early nineteen eighties and largely forgotten, top veterinarians expect
the screw worm could be back as soon as the summer.
As the panel began, doctor Burke Heeley, a brutally direct
(01:09):
livestock veterinarian with a thick handlebar mustache, laid out the facts.
More than nine hundred and fifty cases have been reported
in Mexico so far this year, including one within miles
of a livestock checkpoint and chop us. A resurgence in
the US would have devastating consequences for farm animals and
wildlife deer, feral hogs, squirrels, raccoons, and even birds, and
(01:32):
could spread like wildfire. I'm now very nervous, Heeley, the
senior leader for policy and operations for the USDA Animal
and Plant Health Inspection Service, told the room in a
deep Oklahoma accent, almost to the point of being scared.
The screw worm, whose scientific name Koclomea homnivorix means man eater,
(01:53):
is actually a fly. It lays its eggs on the
wounds as well as noses, eyes, utters, and umbilical cord
stuf umps of living mammals. It mostly feeds on animals,
but can infect and kill human beings, taking root in
abrasions as small as tick bites. The eggs hatch into larvae,
which burrow or screw deep into the host's flesh. The
(02:15):
larvae eat around and down until there is a hole
inside the animal the size of your fist, said Rick Tait,
a lifelong rancher from Marfa, Texas. After three to five days,
the larva pewpates into a fly and begins to reproduce,
starting the cycle over again. Tate, born in nineteen forty five,
remembers a childhood roping cattle to check for the screw
worm infections that cowboys could often smell before they could see.
(02:38):
Texas was famous for producing the country's top rodeo champions
during this era because ranch hands spent all day every
day roping and cutting cattle out of herds on horseback
to inspect and treat for screw worms. But where cowboys
could monitor livestock, there was no one looking after the
region's wildlife. The screw worm decimated local deer populations. In
(03:00):
the southern US, an estimated eighty percent of white tailed
deer fawns died every year. In the late nineteen thirties,
two USDA entomologists, Edward Kipling and Raymond Bushland hypothesized that
the screw worm's sex life might prove its undoing. Female
screw worms mate only once in their lifetime, but male
flies are promiscuous. If they could sterilize enough male screw worms,
(03:24):
they could ensure the eggs laid by females were non viable.
World War II interrupted their research, but by the nineteen
fifties they were using airplanes to drop hundreds of millions
of sterilized flies per week over areas infected with screw worms.
The sterile flies would mate with and overwhelm the reproduction
of native flies, essentially rendering the population infertile. The program
(03:46):
was initially ridiculed as wasteful federal spending and became a
target for politicians campaigning on combating Washington waste, but it
was effective, pushing the screw worms west out of Florida
and then further south. The effort saved them ayer and
consumer more than one billion dollars every year on beef
by nineteen seventy four, around six point five billion dollars today,
(04:07):
according to calculations by the Oklahoma State Department of Agriculture.
Wildlife bounced back two The white tailed deer population quickly
rebounded six hundred percent According to the Texas Parks and
Wildlife Department, the sterile fly technique was heralded as groundbreaking.
It's refreshing to learn that this single most original thought
(04:28):
of our time has nothing to do with thermonuclear annihilation
or even astrophysics, but relates instead to control of a
fly that bothers Texas livestock, The New York Times wrote
in nineteen seventy, despite the sterile fly program success, the
screw worms had yet to be completely controlled. By the
mid nineteen sixties, a two thousand mile border of sterile
(04:49):
flies had been established between the US and Mexico, with
a new sterile fly production plant set up outside Mission Texas.
To fully eliminate the screw worm, it has to be
wiped out from ocean to ocean. The parasite will not
fly over water, but maintaining the sterile flies was a
five million dollars per year. Uphill battle cases still surge
north into the southwestern US every season. In July nineteen
(05:14):
sixty six, President Lyndon Johnson signed a bill partnering with
Mexico to push the worms deeper into Central America, where
the space between oceans was much narrower. The effort, which
later included a sterile fly production plant in Mexico, exemplified
the spirit of cooperation and warm friendship between the countries,
Johnson wrote. By nineteen eighty two, the screw worm was
(05:35):
gone from the US, and by two thousand, the USDA
established a barrier of sterile flies in the narrowest part
of Central America, then a little known jungle in Panama
called the Darien Gap. The US and Panama joined forces
on a Panamanian plant producing screwworms ninety percent funded by
the US. Today, the Panama United States Commission for their
(05:56):
Eradication and Prevention of Screwworm COPEG plant producers between twenty
million and one hundred million steril screw worms each week
to attempt to maintain the border. Once screw worm production
moved to Mexico and then Panama, the US shut down
its domestic sterile fly production outside Mission Texas in nineteen
eighty one. The Mexican plant was turned over to Mexico
(06:17):
in twenty twelve, with no domestic need, it was also decommissioned.
The screw worm soon became the stuff of legend and
then a faint memory. Kipling once regarded as a scientist
on the same plane as galileo and pasture faded into obscurity.
In the decades that followed, if a single screw worm
case was reported, the USDA would drop hundreds of millions
(06:39):
of flies over a wide radius where the infected animal
was found. There were fewer and fewer cases, and a
twenty sixteen outbreaking deer in the Florida Keys, likely transported
by a passenger car, was quickly dealt with. But things
changed after what scientists called a perfect storm almost three
years ago. Veterinarians who worked with co OPEG noted that
(07:01):
during the pandemic, staffing for inspectors of cattle crossing the
screwworm border was diminished. Copaiq's sterile fly production also struggled
with supply chain issues. At the same time, the illegal
transport of cattle across borders increased bypassing checkpoints where screwworm
cases would be detected, and millions of people began moving
northward through the Darien Gap, indelibly changing the landscape of
(07:24):
the region. Suddenly, a significant number of screw worms started
breaching the sterile flyborder. Since then, the screw worm has
been detected in Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, Belize, Elsavador,
and Mexico. Most of the new infections have been in cattle,
but screw worms have also been found in pigs, sheep, horses,
(07:44):
more than a dozen dogs, and at least one goat,
according to the USDA, They've also infected humans. In twenty
twenty four, screw worms were found in the leg of
a Canadian man after a trip to Costa Rica. Experts
said that the US grew complacent about its solved screwworm problem,
not imagining that the threat could return, dismantling its domestic
(08:06):
means of defense, antagonizing Latin American partners, and most recently,
slashing jobs in the government agencies responsible for responding. Early
retirement has been offered to anyone at USDA over fifty
years old, those with the most experience battling the screwworm.
We took our hands off the wheel for the past
thirty years, said Neil Wilkins, president and chief executive of
(08:28):
The East Foundation, which promotes ranching through science and education
in Southwest Texas. He was involved in getting Texas Congressman
Tony Gonzalez to submit a bipartisan letter to Congress in
March calling for action to protect against the screwworm. We
thought we were over it. Derek Philpott, a USDA spokesman,
said that the closure of the production facility in Mission,
(08:50):
Texas was a deliberate, science based decision that reflected the
success of eradication efforts. He said the USDA's readiness to
combat the New Worlds screw has never diminished, adding that
USDA is actively evaluating a staged response to strengthened domestic readiness.
The April conference was hosted by the Texas and Southwestern
(09:12):
Cattle Raisers Association TSCRA, an industry body. Panel discussions addressed
chronic drought, oil and gas rights, and generational estate planning,
with live demonstrations on how to handle cattle to reduce stress.
Every cow pie released by a stressed out cow before
it gets weighed by meat processors amounts to six dollars
(09:32):
in lost profit. On the minds of both speakers and
attendees was the chaos emanating from Washington, d C. Financial
markets had just spent the past week in a whipsaw,
and there was little sense that the screw worm was
anywhere on the radar of elected officials. Whether the US,
which paid for much of the sterile fly program, still
has the same appetite for international cooperation and stewardship was
(09:56):
also an open question. Peyton Schumann, Senior director of Government
Relations at TSCRA is too young to remember the screw worm,
but he's from a ranching family and heard the stories.
The ranchers who remember it have almost all passed on,
he said. TSCRA is advocating to reopen the sterile screw
worm plant and mission. Given Washington's increasingly isolationist attitudes, it
(10:21):
seems prudent to have a domestic means of production. They
estimate the effort would take two to three years and
cost upwards of three hundred and fifty million dollars, money
and time that ranchers don't have. The USDA said in
a statement it was actively evaluating building a domestic insect
dispersal center to help combat the screwworm. Ranchers also said
(10:43):
the screw worm would be much deadlier if it were
to return because of a lack of labor. We can't
fight it like we did in the sixties. We can't
go out and rope every head of cattle and put
a smear on every open wound. Schumann said Texas has
significantly more cattle today twelve million compared with seven million
in the nineteen seventies. Even a modest reinfestation in Texas
(11:04):
alone could cause close to one point eight billion dollars
in damage to the state's economy. The TSCRA said a
chunk of that will come from deer hunting, which now
generates an estimated annual one point two billion dollars for Texas,
according to the States Parks and Wildlife Department. Warmer winters
also mean that the screw worm has fewer natural enemies
and a wider potential reach. Many parasites are already showing
(11:28):
up in places we've never seen them before, and we
know part of that is climate change, said doctor Grace Vanhoy,
a veterinarian and assistant professor of Clinical livestock Medicine and
Surgery at University of California Davis. While the USDA committed
one hundred and sixty five million dollars in emergency funding
to fight the screw worm in December, people with knowledge
(11:48):
of the matter said that field staffing has been impacted
as part of a widespread government hiring freeze. The screw
worm cannot be solved by sterile flies alone. Veterinarians warned
inspecting animals one by one at border checkpoints is vitally important.
We take for granted in this country how safe our
food is, and there are a lot of people who
work to make that happen, said doctor Mira Heller, a
(12:10):
veterinarian and professor of livestock Medicine also at UC Davis.
She has been teaching her students to recognize screwworms as
a looming reality rather than an anecdote in the history
of veterinary medicine. In November, a single case of screw
worms reported in Mexico was enough to close the US
border to livestock, while the USDA scrambled to ramp up
inspection protocols. The border was reopened in late January, but
(12:35):
since then reported cases have continued to climb. More than
nine hundred and fifty cases have been reported in Mexico
so far this year, and those involved doubt whether they
are hearing the true total. Relationships with Mexico have been strained.
On April twenty sixth, Brooke Rawlin's Secretary of the USDA,
sent a letter to the Mexican government accusing the Mexican
(12:55):
authorities of impeding the US funded effort to contain the
screwworm in southern in Mexico. Every delay in granting full
operational authority and eliminating customs barriers undermines our collective ability
to carry out this emergency response, she wrote. Mexico's Secretary
of Agriculture and Rural Development, Julio Berdegae, rebuked the letter
(13:17):
on x shortly afterward, stating, we collaborate, we cooperate, but
we never subordinate ourselves to US demands. Experts say they
will need at least three times as many flies as
can currently be produced to fight back, and will need
to fly three times as many flights over Mexico to
drop them. The USDA has been forced to treat smaller
(13:37):
regions in the middle of the infected zone rather than
from the north in Mexico, with the aim of pushing
the screw worms south. It's just like fighting a fire
as it's working its way up the country. We gotta
be on the front edge and control it, contain it,
and then start pushing it back into itself, said Healley
of the USDA. The road ahead is going to be
(13:58):
long and expensive. It's he's going to be a ten
to twenty year process to get it back to where
we once were. He said, I'm no big fan of
big government. Wilkins at the East Foundation said, but a
problem like this is what the government is for. We
should have the government. We need to handle this moment,
and we don't. Public policy has a famously short memory.
(14:19):
It's more politically expedient to focus on looming crises rather
than reopen old wounds. Forgetting the screw worm may also
be a uniquely American response. Americans tend to be kind
of optimistic people because in many senses, Americans are kind
of the winners of history, said Martha Lincoln, a medical
and cultural anthropologist and a professor at San Francisco State
(14:42):
University in California. So the vigilance or anxious paranoia that
you need in order to make sure that a solution
is forever is not a big part of our cultural makeup.
Doctor T. David Greer, a rancher in Clay County with
a shock of white hair, was born in nineteen thirty eight.
He still rem remember the smell of the greasy ointment
He and his dad used to smear on the rancid
(15:04):
screw worm infections in their cattle. How hard it was
to get off his hands at night, and then one
day it just got better. The sterile fly was an
absolute miracle, he said. It just shut the spigot off.
Greer also survived the measles, and after a long career
as a physician, he is struggling to understand how the
twin threats from his childhood, both huge American success stories,
(15:27):
have returned. I feel deja vus, and it breaks my heart,
he said. More than six hundred cases of measles have
been reported in Texas since January. Two children have died.
To see the measles come back in Texas when we
have a preventative vaccine and here we are again with
the screw worm. We had something that worked, but it's
(15:47):
starting all over again, he said. When things are not there,
people tend to forget and say, oh, well, it's not
a problem anymore. It's unfortunate that we can't learn from
the past, from the successes of our past, he said.
Doctor Greer asked the final question of the panel, standing
slowly to grasp the microphone. He wanted to know why
there was no panic. Why wasn't the US rushing to
(16:10):
reopen the Texans Sterile Fly facility tomorrow? When were the
screw worms going to arrive? This is coming, you haven't
said it's not, he said to the panelists. So I'd
like to know when to get ready for the screw
worm
Popular Podcasts
Boysober
Have you ever wondered what life might be like if you stopped worrying about being wanted, and focused on understanding what you actually want? That was the question Hope Woodard asked herself after a string of situationships inspired her to take a break from sex and dating. She went "boysober," a personal concept that sparked a global movement among women looking to prioritize themselves over men. Now, Hope is looking to expand the ways we explore our relationship to relationships. Taking a bold, unfiltered look into modern love, romance, and self-discovery, Boysober will dive into messy stories about dating, sex, love, friendship, and breaking generational patterns—all with humor, vulnerability, and a fresh perspective.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com