July 17, 2012 • 34 mins
The parasitic worm onchocerciasis carries uses a bacterial cloaking device to colonize the human body, causing tremendous suffering and even blindness. Luckily, the Carter Center is waging a campaign against the parasite. Tune in to learn more.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
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 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. And
you know, Julie, we live in a we have a
pretty good you know, we we have access to clean water.
We live in a relatively parasite free environment. I mean,
(00:25):
we all have it. We have our parasites. Um, they're
they're inevitable to a certain degree. But but but when
you when you really started looking around at some of
the the problems that that are dealt with in some
of the more developing parts of the world, UM, it
really is a wake up call to just how thankful
we should be. Not to get to you know, Gucci here,
(00:47):
but but we are. In this episode, we're going to
talk about, um, something that is both on on one hand,
a very gross and a very fascinating organism, a parasitic
organism that is of interest just because it is an
organism that carries out it's uh, it's it's genetic mission
in a very peculiar and engaging way. It's a very
(01:09):
stealthy parasite, very stealthy, and we can admire it's uh
it's purity, you know. But but on the other hand,
it is also a huge um world health issue. It is,
it is something that is of a great concern to
organizations like the World Health Organization and particularly the Carter
Center based here in Atlanta, who we've been chatting with,
you especially, have been chatting with UH this week to
(01:31):
get geared up for this episode on river blindness. Yeah.
I mean, usually we will talk about parasites, and as
you say, we'll talk about them as as destructive forces,
but we don't always go into these um these larger
public health arenas. So I think it'll be really interesting
to today talk about um again. Like you say, the
parasite itself, but what sort of destruction actually happens when
(01:53):
a parasite really infiltrates a community. UM. So, we are
talking about something called oncos or hiasis. This is also
known as river blindness. It's a parasitic disease caused by
tiny worms or nematodes Uncle serica volvulus worm in particular,
and it is transmitted by flies, black fly specifically, which
are these nasty little things. When when I lived up
(02:16):
in Canada and Newfoundland as a kid, we had we
had black flies, and they were vicious like that. Like, yeah,
now I'm not certain it's exactly the same. You know,
maybe it's just a cousin of the black fly. But
but just the word black fly even now inspires itching
and slapping on my part. All right, so it kind
of strikes fear into your heart already. Um, well, imagine
(02:37):
if it was carrying this this parasite, um, and you
were then infected by one of these bites. Yeah, And
and the thing about when we're talking about one of
these bites, and certainly, like when I was in Canada
dealing with a black fly, you get a couple of bites.
But in some of these these these areas like Uganda
or or or certain parts of South America. Um, you're
(02:59):
talking about like bytes or more per hour when you're
out and about, right, So you're just getting bombarded with
these bites and then these these are infected bites. And
that's really key to the transmission as well. I mean,
you're you're not probably going to get this parasite unless
you get multiple, multiple bites here. But let's just talk
about before we start talking about the Carter Center, we
(03:21):
talked about the parasite itself, let's talk a little bit
about the symptoms. Um we're talking about intense itching, Yeah, itching.
The accounts that I was reading and listening to about this,
we're talking a lot level of itching that most of
us can't really fathom, like like constant, NonStop, extreme itching
that that does not cease, can prevent, can can really
(03:45):
prevent sleeping, and and and and still insomnia for years
and uh. And it's not uncommon for people to commit
suicide to just just over the itching alone. Right. You've
got skin discoloration, of course, and you've got rashes, eye diseases,
and most notably this can lead to permanent blindness. And
we'll talk a little bit more about the blindness aspect
(04:06):
of this and how the worm accomplishes this. But as
you can already tell, this is UM an incredibly tormenting,
devastating disease, particularly if you are in one of these
developing nations and you already are poverty stricken, are already
dealing with a host of other issues just trying to
live your life on a day to day basis. Yeah,
and there are other particularly harmful diseases that are that
(04:29):
are often a problem in these areas as well. I
mean these are areas where we're dealing with HIV AIDS
in many cases, and there's a huge effort to to
tackle that public health concern, and it's in in the
past especially, it's been easy for stuff like river blindness
to fall to the wayside. Another thing to keep in
mind is that this tends to and you'll have communities
(04:49):
where you have like ninety percent infection rate, like most
of the village, most of the community is infected with
this UH, with this organism and essentially have river blindness.
But it's generally in your thirties and forties where it
really becomes debilitating where you see blindness set in. So
it's taking people out during that what should be some
(05:10):
of the most active decades of their life. You have
so people that are otherwise you know, the of of
sound mind and body. But now that first they're robbed
of to a certain extent, their sanity by by the
this itching, this constant itching. They can't sleep constantly having
to deal with this, and then they're obbed to their
side as well well. They can't so then they can't
(05:31):
hold down a job right um, they can't take care
of their children, they can't harvest crops, um, you know,
they can't receive an education, so it's basically stripping them
of their livelihoods and compounding these cycles of poverty for generations. Um.
So yeah, there's a huge economic impact here. We're talking
about it affecting eighteen million people around the world with
(05:52):
the cases in Africa, and it is the leading cause
of preventable blindness in the world and is endemic to
thirty seven countries in Africa and in Latin America. All Right,
so let's uh, let's talk about this disease cycle that
happens this with this parasite and how it's being um
carried around and the mandibles of these black flies. Yeah,
(06:12):
I guess we'll start with the black flies. They're flying
around there and they're they're carrying uh this uh this
infection the larva. Right, so yeah, let's set the scene here,
and we were talking about swiftly flowing rivers and streams. Yeah,
which is which that alone through me when I was
first looking into this, because you you know, when you're
dealing with stagnant waters are still waters, there's always this
(06:35):
potential for for something horrible to brew there. But but
fast flowing, clean waters and that's that should be safe, right,
Well not. So you have the black fly that's infected
by the larva, all right, it's got it in its mandibles,
and the black fly seeks out prey. It wants to
feed on some blood. So it finds these various villages
who are hanging out around the water, bathing in the water,
(06:58):
collecting drinking water. I mean, this is the sin of
their life. So they're there. There's no avoiding contact with
the water. Other community is often you know, adjacent to
the water. So black fly bites you and then you
get the larva in your skin, yes, and and then
things begin to proliferate. Yep, that's right. So the parasite
is entering through that the skin that's been pierced by
(07:20):
the fly, and they migrate inform nodules and the skin
and then they mature. Yeah, basically they were talking about nodules.
We're talking about like little little spheres in the skin,
like little round colonies, little it's almost like the nodules
of your spine that you can feel in your back. Right.
This this is something that's going to become that apparent
(07:40):
on your skin when you see that kind of bump
um forming. Yeah, they look like little like little tumors
or little just little balloons of worms basically, and these
things reproducing an astonishing rate and and a really long
lived like you tend not to think of things like
a nematode living for nine twelve upwards of you know,
(08:04):
over twelve years up to fifteen years of life in
this worm that is living inside of this tiny little
round the globe in your skin. Yeah, I mean, I
kind of think of it as like tense city, Like
your body becomes tense city for them. These nodules are
these places that they migrate back and forth too, because
they are either moving back and forth to join other worms,
(08:25):
are mating with other worms. So there's all this activity
going on um in your body, and of course that's
why you're getting some of these horrible symptoms. These worms
are mating, uh in they're they're laying eggs. Said A
thousand larvae a day. Yeah, these, Yeah, a thousand of
these microfilarre per day are being laid inside your skin.
(08:46):
So it just it's it's exponential, It just it just
builds up like crazy. So the body progressively it becomes
more and more ravaged by this. You have these uh,
these non nodules are popping up everywhere. They're they're they're itching,
and then if it spreads to your eyes, that's where
you encounter some real problems. Yeah. Okay, so, and that
sounds weird because you think about a worm, you probably
(09:07):
are thinking about a nerveform or something along those lines.
Are not thinking about a worm. That is the size
of the period at the end of a sentence. But
the fact of the matter is that's the size of
these horms and they can travel to the eye where
they create severe lesions and this is what it can
lead to blindness. Um. So that is a huge concern obviously,
because again this is debilitating for the person. And the
(09:29):
idea is that you want to try to get or
intervene with medication before this happens. And we'll talk a
little bit more about the medication later. Um, but let's
talk about when you are infected. You you are the
host that's infected. You are then contributing to the rest
of the life cycle of this parasite because you're infected,
you're bitten again, and then another fly becomes infected with
(09:53):
the larvae from your body in the cycle just continue. Yeah,
you're like a resupply camp. You know, we talked about
parasitic life cycles before and and that's generally how it goes.
The organism is not living its entire life cycle inside
your body. You are just a stopover in the same
way that a human will occupy won't occupy a single
job that their entire life, or live in one house
(10:15):
for an entire life. You know, it's it's it's a cycle,
except the cycle in this case always comes back around
at the same place. Yeah. That reminds me of when
we did an episode on toxoplasmosis and how it uses
rats and cats to continue its life cycle and even
changes the behavior of those those animals and perhaps even people,
which makes me think about this parasite and how it
(10:38):
also can change the body's immune response. It can tinker
with how things are working inside of us. And you're
talking for us about the Wallbachia bacteria. Yeah, yeah, so okay,
this this worm is not a single parasite or a
single organism parasite. It actually contains the Wolbachia bacteria, which
is in and of itself unusual. But the reason him
(11:00):
why that bacteria is hitching a ride with Anco sacs
um psarchiasis is because it actually does a job for
that worm. Um. What happens is that when it infiltrates
the human body, and our white blood cells go, oh,
there's there's something going on here. Um. Those white blood cells,
specifically neutrophiles, which are specialized white blood cells. They surround
(11:24):
the the infection point. But what happens here is that
that bacteria has already created a ring around the worm
and is basically cloaking that worm from the white blood cells.
So the white blood cells a cloaking device, the bacterial
cloaking device used by the bacteria to infiltrate our bodies
defense systems. Yeah. Yeah, So the white blood cells are
(11:45):
then creating another ring around the bacterial ring and trying
to attack that. But it's specialized, right, so it can't
actually attack the worm itself. It can't even get to
the worm. Um. And then you have something called eosinophiles,
and this sort of like the cleanup crew of our body.
This is another type of white blood cell, and it
(12:06):
usually could get to the worm and take it out. Okay,
it's like, um, it's sort of like the crime scene
clean up white blood cell of our body. But again
because it's got the double ring around it. Now it
can't get through the other white blood cells, it can't
get through the bacteria. It's not going to make its
way to the worm. Which is amazing because what it's
(12:26):
doing is it's gaming our immune system. This parasite. Yeah,
it's like it's throwing up some some interference. It's like
some sort of like a bank haist kind of a flick.
It's it's like coming to mind, you know where where
it's like the bank haist itself is just distraction. And
then the the the guy who can say today can't
get in to stop the bad guy because the police
(12:46):
response is surrounding the building. Uh. Kind of some more
thing going on here with the with with with our
nemesis here or misdirection like we talked about with magicians
what they do to our brains to try to get
us to focus on something else. Um. So this is
how amazing this parasite is and and also how detrimental,
as you can see, it can be because it's just
(13:08):
playing havoc with your body. Um. And we're gonna talk
about the ways in which it has been combated and
want to take a quick break, Yeah, we'll take you
a quick break, and when we come back we will
talk about how we're actually fighting this thing and and
really thanks to uh, to the Carter Center and in
other efforts, were actually defeating the thing. All Right, we're
(13:31):
back in reading about anco psarchiusis it also happens to
fall in the same week where I'm I'm reading a
lot about the xeno morph from Aliens, which also has
a parasitic a fictional parasitic life cycle. And of course
there's a there's a place, there's a part in the
original film Alien where they're asking the android ash Um,
(13:51):
how do we defeat it? How do we defeat this, uh,
this organism? And he tells them you can't. So there's
there's no way you're gonna be able to kill it. Uh.
He just tells them, you know, you have my sympathies,
symp sympathies. And the interesting thing about uncle siasis is
when we attempt to fight it, killing it is not
really an option on the table. Is so our our
(14:13):
means of defeating it is not going in there and
wiping it out, rather waiting it out and keeping it
from reproducing. That's right. So we're trying to control it
and we're trying to um to lessen the symptoms, and
so the disease is really just treated here. Um, it's
as you say, it's not eradicable at least at this point.
(14:35):
So that is done through something called ibra mactin, which
is an oral medicine. And this is part um. This
is really part of this, really the great part of
this story which involves Carter Center and involves Murk. Yeah,
I mean the parasite blinding people not the great part, no, No,
but the things that we're doing to to to curb
(14:55):
it and to control it and to and to address
the public health side of it is amazing and pretty
pretty much just an awesome story for everybody involved. Yeah.
So in n this is the only part of the
story here, Murk and company pledge donate mecdicine, which is
ib macdin, for as long as necessary to all people
affected by the disease and endemic countries. This is a
(15:17):
huge deal, right. Yeah, say what you will about the
large pharmaceutical companies, but this is just there is an
example of of of a company doing the right thing
here and just just putting public health above all else. Yeah.
And when we're talking, um, just so everybody gets an
idea of the scope of this. Since two thousand and ten,
more than one hundred and fifty million medicine treatments have
(15:39):
been distributed, and presumably many more until this is, you know,
completely managed to the point to zero where there's zero
infections across the world. And to put that the number
of treatments in perspective to this is not something you
take every day. This is something you take annually. So
you'll you'll dose up on medicine once a year, but
(16:00):
you'll do it for about fifteen years because the idea
is that every year you want to pump the stuff
in there, keep the females from reproducing, the females that
are already living inside your body, keep them from reproducing
for their entire life cycle. And again, these things live
nine twelve m generally that the estimate I was saying
was like nine to twelve years, call it fifteen and
(16:22):
you're safe, right, Um, Basically, you want to wait it out,
don't let it reproduce for the rest of its life,
and then at the end of fifteen years, nothing else
has been new has been born. You'll be clean. Yeah. Yeah,
So again, you know, Mark has pledged to you know,
indemic countries to help keep this under control. The pill
does kill immature worms in the body, and if they
(16:42):
can't reproduce in the human body, we defeat it ultimately
exactly because it breaks that cycle. Right. So if you
get you know bit again and you know, anyway, the transmission,
what we're talking about here is interruption and elimination, and
we'll talk a little bit more about that. But um,
but macdisene is is great. It relieves itching and in
whose vision and prevents blindness. UM. So hopefully you can
(17:03):
get in there at the right time to help prevent
that blindness because essentially, what you're doing is you're giving
uh people their lives back, because if you can't work,
if you can't take care of yourself, if you are
in a family that has already stretched to live you
know again, day to day living here, um, then most
likely you're going to be kind of put to the wayside.
And for years some people have been living outside of
(17:25):
their communities because they just don't have the resources to
take care of people who um have river blindness. UM.
So anyway, this really is sort of a life giving
drug and a development that happened in conjunction with the
Carter Center. So let's talk about the Carter Center, um,
real quickly. These guys are a leader in disease eradication
(17:46):
and elimination. They target diseases that no one knew um
or did little or nothing about before the diseases like
something like river blindness were even recognized as a neglected disease.
And they've been doing this since the eighties. Uh, so
they are out there on the front field. But not
only that, they work like in tandem with the countries
(18:06):
and the program administrators, um, you know, the community based volunteers.
And this is a huge effort because not just like hey,
we're this one organization and we're gonna bring this down
on high. Everybody can have this. I mean this takes
a huge UM commitment first of all, and the second
well cooperation um different countries, um, you know, different levels
(18:28):
of government to get this. You know, going yeah and
think because once you get it going to where it's
such a long term process. You're talking because again you're
talking about uh supplying this to two communities for a
period of fifteen years, and you need everybody to take
it because because again these communities are dealing you're dealing
with like infection. Right, So it's like everybody so and
(18:50):
everybody has to take it because if if only some
people take this medication, if some are abstaining because of
of real or perceived side effects to taking it or
some sort of I read some stuff too about you know,
at times there have been like fears that oh, it
will make me sterile, or or concerns that more traditional
medical practices in a culture would treat would be actually
(19:13):
be better at treating this condition than outsider medicine. So
you have to do a lot of real education and
re education UM and keep that up for fifteen years
as well. So it's a it's a huge commitment. And
uh and the fact that the Carter Center has been
so proactive and it is really amazing. Yeah, And I
think one of the keys UM in learning about the program,
particularly the river blind this program UM that that they do.
(19:35):
It's not just okay, here's a strug from an outsider.
What they really have done is they've allowed these countries
and these communities and these different levels of government to
take this on this the education programs and UM the
medication on themselves and distribute it to the communities that
need it to the people that need it, so that
people are understanding it as not an outsider agenda, but
(19:58):
as an agenda that is important um inside the community.
And so I think that has gotten everybody on board.
So in that sense, you know, the CAR Center is
also helping them that you know, those communities to help themselves. UM.
So that's really important. You've got the education component, you've
got the medicine component, and you have the vector control. Right,
(20:21):
so there's also spring that goes on. Yeah, So medicating
UM infected individuals just one part of it. We also
are getting in there with anti larval um like larval
sides actually that that put in the water. Well, first
of all, figure out what portions of a river are
really prime activity, So they'll go in, they'll they'll look
(20:42):
at the rate of the water flowing through there, like
measure it with like little propeller gadgets. And then once
they figure out the areas to treat, treat it with
this environmentally friendly anti larval yeah yeah, and then that
that will attempt to kill it off. And then you know,
you'll look at how the larval populations have dropped off
in those areas, like like looking at typically these larva
(21:04):
will end up crawling all over like the crabs that
live in there in the water. Pull out the crabs,
examine the crabs and uh. And we're seeing some of
these areas that were previously hotbeds for the larval infestations
that it's just just not there anymore. Yeah. So yeah,
cutting down, medicating people, cutting down on where it grows.
(21:24):
Um also just a lot of things like making sure
people were wearing more clothes in areas where they're exposed
to the black flies, protective clothing, protective gear. Uh. Just
sort of any little additional, seemingly petty advantage you can
take can make a huge difference when you add everything up. Yeah.
And UM, I wanted to touch on elimination versus interrupted
(21:45):
transmission too, because these are two different terms obviously that
mean very different things. UM. So for for interrupted transmissions,
but this has been happening with a lot of um,
the different countries that the car Center is involved with. UM.
This interrupted transmission basically happens when treatment coverage of an
area UH is attained and there are no new incidences.
(22:08):
Elimination is a term that that you cannot actually use
until an area or a country has maintained no new
cases during a three year period called the surveillance period,
and that's zero infections, and that's when you know that
that is eliminated. Of course, World Health Organization is also
involved in UM in terming the country or an area
(22:32):
eliminated of this disease. But I guess with the larger
story here is that this is a huge wind for
these countries and for these areas. Colombia has interrupted transmission
UM and has gone three years without any new cases
and it's waiting to be certified as eliminated. Ecuador, which
is another area that the Carter Center is focusing on,
(22:53):
has interrupted transmission, has also gone nearly three years without
any new cases and is also being prepared to be
sort of fight is eliminated. Mexico and Guatemala have interrupted
transmission and they are in their surveillance period now. Venezuela
and Brazil still have endemic areas UH, most notably the
area that crosses their shared border. Sort of makes sense,
(23:14):
right UM. And then the Carter Center assists five African
countries where they've interrupted transmission in some areas but not
entire countries. A little bit more complex UM. Some countries
have elected to go from nationwide elimination or to go
for nationwide elimination, and others have not. And I think
that is important, UM, that that aspect right there, that
(23:35):
you have to have the country on board with us
as well or the area on board with us to
really decide, Hey, are we gonna as a community go
for complete elimination. Yea. So now one of the big
challenges is just keeping the fight going, just continuing to
to keep it in people's minds. This is an issue
that we need to continue to to fight, to u
to eradicate, continue to treat, and just not let the
(23:56):
guard down until UM, until it's it's adequately dealt with
in the all of these affected areas. Yeah, because as
you said before, like to stop that disease cycle, you
have to have at least eighty of eligible people in
the endemic area taking the medicine each year until the
parasite disappears. And I read I believe it was in
Guatemala Um. I may be wrong on that location, but
(24:18):
in the Carter Center they were talking about the Carter
Center website, they have this great story about how they're
trying to really keep the education component of this UM
in people's minds for for all generations. And they were
talking about school aged kids who in their courtyard have
um black fly pinatas and that's again part of the
(24:40):
conversation of keeping it in their minds. If this is
a very real danger, this is something that we need
to think about so that those generations will continue to
part of the culture. Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely, um. And
I should also mention too that there is um and
independently produced film called Dark Forest Black Fly that is
(25:03):
tracking the efforts of the Carter Center and its partners
to wipe out river blindness in Uganda, and that should
be out later this year. But you can check out
a clip on the Carter Center's website. Yeah, do you do.
Go to the Carter Center's website. You can just do
a Google search for Carter Center. If you want to
be a little more specific, do Carter Center River Blindness,
or just do a search for river blindness and you'll
(25:24):
find the Carter Centers website on this you also visiting
that website, you'll find an easy way to donate if
you would like to donate to to that particular cause.
It's a great cause and I highly recommend supporting it.
And uh oh and also if you want, if you're
just a little more curious about the organism itself, well,
(25:45):
they have plenty of information about it, but the results.
There's also a little discovery show that came out a
couple of years ago called Monsters Inside Me. And if
you're just fascinated by grotesque, harmful parasites, um, this is
the show for you. It's it's it's it's kind of
a disturbing and dark show. It's a documentary but with
a lot of dramatized scenes of individuals encountering parasites, becoming
(26:10):
infected by parasit. It's all based on unreal stories. But
they have a segment in one of the episodes it
deals with with river blindness. Um. What has to do
with an American chimpanzee Um? Yeah, and um specialist who
comes back to the States infected and has to deal
with the ramifications. But but check that out if you're
you're interesting in learning just more about the the strangeness
(26:34):
of this creature. Yeah, and I hope you guys enjoyed
learning about this. More of the Carter Center part of this,
and not just the Carter Center part, but the sort
of humanitarian efforts that are going on. We can often
we talk about parasites who talk about how deadly they
are or how fascinating they are. But this is so
incredible to know or to remember that there's this whole
(26:55):
shadow effort and it's not even really shadow, but it's
not something that we don't talked about all the time.
There's a huge effort going on to to help people
and to um to get them educated, in to to
get that sort of health care that they need, and
to stop the cycles of this that are making a
huge difference in their quality of life. So it's pretty
cool stuff. All right, Well, let's call the ropeot over
(27:16):
here and do a couple of listener mails before we
sign out. First of all, I want to say that
we heard from Adam again UM, the Chief Happiness Officer
who's traveling around the world and sentis the cool hats,
which we still need to get a photo of. I
know one of these days, like this week is blown
by UM. But anyway, he wrote in to tell us
(27:38):
what he was up to now. He was in Hope,
Hi men City. Uh and he also managed to pick
up and he sent some pictures of the money. But
he also says also Robert, I suppose this is the
Asian red Bull that you talked about many times in
the show. It was available here in Singapore. I didn't
try it and included a picture of it. Uh. We
had a listeners in a picture of this this beverage
(27:59):
in before and it's hard for me to place because
it looks like it's in cans now. And when I
had it a few years ago in um Um in Thailand,
it was it was in like a little medicine looking bottle,
but but it was a red bluel product and it
was like really crazy intense. So I've I've yeah, So
I put the call out. It's like for any of
(28:20):
our listeners who are traveling through East Asia or live
in East Asia, uh, to to give me their feedback
on it and see if it's really such a a
such such an intense beverage compared to its American counterpart um.
And by intense, it feels as though it alters your
reality a little bit. Yeah, I just, I mean, it's
(28:41):
like like it just felt like an enormous amount of energy,
Like it was like multiple shots of espresso or or
B twelve or something just really charging and sweeter somehow too.
We also heard from a listener by the name of
Robert Roberts and it says Robert, Julie and Company. Uh,
he's refining responding to our episode on fiction and reality,
(29:03):
he says The famed comic writer Alan Moore's recent work
has frequently centered around an investigation of the power of
fictional reality, has discussed in your recent Fiction Reality Secret
Master podcast. His Prometheo graphic novel UH novels are clearly
a simplified exploration of the power of myth and symbolism
on the human experience. But even more relevant is this amazing, spooky,
(29:23):
bizarre spoken word performance Snakes and Ladders, which ties in
the biblical serpent, the discovery of DNA and obscure writer
author Makin's mourning over the loss of his wife into
a beautiful exploration of where ideas come from and what
impact they can have on us. It's quite a dense performance,
and some of the more complicated elements elude me. Eluded
(29:44):
me until I read the illustrated adaptation, but it's really
worth investigating. Thanks for your continued excellent work in the
field of thought provoking podcasts. Um Yeah, Alan Moore is awesome.
I encouraged anyone to chuck at his stuff. I actually
actually have not read or listened to the titles he
mentioned here, and familiar with Promethea I was. I was
(30:04):
actually reading a little about it the other day. That's
the one where we get the weeping gorilla from just
like a weeping gorilla that shows up and he's, uh,
he's always been moaning something like I can't get good.
I thought you men about the weeping girl in the office. No,
no one, no, Well, if you see a weeping girl
in the office, and it's probably um some sort of
(30:24):
crossover from fiction into reality via the metaphysics of Promethea
um as for snakes and ladders. I don't think I
actually heard of this one before, though I have read
some of the fiction of author mockin Um. Unless I
have my name's crossed the belief he's the guy who
wrote he wrote the Wind to Go and some really
(30:45):
weird No, maybe he didn't write When to Go. I
think he wrote I think you wrote some weird stories
about Pan, like uh, like sort of early weird tales.
But but at the center of this is is Pan
the the half man, half man, and have goat, and
he's depicted in a very very interesting manner, like a
dangerous manner. But it's it's really powerful stuff assuming and
(31:09):
I didn't screw up my names there. But anyway, thanks UH, Robert.
We always love to hear from people on the podcast
and also about other bits of media Italian and what
we're talking about. And finally we heard from Summer in
Salt Lake City, Utah. Summer rights in and UH. She's
responding to our discussion of how stuff works versus HSW.
(31:32):
She brought this up because we mentioned on the podcast
in the past that that even though we say how
stuff works, when we go to UH to refer to
the website or website properties and internal emails will often
put down UH, it just put on h SW to
simplify things, just three letters. But when you start looking
(31:52):
at the syllables how stuff works, that's three syllables, H
s W, that's five syllables, we end up say saying
hs W though, because we're used to abbreviate it on
reviating it on paper, so we up abbreviating it in
our speech. And so she says, I would like to
offer solution that was adopted at the place where I
was employed through college. Kennis Warehouse is much longer and
(32:16):
more drawn out than t W when written, but they
are the same number of syllables when spoken. Being college students,
either options seemed to require way too much energy to
say over and over, so we instead pronounced it t dub.
It only solves the too many syllable in the letter
W problem, but it also makes everyone feel slightly more
(32:36):
street smart. So he recommendation would be for us to
go with hs dub. Okay, so H s W with
a four, right, then we can short g it back
to three. It just all right, we need to send it.
We need to send a memo out today. Well, I
think we would have to. We'd probably have to get
rid of that S and we just change it to
H dub or h W. I don't know, something, once
(33:00):
you start down that road, it's a slippery slip. I
understand I'm thinking of this. I don't know. I'm a traditionalist.
I'm like an hs dub hs stub. All right, Well,
we'll give it a trial weekend. We'll see how it goes.
All right, Well, if you would like to talk about
anything with us, be at abbreviations and UH be at
river blindness and its effects on the world. Other interesting parasites,
(33:22):
parasitic lifestyles, lifestyles, parasitical life cycles, not so much the
life stuff, but that's another podcast. Yeah. Yeah, if you
have a parasitic lifestyle, let us know about that. We'd
be interested to know what that can to the stuff.
And do you have the Bolbock bacteria? Yeah? And how
is that working out? So? You can find us on
Facebook and you can find us on Twitter. On Facebook,
(33:43):
we are Stuff to Blow your Mind. On Twitter, our
handle is blow the Mind. Look us up there, friend us,
follow us, interact with us, share stuff with us. Um,
anything's on the table. Yeah, and do make sure to
check out the Carter Center's website. UM. River Blindness is
just one of the many programs UM, but they work
on and uh please do feel free to send us
an email at Blow the Mind at Discovery dot com.
(34:10):
Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff
from the Future. Join How Stuff Work staff as we
explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. M H.
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. And
you know, Julie, we live in a we have a
pretty good you know, we we have access to clean water.
We live in a relatively parasite free environment. I mean,
(00:25):
we all have it. We have our parasites. Um, they're
they're inevitable to a certain degree. But but but when
you when you really started looking around at some of
the the problems that that are dealt with in some
of the more developing parts of the world, UM, it
really is a wake up call to just how thankful
we should be. Not to get to you know, Gucci here,
(00:47):
but but we are. In this episode, we're going to
talk about, um, something that is both on on one hand,
a very gross and a very fascinating organism, a parasitic
organism that is of interest just because it is an
organism that carries out it's uh, it's it's genetic mission
in a very peculiar and engaging way. It's a very
(01:09):
stealthy parasite, very stealthy, and we can admire it's uh
it's purity, you know. But but on the other hand,
it is also a huge um world health issue. It is,
it is something that is of a great concern to
organizations like the World Health Organization and particularly the Carter
Center based here in Atlanta, who we've been chatting with,
you especially, have been chatting with UH this week to
(01:31):
get geared up for this episode on river blindness. Yeah.
I mean, usually we will talk about parasites, and as
you say, we'll talk about them as as destructive forces,
but we don't always go into these um these larger
public health arenas. So I think it'll be really interesting
to today talk about um again. Like you say, the
parasite itself, but what sort of destruction actually happens when
(01:53):
a parasite really infiltrates a community. UM. So, we are
talking about something called oncos or hiasis. This is also
known as river blindness. It's a parasitic disease caused by
tiny worms or nematodes Uncle serica volvulus worm in particular,
and it is transmitted by flies, black fly specifically, which
are these nasty little things. When when I lived up
(02:16):
in Canada and Newfoundland as a kid, we had we
had black flies, and they were vicious like that. Like, yeah,
now I'm not certain it's exactly the same. You know,
maybe it's just a cousin of the black fly. But
but just the word black fly even now inspires itching
and slapping on my part. All right, so it kind
of strikes fear into your heart already. Um, well, imagine
(02:37):
if it was carrying this this parasite, um, and you
were then infected by one of these bites. Yeah, And
and the thing about when we're talking about one of
these bites, and certainly, like when I was in Canada
dealing with a black fly, you get a couple of bites.
But in some of these these these areas like Uganda
or or or certain parts of South America. Um, you're
(02:59):
talking about like bytes or more per hour when you're
out and about, right, So you're just getting bombarded with
these bites and then these these are infected bites. And
that's really key to the transmission as well. I mean,
you're you're not probably going to get this parasite unless
you get multiple, multiple bites here. But let's just talk
about before we start talking about the Carter Center, we
(03:21):
talked about the parasite itself, let's talk a little bit
about the symptoms. Um we're talking about intense itching, Yeah, itching.
The accounts that I was reading and listening to about this,
we're talking a lot level of itching that most of
us can't really fathom, like like constant, NonStop, extreme itching
that that does not cease, can prevent, can can really
(03:45):
prevent sleeping, and and and and still insomnia for years
and uh. And it's not uncommon for people to commit
suicide to just just over the itching alone. Right. You've
got skin discoloration, of course, and you've got rashes, eye diseases,
and most notably this can lead to permanent blindness. And
we'll talk a little bit more about the blindness aspect
(04:06):
of this and how the worm accomplishes this. But as
you can already tell, this is UM an incredibly tormenting,
devastating disease, particularly if you are in one of these
developing nations and you already are poverty stricken, are already
dealing with a host of other issues just trying to
live your life on a day to day basis. Yeah,
and there are other particularly harmful diseases that are that
(04:29):
are often a problem in these areas as well. I
mean these are areas where we're dealing with HIV AIDS
in many cases, and there's a huge effort to to
tackle that public health concern, and it's in in the
past especially, it's been easy for stuff like river blindness
to fall to the wayside. Another thing to keep in
mind is that this tends to and you'll have communities
(04:49):
where you have like ninety percent infection rate, like most
of the village, most of the community is infected with
this UH, with this organism and essentially have river blindness.
But it's generally in your thirties and forties where it
really becomes debilitating where you see blindness set in. So
it's taking people out during that what should be some
(05:10):
of the most active decades of their life. You have
so people that are otherwise you know, the of of
sound mind and body. But now that first they're robbed
of to a certain extent, their sanity by by the
this itching, this constant itching. They can't sleep constantly having
to deal with this, and then they're obbed to their
side as well well. They can't so then they can't
(05:31):
hold down a job right um, they can't take care
of their children, they can't harvest crops, um, you know,
they can't receive an education, so it's basically stripping them
of their livelihoods and compounding these cycles of poverty for generations. Um.
So yeah, there's a huge economic impact here. We're talking
about it affecting eighteen million people around the world with
(05:52):
the cases in Africa, and it is the leading cause
of preventable blindness in the world and is endemic to
thirty seven countries in Africa and in Latin America. All Right,
so let's uh, let's talk about this disease cycle that
happens this with this parasite and how it's being um
carried around and the mandibles of these black flies. Yeah,
(06:12):
I guess we'll start with the black flies. They're flying
around there and they're they're carrying uh this uh this
infection the larva. Right, so yeah, let's set the scene here,
and we were talking about swiftly flowing rivers and streams. Yeah,
which is which that alone through me when I was
first looking into this, because you you know, when you're
dealing with stagnant waters are still waters, there's always this
(06:35):
potential for for something horrible to brew there. But but
fast flowing, clean waters and that's that should be safe, right,
Well not. So you have the black fly that's infected
by the larva, all right, it's got it in its mandibles,
and the black fly seeks out prey. It wants to
feed on some blood. So it finds these various villages
who are hanging out around the water, bathing in the water,
(06:58):
collecting drinking water. I mean, this is the sin of
their life. So they're there. There's no avoiding contact with
the water. Other community is often you know, adjacent to
the water. So black fly bites you and then you
get the larva in your skin, yes, and and then
things begin to proliferate. Yep, that's right. So the parasite
is entering through that the skin that's been pierced by
(07:20):
the fly, and they migrate inform nodules and the skin
and then they mature. Yeah, basically they were talking about nodules.
We're talking about like little little spheres in the skin,
like little round colonies, little it's almost like the nodules
of your spine that you can feel in your back. Right.
This this is something that's going to become that apparent
(07:40):
on your skin when you see that kind of bump
um forming. Yeah, they look like little like little tumors
or little just little balloons of worms basically, and these
things reproducing an astonishing rate and and a really long
lived like you tend not to think of things like
a nematode living for nine twelve upwards of you know,
(08:04):
over twelve years up to fifteen years of life in
this worm that is living inside of this tiny little
round the globe in your skin. Yeah, I mean, I
kind of think of it as like tense city, Like
your body becomes tense city for them. These nodules are
these places that they migrate back and forth too, because
they are either moving back and forth to join other worms,
(08:25):
are mating with other worms. So there's all this activity
going on um in your body, and of course that's
why you're getting some of these horrible symptoms. These worms
are mating, uh in they're they're laying eggs. Said A
thousand larvae a day. Yeah, these, Yeah, a thousand of
these microfilarre per day are being laid inside your skin.
(08:46):
So it just it's it's exponential, It just it just
builds up like crazy. So the body progressively it becomes
more and more ravaged by this. You have these uh,
these non nodules are popping up everywhere. They're they're they're itching,
and then if it spreads to your eyes, that's where
you encounter some real problems. Yeah. Okay, so, and that
sounds weird because you think about a worm, you probably
(09:07):
are thinking about a nerveform or something along those lines.
Are not thinking about a worm. That is the size
of the period at the end of a sentence. But
the fact of the matter is that's the size of
these horms and they can travel to the eye where
they create severe lesions and this is what it can
lead to blindness. Um. So that is a huge concern obviously,
because again this is debilitating for the person. And the
(09:29):
idea is that you want to try to get or
intervene with medication before this happens. And we'll talk a
little bit more about the medication later. Um, but let's
talk about when you are infected. You you are the
host that's infected. You are then contributing to the rest
of the life cycle of this parasite because you're infected,
you're bitten again, and then another fly becomes infected with
(09:53):
the larvae from your body in the cycle just continue. Yeah,
you're like a resupply camp. You know, we talked about
parasitic life cycles before and and that's generally how it goes.
The organism is not living its entire life cycle inside
your body. You are just a stopover in the same
way that a human will occupy won't occupy a single
job that their entire life, or live in one house
(10:15):
for an entire life. You know, it's it's it's a cycle,
except the cycle in this case always comes back around
at the same place. Yeah. That reminds me of when
we did an episode on toxoplasmosis and how it uses
rats and cats to continue its life cycle and even
changes the behavior of those those animals and perhaps even people,
which makes me think about this parasite and how it
(10:38):
also can change the body's immune response. It can tinker
with how things are working inside of us. And you're
talking for us about the Wallbachia bacteria. Yeah, yeah, so okay,
this this worm is not a single parasite or a
single organism parasite. It actually contains the Wolbachia bacteria, which
is in and of itself unusual. But the reason him
(11:00):
why that bacteria is hitching a ride with Anco sacs
um psarchiasis is because it actually does a job for
that worm. Um. What happens is that when it infiltrates
the human body, and our white blood cells go, oh,
there's there's something going on here. Um. Those white blood cells,
specifically neutrophiles, which are specialized white blood cells. They surround
(11:24):
the the infection point. But what happens here is that
that bacteria has already created a ring around the worm
and is basically cloaking that worm from the white blood cells.
So the white blood cells a cloaking device, the bacterial
cloaking device used by the bacteria to infiltrate our bodies
defense systems. Yeah. Yeah, So the white blood cells are
(11:45):
then creating another ring around the bacterial ring and trying
to attack that. But it's specialized, right, so it can't
actually attack the worm itself. It can't even get to
the worm. Um. And then you have something called eosinophiles,
and this sort of like the cleanup crew of our body.
This is another type of white blood cell, and it
(12:06):
usually could get to the worm and take it out. Okay,
it's like, um, it's sort of like the crime scene
clean up white blood cell of our body. But again
because it's got the double ring around it. Now it
can't get through the other white blood cells, it can't
get through the bacteria. It's not going to make its
way to the worm. Which is amazing because what it's
(12:26):
doing is it's gaming our immune system. This parasite. Yeah,
it's like it's throwing up some some interference. It's like
some sort of like a bank haist kind of a flick.
It's it's like coming to mind, you know where where
it's like the bank haist itself is just distraction. And
then the the the guy who can say today can't
get in to stop the bad guy because the police
(12:46):
response is surrounding the building. Uh. Kind of some more
thing going on here with the with with with our
nemesis here or misdirection like we talked about with magicians
what they do to our brains to try to get
us to focus on something else. Um. So this is
how amazing this parasite is and and also how detrimental,
as you can see, it can be because it's just
(13:08):
playing havoc with your body. Um. And we're gonna talk
about the ways in which it has been combated and
want to take a quick break, Yeah, we'll take you
a quick break, and when we come back we will
talk about how we're actually fighting this thing and and
really thanks to uh, to the Carter Center and in
other efforts, were actually defeating the thing. All Right, we're
(13:31):
back in reading about anco psarchiusis it also happens to
fall in the same week where I'm I'm reading a
lot about the xeno morph from Aliens, which also has
a parasitic a fictional parasitic life cycle. And of course
there's a there's a place, there's a part in the
original film Alien where they're asking the android ash Um,
(13:51):
how do we defeat it? How do we defeat this, uh,
this organism? And he tells them you can't. So there's
there's no way you're gonna be able to kill it. Uh.
He just tells them, you know, you have my sympathies,
symp sympathies. And the interesting thing about uncle siasis is
when we attempt to fight it, killing it is not
really an option on the table. Is so our our
(14:13):
means of defeating it is not going in there and
wiping it out, rather waiting it out and keeping it
from reproducing. That's right. So we're trying to control it
and we're trying to um to lessen the symptoms, and
so the disease is really just treated here. Um, it's
as you say, it's not eradicable at least at this point.
(14:35):
So that is done through something called ibra mactin, which
is an oral medicine. And this is part um. This
is really part of this, really the great part of
this story which involves Carter Center and involves Murk. Yeah,
I mean the parasite blinding people not the great part, no, No,
but the things that we're doing to to to curb
(14:55):
it and to control it and to and to address
the public health side of it is amazing and pretty
pretty much just an awesome story for everybody involved. Yeah.
So in n this is the only part of the
story here, Murk and company pledge donate mecdicine, which is
ib macdin, for as long as necessary to all people
affected by the disease and endemic countries. This is a
(15:17):
huge deal, right. Yeah, say what you will about the
large pharmaceutical companies, but this is just there is an
example of of of a company doing the right thing
here and just just putting public health above all else. Yeah.
And when we're talking, um, just so everybody gets an
idea of the scope of this. Since two thousand and ten,
more than one hundred and fifty million medicine treatments have
(15:39):
been distributed, and presumably many more until this is, you know,
completely managed to the point to zero where there's zero
infections across the world. And to put that the number
of treatments in perspective to this is not something you
take every day. This is something you take annually. So
you'll you'll dose up on medicine once a year, but
(16:00):
you'll do it for about fifteen years because the idea
is that every year you want to pump the stuff
in there, keep the females from reproducing, the females that
are already living inside your body, keep them from reproducing
for their entire life cycle. And again, these things live
nine twelve m generally that the estimate I was saying
was like nine to twelve years, call it fifteen and
(16:22):
you're safe, right, Um, Basically, you want to wait it out,
don't let it reproduce for the rest of its life,
and then at the end of fifteen years, nothing else
has been new has been born. You'll be clean. Yeah. Yeah,
So again, you know, Mark has pledged to you know,
indemic countries to help keep this under control. The pill
does kill immature worms in the body, and if they
(16:42):
can't reproduce in the human body, we defeat it ultimately
exactly because it breaks that cycle. Right. So if you
get you know bit again and you know, anyway, the transmission,
what we're talking about here is interruption and elimination, and
we'll talk a little bit more about that. But um,
but macdisene is is great. It relieves itching and in
whose vision and prevents blindness. UM. So hopefully you can
(17:03):
get in there at the right time to help prevent
that blindness because essentially, what you're doing is you're giving
uh people their lives back, because if you can't work,
if you can't take care of yourself, if you are
in a family that has already stretched to live you
know again, day to day living here, um, then most
likely you're going to be kind of put to the wayside.
And for years some people have been living outside of
(17:25):
their communities because they just don't have the resources to
take care of people who um have river blindness. UM.
So anyway, this really is sort of a life giving
drug and a development that happened in conjunction with the
Carter Center. So let's talk about the Carter Center, um,
real quickly. These guys are a leader in disease eradication
(17:46):
and elimination. They target diseases that no one knew um
or did little or nothing about before the diseases like
something like river blindness were even recognized as a neglected disease.
And they've been doing this since the eighties. Uh, so
they are out there on the front field. But not
only that, they work like in tandem with the countries
(18:06):
and the program administrators, um, you know, the community based volunteers.
And this is a huge effort because not just like hey,
we're this one organization and we're gonna bring this down
on high. Everybody can have this. I mean this takes
a huge UM commitment first of all, and the second
well cooperation um different countries, um, you know, different levels
(18:28):
of government to get this. You know, going yeah and
think because once you get it going to where it's
such a long term process. You're talking because again you're
talking about uh supplying this to two communities for a
period of fifteen years, and you need everybody to take
it because because again these communities are dealing you're dealing
with like infection. Right, So it's like everybody so and
(18:50):
everybody has to take it because if if only some
people take this medication, if some are abstaining because of
of real or perceived side effects to taking it or
some sort of I read some stuff too about you know,
at times there have been like fears that oh, it
will make me sterile, or or concerns that more traditional
medical practices in a culture would treat would be actually
(19:13):
be better at treating this condition than outsider medicine. So
you have to do a lot of real education and
re education UM and keep that up for fifteen years
as well. So it's a it's a huge commitment. And
uh and the fact that the Carter Center has been
so proactive and it is really amazing. Yeah, And I
think one of the keys UM in learning about the program,
particularly the river blind this program UM that that they do.
(19:35):
It's not just okay, here's a strug from an outsider.
What they really have done is they've allowed these countries
and these communities and these different levels of government to
take this on this the education programs and UM the
medication on themselves and distribute it to the communities that
need it to the people that need it, so that
people are understanding it as not an outsider agenda, but
(19:58):
as an agenda that is important um inside the community.
And so I think that has gotten everybody on board.
So in that sense, you know, the CAR Center is
also helping them that you know, those communities to help themselves. UM.
So that's really important. You've got the education component, you've
got the medicine component, and you have the vector control. Right,
(20:21):
so there's also spring that goes on. Yeah, So medicating
UM infected individuals just one part of it. We also
are getting in there with anti larval um like larval
sides actually that that put in the water. Well, first
of all, figure out what portions of a river are
really prime activity, So they'll go in, they'll they'll look
(20:42):
at the rate of the water flowing through there, like
measure it with like little propeller gadgets. And then once
they figure out the areas to treat, treat it with
this environmentally friendly anti larval yeah yeah, and then that
that will attempt to kill it off. And then you know,
you'll look at how the larval populations have dropped off
in those areas, like like looking at typically these larva
(21:04):
will end up crawling all over like the crabs that
live in there in the water. Pull out the crabs,
examine the crabs and uh. And we're seeing some of
these areas that were previously hotbeds for the larval infestations
that it's just just not there anymore. Yeah. So yeah,
cutting down, medicating people, cutting down on where it grows.
(21:24):
Um also just a lot of things like making sure
people were wearing more clothes in areas where they're exposed
to the black flies, protective clothing, protective gear. Uh. Just
sort of any little additional, seemingly petty advantage you can
take can make a huge difference when you add everything up. Yeah.
And UM, I wanted to touch on elimination versus interrupted
(21:45):
transmission too, because these are two different terms obviously that
mean very different things. UM. So for for interrupted transmissions,
but this has been happening with a lot of um,
the different countries that the car Center is involved with. UM.
This interrupted transmission basically happens when treatment coverage of an
area UH is attained and there are no new incidences.
(22:08):
Elimination is a term that that you cannot actually use
until an area or a country has maintained no new
cases during a three year period called the surveillance period,
and that's zero infections, and that's when you know that
that is eliminated. Of course, World Health Organization is also
involved in UM in terming the country or an area
(22:32):
eliminated of this disease. But I guess with the larger
story here is that this is a huge wind for
these countries and for these areas. Colombia has interrupted transmission
UM and has gone three years without any new cases
and it's waiting to be certified as eliminated. Ecuador, which
is another area that the Carter Center is focusing on,
(22:53):
has interrupted transmission, has also gone nearly three years without
any new cases and is also being prepared to be
sort of fight is eliminated. Mexico and Guatemala have interrupted
transmission and they are in their surveillance period now. Venezuela
and Brazil still have endemic areas UH, most notably the
area that crosses their shared border. Sort of makes sense,
(23:14):
right UM. And then the Carter Center assists five African
countries where they've interrupted transmission in some areas but not
entire countries. A little bit more complex UM. Some countries
have elected to go from nationwide elimination or to go
for nationwide elimination, and others have not. And I think
that is important, UM, that that aspect right there, that
(23:35):
you have to have the country on board with us
as well or the area on board with us to
really decide, Hey, are we gonna as a community go
for complete elimination. Yea. So now one of the big
challenges is just keeping the fight going, just continuing to
to keep it in people's minds. This is an issue
that we need to continue to to fight, to u
to eradicate, continue to treat, and just not let the
(23:56):
guard down until UM, until it's it's adequately dealt with
in the all of these affected areas. Yeah, because as
you said before, like to stop that disease cycle, you
have to have at least eighty of eligible people in
the endemic area taking the medicine each year until the
parasite disappears. And I read I believe it was in
Guatemala Um. I may be wrong on that location, but
(24:18):
in the Carter Center they were talking about the Carter
Center website, they have this great story about how they're
trying to really keep the education component of this UM
in people's minds for for all generations. And they were
talking about school aged kids who in their courtyard have
um black fly pinatas and that's again part of the
(24:40):
conversation of keeping it in their minds. If this is
a very real danger, this is something that we need
to think about so that those generations will continue to
part of the culture. Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely, um. And
I should also mention too that there is um and
independently produced film called Dark Forest Black Fly that is
(25:03):
tracking the efforts of the Carter Center and its partners
to wipe out river blindness in Uganda, and that should
be out later this year. But you can check out
a clip on the Carter Center's website. Yeah, do you do.
Go to the Carter Center's website. You can just do
a Google search for Carter Center. If you want to
be a little more specific, do Carter Center River Blindness,
or just do a search for river blindness and you'll
(25:24):
find the Carter Centers website on this you also visiting
that website, you'll find an easy way to donate if
you would like to donate to to that particular cause.
It's a great cause and I highly recommend supporting it.
And uh oh and also if you want, if you're
just a little more curious about the organism itself, well,
(25:45):
they have plenty of information about it, but the results.
There's also a little discovery show that came out a
couple of years ago called Monsters Inside Me. And if
you're just fascinated by grotesque, harmful parasites, um, this is
the show for you. It's it's it's it's kind of
a disturbing and dark show. It's a documentary but with
a lot of dramatized scenes of individuals encountering parasites, becoming
(26:10):
infected by parasit. It's all based on unreal stories. But
they have a segment in one of the episodes it
deals with with river blindness. Um. What has to do
with an American chimpanzee Um? Yeah, and um specialist who
comes back to the States infected and has to deal
with the ramifications. But but check that out if you're
you're interesting in learning just more about the the strangeness
(26:34):
of this creature. Yeah, and I hope you guys enjoyed
learning about this. More of the Carter Center part of this,
and not just the Carter Center part, but the sort
of humanitarian efforts that are going on. We can often
we talk about parasites who talk about how deadly they
are or how fascinating they are. But this is so
incredible to know or to remember that there's this whole
(26:55):
shadow effort and it's not even really shadow, but it's
not something that we don't talked about all the time.
There's a huge effort going on to to help people
and to um to get them educated, in to to
get that sort of health care that they need, and
to stop the cycles of this that are making a
huge difference in their quality of life. So it's pretty
cool stuff. All right, Well, let's call the ropeot over
(27:16):
here and do a couple of listener mails before we
sign out. First of all, I want to say that
we heard from Adam again UM, the Chief Happiness Officer
who's traveling around the world and sentis the cool hats,
which we still need to get a photo of. I
know one of these days, like this week is blown
by UM. But anyway, he wrote in to tell us
(27:38):
what he was up to now. He was in Hope,
Hi men City. Uh and he also managed to pick
up and he sent some pictures of the money. But
he also says also Robert, I suppose this is the
Asian red Bull that you talked about many times in
the show. It was available here in Singapore. I didn't
try it and included a picture of it. Uh. We
had a listeners in a picture of this this beverage
(27:59):
in before and it's hard for me to place because
it looks like it's in cans now. And when I
had it a few years ago in um Um in Thailand,
it was it was in like a little medicine looking bottle,
but but it was a red bluel product and it
was like really crazy intense. So I've I've yeah, So
I put the call out. It's like for any of
(28:20):
our listeners who are traveling through East Asia or live
in East Asia, uh, to to give me their feedback
on it and see if it's really such a a
such such an intense beverage compared to its American counterpart um.
And by intense, it feels as though it alters your
reality a little bit. Yeah, I just, I mean, it's
(28:41):
like like it just felt like an enormous amount of energy,
Like it was like multiple shots of espresso or or
B twelve or something just really charging and sweeter somehow too.
We also heard from a listener by the name of
Robert Roberts and it says Robert, Julie and Company. Uh,
he's refining responding to our episode on fiction and reality,
(29:03):
he says The famed comic writer Alan Moore's recent work
has frequently centered around an investigation of the power of
fictional reality, has discussed in your recent Fiction Reality Secret
Master podcast. His Prometheo graphic novel UH novels are clearly
a simplified exploration of the power of myth and symbolism
on the human experience. But even more relevant is this amazing, spooky,
(29:23):
bizarre spoken word performance Snakes and Ladders, which ties in
the biblical serpent, the discovery of DNA and obscure writer
author Makin's mourning over the loss of his wife into
a beautiful exploration of where ideas come from and what
impact they can have on us. It's quite a dense performance,
and some of the more complicated elements elude me. Eluded
(29:44):
me until I read the illustrated adaptation, but it's really
worth investigating. Thanks for your continued excellent work in the
field of thought provoking podcasts. Um Yeah, Alan Moore is awesome.
I encouraged anyone to chuck at his stuff. I actually
actually have not read or listened to the titles he
mentioned here, and familiar with Promethea I was. I was
(30:04):
actually reading a little about it the other day. That's
the one where we get the weeping gorilla from just
like a weeping gorilla that shows up and he's, uh,
he's always been moaning something like I can't get good.
I thought you men about the weeping girl in the office. No,
no one, no, Well, if you see a weeping girl
in the office, and it's probably um some sort of
(30:24):
crossover from fiction into reality via the metaphysics of Promethea
um as for snakes and ladders. I don't think I
actually heard of this one before, though I have read
some of the fiction of author mockin Um. Unless I
have my name's crossed the belief he's the guy who
wrote he wrote the Wind to Go and some really
(30:45):
weird No, maybe he didn't write When to Go. I
think he wrote I think you wrote some weird stories
about Pan, like uh, like sort of early weird tales.
But but at the center of this is is Pan
the the half man, half man, and have goat, and
he's depicted in a very very interesting manner, like a
dangerous manner. But it's it's really powerful stuff assuming and
(31:09):
I didn't screw up my names there. But anyway, thanks UH, Robert.
We always love to hear from people on the podcast
and also about other bits of media Italian and what
we're talking about. And finally we heard from Summer in
Salt Lake City, Utah. Summer rights in and UH. She's
responding to our discussion of how stuff works versus HSW.
(31:32):
She brought this up because we mentioned on the podcast
in the past that that even though we say how
stuff works, when we go to UH to refer to
the website or website properties and internal emails will often
put down UH, it just put on h SW to
simplify things, just three letters. But when you start looking
(31:52):
at the syllables how stuff works, that's three syllables, H
s W, that's five syllables, we end up say saying
hs W though, because we're used to abbreviate it on
reviating it on paper, so we up abbreviating it in
our speech. And so she says, I would like to
offer solution that was adopted at the place where I
was employed through college. Kennis Warehouse is much longer and
(32:16):
more drawn out than t W when written, but they
are the same number of syllables when spoken. Being college students,
either options seemed to require way too much energy to
say over and over, so we instead pronounced it t dub.
It only solves the too many syllable in the letter
W problem, but it also makes everyone feel slightly more
(32:36):
street smart. So he recommendation would be for us to
go with hs dub. Okay, so H s W with
a four, right, then we can short g it back
to three. It just all right, we need to send it.
We need to send a memo out today. Well, I
think we would have to. We'd probably have to get
rid of that S and we just change it to
H dub or h W. I don't know, something, once
(33:00):
you start down that road, it's a slippery slip. I
understand I'm thinking of this. I don't know. I'm a traditionalist.
I'm like an hs dub hs stub. All right, Well,
we'll give it a trial weekend. We'll see how it goes.
All right, Well, if you would like to talk about
anything with us, be at abbreviations and UH be at
river blindness and its effects on the world. Other interesting parasites,
(33:22):
parasitic lifestyles, lifestyles, parasitical life cycles, not so much the
life stuff, but that's another podcast. Yeah. Yeah, if you
have a parasitic lifestyle, let us know about that. We'd
be interested to know what that can to the stuff.
And do you have the Bolbock bacteria? Yeah? And how
is that working out? So? You can find us on
Facebook and you can find us on Twitter. On Facebook,
(33:43):
we are Stuff to Blow your Mind. On Twitter, our
handle is blow the Mind. Look us up there, friend us,
follow us, interact with us, share stuff with us. Um,
anything's on the table. Yeah, and do make sure to
check out the Carter Center's website. UM. River Blindness is
just one of the many programs UM, but they work
on and uh please do feel free to send us
an email at Blow the Mind at Discovery dot com.
(34:10):
Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff
from the Future. Join How Stuff Work staff as we
explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. M H.
Stuff To Blow Your Mind News
Hosts And Creators
Robert Lamb
Joe McCormick
Popular Podcasts
United States of Kennedy
United States of Kennedy is a podcast about our cultural fascination with the Kennedy dynasty. Every week, hosts Lyra Smith and George Civeris go into one aspect of the Kennedy story.
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
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.