0:00:00.658,0:00:03.394 So I'd like to start by focusing on 0:00:03.394,0:00:05.930 the world's most dangerous animal. 0:00:05.930,0:00:08.090 Now, when you talk about dangerous animals, 0:00:08.090,0:00:11.137 most people might think of lions or tigers or sharks. 0:00:11.137,0:00:12.814 But of course the most dangerous animal 0:00:12.814,0:00:14.677 is the mosquito. 0:00:14.677,0:00:16.836 The mosquito has killed more humans 0:00:16.836,0:00:19.825 than any other creature in human history. 0:00:19.825,0:00:21.815 In fact, probably adding them all together, 0:00:21.815,0:00:24.001 the mosquito has killed more humans. 0:00:24.001,0:00:26.660 And the mosquito has killed more humans than wars 0:00:26.660,0:00:28.359 and plague. 0:00:28.359,0:00:30.932 And you would think, would you not, 0:00:30.932,0:00:34.879 that with all our science, with all our advances in society, 0:00:34.879,0:00:39.775 with better towns, better civilizations, better sanitation, 0:00:39.791,0:00:42.991 wealth, that we would get better at controlling mosquitos, 0:00:42.991,0:00:45.684 and hence reduce this disease. 0:00:45.684,0:00:49.026 And that's not really the case. 0:00:49.026,0:00:51.146 If it was the case, we wouldn't have 0:00:51.146,0:00:55.733 between 200 and 300 million cases of malaria every year, 0:00:55.733,0:00:57.458 and we wouldn't have 0:00:57.458,0:01:01.400 a million and a half deaths from malaria, 0:01:01.400,0:01:04.100 and we wouldn't have a disease 0:01:04.100,0:01:06.636 that was relatively unknown 50 years ago 0:01:06.636,0:01:09.468 now suddenly turned into 0:01:09.468,0:01:12.700 the largest mosquito-borne virus threat that we have, 0:01:12.700,0:01:15.393 and that's called dengue fever. 0:01:15.393,0:01:18.124 So 50 years ago, pretty much no one had heard of it, 0:01:18.124,0:01:21.116 no one certainly in the European environment. 0:01:21.116,0:01:24.749 But dengue fever now, according to the World Health Organization, 0:01:24.749,0:01:28.236 infects between 50 and 100 million people every year, 0:01:28.236,0:01:30.572 so that's equivalent to the whole of the population 0:01:30.572,0:01:33.500 of the U.K. being infected every year. 0:01:33.500,0:01:36.612 Other estimates put that number at roughly double 0:01:36.612,0:01:40.570 that number of infections. 0:01:40.570,0:01:45.005 And dengue fever has grown in speed quite phenomenally. 0:01:45.005,0:01:48.055 In the last 50 years, the incidence of dengue 0:01:48.055,0:01:50.273 has grown thirtyfold. 0:01:50.273,0:01:52.776 Now let me tell you a little bit about what dengue fever is, 0:01:52.776,0:01:54.364 for those who don't know. 0:01:54.364,0:01:56.573 Now let's assume you go on holiday. 0:01:56.573,0:01:58.335 Let's assume you go to the Caribbean, 0:01:58.335,0:02:00.728 or you might go to Mexico. You might go to Latin America, 0:02:00.728,0:02:04.687 Asia, Africa, anywhere in Saudi Arabia. 0:02:04.687,0:02:06.410 You might go to India, the Far East. 0:02:06.410,0:02:09.023 It doesn't really matter. It's the same mosquito, 0:02:09.023,0:02:11.935 and it's the same disease. You're at risk. 0:02:11.935,0:02:14.611 And let's assume you're bitten by a mosquito 0:02:14.611,0:02:16.172 that's carrying that virus. 0:02:16.172,0:02:19.167 Well, you could develop flu-like symptoms. 0:02:19.167,0:02:20.945 They could be quite mild. 0:02:20.945,0:02:23.046 You could develop nausea, headache, 0:02:23.046,0:02:25.485 your muscles could feel like they're contracting, 0:02:25.485,0:02:29.571 and you could actually feel like your bones are breaking. 0:02:29.571,0:02:31.795 And that's the nickname given to this disease. 0:02:31.795,0:02:33.388 It's called breakbone fever, 0:02:33.388,0:02:35.732 because that's how you can feel. 0:02:35.732,0:02:38.669 Now the odd thing is, is that once you've been bitten 0:02:38.669,0:02:40.931 by this mosquito, and you've had this disease, 0:02:40.931,0:02:43.553 your body develops antibodies, 0:02:43.553,0:02:47.967 so if you're bitten again with that strain, 0:02:47.967,0:02:49.683 it doesn't affect you. 0:02:49.683,0:02:52.603 But it's not one virus, it's four, 0:02:52.603,0:02:55.579 and the same protection that gives you the antibodies 0:02:55.579,0:02:58.891 and protects you from the same virus that you had before 0:02:58.891,0:03:01.957 actually makes you much more susceptible to the other three. 0:03:01.957,0:03:04.692 So the next time you get dengue fever, 0:03:04.692,0:03:07.332 if it's a different strain, you're more susceptible, 0:03:07.332,0:03:09.963 you're likely to get worse symptoms, 0:03:09.963,0:03:12.564 and you're more likely to get the more severe forms, 0:03:12.564,0:03:15.826 hemorrhagic fever or shock syndrome. 0:03:15.826,0:03:17.245 So you don't want dengue once, 0:03:17.245,0:03:19.986 and you certainly don't want it again. 0:03:19.986,0:03:23.269 So why is it spreading so fast? 0:03:23.269,0:03:25.365 And the answer is this thing. 0:03:25.365,0:03:27.139 This is Aedes aegypti. 0:03:27.139,0:03:30.349 Now this is a mosquito that came, like its name suggests, 0:03:30.349,0:03:33.791 out of North Africa, and it's spread round the world. 0:03:33.791,0:03:36.919 Now, in fact, a single mosquito will only travel 0:03:36.919,0:03:40.648 about 200 yards in its entire life. They don't travel very far. 0:03:40.648,0:03:43.033 What they're very good at doing is hitchhiking, 0:03:43.033,0:03:44.443 particularly the eggs. 0:03:44.443,0:03:49.140 They will lay their eggs in clear water, any pool, any puddle, 0:03:49.140,0:03:51.090 any birdbath, any flower pot, 0:03:51.090,0:03:53.830 anywhere there's clear water, they'll lay their eggs, 0:03:53.830,0:03:57.452 and if that clear water is near freight, it's near a port, 0:03:57.452,0:04:00.101 if it's anywhere near transport, 0:04:00.101,0:04:03.285 those eggs will then get transported around the world. 0:04:03.285,0:04:05.708 And that's what's happened. Mankind has transported 0:04:05.708,0:04:07.714 these eggs all the way around the world, 0:04:07.714,0:04:11.412 and these insects have infested over 100 countries, 0:04:11.412,0:04:14.110 and there's now 2.5 billion people living in countries 0:04:14.110,0:04:17.102 where this mosquito resides. 0:04:17.102,0:04:18.686 To give you just a couple of examples 0:04:18.686,0:04:21.202 how fast this has happened, 0:04:21.202,0:04:26.718 in the mid-'70s, Brazil declared, "We have no Aedes aegypti," 0:04:26.718,0:04:29.068 and currently they spend about a billion dollars now 0:04:29.068,0:04:31.868 a year trying to get rid of it, trying to control it, 0:04:31.868,0:04:36.969 just one species of mosquito. 0:04:36.969,0:04:40.512 Two days ago, or yesterday, I can't remember which, 0:04:40.512,0:04:42.476 I saw a Reuters report that said 0:04:42.476,0:04:45.110 Madeira had had their first cases of dengue, 0:04:45.110,0:04:48.930 about 52 cases, with about 400 probable cases. 0:04:48.930,0:04:50.744 That's two days ago. 0:04:50.744,0:04:55.925 Interestingly, Madeira first got the insect in 2005, 0:04:55.925,0:04:57.982 and here we are, a few years later, 0:04:57.982,0:04:59.309 first cases of dengue. 0:04:59.309,0:05:02.668 So the one thing you'll find is that where the mosquito goes, 0:05:02.668,0:05:04.982 dengue will follow. 0:05:04.982,0:05:07.173 Once you've got the mosquito in your area, 0:05:07.173,0:05:09.542 anyone coming into that area with dengue, 0:05:09.542,0:05:12.485 mosquito will bite them, mosquito will bite somewhere else, 0:05:12.485,0:05:13.449 somewhere else, somewhere else, 0:05:13.449,0:05:17.564 and you'll get an epidemic. 0:05:17.564,0:05:19.472 So we must be good at killing mosquitos. 0:05:19.472,0:05:21.369 I mean, that can't be very difficult. 0:05:21.369,0:05:24.189 Well, there's two principle ways. 0:05:24.189,0:05:27.561 The first way is that you use larvicides. 0:05:27.561,0:05:30.373 You use chemicals. You put them into water where they breed. 0:05:30.373,0:05:33.173 Now in an urban environment, that's extraordinarily difficult. 0:05:33.173,0:05:35.358 You've got to get your chemical into every puddle, 0:05:35.358,0:05:37.606 every birdbath, every tree trunk. 0:05:37.606,0:05:40.648 It's just not practical. 0:05:40.648,0:05:42.164 The second way you can do it 0:05:42.164,0:05:45.478 is actually trying to kill the insects as they fly around. 0:05:45.478,0:05:47.704 This is a picture of fogging. 0:05:47.704,0:05:50.149 Here what someone is doing 0:05:50.149,0:05:53.063 is mixing up chemical in a smoke 0:05:53.063,0:05:56.077 and basically spreading that through the environment. 0:05:56.077,0:05:59.037 You could do the same with a space spray. 0:05:59.037,0:06:00.605 This is really unpleasant stuff, 0:06:00.605,0:06:03.007 and if it was any good, we wouldn't have this massive increase 0:06:03.007,0:06:07.663 in mosquitos and we wouldn't have this massive increase in dengue fever. 0:06:07.663,0:06:09.752 So it's not very effective, but it's probably 0:06:09.752,0:06:12.647 the best thing we've got at the moment. 0:06:12.647,0:06:14.799 Having said that, actually, your best form of protection 0:06:14.799,0:06:17.184 and my best form of protection is a long-sleeve shirt 0:06:17.184,0:06:20.608 and a little bit of DEET to go with it. 0:06:20.608,0:06:24.297 So let's start again. Let's design a product, 0:06:24.297,0:06:27.573 right from the word go, and decide what we want. 0:06:27.573,0:06:30.168 Well we clearly need something that is effective 0:06:30.168,0:06:32.476 at reducing the mosquito population. 0:06:32.476,0:06:34.908 There's no point in just killing the odd mosquito here and there. 0:06:34.908,0:06:38.000 We want something that gets that population right the way down 0:06:38.000,0:06:41.016 so it can't get the disease transmission. 0:06:41.016,0:06:44.320 Clearly the product you've got has got to be safe to humans. 0:06:44.320,0:06:46.496 We are going to use it in and around humans. 0:06:46.496,0:06:48.059 It has to be safe. 0:06:48.059,0:06:50.289 We don't want to have a lasting impact on the environment. 0:06:50.289,0:06:53.523 We don't want to do anything that you can't undo. 0:06:53.523,0:06:58.616 Maybe a better product comes along in 20, 30 years. 0:06:58.616,0:07:01.490 Fine. We don't want a lasting environmental impact. 0:07:01.490,0:07:04.762 We want something that's relatively cheap, or cost-effective, 0:07:04.762,0:07:06.715 because there's an awful lot of countries involved, 0:07:06.715,0:07:08.721 and some of them are emerging markets, 0:07:08.721,0:07:12.283 some of them emerging countries, low-income. 0:07:12.283,0:07:14.658 And finally, you want something that's species-specific. 0:07:14.658,0:07:17.446 You want to get rid of this mosquito that spreads dengue, 0:07:17.446,0:07:20.434 but you don't really want to get all the other insects. 0:07:20.434,0:07:23.650 Some are quite beneficial. Some are important to your ecosystem. 0:07:23.650,0:07:25.488 This one's not. It's invaded you. 0:07:25.488,0:07:28.170 But you don't want to get all of the insects. 0:07:28.170,0:07:29.829 You just want to get this one. 0:07:29.829,0:07:32.688 And most of the time, you'll find this insect 0:07:32.688,0:07:34.123 lives in and around your home, 0:07:34.123,0:07:38.047 so this -- whatever we do has got to get to that insect. 0:07:38.047,0:07:40.430 It's got to get into people's houses, into the bedrooms, 0:07:40.430,0:07:42.224 into the kitchens. 0:07:42.224,0:07:45.869 Now there are two features of mosquito biology 0:07:45.869,0:07:47.769 that really help us in this project, 0:07:47.769,0:07:51.641 and that is, firstly, males don't bite. 0:07:51.641,0:07:54.750 It's only the female mosquito that will actually bite you. 0:07:54.750,0:07:57.151 The male can't bite you, won't bite you, 0:07:57.151,0:07:59.454 doesn't have the mouth parts to bite you. 0:07:59.454,0:08:01.113 It's just the female. 0:08:01.113,0:08:03.086 And the second is a phenomenon 0:08:03.086,0:08:07.302 that males are very, very good at finding females. 0:08:07.302,0:08:09.950 If there's a male mosquito that you release, 0:08:09.950,0:08:14.793 and if there's a female around, that male will find the female. 0:08:14.793,0:08:18.611 So basically, we've used those two factors. 0:08:18.611,0:08:20.279 So here's a typical situation, 0:08:20.279,0:08:22.847 male meets female, lots of offspring. 0:08:22.847,0:08:24.576 A single female will lay about 0:08:24.576,0:08:26.371 up to 100 eggs at a time, 0:08:26.371,0:08:28.855 up to about 500 in her lifetime. 0:08:28.855,0:08:31.876 Now if that male is carrying a gene 0:08:31.876,0:08:34.494 which causes the death of the offspring, 0:08:34.494,0:08:37.175 then the offspring don't survive, 0:08:37.175,0:08:40.606 and instead of having 500 mosquitos running around, 0:08:40.606,0:08:43.227 you have none. 0:08:43.227,0:08:46.346 And if you can put more, I'll call them sterile, 0:08:46.346,0:08:49.219 that the offspring will actually die at different stages, 0:08:49.219,0:08:50.808 but I'll call them sterile for now. 0:08:50.808,0:08:54.364 If you put more sterile males out into the environment, 0:08:54.364,0:08:57.652 then the females are more likely to find a sterile male 0:08:57.652,0:09:03.491 than a fertile one, and you will bring that population down. 0:09:03.491,0:09:05.886 So the males will go out, they'll look for females, 0:09:05.886,0:09:09.710 they'll mate. If they mate successfully, then no offspring. 0:09:09.710,0:09:12.713 If they don't find a female, then they'll die anyway. 0:09:12.713,0:09:16.447 They only live a few days. 0:09:16.447,0:09:18.681 And that's exactly where we are. 0:09:18.681,0:09:20.311 So this is technology that was developed 0:09:20.311,0:09:22.863 in Oxford University a few years ago. 0:09:22.863,0:09:25.284 The company itself, Oxitec, we've been working 0:09:25.284,0:09:27.833 for the last 10 years, very much on a sort of similar 0:09:27.833,0:09:31.275 development pathway that you'd get with a pharmaceutical company. 0:09:31.275,0:09:35.385 So about 10 years of internal evaluation, testing, 0:09:35.385,0:09:38.777 to get this to a state where we think it's actually ready. 0:09:38.777,0:09:41.264 And then we've gone out into the big outdoors, 0:09:41.264,0:09:42.865 always with local community consent, 0:09:42.865,0:09:45.050 always with the necessary permits. 0:09:45.050,0:09:48.113 So we've done field trials now in the Cayman Islands, 0:09:48.113,0:09:49.659 a small one in Malaysia, 0:09:49.659,0:09:53.994 and two more now in Brazil. 0:09:53.994,0:09:55.727 And what's the result? 0:09:55.727,0:09:59.035 Well, the result has been very good. 0:09:59.035,0:10:01.859 In about four months of release, 0:10:01.859,0:10:04.155 we've brought that population of mosquitos 0:10:04.155,0:10:06.698 — in most cases we're dealing with villages here 0:10:06.698,0:10:09.970 of about 2,000, 3,000 people, that sort of size, 0:10:09.970,0:10:11.408 starting small — 0:10:11.408,0:10:13.599 we've taken that mosquito population down 0:10:13.599,0:10:16.823 by about 85 percent in about four months. 0:10:16.823,0:10:18.822 And in fact, the numbers after that get, 0:10:18.822,0:10:22.562 those get very difficult to count, because there just aren't any left. 0:10:22.562,0:10:24.218 So that's been what we've seen in Cayman, 0:10:24.218,0:10:27.480 it's been what we've seen in Brazil 0:10:27.480,0:10:29.466 in those trials. 0:10:29.466,0:10:31.778 And now what we're doing is we're going through a process 0:10:31.778,0:10:34.611 to scale up to a town of about 50,000, 0:10:34.611,0:10:36.984 so we can see this work at big scale. 0:10:36.984,0:10:39.771 And we've got a production unit in Oxford, 0:10:39.771,0:10:43.262 or just south of Oxford, where we actually produce these mosquitos. 0:10:43.262,0:10:44.466 We can produce them, 0:10:44.466,0:10:46.622 in a space a bit more than this red carpet, 0:10:46.622,0:10:49.146 I can produce about 20 million a week. 0:10:49.146,0:10:51.312 We can transport them around the world. 0:10:51.312,0:10:54.334 It's not very expensive, because it's a coffee cup -- 0:10:54.334,0:10:55.623 something the size of a coffee cup 0:10:55.623,0:10:58.950 will hold about three million eggs. 0:10:58.950,0:11:02.768 So freight costs aren't our biggest problem. (Laughter) 0:11:02.768,0:11:06.072 So we've got that. You could call it a mosquito factory. 0:11:06.072,0:11:09.168 And for Brazil, where we've been doing some trials, 0:11:09.168,0:11:11.056 the Brazilian government themselves have now built 0:11:11.056,0:11:13.488 their own mosquito factory, far bigger than ours, 0:11:13.488,0:11:18.963 and we'll use that for scaling up in Brazil. 0:11:18.963,0:11:21.336 There you are. We've sent mosquito eggs. 0:11:21.336,0:11:23.968 We've separated the males from the females. 0:11:23.968,0:11:27.618 The males have been put in little pots 0:11:27.618,0:11:29.702 and the truck is going down the road 0:11:29.702,0:11:32.666 and they are releasing males as they go. 0:11:32.666,0:11:34.316 It's actually a little bit more precise than that. 0:11:34.316,0:11:35.797 You want to release them so that 0:11:35.797,0:11:37.878 you get good coverage of your area. 0:11:37.878,0:11:40.669 So you take a Google Map, you divide it up, 0:11:40.669,0:11:42.553 work out how far they can fly, 0:11:42.553,0:11:44.528 and make sure you're releasing such that you get 0:11:44.528,0:11:47.426 coverage of the area, and then you go back, 0:11:47.426,0:11:49.200 and within a very short space of time, 0:11:49.200,0:11:52.776 you're bringing that population right the way down. 0:11:52.776,0:11:55.208 We've also done this in agriculture. 0:11:55.208,0:11:59.280 We've got several different species of agriculture coming along, 0:11:59.280,0:12:01.188 and I'm hoping that soon 0:12:01.188,0:12:03.984 we'll be able to get some funding together so we can get back 0:12:03.984,0:12:07.066 and start looking at malaria. 0:12:07.066,0:12:09.115 So that's where we stand at the moment, 0:12:09.115,0:12:11.644 and I've just got a few final thoughts, 0:12:11.644,0:12:15.088 which is that this is another way in which biology 0:12:15.088,0:12:19.077 is now coming in to supplement chemistry 0:12:19.077,0:12:22.820 in some of our societal advances in this area, 0:12:22.820,0:12:25.108 and these biological approaches are coming in 0:12:25.108,0:12:27.509 in very different forms, 0:12:27.509,0:12:29.831 and when you think about genetic engineering, 0:12:29.831,0:12:32.837 we've now got enzymes for industrial processing, 0:12:32.837,0:12:35.771 enzymes, genetically engineered enzymes in food. 0:12:35.771,0:12:38.573 We have G.M. crops, we have pharmaceuticals, 0:12:38.573,0:12:39.889 we have new vaccines, 0:12:39.889,0:12:43.973 all using roughly the same technology, but with very different outcomes. 0:12:43.973,0:12:47.486 And I'm in favor, actually. Of course I am. 0:12:47.486,0:12:50.382 I'm in favor of particularly where the older technologies 0:12:50.382,0:12:53.454 don't work well or have become unacceptable. 0:12:53.454,0:12:56.811 And although the techniques are similar, 0:12:56.811,0:12:58.352 the outcomes are very, very different, 0:12:58.352,0:12:59.866 and if you take our approach, for example, 0:12:59.866,0:13:02.291 and you compare it to, say, G.M. crops, 0:13:02.291,0:13:06.583 both techniques are trying to produce a massive benefit. 0:13:06.583,0:13:08.726 Both have a side benefit, 0:13:08.726,0:13:12.435 which is that we reduce pesticide use tremendously. 0:13:12.435,0:13:16.396 But whereas a G.M. crop is trying to protect the plant, 0:13:16.396,0:13:19.140 for example, and give it an advantage, 0:13:19.140,0:13:22.235 what we're actually doing is taking the mosquito 0:13:22.235,0:13:26.324 and giving it the biggest disadvantage it can possibly have, 0:13:26.324,0:13:29.308 rendering it unable to reproduce effectively. 0:13:29.308,0:13:32.908 So for the mosquito, it's a dead end. 0:13:32.908,0:13:36.715 Thank you very much. (Applause)