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