聽力課堂TED音頻欄目主要包括TED演講的音頻MP3及中英雙語(yǔ)文稿,供各位英語(yǔ)愛好者學(xué)習(xí)使用。本文主要內(nèi)容為演講MP3+雙語(yǔ)文稿:給吸血蝙蝠注射疫苗教會(huì)我們哪些流行病知識(shí),希望你會(huì)喜歡!
【演講者及介紹】Daniel Streicker
Daniel Streicker,動(dòng)物疾病研究者,研究日常的致命病原體如何為未來(lái)傳染病的爆發(fā)提供洞察力。
【演講主題】給吸血蝙蝠注射疫苗可以教會(huì)我們哪些流行病知識(shí)?
翻譯者 Jiasi Hao,校對(duì)者 Yolanda Zhang
00:13
The story that I'm going to tell you today,for me, began back in 2006. That was when I first heard about an outbreak ofmysterious illness that was happening in the Amazon rainforest of Peru. Thepeople that were getting sick from this illness, they had horrifying symptoms,nightmarish. They had unbelievable headaches, they couldn't eat or drink. Someof them were even halluting -- confused and aggressive. The most tragicpart of all was that many of the victims were children. And of all of those thatgot sick, none survived. It turned out that what was killing people was avirus, but it wasn't Ebola, it wasn't Zika, it wasn't even some new virus neverbefore seen by science. These people were dying of an ancient killer, one thatwe've known about for centuries. They were dying of rabies. And what all ofthem had in common was that as they slept, they'd all been bitten by the onlymammal that lives exclusively on a diet of blood: the vampire bat.
今天我要講的故事對(duì)于我來(lái)說(shuō),始于 2006 年。那是我第一次聽到秘魯亞馬遜雨林正在上演一場(chǎng)神秘疾病的大爆發(fā)。因?yàn)檫@個(gè)疾病,人們開始感到不適。他們出現(xiàn)了噩夢(mèng)般的可怕癥狀;經(jīng)歷著難以忍受的的頭痛,難以喝水進(jìn)食。他們有的甚至產(chǎn)生了幻覺(jué)——變得困惑與激進(jìn)。最讓人心碎的是,大部分的病患是兒童。而且所有這些病患,無(wú)人幸存。最后事實(shí)證明是一種病毒殺害了那些人,但不是埃博拉,也不是寨卡,它甚至不是科學(xué)家前所未聞的新病毒。這些病患的離去是由一種古老的殺手造成的,一種在幾百年前就知曉的病毒。病患們死于狂犬病。他們的一個(gè)共同點(diǎn)是,在睡覺(jué)時(shí),都被一種僅以嗜血為生的哺乳動(dòng)物給咬了:吸血蝠。
01:13
These sorts of outbreaks that jump frombats into people, they've become more and more common in the last couple ofdecades. In 2003, it was SARS. It showed up in Chinese animal markets andspread globally. That virus, like the one from Peru, was eventually traced backto bats, which have probably harbored it, undetected, for centuries. Then, 10years later, we see Ebola showing up in West Africa, and that surprised justabout everybody because, according to the science at the time, Ebola wasn't reallysupposed to be in West Africa. That ended up causing the largest and mostwidespread Ebola outbreak in history.
這類疾病的大爆發(fā)從蝙蝠轉(zhuǎn)移到了人,在過(guò)去幾十年中已經(jīng)變得越發(fā)普遍。在2003 年,是非典。它首現(xiàn)于中國(guó)動(dòng)物市場(chǎng),并肆虐全球。那病毒,就像是秘魯?shù)哪莻€(gè)一樣,最終被追溯到蝙蝠,它們可能已經(jīng)藏匿該病毒長(zhǎng)達(dá)幾百年,卻從未被發(fā)現(xiàn)。10 年后,我們看到埃博拉出現(xiàn)在西非,這震驚了所有人,因?yàn)楦鶕?jù)當(dāng)時(shí)的科學(xué)表明,埃博拉不應(yīng)該出現(xiàn)在西非。但它卻導(dǎo)致了史上傳播最廣,規(guī)模最大的埃博拉病毒爆發(fā)。
01:50
So there's a disturbing trend here, right?Deadly viruses are appearing in places where we can't really expect them, andas a global health community, we're caught on our heels. We're constantlychasing after the next viral emergency in this perpetual cycle, always tryingto extinguish epidemics after they've already started. So with new diseasesappearing every year, now is really the time that we need to start thinkingabout what we can do about it. If we just wait for the next Ebola to happen, wemight not be so lucky next time. We might face a different virus, one that'smore deadly, one that spreads better among people, or maybe one that justcompletely outwits our vaccines, leaving us defenseless.
這是一個(gè)令人不安的趨勢(shì),對(duì)吧?致命的病毒正出現(xiàn)于我們無(wú)法真正預(yù)期的地方。而作為全球健康社區(qū),我們一直在忙于應(yīng)對(duì)。我們一直在追逐下一個(gè)病毒帶來(lái)的緊急情況,總是在疫情已經(jīng)開始蔓延后,努力消滅它們。隨著每年新疾病的出現(xiàn),現(xiàn)在,真的是需要開始思考我們能為之做什么的時(shí)候了。如果我們僅僅等著下一個(gè)埃博拉的出現(xiàn),那時(shí),我們可能就不會(huì)這么幸運(yùn)了。我們可能面對(duì)著一個(gè)不同的病毒,一個(gè)更加致命的病毒,一個(gè)人類間傳播能力更強(qiáng)的病毒,或可能是效力完全勝于疫苗,讓我們束手無(wú)策的病毒。
02:32
So can we anticipate pandemics? Can we stopthem? Those are really hard questions to answer, and the reason is that thepandemics -- the ones that spread globally, the ones that we really want toanticipate -- they're actually really rare events. And for us as a species thatis a good thing -- that's why we're all here. But from a scientific standpoint,it's a little bit of a problem. That's because if something happens just onceor twice, that's really not enough to find any patterns. Patterns that couldtell us when or where the next pandemic might strike. So what do we do? Well, Ithink one of the solutions we may have is to study some viruses that routinelyjump from wild animals into people, or into our pets, or our livestock, even ifthey're not the same viruses that we think are going to cause pandemics. If wecan use those everyday killer viruses to work out some of the patterns of whatdrives that initial, crucial jump from one species to the next, and,potentially, how we might stop it, then we're going to end up better preparedfor those viruses that jump between species more rarely but pose a greaterthreat of pandemics.
那么我們可以預(yù)測(cè)疾病大流行嗎?我們能夠阻止它們嗎?這些是非常難以回答的問(wèn)題,而其中的原因是大流行——那些傳播于全球的流行病,那些我們非常想要去預(yù)測(cè)的流行病——它們實(shí)際上是罕見事件。對(duì)于我們,作為一個(gè)物種,是一件好事——這就是為何我們都在這里。但從科學(xué)角度來(lái)看,這是有一些問(wèn)題的。因?yàn)橐患氯绻话l(fā)生一兩次,那就真的不足以發(fā)現(xiàn)任何規(guī)律,可以告訴我們何時(shí)或何地下一場(chǎng)流行病毒可能發(fā)生的規(guī)律。那么我們?cè)撛趺醋??我認(rèn)為其中一個(gè)解決方案就是,我們可能可以研究一些常規(guī)性從野生動(dòng)物傳播到人身上的病毒,或到我們寵物、牲畜的病毒,即使它們和我們認(rèn)為造成大流行的病毒不同,如果我們可以利用那些日常殺手病毒來(lái)找到一些規(guī)律,例如是什么驅(qū)動(dòng)了最初的病毒的物種間轉(zhuǎn)移,以及,我們可能如何阻止轉(zhuǎn)移的發(fā)生,這樣為應(yīng)對(duì)未來(lái)更小概率的物種間轉(zhuǎn)移,但對(duì)大流行造成更大威脅的病毒,我們將做出更加充分的準(zhǔn)備。
03:45
Now, rabies, as terrible as it is, turnsout to be a pretty nice virus in this case. You see, rabies is a scary, deadlyvirus. It has 100 percent fatality. That means if you get infected with rabiesand you don't get treated early, there's nothing that can be done. There is nocure. You will die. And rabies is not just a problem of the past either. Eventoday, rabies still kills 50 to 60,000 people every year. Just put that numberin some perspective. Imagine the whole West African Ebola outbreak -- abouttwo-and-a-half years; you condense all the people that died in that outbreakinto just a single year. That's pretty bad. But then, you multiply it by four,and that's what happens with rabies every single year.
然而如此可怕的狂犬病毒,事實(shí)證明已經(jīng)是比較“友善”的了。大家都知道,狂犬病毒多么令人聞聲色變,它是致命的,且具有百分百的死亡率。這意味著如果你被它感染,而且沒(méi)盡早接受治療,那你就會(huì)走投無(wú)路。無(wú)藥可治,你必死無(wú)疑。此外,狂犬病毒不僅是一個(gè)歷史問(wèn)題。甚至在今天,該病毒每年仍能殺死5 - 6萬(wàn)人。換個(gè)角度看看這個(gè)數(shù)字。想象整個(gè)西非的埃博拉疫情爆發(fā)——持續(xù)了大約 2 年至 2 年半,把所有在疫情爆發(fā)中死亡的人數(shù)壓縮到一年。這聽起來(lái)蠻糟糕的。但你再把這數(shù)字乘以 4,就是每一年狂犬病疫情的情況。
04:36
So what sets rabies apart from a virus likeEbola is that when people get it, they tend not to spread it onward. That meansthat every single time a person gets rabies, it's because they were bitten by arabid animal, and usually, that's a dog or a bat. But it also means that thosejumps between species, which are so important to understand, but so rare formost viruses, for rabies, they're actually happening by the thousands. So in away, rabies is almost like the fruit fly or the lab mouse of deadly viruses.This is a virus that we can use and study to find patterns and potentially testout new solutions. And so, when I first heard about that outbreak of rabies inthe Peruvian Amazon, it struck me as something potentially powerful becausethis was a virus that was jumping from bats into other animals often enoughthat we might be able to anticipate it ... Maybe even stop it.
讓狂犬病毒有別于埃博拉病毒的是,當(dāng)人們被病毒感染時(shí),往往不會(huì)繼續(xù)傳播給其他人。這意味著每次當(dāng)一個(gè)人接觸到狂犬病病毒,都是因?yàn)樗麄儽粩y帶狂犬病的動(dòng)物咬了,通常是狗或蝙蝠。但這也意味著我們對(duì)于那些物種間傳播的病毒的理解認(rèn)知是如此重要,但對(duì)大部分病毒來(lái)說(shuō)卻又如此罕見。然而對(duì)狂犬病毒來(lái)說(shuō),物種間傳播是非常頻繁的。所以從某種程度上,狂犬病毒就好比果蠅,或是攜帶致命病毒的實(shí)驗(yàn)室老鼠。這是一種我們可以用來(lái)研究以找尋規(guī)律的病毒,有可能幫助我們找到新的解決方案。所以,當(dāng)我第一次聽到秘魯亞馬遜的狂犬病大爆發(fā),我驚訝于這潛在的、如此強(qiáng)大的威力,因?yàn)檫@是個(gè)能夠從蝙蝠轉(zhuǎn)移到其它動(dòng)物身上的病毒,通常我們可能足以預(yù)見它……甚至可能阻止它。
05:34
So as a first-year graduate student with avague memory of my high school Spanish class, I jumped onto a plane and flewoff to Peru, looking for vampire bats. And the first couple of years of thisproject were really tough. I had no shortage of ambitious plans to rid LatinAmerica of rabies, but at the same time, there seemed to be an equally endlesssupply of mudslides and flat tires, power outages, stomach bugs all stoppingme. But that was kind of par for the course, working in South America, and tome, it was part of the adventure. But what kept me going was the knowledge thatfor the first time, the work that I was doing might actually have some realimpact on people's lives in the short term. And that struck me the most when weactually went out to the Amazon and were trying to catch vampire bats. You see,all we had to do was show up at a village and ask around. "Who's beengetting bitten by a bat lately?" And people raised their hands, because inthese communities, getting bitten by a bat is an everyday occurrence, happensevery day. And so all we had to do was go to the right house, open up a net andshow up at night, and wait until the bats tried to fly in and feed on humanblood. So to me, seeing a child with a bite wound on his head or blood stainson his sheets, that was more than enough motivation to get past whateverlogistical or physical headache I happened to be feeling on that day.
因此,作為一個(gè)研一學(xué)生,帶著自己模糊的高中西語(yǔ)課記憶,我跳上了飛機(jī),飛往秘魯,尋找吸血蝠。這個(gè)項(xiàng)目的最初幾年真的很艱難。我不乏消滅拉丁美洲狂犬病毒的雄心壯志,但與此同時(shí),我還不斷遇到無(wú)止盡的泥石流和爆胎,停電以及胃病,都在阻礙我的進(jìn)程。但這在南美洲都是意料之中的,與我而言,也是探險(xiǎn)的一部分。讓我堅(jiān)持下去的是第一次知道 自己手頭的工作也許確實(shí)能 在短期對(duì)人們的生活產(chǎn)生實(shí)際影響。令我最震驚的是,我們真正步入亞馬遜并親自嘗試著抓捕吸血蝠。我們要做的就是去往村莊,四處詢問(wèn)?!罢l(shuí)最近被蝙蝠咬了?”之后人們舉起他們的手,因?yàn)樵谶@個(gè)社區(qū),被蝙蝠咬是家常便飯,每天都在發(fā)生。所以我們要做的是去正確的家庭,布網(wǎng),夜間拜訪,并等待蝙蝠前來(lái)準(zhǔn)備吸人血。對(duì)我而言,看著一個(gè)孩子頭被咬傷,或他床單上的血跡,就是能讓我忘卻任何路途困難與身體不適的動(dòng)力,繼續(xù)工作。那天碰巧是這樣。
07:03
Since we were working all night long,though, I had plenty of time to think about how I might actually solve thisproblem, and it stood out to me that there were two burning questions. Thefirst was that we know that people are bitten all the time, but rabiesoutbreaks aren't happening all the time -- every couple of years, maybe evenevery decade, you get a rabies outbreak. So if we could somehow anticipate whenand where the next outbreak would be, that would be a real opportunity, meaningwe could vacte people ahead of time, before anybody starts dying. But theother side of that coin is that vaction is really just a Band-Aid. It'skind of a strategy of damage control. Of course it's lifesaving and importantand we have to do it, but at the end of the day, no matter how many cows, howmany people we vacte, we're still going to have exactly the same amount ofrabies up there in the bats. The actual risk of getting bitten hasn't changedat all. So my second question was this: Could we somehow cut the virus off atits source? If we could somehow reduce the amount of rabies in the batsthemselves, then that would be a real game changer.
盡管我們經(jīng)常整夜都在工作,我仍然會(huì)抽時(shí)間思考要如何解決這個(gè)問(wèn)題,然而在我看來(lái),尚有兩個(gè)亟待解決的問(wèn)題。第一個(gè)是我們知道人們總是被咬,但是狂犬病并非總是爆發(fā)——每隔幾年,甚至可能每隔十年,爆發(fā)一次。因此,如果我們能夠預(yù)測(cè)下一次爆發(fā)的時(shí)間地點(diǎn),那將會(huì)是一個(gè)極佳的機(jī)會(huì),意味著我們可以在任何人受到疫情折磨前,給大家注射疫苗。但是同時(shí),疫苗是否只能充當(dāng)一張創(chuàng)可貼,作為一種控制傷害的策略。當(dāng)然,這能挽救生命,也很重要,我們要做這件事,但歸根結(jié)底,不論我們給多少頭牛、多少個(gè)人接種疫苗,蝙蝠身上始終將攜帶同樣數(shù)量的狂犬病毒。被蝙蝠咬傷的實(shí)際風(fēng)險(xiǎn)并沒(méi)有任何改變。所以,我的第二個(gè)問(wèn)題就是:我們能否從源頭消滅這些病毒?如果我們多少能降低蝙蝠自身攜帶狂犬病毒的數(shù)量,這將會(huì)真正逆轉(zhuǎn)現(xiàn)狀。
08:05
We'd been talking about shifting from astrategy of damage control to one based on prevention. So, how do we begin todo that? Well, the first thing we needed to understand was how this virusactually works in its natural host -- in the bats. And that is a tall order forany infectious disease, particularly one in a reclusive species like bats, butwe had to start somewhere. So the way we started was looking at some historicaldata. When and where had these outbreaks happened in the past? And it becameclear that rabies was a virus that just had to be on the move. It couldn't sitstill. The virus might circulate in one area for a year, maybe two, but unlessit found a new group of bats to infect somewhere else, it was pretty much boundto go extinct. So with that, we solved one key part of the rabies transmissionchallenge. We knew we were dealing with a virus on the move, but we stillcouldn't say where it was going.
我們一直在說(shuō)要從傷害控制轉(zhuǎn)變成預(yù)防的策略。那么,我們?nèi)绾伍_始做這件事?第一件我們需要了解這個(gè)病毒是如何 在它的天然宿主—— 即蝙蝠體內(nèi)生存的。這對(duì)于任何傳染病來(lái)說(shuō) 都是一項(xiàng)艱巨的任務(wù),尤其是對(duì)于蝙蝠這樣的隱居物種,但我們必須找到入手點(diǎn)。于是我們最先查看了一些歷史數(shù)據(jù):這些大爆發(fā)曾經(jīng)發(fā)生在何時(shí)何地?我們也逐漸明確了狂犬病毒必須要 不斷轉(zhuǎn)移宿主,它們無(wú)法保持不動(dòng)。病毒可能在一個(gè)地區(qū) 傳播一年,或兩年,除非它能找到新蝙蝠群,傳播到別的地方,否則就會(huì)自然滅絕。根據(jù)這點(diǎn),我們解決了一個(gè)狂犬病毒傳播挑戰(zhàn)的關(guān)鍵部分。我們知道我們?cè)谂c不斷轉(zhuǎn)移的病毒打交道,但我們?nèi)耘f不知道它會(huì)傳播到哪里去。
09:02
Essentially, what I wanted was more of aGoogle Maps-style prediction, which is, "What's the destination of thevirus? What's the route it's going to take to get there? How fast will itmove?" To do that, I turned to the genomes of rabies. You see, rabies,like many other viruses, has a tiny little genome, but one that evolves really,really quickly. So quickly that by the time the virus has moved from one pointto the next, it's going to have picked up a couple of new mutations. And so allwe have to do is kind of connect the dots across an evolutionary tree, andthat's going to tell us where the virus has been in the past and how it spreadacross the landscape. So, I went out and I collected cow brains, because that'swhere you get rabies viruses. And from genome sequences that we got from theviruses in those cow brains, I was able to work out that this is a virus thatspreads between 10 and 20 miles each year.
我想要一個(gè)類似谷歌地圖的預(yù)測(cè)圖,能告訴我“病毒的目的地在哪里?它們?nèi)ツ康牡氐穆窂绞鞘裁矗克俣扔卸嗫???于是我轉(zhuǎn)去研究狂犬病毒基因組。狂犬病毒和許多其他病毒一樣,有一個(gè)很小的基因組,但是它進(jìn)化得非常非?????斓皆诓《緩囊粋€(gè)地點(diǎn)轉(zhuǎn)移到另一個(gè)的時(shí)候,它就會(huì)經(jīng)歷幾次新突變。因此,我們要做的就是連結(jié)那些進(jìn)化樹上的點(diǎn),這會(huì)告訴我們這個(gè)病毒曾經(jīng)去過(guò)哪里,又是如何傳播的。所以我出門收集了牛腦,因?yàn)檫@是你能找到狂犬病毒的地方。從牛腦病毒中獲取的基因序列中,我發(fā)現(xiàn)這是一個(gè)每年能夠傳播 10-20 英里的病毒。
09:57
OK, so that means we do now have the speedlimit of the virus, but still missing that other key part of where is it goingin the first place. For that, I needed to think a little bit more like a bat,because rabies is a virus -- it doesn't move by itself, it has to be movedaround by its bat host, so I needed to think about how far to fly and how oftento fly. My imagination didn't get me all that far with this and neither didlittle digital trackers that we first tried putting on bats. We just couldn'tget the information we needed. So instead, we turned to the mating patterns ofbats. We could look at certain parts of the bat genome, and they were tellingus that some groups of bats were mating with each other and others were moreisolated. And the virus was basically following the trail laid out by the batgenomes. Yet one of those trails stood out as being a little bit surprising --hard to believe. That was one that seemed to cross straight over the PeruvianAndes, crossing from the Amazon to the Pacific coast, and that was kind of hardto believe, as I said, because the Andes are really tall -- about 22,000 feet,and that's way too high for a vampire to fly. Yet --
所以這說(shuō)明我們現(xiàn)在有了病毒的傳播限速,但依舊缺失其他關(guān)鍵部分,例如它們首先向什么地方傳播。要解決這個(gè)問(wèn)題,我需要用蝙蝠的思維來(lái)思考,因?yàn)榭袢《臼且粋€(gè)病毒——不依靠自身傳播,必須圍繞在蝙蝠宿主身邊,所以我需要思考這個(gè)病毒傳播的距離和頻率。我的想象力不夠回答這些問(wèn)題,我們第一次嘗試安裝在蝙蝠上的小型數(shù)字追蹤器也沒(méi)有答案。我們就是無(wú)法獲取所需信息。于是,我們轉(zhuǎn)向蝙蝠交配模式的研究。我們觀察蝙蝠基因組的特定片段,知道了有些蝙蝠群會(huì)相互交配,但是有的比較孤立??袢《净旧献裱蓑鸹蚪M的蹤跡。但其中的一個(gè)蹤跡與眾不同,令人驚訝且難以置信。那個(gè)蹤跡似乎徑直跨越了秘魯安第斯山脈,從亞馬遜穿越到太平洋海岸,這就是我說(shuō)的難以置信,因?yàn)榘驳谒股矫}海拔很高——大約6700米,是吸血蝠幾乎不可能飛越的高度。但是——
11:10
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
11:11
when we looked more closely, we saw, in thenorthern part of Peru, a network of valley systems that was not quite too tallfor the bats on either side to be mating with each other. And we looked alittle bit more closely -- sure enough, there's rabies spreading through thosevalleys, just about 10 miles each year. Basically, exactly as our evolutionarymodels had predicated it would be.
當(dāng)我們仔細(xì)觀察后,我們看到對(duì)于河岸兩邊想要互相交配的蝙蝠來(lái)說(shuō),秘魯北部的一系列峽谷流域海拔還不算太高。我們又觀察得更加仔細(xì)了一點(diǎn)——沒(méi)錯(cuò),所有那些流域都有狂犬病毒的傳播,每年 10 英里。基本上正如我們的進(jìn)化模型預(yù)測(cè)的那樣。
11:31
What I didn't tell you is that that'sactually kind of an important thing because rabies had never been seen beforeon the western slopes of the Andes, or on the whole Pacific coast of SouthAmerica, so we were actually witnessing, in real time, a historical firstinvasion into a pretty big part of South America, which raises the keyquestion: "What are we going to do about that?"
我沒(méi)有告訴你們的是這件事的重要性,因?yàn)榭袢奈丛诎驳谒股矫}的西坡出現(xiàn),或是整個(gè)南非的太平洋海岸,所以我們實(shí)際上在親眼目睹一場(chǎng)實(shí)時(shí)的,歷史首現(xiàn)的入侵,對(duì)相當(dāng)大面積南美洲的入侵。這就引出了一個(gè)關(guān)鍵問(wèn)題:“我們應(yīng)該做什么來(lái)應(yīng)對(duì)入侵?”
11:52
Well, the obvious short-term thing we cando is tell people: you need to vacte yourselves, vacte your animals;rabies is coming. But in the longer term, it would be even more powerful if wecould use that new information to stop the virus from arriving altogether. Ofcourse, we can't just tell bats, "Don't fly today," but maybe wecould stop the virus from hitching a ride along with the bat.
我們?cè)诙唐诿鞔_可以做的就是告訴大家: 你需要給自己接種疫苗,以及你的寵物也是,狂犬病毒馬上要傳播到這里了。但是長(zhǎng)遠(yuǎn)來(lái)說(shuō),如果能夠利用新的研究成果來(lái)阻止病毒入侵,這會(huì)使我們變得更加強(qiáng)大。當(dāng)然,我們不能和蝙蝠說(shuō):“今天不要飛。”但我們或許可以阻止病毒在蝙蝠身上的搭便車行為。
12:17
And that brings us to the key lesson thatwe have learned from rabies-management programs all around the world, whetherit's dogs, foxes, skunks, raccoons, North America, Africa, Europe. It's thatvacting the animal source is the only thing that stops rabies.
我們從全球狂犬病毒管理項(xiàng)目中所學(xué)到的最重要的一堂課,就是不論狗、狐貍、臭鼬還是浣熊,在北美,非洲還是歐洲,動(dòng)物源的疫苗接種都是唯一能夠消除狂犬病毒的方法。
12:34
So, can we vacte bats? You hear aboutvacting dogs and cats all the time, but you don't hear too much aboutvacting bats. It might sound like a crazy question, but the good news isthat we actually already have edible rabies vaccines that are speciallydesigned for bats. And what's even better is that these vaccines can actuallyspread from bat to bat. All you have to do is smear it on one and let the bats'habit of grooming each other take care of the rest of the work for you. So thatmeans, at the very least, we don't have to be out there vacting millions ofbats one by one with tiny little syringes.
那么,我們能給蝙蝠接種疫苗嗎?你們都聽說(shuō)過(guò)給貓狗接種疫苗,但是肯定沒(méi)怎么聽過(guò)給蝙蝠接種疫苗。這問(wèn)題可能聽起來(lái)有點(diǎn)瘋狂,但有一個(gè)好消息,我們已經(jīng)有專門為蝙蝠設(shè)計(jì)的可食用狂犬病疫苗。更妙的是,這些疫苗可以阻止病毒在蝙蝠間傳播。你所要做的就是將疫苗涂抹在一只蝙蝠上,之后讓它們相互梳理絨毛的習(xí)慣幫助你完成剩下的工作。所以這意味著,至少我們不需要用小小的注射器去外面把上百萬(wàn)只蝙蝠一只只抓來(lái)接種疫苗。
13:15
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
13:16
But just because we have that tool doesn'tmean we know how to use it. Now we have a whole laundry list of questions. Howmany bats do we need to vacte? What time of the year do we need to bevacting? How many times a year do we need to be vacting? All of theseare questions that are really fundamental to rolling out any sort ofvaction campaign, but they're questions that we can't answer in thelaboratory. So instead, we're taking a slightly more colorful approach. We'reusing real wild bats, but fake vaccines. We use edible gels that make bat hairglow and UV powders that spread between bats when they bump into each other,and that's letting us study how well a real vaccine might spread in these wildcolonies of bats. We're still in the earliest phases of this work, but ourresults so far are incredibly encouraging. They're suggesting that using thevaccines that we already have, we could potentially drastically reduce the sizeof rabies outbreaks. And that matters, because as you remember, rabies is avirus that always has to be on the move, and so every time we reduce the sizeof an outbreak, we're also reducing the chance that the virus makes it onto thenext colony. We're breaking a link in the chain of transmission. And so everytime we do that, we're bringing the virus one step closer to extinction. And sothe thought, for me, of a world in the not-too-distant future where we'reactually talking about getting rid of rabies altogether, that is incrediblyencouraging and exciting.
但工具的存在并不代表我們知道如何使用它?,F(xiàn)在我們有一籮筐的問(wèn)題。我們需要給多少蝙蝠接種疫苗?一年中的什么時(shí)候,我們需要開始接種?一年總共需要接種幾次?所有的這些問(wèn)題都是開展任何預(yù)防接種運(yùn)動(dòng)最基本的問(wèn)題,但這些恰恰是我們?cè)趯?shí)驗(yàn)室中無(wú)法解答的問(wèn)題。于是,我們正在嘗試一個(gè)稍許更加有趣的方法。使用真正的野生蝙蝠,但接種的是假疫苗。我們用可食用凝膠使蝙蝠毛發(fā)發(fā)光,以及蝙蝠在彼此碰撞時(shí)能得以傳播的紫外光粉末,這使我們能夠研究真正的疫苗在這些野生蝙蝠群體中的潛在的傳播有效性。我們依舊處于這個(gè)項(xiàng)目的初期階段,可至今我們的成果非常鼓舞人心。結(jié)果表明,使用我們已經(jīng)擁有的疫苗,很有可能可以極大地縮減狂犬病爆發(fā)的規(guī)模。這很重要,因?yàn)榫腿鐒偛潘f(shuō),狂犬病毒是一種經(jīng)常需要變換宿主的病毒,所以我們每一次對(duì)爆發(fā)規(guī)模的削弱,都在降低病毒入侵下一個(gè)種群的可能性,都在打破傳播鏈的一個(gè)環(huán)節(jié)。因此每一次,我們都讓該病毒距離滅亡更進(jìn)一步。不遠(yuǎn)的將來(lái),世界將會(huì)永遠(yuǎn)免于任何狂犬病毒侵?jǐn)_的想法,對(duì)我來(lái)說(shuō)是極其鼓舞人心且令人激動(dòng)的。
14:42
So let me return to the original question.Can we prevent pandemics? Well, there is no silver-bullet solution to thisproblem, but my experiences with rabies have left me pretty optimistic aboutit. I think we're not too far from a future where we're going to have genomicsto forecast outbreaks and we're going to have clever new technologies, likeedible, self-spreading vaccines, that can get rid of these viruses at theirsource before they have a chance to jump into people.
那么讓我回到最初的問(wèn)題。我們能夠預(yù)防疾病大流行嗎?這個(gè)問(wèn)題沒(méi)有徹底且完美的解決方案,但是我對(duì)于狂犬病毒的經(jīng)驗(yàn)讓我對(duì)這個(gè)問(wèn)題持樂(lè)觀態(tài)度。我認(rèn)為我們離那個(gè)未來(lái)不是太遠(yuǎn),一個(gè)利用基因組學(xué)預(yù)測(cè)疫情爆發(fā)和擁有智能新技術(shù)的未來(lái),例如可食用,可自行傳播的疫苗,能夠在這些病毒有機(jī)會(huì)傳播到人類前從根源消滅它們的疫苗。
15:11
So when it comes to fighting pandemics, theholy grail is just to get one step ahead. And if you ask me, I think one of theways that we can do that is using some of the problems that we already havenow, like rabies -- sort of the way an astronaut might use a flight simulator,figuring out what works and what doesn't, and building up our tool set so thatwhen the stakes are high, we're not flying blind.
所以當(dāng)說(shuō)到對(duì)抗疾病大流行,我們離勝利也就一步之遙。如果你問(wèn)我,我認(rèn)為其中一個(gè)能實(shí)現(xiàn)這一目標(biāo)的方法就是,利用一些現(xiàn)在我們已經(jīng)知道的問(wèn)題,比如狂犬病毒——好比宇航員會(huì)用飛行模擬器,來(lái)摸索什么能起作用,而什么不行,并且構(gòu)建我們自己的工具集,這樣當(dāng)我們面臨危難時(shí),我們不會(huì)盲目飛行。
15:33
Thank you.
謝謝。
15:34
(Applause)
掌聲。
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