#1237 Timothy Winegard - The Mosquito: A Human History of Our Deadliest Predator

00:00 Ricardo Lopes: Hello everyone. Welcome to a new episode of The Dissenter. I'm your host, as always, Ricardo Lobs, and today I'm joined by Doctor Timothy Weingart. He's associate professor of history at Colorado Mesa University. He's the author of several bestselling, uh, books, and today we're going to talk about the mosquito, a Human History of our deadliest predators. So, Doctor Weingar, welcome to the show. It's a pleasure to everyone.

00:27 Timothy Winegard: Yeah, my pleasure as well. Thank you for having me.

00:30 Ricardo Lopes: So, I mean, you're a historian, so what motivated you to write a book about the mosquito? I mean, in what ways does the mosquito relate to our history as humans?

00:46 Timothy Winegard: So the mosquito is actually my 5th book. Um, I had written 4 previous books that were fairly academic in nature, um, revolving around the First World War and indigenous peoples globally. And I always chat with my dad. He's an emergency physician back home in Canada. But after I finished a book, I always chat with him about, you know, ideas. And I wanted to write something that I call an airport book, which is you, in the airport bookstores, you only see very select books on the shelf, whether it be Guns, Germs and Steel, uh, Novo or Sapiens. So I wanted to write a book like that, and being a, a medical physician, he said, you should write a book on malaria. And I jokingly said, sure, Dad, I'll just write a book on the mosquito. And he actually was like, that's a great idea. So I started, I started researching and realized that there was a A large gap in the historiography of just human civilization in general about the historical impact of mosquito-borne pathogens. Um, OBVIOUSLY, for your listeners, a mosquito, mosquito untethered from a pathogen is harmless. The only females bite, they still would need the blood of humans in the zoological Noah's Ark of other. Animals to grow and mature their eggs, but they're still harmless. We'd get a little itchy bump, and donate some blood and move on. It's the pathogens that hitch a free ride or are vectored via, uh, select mosquito species that cause so much death, disease, and suffering and have really altered and changed the, the course of, of human history. Um. You know, from the dinosaurs to present day.

02:25 Ricardo Lopes: So I mean in terms of our predators, is it true that the mosquito has been the main cause of our death, I mean in terms of diseases transmitted by them and comparing to other animals that have been causes of human death

02:47 Timothy Winegard: for sure, and Unfortunately, like a lot of things on the internet or TV, um, our movies and, and nightmares have lied to us. Um, FOR sharks and wolves and all these, you know, Cujo and all these feared animals are, are way down the list. Uh, MOSQUITOES take the number 1 spot as the largest killer of humanity, um, by far, with humans being a distant second. So for example, sharks kill on average maybe 10 people a year. Um, THE hippos are about 500, but when we think of mosquito-borne pathogens prior to modern medicine, we're in the tens or hundreds of millions of people annually. Um, CURRENTLY, it's somewhere between, numbers vary, but around, you know, 1.5 to 2 million people still die of mosquito-borne pathogens every year. Um, SO, throughout our historical journey from our hominid ancestors to present, the, the mosquito, or I guess more correctly again, the pathogens that the mosquito transmits. Uh, HAVE been the, um, the scourge of humanity.

03:48 Ricardo Lopes: Yeah, so I mean instead of us having movies, uh, horror movies, uh, about spiders and snakes, maybe a more realistic horror movie would be about mosquitoes, right? Yeah,

04:00 Timothy Winegard: although there's that terrible new Anaconda movie coming out, so I, I, I can't change Hollywood, but yes, um, you know, our history books have largely You know, misled us and certainly Hollywood and our nightmares are um fictitious as far as, you know, animal killers, if you will. Uh, THE mosquito is, is by far the, the largest throughout our history.

04:22 Ricardo Lopes: So you've already told us a little bit about the mosquito, but what is a mosquito actually and when and how has the mosquito evolved?

04:32 Timothy Winegard: So obviously it's an insect and the mosquito in its present form has largely, largely existed since the You know, late Jurassic period, so 190 million years ago. Um, AND they were vectoring or transmitting pathogens to the dinosaurs, including various, um, bacteria, viruses, and, um, worms, uh, as well. And we find this in coprolite and, and dinosaur dung and, and so we know this and It's not to say that the meteor impact 65 million years ago didn't wipe out the dinosaurs. It certainly did, but a lot of dinosaur species prior to that were either extinct or endangered via insect-borne pathogens, and that includes pathogens vectored by the mosquitoes, sandfly, and other insects. So, The mosquito was shaping, I guess, human history long before we or our ancestors, um, were on the planet, and it actually allowed, when we see the extinction of the dinosaurs 65.5 million years ago, what comes around is the age of mammals and insects actually. Insects and mammals both thrive in coming out of this kind of nuclear winter, and then we give birth to our, our hominid ancestors and, and eventually Homo sapiens, so. Um, THE, the mosquito was shaping, I guess, our world before we even. So we're an evolutionary, uh, line or thought on this planet.

06:01 Ricardo Lopes: But I mean, how exactly uh do mosquitoes transmit diseases to humans? I mean they bite us, they get a little bit of blood from us, is it then that if they carry these pathogens, they get into our bloodstream, is that it?

06:17 Timothy Winegard: Yep, so again, only females bite, uh, they're simply being good mothers, they need blood to grow and mature their eggs. Uh, BOTH males and females, um, drink nectar, so they actually are pollinators as well. Mosquitoes are not to the extent of bees, but they do pollinate. But again, it's only the females that bite. Um, SO, essentially think

06:38 Ricardo Lopes: of it

06:38 Timothy Winegard: as having 6 needles. Um, SO the 1st 2 go in and they saw into your skin, and then the 2 others essentially act as, as retractors holding open the puncture site. One straw, uh straw, if you will, goes in and it pumps in saliva with an anticoagulant, uh, and a numbing analgesic, so that you don't feel the mosquito bite. And then the 6th 1, if you will, uh, is the straw that sucks out the blood. So there's no blood, actual blood exchange during the mosquito bite. It's in that saliva tube that contains the anticoagulant and the analgesic. Um, THAT is where the pathogen enters the human or again. All animals on the planet suffer from mosquito-borne pathogens. So that's where the pathogen enters the bloodstream of the animal, in this case, humans, and that could be, uh, dengue, yellow fever, malaria, West Nile, Japanese encephalitis, eastern, I can go on and on, hundreds of mosquito-borne pathogens, um, for humans, uh, um, and every animal, other animals have their own as well. So, that's how she bites, and then. She flies away and pumps the water out of the, the blood in her abdomen to, uh, as she's biting, she's pumping the water out of the blood so she can pack her abdomen with more protein, uh, which is essentially what she's after to, to be a good mother.

08:01 Ricardo Lopes: Mhm. So you've already mentioned there that throughout human history, probably uh 10s or hundreds of millions, millions of people have died uh due to diseases transmitted by mosquito bites, but I mean, do we have an exact number or is this more of an approximate number?

08:26 Timothy Winegard: No, it's an they're all estimates, and some estimates are as high as 50% of all humanity in the history of our species has died of a mosquito-borne pathogen. Now, this estimate was done by a man named Barack Blomberg, who is a polymath Nobel Prize winner in genetics, mathematics, and medicine. And so this was his estimate in the 80s in using various, I guess, models of that, you know, upwards of half of all human beings have um perished from mosquito-borne pathogens in our existence. Um, EVEN if that is, I guess. A high estimate, um, it doesn't take away from the fact that when we look at the historical record and we look at the events through our human history that were influenced or shaped or largely decided by mosquito-borne pathogens, um, you can't take away the impact that this animal has had on the trajectory of human history. And if we remove them, there's not many things in a singular focus you can say this about where if we remove the mosquito from. I guess our historical journey, the, the modern world order would look completely different. It would, we would might as well live on a planet in a galaxy far, far away. And there's very few things you can say in a, in a, with a singular, I guess. SINGULAR influence because most historical events are a web of different cascading influences and, um, and, and, um, you know, agendas, but I can safely say that about the mosquito. I can say that about the horse. I can say that about a very few things in, in the mosquito being one.

10:04 Ricardo Lopes: Mhm. So where exactly do mosquitoes exist and tend to develop because we tend to associate them, er, I mean mosquito-borne diseases with Africa mostly, but now, With climate change and global warming, people are worried that mosquitoes might migrate to other places and take their diseases with them. So where exactly do they tend to thrive?

10:35 Timothy Winegard: Uh, WELL, they exist everywhere, all over the planet, uh, which is why they have such a big impact is because there's really not a person in the history of the world who hasn't had a run-in with a mosquito of, of some kind, whether it's trying to sleep and buzzing in your ear, whether it's unfortunate. MAY be contracting one of these pathogens. Um, THEY exist everywhere save for a handful of, you know, Pacific islands and Iceland. Although I just read an article recently that they think there may be mosquitoes in Iceland now, but Iceland has been mosquito-free, um, and Antarctica as well. But other than that, the, the planet is crawling with, with mosquitoes, and I mean, Some of the largest mosquito populations in the world are in Arctic Canada. So depending on the mosquito species, and there was malaria outbreaks and Archangel at the port in northern Russia. So again, it depends on the various, there's about 33,700 species of mosquitoes on the planet, and only a couple 100 are capable of vectoring pathogens, and most don't do it very well at all. So, There's a handful of mosquitoes, the Anopheles mosquito, which is the malaria vector, and Aedes aegypti mosquito, which is an enemy number one for yellow fever, dengue, West Nile, Zika, these, these, the viral class of mosquito-borne pathogens. Um, AND that mosquito is an African mosquito. Mosquito. It, um, it was a stowaway on slave ships crossing the middle passages of the Atlantic during, um, European intrusion into the Americas, and it found a sanguine home in the, the South, Central South America, the Caribbean, and now that the Aedes aegypti mosquito is being found as far north as southern Canada in the Great Lakes region where I come from. So again, if you have the right mosquito species and you introduce that pathogen, which you're gonna have a cyclical um contagion of that pathogen, I mean, we're even seeing domestic cases of malaria in Florida now, um, recently, as well as dengue and, and, and chikungunya and other um viral mosquito-borne pathogens. Malaria is in its own class. It's a very sophisticated protozoan. Um, Plasmodium parasite, it's not a virus, it's not a bacteria, it's not a worm, it's a very sophisticated evolutionary parasite, um, whereas most of them are viruses, and then, Uh, filariasis, often mistakenly called in, in common parlance encephalitis, or sorry, um, elephantiasis, which is the engorgement of the, the limbs and the genitals, that's caused by a, a mosquito-borne pathogen, a worm that blocks the lymph nodes, and then fluid collects usually in your legs, feet, and, and, in a male in the scrotum or genitals. Um, EVEN canine heartworm, for example, uh, we all give our dogs these pills to prevent, that's a mosquito-borne pathogen. So they're, they're, they're quite prevalent, um, and they exist all over the world. In fact, if there's, you know, 8.5 billion people on the planet right now, um, almost 6 billion are at risk of dengue currently. Uh, IT'S the fastest growing mosquito-borne pathogen in the world. It's called breakbone fever, it's nickname, and while the death rates are not extremely high, um, I think I've talked to people who've had it, they wish they may. It may go that way with, with the symptoms are pretty horrific. So, um, they are concerned with global warming as, as you mentioned with your question is that mosquitoes who have largely been confined to the tropics, if you will, are pushing the northern limit line into the northern hemisphere and also into higher altitudes. So it's kind of a 3D model of expansion uh of these what were essentially tropical mosquitoes showing up in southern Canada or into Europe now.

14:29 Ricardo Lopes: So when people worry about the possibility or they or eventually some of these mosquitoes moving to places where they didn't tend to exist in, um, I mean, we're talking about certain species of mosquitoes that tend to transmit these diseases and perhaps conditions that favor the development of the pathogens they transmit. Is that it?

14:56 Timothy Winegard: Right, so again, Of the 37, roughly 3700 species of mosquito on the planet, very few, uh, are capable of transmitting these pathogens, and most of them don't do it very well at all. There's a few 100 but there's really nobody. When we talk about the eradication of mosquitoes or using CRISPR gene editing technology or other, you know, modern science, nobody is promoting the eradication of every mosquito off the face of the earth. That's just simply not true. Uh, ONE, that would be impossible, and two, we're targeting very select mosquito species. So the Anopheline mosquitoes for malaria and primarily Aedes aegypti for, for the virus class, um, of those pathogens. So. Mosquitoes are very important to ecosystems. Uh, I'm a big Star Wars fan, so there's a balance to the force, and, and when you, you create a disturbance to the force, you have unintended consequences like the rise of the Sith. So, no one wants to see that happen. So, again, nobody is promoting the eradication of all mosquitoes off the face of the earth. It's targeting very select mosquito species that are these, these transmitters or vectors for, for these pathogens.

16:10 Ricardo Lopes: If we eradicate those mosquito species that are responsible or uh behave as as vectors for diseases, could that have a negative impact, uh, in the, on the biosphere or particular habitats or environments or not at all?

16:31 Timothy Winegard: For sure. And, and again, as I mentioned, mosquitoes are, are, they drink pollen, so they're, they're pollinators. Females bite, they need blood for a different reason. But, so for example, if we removed a certain mosquito species, then certain species of orchids would go extinct. Because there, it's, it's the, that symbiotic relationship between the pollen of these orchids and then, and then the mosquito transferring this and breeding these orchids. So, there, there's a symbiotic relationship that goes on in, in ecosystems and when you disturb that balance, there's unintended consequences. The other thing we worry about is, obviously the job of pathogens or, or any animal or species on this planet is, is procreation and survival. And, you know, there's no preordained roadmap or lonely planet for evolution. But when you put survival pressures on an animal, whether that be a bacteria even, or I know viruses are technically not alive, but or a virus, they'll find ways to mutate to ensure their survival. So, if we extincted hypothetically, the Aedes aegypti, would the pat mutate to find another host to transfer it to ensure its survival. Would another mosquito species simply fill that void within the, you know, the evolutionary struggle and survival pressures. So if we put artificial survival pressures on either these mosquito species or these pathogens, will they find another route through natural selection to, to continue the reproduction? And when we look at malaria, Across our existence, or mosquitoes. I mean, people have hated mosquitoes since the dawn of humankind. The answer is yes, they will circumvent our frontline weapons to continue their survival and the unintended consequences of, of, of killing us and other animals.

18:21 Ricardo Lopes: Mhm. Um, DO we know if there are people who are more vulnerable to mosquitoes and their transmissible diseases than others? I mean, because, uh, uh, this, I, I guess that this is probably, uh, medical misinformation, but I've heard or it's very common for people to say that, uh, for example, uh, couples who live together and one of the. One of the people, uh, one of them gets mosquito bites and the other doesn't. People say, oh, it's because they have different blood types and mosquitoes prefer certain blood types to waters. I mean, is that true at all?

19:01 Timothy Winegard: That is actually true. So, OK, again, when we look at the disease burden, 90% of malarial deaths are children under the age of 5. Because their immune systems are not fully developed, so they just can't fight this off. So if we look at the disease burden, it largely falls with young children, specifically with malaria and pregnant women as well, um, which is kind of a double whammy. So, but your question is, do some people get more bitten. By mosquitoes more than others. The answer is yes. So 85% of what makes you alluring or less alluring to mosquitoes is hardwired into your genetic circuit board, and there's nothing you can do about it, unless you CRISPR yourself with gene editing technology, which uh I don't advise, but, um, so. People with blood type O get bitten twice as much than people with blood type A and blood type B somewhere in the middle. So blood type O is her vintage of choice. Um, IT depends on how much lactic acid or bacteria is in and on your skin. So there's a lot of just natural genetic factors that attract mosquitoes or your, how your heat signature. So that essentially if you, if you think of an infrared like the military, like infrared hunting. They hunt by both sight, which is infrared, their heat signatures and smell of carbon dioxide, so CO2. So if you emit more CO2, then they'll be more attracted to you, or if you're hotter, they'll be more attracted to you. So pregnant women, for example, their body temperatures are slightly elevated, so they stand out to these mosquitoes that are looking for a meal. So, there is some truth to that, but I think some of the common things like Uh, if you have darker skin, you get bit less by mosquitoes. That's not true. Skin color or, or skin tone has nothing to do with it. It's what's in and on your skin, bacterial lactic acid that matters, or CO2 emissions. Uh, THEY prefer blondes and redheads over people with darker hair. Again, no gentlemen prefer blondes like Marilyn Monroe, perhaps, uh, to quote that movie, but mosquitoes. DON'T care. Uh, GARLIC, no, they're not vampires, so you don't, garlic isn't gonna work for you. So there's all this garbage, of course, out there, and a lot of the mosquito repellents that are sold commercially also don't work. Um, SO, yes, there is scientific truth to, they do prefer certain people over other people. And I'll give you a great example as I'm blood type B. And I, I get the odd mosquito bite, but my sister's blood type O. And for every 5 mosquito bites I'd get, she'd probably get 50. So, uh, I, I mean, and, and there's just a good example of, of circumstantial evidence if you will, backing up what science already knows.

21:46 Ricardo Lopes: So, uh, you mentioned the thing there that I found very interesting. So in terms of even metabolism, perhaps people who have just for some reason a higher basal temperature would also be targeted more by mosquitoes than people who have a lower.

22:05 Timothy Winegard: Correct. So that's one, again, it's a combination of factors. It's not, but that is certainly one of the factors is body temperature. So again, pregnant women slightly raised, uh, if you're drinking alcohol, that slightly raises your body temperature as well. So people who drink tend to get bitten more than people who are not drinking. Again, that's, there's a multitude of factors, but Again, yes, they kind of combine into this overall picture of your genetic makeup that makes you alluring or, or less alluring, unfortunately for some people. Um, AND I mean science does back up all these, these, I guess genetic claims and, and the other ones are just. Fictitious in urban legends. Um, I mean, obviously, a lot of these diseases, whether it's malaria or yellow fever, their, their birthplace and origin is in Africa. And, and so to say like foolishly that people with darker skin don't get bitten as much, that, that's just, it just doesn't make any sense.

23:08 Ricardo Lopes: So I, I want to ask you about the different historic periods and societies and the empires that you go through in the book, but just before that, uh, one more general question. So do we have or do we know how much of an economic impact the mosquito has had throughout history and still has today?

23:33 Timothy Winegard: Um, THERE'S no, I mean, in more recent times we can kind of put numbers on it, but when we look historically at the difference in economies between the southern hemisphere and the northern hemisphere, we see again, there's a lot of factors that go into this, and I wouldn't be so historically reckless to say, well, it's just the malarial burden in the southern hemisphere that caused them to be poor countries in the north richer. Um, THERE'S a lot of factors, obviously, mineral resources and settlement patterns and everything else. However, one of the factors historically in the progression of global economies is that in the north, you did have malaria, but it was very seasonal and it came as an epidemic, and it was short-lived. Whereas in In the southern hemisphere, you have endemic malaria. It's constantly there. So think of your workforce being constantly having to, in modern terms, calling in sick. Well, if you own a Campbell's Soup factory and half of your workforce is continuously calling in sick and can't show up for work, how can your economy function? So one of the reasons again in a kind of cascading events, but certainly one of the reasons why we see the northern hemisphere in lead productivity compared to the southern hemisphere in relative terms, one of the factors is certainly the malarial burden that is just crushing. Um, THE southern hemisphere, and continues to do so, um, and malaria being the big one, but obviously others, and I said, dengue has a, it, the, the death rates are less, but again, you're extremely sick for 2 to 3 weeks, uh, and not able to work if you contract dengue. So, it, it's one of the factors that shaped, um, global economies throughout our, our history, uh, in, in recent times as well.

25:22 Ricardo Lopes: Yeah, uh, of course it's not, uh, uh, just a single factor that plays a role in how much, uh, uh, the economy of a particular country develops. Of course, we also have certainly to take into account, uh, political, geopolitical, and other kinds of geographic. FACTORS, but the mosquitoes certainly is one of them, or at least makes a difference

25:47 Timothy Winegard: for sure, as I, as I mentioned earlier and as you just correctly said, most, most things are, um, I say most, not all, most things are a combination of. Numerous factors including settlement patterns, politics, uh, resources. I mean, I mean, if you have resources, you're going to be a wealthy country, whether that be timber, whether that be water, fish, gold, uranium, I mean, oil. I mean, look at some of these northern countries like Russia or Canada, or they, they have every, the United States, they have all these massive amounts of resources and massive amounts of territory as well. These are huge countries. Um, SO, of course, that's part of it, but if you're just for lack of a better example, if you're trying to extract that gold out of the ground in Canada, you don't have to worry about malaria, generally speaking. Whereas if you're trying to do it in parts of Africa, your workforce is constantly being depleted with malaria and or other mosquito-borne pathogens. So, that's where we see it kind of draining the vitality. Of the workforce, whether you because they're constantly sick. The same can be said of armies as well, which we'll get to, um, northern armies kind of coming into malarial zones, um. With the British during the American Revolution, for example, so it, it, it just, it just it's a constant endemic drain on manpower, vitality, and, and at the end of the day, economies or money.

27:14 Ricardo Lopes: Mhm. So let's go through history a little bit here then. How did the mosquito impact ancient Greece?

27:23 Timothy Winegard: So we see again looking malaria specifically and yellow fever, which are the two biggest killers. They, they're very, the symptoms are very telltale. So when I go back or we go back and look at some primary sources coming out of ancient Greece or certainly Rome, um, we can see the telltale signs of malarial fevers and then later in history, yellow fever called vomitto negro in Spanish, which means the black vomit. Its symptoms are unmistakable, so. Uh, AND the progression of fevers with malarial fevers. Now there's 5 human malarias. Um, Falsaarum is the most deadly, and vivax is the most common, but, um, so we see in ancient Greece specifically, if we look at Alexander in India, I mean, we talk about this great kind of coup with his soldiers saying, I'm not in this mutiny. It's a half truth. By the time Alexander defeats King Porus in India. Um, HE marches through India during the monsoon or the rainy season, and his troops have been continuously fighting, and on top of that, they are contracting malaria. The Indus River Valley system has been a hotbed of malaria forever. So, his troops are sick, they're tired, and Alexander also knows that his enemies are increasingly more powerful, and the Nanda Empire, his next kind of target. He's, I'm not sure if I wanna win this one, and it's an egomaniac, he listens to his generals who are saying, hey, your troops are tired, they don't wanna fight anymore, they wanna go home. And he also knows he can't win. And he has a perfect battle record, so he blames it on his troops and said, my troops are lazy and they don't wanna fight. So there's some mythology about this great mutiny, when in fact, He, it's an untenable situation for him in this rainy season in the Indus River Valley. He, his troops are being crushed by malaria. He knows this, so he turns around, heads to Babylon to plan a bunch of other campaigns where he ultimately dies. What we think predominantly we think is malaria. His body has gone missing, but if we look at the symptoms, there's a lot of different um Explanations or hypotheses of how Alexander died, but the, the number one candidate is malaria.

29:41 Ricardo Lopes: Mhm. How about the Roman Empire? I mean, did mosquitoes play a role in the expansion, rise and fall of the Roman Empire in any way?

29:54 Timothy Winegard: Yeah, so in both the rise and fall in a way, so surrounding the city of Rome is something called the Pontine Marshes. It's 310 square miles of marshland. So malaria literally means bad air in Italian. Um, AND during ancient times it was called the Roman fever, uh, malaria, because Italy was awash with malarious, mosquitoes and malaria. So, when we look at the rise of Rome, Rome was essentially safeguarded by these pontine marshes which spread from Rome south towards Naples and Anzio, where the Nazis reintroduced malarious mosquitoes in 1943, 194944 as a purpose. BIOLOGICAL weapon against the Allied landings at ANZO and my wife's grandpa actually contracted malaria from one of these malarious mosquitoes that were purposefully reintroduced to the marshes by the Nazis as a deliberate act of biological weaponry. Um, THE, the thing is though, is the Germans also got malaria because the mosquito doesn't pick, doesn't choose sizes. It's like I'll bite the Canadians and Americans and, and British, but I'll also Bite the Germans. So it kind of, I don't see it backfired, but everybody shared equally in the, in the biological.

31:05 Ricardo Lopes: The mosquitoes are probably not racist, right?

31:08 Timothy Winegard: No, they don't care whether you're a German soldier or an American or Canadian, British soldier. They, they did everybody. So, um, but these mosquitoes were purposely reintroduced into these marshes as a deliberate act of biological weaponry in 19. Um, 43, 44 at Anzio to, to where the Allies eventually landed in Italy. Um, SO these marshes essentially safeguarded Rome and allowed the city of Rome to develop into, into kind of this, this huge city, upwards of a million people at one point in, in, in within the Roman Empire. And when we see people, outsiders coming down to attack Rome itself, when we look at the city of Rome, it's never really taken and held by anybody. We think of Hannibal and the Carthaginians. He, he bombs around Italy for 1516 years and never attacks Rome because he's not prepared to lay siege in the Pontine Marshes to attack the city of Rome. Um, HE gets malaria, actually, his wife and son die of malaria. So when we look at the Carthaginians, the Huns, Attila and his Huns, the Vandals, the Visigo. Continuously either they try to take Rome and suffer horrible malaria rates, and then retreat, or they stay for a brief period of time like the Vandals. They ransack, they vandalize Rome, and then they leave once the malarial burden starts crushing their, their outside armies coming in. And so it safeguards Rome, um, from these outside invaders and allows Rome to kind of flourish and eventually start to expand, um, with the center, obviously the city of Rome. Uh, BUT at the same time, what it does is, again, back to our earlier discussion, it starts to bleed the vitality of, of Italy, again, because you have this constant malarial burden, um, that is depleting, you know, the workforce or manpower for your mines, for your specifically your agriculture as well. So it's kind of a, a double-edged sword for, for Rome in, in, in the long run.

33:08 Ricardo Lopes: Yeah, no, it's interesting because uh people or some people of course talk a lot about the factors that might have played a role in the fall of the Roman Empire or or at least the Western Roman Empire, and perhaps here again it would be uh a collection of factors and not just. A single one because people try to arrive at one single factor like I don't know, political corruption or economic inequality or invasions by other peoples and so on and so forth, but probably it was just a conjunction of factors including, as you mentioned there, uh mosquito-borne diseases.

33:51 Timothy Winegard: Again, yeah, mosquito in, in most of the instances that, I mean, there's select instances in history where it is solely malaria, when we look at it, it's just malaria or the mosquito is the singular cause of an event, but in the case of Rome, it's one, there's, I mean, Kyle Harper, who, who is, uh, his books are, uh, research is fantastic. The fate of Rome, um, is, is, is, it's a wonderful book. He's a professor, I can't remember where, somewhere in the southern US, but he's written extensively about the Roman Empire and looking at it from an ecological standpoint. So when we look at Yeah, malaria is one factor. You had famine, you have climate change, you have natural disasters, you have earthquakes and and um like tsunamis, if you will. You have a, uh, there's a series of factors, but largely when we look at Malthusian checks, they don't come as a singular entity. You get all of them, famine, drought, disease, war, and so, and you had political. INTRIGUE and political infighting within the system of Rome itself. And, and so there's a series of factors and usually when we look at empires, they start to decay and rot on the inside. And in this case, it's true of Rome where you had political intrigue, infighting, civil unrest, political unrest, natural disasters, famine, disease burden. And then once it starts to weaken itself, specifically the Western Roman Empire, as you mentioned, you have outside agents coming in and ransacking or attacking Rome, and that's, that's the Germanic tribes that from the steppe that come, and that's the Visigoths, the Huns, and the Vandals predominantly, and then eventually the Ostrogoths set up shop in in Italy, but Yes, so it's a, it's a combination or series of factors, but certainly the malarial burden that is, I guess, depressing Rome's ability to raise soldiers to farm on top of natural disaster, climate change, and famine. It's this, this perfect storm of, of, um, I guess things that are outside of, of Rome's control, except for perhaps the, the civil strife and political intrigue. Um, AND, and then they're, pardon the pun, but ripe for invasion from, from outside forces coming in, and this is what we see with the Western Roman Empire, uh, and eventually the eastern Roman Empire too with the plague of Justinian, and then the collapse of, of, of his trying to rebuild the Roman Empire. It's the first epidemic or pandemic of bubonic plague, which just crushes Constantinople, um, in the, in the 500s during the reign of Emperor Justinian, who was Had done a good job trying to piece together the empire, so we see similar things, I guess later on in the in the east, just with the plague and not mosquito-borne pathogen.

36:41 Ricardo Lopes: Yes, so in the book you also talk about the Crusades, and I actually never thought of the role that mosquito-borne diseases might have played there, so tell us about that.

36:53 Timothy Winegard: So again, to, to set up malaria, and I don't suggest this as an inoculation strategy, but with malaria, essentially, the more you suffer, the less you suffer. So, the British called it seasoning. You're being seasoned because there was malaria throughout British as well in the Finlands, kind of in East England. Um, SO, the repeat infections of malaria, the less likely you will die, and the milder the symptoms. So essentially, the more you suffer, the less you suffer. Now, it's not like a virus where if you contract yellow fever and survive, you're immune to yellow fever. It, it's not a virus, so there's no vaccine right now. They're developing them, but for malaria. It's not like the smallpox vaccine where you got this and then we eradicate smallpox. Um, SO, What happens is in places like the Upper Euphrates where you have these endemic malarial zones, and they're all over the world at this time, including the Finlands in England, um, including the southern colonies in the United States. So with the Crusades, one of these malarial zones is kind of the northern Levant as the Euphrates River river, um, comes up, so. Um, What happens is specifically during the Second Crusade is you have Europeans coming down into these malarial zones that are not seasoned to malaria. So while local people still got malaria, they weren't affected as much. And we see this time and time again, whether it's Cornwallis's army at at Yorktown during the American Revolution, cause they came from northern England away from the malarial zones. They're shoved into the Carolinas during the revolution, which is awash with malaria, and it's this different. Difference of seasoning between the American troops and the British troops, and so the British troops are just crushed by malaria. So it's that large, it's that what we see during the Crusades as well as these European armies coming from malaria-free zones into malarial zones and getting sapped by malaria where the local peoples are seasoned to their own malaria. And and we see this in different episodes, uh, historically up throughout the kind of ch chronological journey of, of how the mosquito influenced humanity.

39:12 Ricardo Lopes: Yeah, uh, let us talk also a little bit about the Mongol Empire, and of course the Mongol Empire at its largest was just huge. It, it went from Eastern Asia up to all the way to Eastern Europe. So I mean it was a huge swath of land. Uh, I mean, probably the only empires that were bigger than the Mongol Empire in history were the

39:39 Timothy Winegard: just one.

39:41 Ricardo Lopes: Oh, it was just one, what the English

39:42 Timothy Winegard: Empire, the British Empire, or the

39:44 Ricardo Lopes: British Empire. Oh, I thought that the Spanish Empire was also bigger.

39:49 Timothy Winegard: No, I have a, a chart actually that I a video I show him one of my classes. Uh, THE Mongol Empire is the largest contiguous land empire in the world because it was contiguous across the Eurasian Steppe, um. But it's the 2nd biggest empire in the world, uh, at least from the, the knowledge that I have, but I mean, maybe it's 3rd to the Spanish, but I have it ranked 2nd to the, the British Empire. Obviously it's not contiguous, but it's the largest empire in history.

40:16 Ricardo Lopes: So, uh, so of course it was so huge. Was it also affected by mosquitoes in some way?

40:24 Timothy Winegard: In a few ways. So again, the Mongols come from the, the, the steppe, the grasslands of Mongolia, which is not um awash with a mosquito-borne pathogens. So, we always wondered why when They first attack Europe and they're into Eastern Europe. They're into the Hungarian plains and the Balkans and even into parts of Austria. Why they just quickly vacate Europe and turn around and come back from where they came, uh, go back from where they came. So one of the reasons is actually the crux of the Mongol Empire or army is obviously its horses and its bows. So they're proficient with their, their, their bow, which is made differently than European bow. It has more pounds per pressure. It can shoot further. Uh, NOBODY can withstand the Mongol, I guess, mounted cavalry with their bows. So the, the crux of their military prowess is their horses and their bows. So, when they get to the, the, the, the Eurasian Steppe goes from the Pacific in Mongolia, China, all the way to Hungary. That's the, the, the western portion of the Eurasian Steppe, which is the longest contiguous grasslands in the world. So, during that time period in the 1200s when the Mongols attacked Europe, there is abnormally heavy rainfall during those couple years in those springs and summers. So the Hungarian plains turn into a morass. They're flooded, so two things happen. One is it takes away the pasture lands for their horses, cause it's the only large pasture lands that are now underwater. Two, you get malarious mosquitoes breeding in these what are now swamps, and infecting the Mongol army. And 3 is that because it's so humid, the glue on their, their bows won't coagulate and their bow strings become taut, so they lose their two most valuable kind of military arms is their bows and their horses. So, Malaria plays a one, again, one factor. Their leader also dies, and also Europe isn't as rich as, as parts of the Middle East where they eventually head down and join the Crusades. So there's multiple factors again, but one of the factors is this, this climate change and the flooding of the, and we can, there's tree rings that, you know, back this up and all the, the, the scientific evidence, but These wet wet conditions rob them of the Hungarian plain grasslands, where at the same time it turns them into, you know, mosquito breeding grounds, and malaria starts to sap the Mongols as well. Um, SO that's one, and the other one is Kublai Khan, when he tries to invade what is now Southeast Asia, and the Khmhmer civilization is usually when you attack, you attack during the dry season, and if you can't take or hold it, you vacate during the rainy season. He keeps his army in Southeast Asia during the rainy season. And they get absolutely crushed by malaria, which is why the Mongols are never able to really take or fortify um Southeast Asia and in their later kind of imperial push with Kublai Khan in both Japan and then into Southeast Asia as well.

43:39 Ricardo Lopes: So and during European colonization of the Americas and Africa, uh we've already talked about the presence of mosquitoes in both places, but, and we know of course that Europeans took some of their pathogens to the. Americans and it was one of the biggest factors in in how many people died there because the indigenous peoples there were not exposed to those pathogens before the arrival of Europeans, but did the mosquitoes also play a role during colonization?

44:19 Timothy Winegard: Yes, so again, the Aedes aegypti is brought to the Americas uh on slave ships as a as a stowaway. And then finds a sanguine home and. South America, Central America, and then eventually the southern colonies of the United States. Um, AND then those pathogens that, that she spreads are introduced, specifically yellow, yellow fever is the big one in the tropics of the Americas. It's a huge killer yellow fever. And there's Anopheles mosquitoes in both the Africa or or the old world, if you will, and there's Anopheles mosquitoes in the Americas. But when Pangaea separates, they've essentially had 100 million years of different evolution. So there is no malaria in the Americas until Columbus comes over and some of the soldiers and sailors have malaria, and these American Anopheles mosquitoes who have never seen malaria, bite the Spanish, and then they quickly start transmitting malaria in the Americas. So that's how these pathogens and mosquitoes get to the Americas or they're already here, pathogen-free and the pathogen malaria is introduced to the Anopheles mosquitoes in the Americas. And yeah, indigenous people, upwards of 95 million indigenous people die of European disease. That's about 95%. There's arguably 100 million indigenous peoples across the Western Hemisphere when, when Columbus is 8000 miles lost and arrives to the Americas. And it's, uh, I mean, it, they, it, disease including malaria and yellow fever just devastate indigenous people. 95% are dead within the next kind of 200 years of, of disease because They, they're not, haven't been exposed to European diseases. Smallpox is the biggest killer, um, but even things like whooping cough or, you know, pertussis, like there's so many, and it's largely because of differentiation of economies between Europe and what happens in the Americas and Farming and not domesticating animals because most of our diseases come, they're spillover, they're zoonotic diseases, they're spillovers from other animals. So by not domesticating animals on a large scale in the Americas, they don't have these diseases where Europeans domesticate these animals anywhere from 8. Well, across the Eurasian Steppe, 8000 to 6000 BCE when we look at goats, sheep, chickens, cattle, pigs, and horses are a little bit later, 3500 BCE. So, They, these spillover diseases come to the Europeans, but they're, but they're still dying, but not, not to that extent. They're, they have some immunity to them by that time, whereas indigenous peoples, it's a, it's pretty horrific. Piece of, of poisonous history if you will,

47:16 Ricardo Lopes: yeah, yeah, for sure, so uh we've already talked a little bit about or touched on the British Empire, so uh were mosquitoes also a factor in the creation of Great Britain?

47:31 Timothy Winegard: Yeah, so why European countries want colonies is something called mercantilism. Essentially they rape the raw resources from these colonies, they ship it back to the mother country in Europe, they turn it into usable goods, and then sell these usable usable goods back to their, their colonists at an inflated price. And so all European mother countries, if you will, Spain, Portugal, Britain, uh, France, and the Netherlands to a lesser extent have these mercantilist economies and, and, and essentially it benefits, it's all designed to benefit the mother country. The colonists are just used as essentially a, uh, an export market. So, the more colonies you have, the more raw resources you have, and the more export markets you have for these resources being turned into. To usable goods sold and taxed at a higher price and then the mother country benefits. It's one of the causes of the American Revolution, uh, the Cuban Revolution, uh, you know, the, the Haitian Revolution with Toussaint Louverture. I mean, it's one of the causes of all these revolutions with Simon Bolivar in South America and, and the rest of it is Mexico included. They want to break free of these mercantilist economies and have capitalism so they can sell their stuff to anybody. So, What happens is Scotland is not included in the English mercantilist economy, so Scotland can't benefit from England's Empire. And so Scotland wants to create its own empire, rightfully so, cause there's a lot of money in this. So, the Spanish had tried to punch a essentially a highway or a path through the what is now the Panama Canal, the Isthmus of Darien, the Panama, because this is obviously a huge, would be a huge boon to trade. Uh, AND they suffer horribly from, from yellow fever. And so the Scottish think that they can do this. It's called the Darien Expedition or the Darien colony, and they pump, they're already in debt, but they pump all available capital into this colonial expedition in Panama to try to create essentially a, a, a Panama highway, you know, through the isthmus for trade. And so they pump all this money in there, and it's absolutely crushed by yellow fever and mosquito-borne pathogens, and they send more settlers, and they're devastated, and so they keep pumping their money into this, and it fails miserably. Uh, AND so they're in massive debt. And so the English tell the Scottish, if you surrender your sovereignty to us in the Acts of Union, so we're talking the, the, the colonial expedition was the late 1600s, early 1700s. And so, England tells Scotland that they'll pay back all their debts or forgive all their debt. If they surrender their sovereignty and join England, creating Greater Britain, if you will. And Scotland agrees with the Acts of Union, and Robbie Burns, the poet has problems with this, and writes about this, and the Acts of Union are signed, and Scotland, this is the orig origin of the creation of Greater Britain, and it is due to mosquitoes in the wilds of Panama. Um, SO, again, it, it, it's a. Unbelievable story when you connect the dots between this colonial failed colonial expedition and then the outcome is, I mean, we're living it still today with, with, with Scotland, and I mean, I know they have some political independence now, but that's very recent. So, um, there's, I guess one example of hundreds of the impact of, of mosquito-borne pathogens in shaping and creating or at least altering the trajectory of, of human history or geopolitics.

51:09 Ricardo Lopes: Did the mosquito also play a role in the American Civil War?

51:14 Timothy Winegard: So indirectly, yes, because again, if we look at the malarial burden in the US, um, not yellow fever in the Civil War, it was, it was because the blockades, the Anaconda Plan or the blockade of the South by the US Navy largely kept the US free of these yellow fever epidemics that would come up from the Caribbean. Uh, SO it was the endemic malaria that's already in the South and along the Mississippi River watershed and the southern colonies. So, It prolongs the war essentially, um, because when we look at the Peninsula Campaign by General McClellan, uh, he himself gets malaria and delays the advance of Union soldiers towards Richmond, which gives the Confederates and General Lee, who's now in command by that time, even more time. To reinforce their defenses around the hills of Richmond, because when McClellan, he gets malaria actually at Yorktown, back to where the British are crushed by malaria during the revolution. And so it, it Creates a bit of a snafu during the peninsula Campaign. He tries to attack Richmond. He's defeated and pushed back. The Confederates counterattack and essentially drive the Union back out. And so, the Union war planners, even before the war, are fearful of what they call the Memphis line. So anything south of this Memphis line, they, they're very fearful of sending their troops because of malaria. So, in, in that way, it helps prolong the Civil War because it's not short in part because of these malarial zones in what are these Confederate states along the Mississippi River watershed and then um in the Carolinas and even Virginia. So, it prolongs the war and allows Lincoln to fire. The the original war aim was to preserve the economic integrity of the Union. But as the war drags on, partly because of malaria, he adds another war aim, which is obviously the abolition of slavery. So, and then eventually malaria comes back and bites the Confederates because it starts to again bleed the vitality of not only their army, but their workforce and their civilians, uh, as well. So, it's kind of a, a, a two-pronged influence on the Civil War. Um, AND the death rates from malaria aren't huge, but again, even if you're not dying, you're still sick and you can't do your job. And I always say that a wounded soldier is worse than a dead soldier, and I don't mean that to be, um, immoral or, uh, you know. Do not have a heart, but if you're a wounded soldier, you're still taking up resources. Whereas if you're dead, you're not taking up resources. So the think of malaria like that, where if you're not dead, you're, you're sick for months, and you're still taking up resources, and you can't fight, you can't farm, um, you can't sail your ship up the Mississippi to deliver supplies to Vicksburg. I mean, whatever it is. So, it starts just like Rome, it starts to bleed, slowly bleed the Confederacy as the Anaconda plan is just choking any supply lines into the Confederacy.

54:23 Ricardo Lopes: So, uh, let me ask you about one more historic event and then I have just one final question. Earlier, you've already told us a little bit about, uh, the sort of role that intentionally and also unintentionally and unintentionally the mosquito played in World War II, but uh tell us more about that. I mean, in, in which ways were mosquitoes a factor there?

54:50 Timothy Winegard: So, in the European um theater, we have high malaria rates in North Africa, uh, Sicily, obviously in Italy, uh, but in the Pacific theater, and I'll, I'll kind of paraphrase to quote General MacArthur, who's in, in command of the, the US forces in the Pacific, is, this is gonna be a very long war if for every division I have fighting, I have another division on leave and another division in the hospital suffering from malaria. And so he tells essentially the general staff um of the US military and, and the, the politicians that be at that time in, in the, the War Department that we need to have a solution to malaria because it's again depleting um. The vitality of my army and it's depleting the punching power. So the US creates something called the Malaria Project, which is given equal scope of secrecy to the Manhattan Project to developing nuclear weapons. Um, AND so what comes out of this is DDT, um, and chloroquine, uh, and certain malarial prophylactics, if you will. And I mean, Walt Disney's involved in this with, with. Uh, MOVIES for the troops, the wing and, um, wing and enemy movies for the troops about malaria. Doctor Zeuss is writing pamphlets, uh, cause he was part of the War Department before he was Doctor Seuss about the ills of malaria, and the, this is Anne, she's dying to meet you. It's a very risque kind of sexual, um, little pamphlet that's given to soldiers. So there's a huge campaign, this anti-malarial campaign, whether it's propaganda to The troops, whether it's safety instructions to the troops done through Disney movies or Doctor Seuss pamphlets. Um, BUT what comes out of this is DDT, which is a miraculous mosquito killer, despite the fact that it enters the food chain and, and kills a lot of other things including us. Uh, IT does rid the world. It, it's the reason we don't have malaria in Canada anymore or in the US anymore is DDT. It is a, it's a, it does what it's intended to do. It it also has huge ramifications on other animals and including us with cancers, but. So I'm not promoting the use of DDT, but so, it, uh, and so we're spraying um areas of operation. By 1943, we're spraying areas of operation. The Allies are in the Pacific and in Europe with with DDT and other mosquito repellents, if you will, um, to try to limit the burden of malaria on our soldiers. And then, as I said, um, the Nazis, um, Mussolini drains the pontine marshes to reclaim that land for farmland, and it's actually one of the remarkable things that he does, whether trains run on time or not, I don't care, but he drains the pontine marshes and he force relocates peasants to these, I guess, purposefully um erected cities in these pontine in what was the Pontine Marshes, and malaria rates drop by about 90%. And so the, the Germans re-flood the Pontine marshes and then add the mosquitoes specifically as a biological weapon during the Anzio landings in

58:09 Ricardo Lopes: 43. So, uh, one last question then, and we've already ended up touching on it a little bit earlier, but, uh, and particularly also when I mentioned that now with increasing global warming, probably mosquitoes are going to become more of a factor, more of a problem in more, uh, societies and countries across the globe. But what is the impact of the mosquito in contemporary society?

58:40 Timothy Winegard: Uh, uh, uh, THE mosquito is still the biggest killer of, of humans of any animal, um, including ourselves. Um, I mean, the rates are less than they were in the past, really in the last 50 years, we see the rates decreasing because we're getting. A slight grip on malaria, but we're seeing the rates of dengue go up, which doesn't have the lethality of malaria, but again, you're still seeing a lot of, uh, I mean, a lot of the attraction of dengue. It's the fastest growing mosquito-borne pathogen on the planet. And as I mentioned earlier, somewhere between 5, 5.5 billion people are currently at risk of dengue, um, in the world. So. With global warming, and again, we're seeing mosquitoes that hitherto weren't in these places and now are. And so what's happening is northern wealthy countries are now having or going to start to have to pay attention to mosquitoes. Whereas before we looked, the wealthy countries of Europe and Canada and the United States, we looked at malaria and yellow fever as a problem in lesser developed countries or poorer countries where it's out of sight, out of mind. It's their problem, not ours. Uh, AND so, funding for research and development for malaria vaccines or dengue vaccines or whatever else is, is put on the shelf because there's no purchasing power to buy these medications, where it's like, oh, I'd rather put my money in to develop something for cancer or for AIDS, where I can make money back off what I'm producing in my R&D. So we see stagnation in any R&D to find solutions to malaria or yellow fever because it didn't exist in wealthy countries. That's starting to change with, with global warming and the proliferation of these mosquitoes in hitherto untapped northern climes. So, we are going to start seeing wealthy countries, I guess, be forced to pay attention. To mosquito-borne pathogens. And as I mentioned, we have domestic cases of malaria now in Florida. We have domestic cases of dengue and chikungunya in the United States, um, and on top of West Nile. So, What we are seeing in the last kind of 20 years is, I guess, some movement or a shift into developing or trying to develop vaccines or um medical shields to these diseases, which is a good thing.

1:01:12 Ricardo Lopes: Mhm. Great, so the book is again The Mosquito A Human History of Our Deadliest Predator. I'm of course leaving a link to it in the description, um, and Doctor Weingar, just before we go, would you like to tell people where they can find you and your work on the internet?

1:01:29 Timothy Winegard: Uh, I am not on the internet. I have no social media, uh, I never have, and I never will, and shockingly I've survived just fine, uh, so I, I, I mean, I, I come from a very small town in Canada and I, I like my privacy. I love my job at the university. I love coaching my hockey team. I love my family, but I, I like to, to, pardon the pun, I like to fly under the radar just like the mosquito. Uh, AND, uh, so I have no social media. Um, OBVIOUSLY, I've done tons of interviews that are all over the internet and, and, but, uh, I, I, I like, I like my privacy.

1:02:08 Ricardo Lopes: No, that's completely fair. So thank you so much again for taking the time to come on the show. It's been a fascinating conversation.

1:02:15 Timothy Winegard: You're very welcome. Thank you for having me.

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