On the west coast when it comes to natural disasters they have earthquakes the Heartland has tornadoes the South has hurricanes here in the Northeast our natural disaster is Lyme disease and the cause of this natural disaster disease-carrying ticks but scientists think they can stop this pest by genetically engineering another [Music] Nantucket Island the sleepy and idyllic summer paradise has a tick problem ticks are the main transmitters of Lyme disease a bacterial infection that can cause fevers fatigue and rashes if left untreated infection can spread to the joints heart and even the nervous system causing serious long-term health problems according to the CDC more than 300,000 Americans are diagnosed with Lyme disease each year but on Nantucket Island up to 40% of residents have been diagnosed according to a local health official how serious is the Lyme disease issue here in Nantucket in about another week my office will be 50 or 60 percent take 40 illnesses with no FDA approved vaccine on the market scientists at MIT Harvard and Tufts think that they found an alternative but controversial solution using the power of genetic editing specifically in a little mouse they call the proposal mice against ticks ecologist have known for quite some time that the white-footed Mouse is the primary reservoir not just of Lyme disease but of pretty much every major tick borne disease in the northeastern United States ticks aren’t born infected they get infected when they bite their first prey typically that’sa weight footed Mouse the chain of transmission starts when a tick bites a white-footed Mouse carrying Lyme disease the tick gets infected and then usually moves on to bite a deer work continues to feed and reproduce and with few natural predators deer populations have exploded increasing the spread of ticks and the odds that you’re bitten by one so what’s the solution we want to heritable immunize the local white-footed mice that are responsible for infecting most ticks so the idea is if we can immunize all of the mice then we can disrupt the chain of transmission in other words if mice can’t carry Lyme disease then they can’t pass it on to the ticks who bite them to immunize Nantucket’s mice population s Felton is collaborators that bring them in woman’s proposed hospital hacking into the white-footed Mouse is genetic code how are you genetically altering the mice to make them to Lyme disease some mice in nature are immune they acquire immunity naturally just like our bodies acquired immunity when we get a cold so this one actually has its door closed which means that there’s a mouse in it oh yeah hey little guy let’s take the unity genes from some mice that have evolved natural resistance let’s encode them in the mouse genome such that their descendants will be protected from birth to do that scientists isolate the genetic code for Lyme disease immunity from the few wild mice that naturally have it then they can edit that special code into many more mice any offspring of these modified mice would inherit Lyme disease immunity and if thousands of modified mice were released in the untuk –it they could pass on Lyme disease immunity to the island’s entire Mouse population these mice would be expected to be resistant to line for decades that will lead to less ticks infected which will lead to less humans effective but nobody has ever released genetically modified mammals into the wild so scientists are planning a two-year trial run they want to release thousands of modified mice onto a private uninhabited island we’re looking at candidate field trial and up and down the East Coast in a number of different states as for where the mice would come from the first few thousand for the field trial could be raised at a university but even if the scientists are happy with the trial run this bold idea has to get past the residents of Nantucket part of our goal is to draw on your knowledge of the local environment they’ll vote on whether or not to prove the project here on the island science is coming right up against small -town democracy our only economic driver here is tourism everything is connected to that the ticks and the diseases that come with it right now are an acceptable risk to live here and visit here it was to get worse let’s say we’re kind of done for my worst fear is that we’re gonna make a modification that affects a whole chain of reaction in this environment and this island is small when you make a reaction in a negative way it is going to affect us very quickly no matter how much they test this we do not know how this is gonna affect the environment five years from now ten years from now 20 years from now to address concerns like these as felt and his collaborators are working on adding an expiration date to any genetic modification it would mean that after a set number of generations the genetic changes will no longer be passed on to offspring but the technique is still in development how critical is community acceptance of this it’s vital without it the project cannot and should not go forwards in fact I think the world could use a salutary positive example of a community saying no and scientists walking away even if the people of Nantucket approve the project a full-scale release of modified mice is at least eight years away and would need approval from the EPA and possibly the FDA but if the experiment works scientists see the possibility of using it on a broader scale as a tool to stop the spread of other harmful viruses and diseases around the world if we move forwards and something goes wrong that’s on us if we choose not to use it then all of those future infections that might otherwise have been prevented that’s also on us there’s always a cost to doing nothing we need technology not just to keep the world running but also to make it betters always a cost to doing nothing we need technology not just to keep the world running but also to make it betters always a cost to doing nothing we need technology not just to keep the world running but also to make it betters always a cost to doing nothing we need technology not just to keep the world running but also to make it betters always a cost to doing nothing we need technology not just to keep the world running but also to make it betters always a cost to doing nothing we need technology not just to keep the world running but also to make it betters always a cost to doing nothing we need technology not just to keep the world running but also to make it betters always a cost to doing nothing we need technology not just to keep the world running but also to make it betters always a cost to doing nothing we need technology not just to keep the world running but also to make it better
