TED英語演講：我與蚊子的愛恨情仇

你真的瞭解蚊子嗎?蚊子到底有多危險?人們爲了抵禦蚊子傳播疾病到底使出過多少解數?本期TED講者Fredros Okumu即是蚊子專家，他的講演將給你帶來全新的抵禦蚊子祕籍。他夢想有一天，我們的世界免受蚊子之苦，我們的夜晚變得更佳安寧。且看科學家怎樣用科學傳遞愛，用科學捍衛生命。下面是小編爲大家收集關於TED英語演講：我與蚊子的愛恨情仇，歡迎借鑑參考。

Why I study the most dangerous animal on earth — mosquitoe

演講者：Fredros Okumu

| 中英對照演講稿 |

I guess because I'm from Tanzania I have a responsibility to welcome all of you once again. Thank you for coming.

我猜，由於我來自坦桑尼亞我有責任再次歡迎你們，謝謝你們的到來。

So, first of all, before we start, how many of you in the audience have been in the past a victim of this bug here? We apologize on behalf of all the mosquito catchers.

在演講開始前，首先我想問一下各位在座的朋友是否都受過蚊蟲叮咬之苦?我代表所有捕蚊者向大家道歉。

Ladies and gentlemen, imagine getting seven infectious mosquito bites every day. That's 2,555 infectious bites every I was in college, I moved to the Kilombero River valley in the southeastern part of Tanzania. This is historically one of the most malariouszones in the world at that time. Life here was difficult. In its later stages malaria manifested with extreme seizures locally known as degedege. It's killed both women and men, adults and children, without mercy.

女士們，先生們想象一下，如果每天被攜帶傳染源的蚊子叮咬7次那一年就是2555次。我上大學的時候，搬到了坐落於坦桑尼亞南部的基隆貝羅河谷村。在當時，那裏是有史以來全世界瘧疾的高發區。那兒的生活很艱辛在瘧疾晚期它主要表現爲極嚴重的抽搐，當地稱爲“degedege"無論男女老少都難以倖免。

My home institution, Ifakara HealthInstitute, began in this valley in the 1950s to address priority health needsfor the local communities. In fact, the name Ifakara refers to a place you go to die, which is a reflection of what life used to be here in the days before organized public health care. When I first moved here, my primary role was toestimate how much malaria transmission was going on across the villages and which mosquitoes were transmitting the disease.

我家鄉的研究機構，‘Ifakara研究所‘於上世紀50年代在這個村莊成立爲當地社區提供重要的健康保障。實際上，Ifakara的意思是人死時會去的地方它反映了沒有公共醫療保障之前當地的生活狀況。當我第一次搬到這裏來的時候我主要的工作就是去估計在這個村子裏有多少瘧疾傳播的案例並找出是哪種蚊子在傳播疾病。

So my colleague and myself came 30 kilometers south of Ifakara town across the river. Every evening we went into the villages with flashlights and siphons. We rolled up our trousers, and waited for mosquitoes that were coming to bite us so we could collect them to check if they were carrying malaria.

爲此，我和同事來到跨過河30公里以外的ifakara鎮以南。每晚我們都帶着手電筒和虹吸管去村子裏我們捲起褲管等着蚊子來叮咬我們因此，我們可以收集它們檢查它們是否攜帶瘧疾病毒。

My colleague and myself selected ahousehold, and we started inside and outside, swapping positions every half hour. And we did this for 12 hours every night for 24 consecutive nights. We slept for four hours every morning and worked the rest of the day, sorting mosquitoes, identifying them and chopping off their heads so they could be analyzed in the lab to check if they were carrying malaria parasites in their blood mouthparts. This way we were able to not only know how much malaria was going on here but also which mosquitoes were carrying this malaria. We were also able to know whether malaria was mostly inside houses or outside houses.

我和同事選了一戶人家然後我們開始屋裏屋外站崗，每隔半小時換一班，每晚值班12個小時，連續幹了24個晚上。我們每天早上睡4個小時其餘時間都一直工作我們將收集到的蚊子分類，辨認它們並切下它們的頭這樣它們就可以被送到實驗室裏去分析了看它們帶血的口器裏是否攜帶瘧原蟲。這樣，我們不僅知道有多少例瘧疾發生也知道是哪種蚊子攜帶瘧疾源我們還可以知道瘧疾是常在屋內感染還是在屋外。

Today, ladies and gentlemen, I still catch mosquitoes for a living. But I do this mostly to improve people's lives and well-being. This has been called by some people the most dangerous animal on earth -- which unfortunately is true. But what do we really know about mosquitoes? It turns out we actually know very little.

女士們，先生們，如今我還是靠捕蚊爲生但主要是爲了延長人們的壽命，改善他們的生活。有些人說，這是世界上最危險的動物不幸的事，事實確實如此但是我們又對蚊子瞭解多少呢?結果表明，我們對蚊子瞭解甚微。

Consider the fact that at the moment our best practice against malaria are bednets -- insecticide treated bednets. We know now that across Africa you have widespread resistance to insecticides. And these are the same insecticides, the pyrethroid class,that are put on these bednets. We know now that these bednets protect you from bites but only minimally kill the mosquitoes that they should. What it means is that we've got to do more to be able to get to zero. And that's part of our duty.

事實是我們現在對抗蚊子最實際的做法是蚊帳-塗有驅蚊劑的蚊帳我們得知，在整個非洲普遍存在殺蟲劑抵抗現象蚊帳用的就是這種殺蟲劑除蟲菊素類殺蟲劑，它們被用在蚊帳上我們現在知道，蚊帳能保護我們不受叮咬，但是殺蚊效果很差，不盡人意。這意味着，我們還要採取更多措施才能把蚊蟲消滅乾淨。而這也是我們的職責。

At Ifakara Health Institute we focus verymuch on the biology of the mosquito, and we try to do this so we can identify new opportunities. A new approach. New ways to try and get new options that we can use together with things such as bednets to be able to get to zero. And I'm going to share with you a few examples of the things that my colleagues and myself do.

在Ifakara健康研究機構我們主要研究蚊子的生物學特性以便尋找新的機會發現新的途徑新的方法，來尋找其他滅蚊方式與蚊帳等傳統手段結合一同將蚊子消滅乾淨。我要給你看我和我同事做的新的東西。

Take this, for example. Mosquitoes breed in small pools of water. Not all of them are easy to find -- they can be scattered across villages, they can be as small as hoofprints. They can be behind yourhouse or far from your house. And so, if you wanted to control mosquito larvae,it can actually be quite difficult to get them. What my colleagues and I have decided to do is to think about what if we used mosquitoes themselves to carry the insecticides from a place of our choice to their own breeding habitats so that whichever eggs they lay there shall not survive.

比如說這個，蚊子在小水窪裏繁殖並不是所有的蚊子都容易發現有的散佈在村子各處有的像蹄印一樣小有的就在你家後院，有的卻離你房子很遠。因此要想控制住蚊子卵也是很困難的。我和我的同事決定要做的是想讓蚊子自己將殺蚊劑從我們指定的地點帶到它們繁殖的棲息地消滅那個地方所有的蚊卵。

This is Dickson Lwetoijera. This is my colleague who runs this show at Ifakara. And he has demonstrated cleverly that you can actually get mosquitoes to come to the place where they normally come to get blood to pick up a dose of sterilants or insecticide, carry this back to their own breeding habitat and kill all their progeny. And we have demonstrated that you can do this and crush populations very, very rapidly. This is beautiful.

這是狄更斯·維託傑亞我的同事，在Ifakara展示這一試驗他聰明的驗證了可以讓蚊子從它常去採血的地方採到帶有殺菌劑或者殺蟲劑的血液然後把它們帶到它們的繁殖地殺掉它們所有的蟲卵。並且，我們可以證實你可以做到並很快的減少蚊子的數量這太美了。

This is our mosquito city. It is the largest mosquito farm available in the world for malaria research. Here we have large-scale self-sustaining colonies of malaria mosquitoes that we rear in these facilities. Of course, they are disease-free. But what these systems allow usto do is to introduce new tools and test them immediately, very quickly, and see if we can crush these populations or control them in some way. And my colleagues have demonstrated that if you just put two or three positions where mosquitoes can go pick up these lethal substances, we can crush these coloniesin just three months. That's auto dissemination, as we call it.

這是我們的蚊子城市。這是全世界最大的蚊子養殖基地用於支持對瘧疾的研究。在這個基地裏，我們養了一大批自給自足的瘧疾蚊子羣體。當然，它們是不攜帶任何疾病的這些系統使我們可以引進新技術並立即投入試驗非常快並看看我們是否能消滅蚊子種羣或者設法控制它們我的同事也證明了只需在兩三個地方投放致命物質讓蚊子去採集，我們就可以將蚊羣在三個月內消滅乾淨。我們稱它爲：自動化播散。

But what if we could use the mosquitoes'sexual behavior to also control them? So, first of all I would like to tell you that actually mosquitoes mate in what we call swarms. Male mosquitoes usually congregate in clusters around the horizon, usually after sunset. The males go there for a dance, the females fly into that dance and select a male mosquito of their choice, usually the best-looking male in their view.

但是我們是否可以利用蚊子的性行爲來控制它們?首先，我想跟你們說的是蚊子其實是聚衆交配的，公蚊子通常成羣結隊的聚集在地表面，太陽落山後公蚊子去那裏跳舞母蚊子也過去跳舞，並挑選一個她們看上的公蚊子，——通常是那個看起來最英俊的。

They clump together and fall down onto the floor. If you watch this, it's beautiful. It'sa fantastic phenomenon. This is where our mosquito-catching work gets really interesting. What we have seen, when we go swarm hunting in the villages, isthat these swarm locations tend to be at exactly the same location every day,every week, every month, year in, year out. They start at exactly the same time of the evening, and they are at exactly the same locations.

它們聚集在一起，然後落到地上你要看到這景象，你也會認爲很美。這真是一個太棒的現象了這就是我們捕蚊工作的好玩之處當我們到村裏的沼澤去捕蚊子的時候會發現，這些沼澤地總是固定不動的每天，每週，每個月年復一年。它們每晚都在相同的時間開始交配，它們也去相同的地點。

What does this tell us? It means that if we can map all these locations across villages, we could actually crush these populations by just a single blow. Kind of, you know,bomb-spray them or nuke them out. And that is what we try to do with young menand women across the villages. We organize these crews, teach them how to identify the swarms, and spray them out. My colleagues and I believe we have a new window to get mosquitoes out of the valley.

這給我們有什麼啓發呢?這就意味着，如果我們可以在村子裏找到這些地點我們就能把這些蚊子一網打盡。就像，用炸彈覆蓋或者核武器一樣消滅它們那就是我們和青年男女在村子裏嘗試做的事我們把這幫人組織起來，教他們如何去辨認蚊羣並噴灑藥物殺死它們。我和我的同事相信我們有新的機會將蚊子趕出村子。

But perhaps the fact that mosquitoes eat blood, human blood, is the reason they are the most dangerous animal on think about it this way -- mosquitoes actually smell you. And they have developed incredible sensory organs. They can smell from as far sometimes as100 meters away. And when they get closer, they can even tell the difference between two family members.

但是事實是，這些蚊子吸血，吸人類的血這就是爲什麼他們是世上最危險的動物但是，請這樣想-蚊子實際上是聞到了你的氣味而它們進化出了不可思議的感覺器官它們可以聞到100米開外的氣味它們離你很近的時候連一家的兩個不同成員都能區分出來。

They know who you are based on what you produce from your breath, skin, sweat and body odor. What we have done at Ifakara is to identify what it is in your skin, your body, your sweat or your breath that these mosquitoes like. Once we identified these substances, we created aconcoction, kind of a mixture, a blend of synthetic substances that are reminiscent of what you produce from your body. And we made a synthetic blend that was attracting three to five times more mosquitoes than a human being.

它們通過你呼出的氣體，皮膚分泌物，汗液，體味就能知道你是誰。我們在Ifakara做的是去鑑別來自你皮膚，你身體，汗液和呼吸中那些蚊子喜歡的東西。一旦我們找到這種物質，我們就可以做一種混合劑一種合成物質接近人類的體味。我們做了一個合成的混合物它吸引蚊子數量是人類能夠吸引的3-5倍。

What can you do with this? You put in a trap, lure a lot of mosquitoes and you kill them, right? And of course, you can also use it for surveillance. AtIfakara we wish to expand our knowledge on the biology of the mosquito; to control many other diseases, including, of course, the malaria, but also those other diseases that mosquitoes transmit like dengue, Chikungunya and Zikavirus.

你可以用這個做什麼?你埋下陷阱，吸引大批的蚊子，然後再殺死它們，對吧?當然，它還可以起到監視作用在Ifakara我們希望可以拓展我們在蚊子的生物學方面的知識去控制其它的疾病，當然包括瘧疾在內還有通過蚊子傳播的其他疾病諸如登革熱，奇昆古尼亞熱病和寨卡病毒。

And this is why my colleagues, for example -- we have looked at the fact that some mosquitoes like to bite you on the leg region. And we've now created these mosquito repellent sandals that tourists and locals can wear when they'recoming. And you don't get bitten -- this gives you 'round the clock protection until the time you go under your bednet.

這也是爲什麼我的同事，比方說我們發現某些蚊子喜歡叮你的大腿。我們爲此也發明了驅蚊涼鞋保護遊人和當地人免遭蚊蟲叮咬因爲這會給你隨時隨地的保護直到你回到你的蚊帳裏去。

My love-hate relationship with mosquitoes continues.

我與蚊子的愛恨情仇還在繼續。

And it's going to go a long way, I can that's OK. WHO has set a goal of 2030 to eliminate malaria from 35countries. The African Union has set a goal of 2030 to eliminate malaria from the continent. At Ifakara we are firmly behind these goals. And we've put together a cohort of young scientists, male and female, who are champions, who are interested in coming together to make this vision come true. They do what they can to make it work. And we are supporting them. We are here to make sure that these dreams come true.

我也知道滅蚊之路仍然任重道遠。但是，這也不錯。世衛組織定了一個目標，在2030年消滅35個國家的瘧疾。非洲聯合國家也定了個目標在2030年將消滅非洲大陸的瘧疾。在Ifakara,我們緊隨目標我們集合了一大批青年科學家男女都有他們是勝利者願意聚集在一起實現目標。他們盡其所能去實現目標。而我們在支持他們。我們來到這就是爲了使這個夢想成真。

Ladies and gentlemen, even if it doesn't happen in our lifetime, even if it doesn't happen before you and me go away, I believe that your child and my child shall inherit a world free of malaria transmitting mosquitoes and free of malaria. Thank you very much, ladies and k you.

女士們，先生們即便這一夢想沒有在我們有生之年起作用我相信你的孩子，我的孩子、也會享受一個沒有傳播瘧疾的蚊子也沒有瘧疾的世界。女士們，先生們。非常感謝。

Kelo Kubu: OK, Fredros. Let's talk about CRISPR for a bit.

凱勒·庫巴：好的，費蘭德我們來聊點兒CRISPR吧

It's taken the world by storm, it promises to do amazing things. What do you think of scientists using CRISPR to kill off mosquitoes?

這讓整個世界很是震撼它預示着能夠做很多不可思議的事情，你怎麼看科學家用CRISPR消滅蚊子。

Fredros Okumu: To answer this question,let's start from what the problem is. First of all, we're talking about a disease that still kills -- according to the latest figures we have from WHO -- 429,000 people. Most of these are African children. Of course, we've made progress,there are countries that have achieved up to 50-60 percent reduction in malaria burden. But we still have to do more to get to zero. There is already proof of principle that gene-editing techniques, such as CRISPR, can be used effectively to transform mosquitoes so that either they do not transmit malaria -- we call this population alteration -- or that they no longer exist, population suppression. This is already proven in the lab.

費蘭德：要回答這個問題，我們就得先說一下問題的實質首先，我們講的是一個可以致人死亡的疾病據世貿衛生組織最新數字表明已有429,000人因此而死亡多數是非洲兒童當然，我們還是有成效的有些國家已經減少了50-60%的瘧疾死亡率但是要達到零死亡，還需要時間已經有證據表明基因編輯技術，比如CRISPR可以有效的用來改造蚊子，是他們不再傳播瘧疾我們稱它爲人口替換抑或是他們根本就不復存在了蚊子數量驟減這些已經通過實驗證實了。

There is also modeling work that has demonstrated that even if you were to release just a small number of these genetically modified mosquitoes, that you can actually achieve eliminationvery, very quickly. So, CRISPR and tools like this offer us some real opportunities -- real-life opportunities to have high-impact interventions that we can use in addition to what we have now to eventually go to zero. This is , of course people always ask us -- which is a common question, I guess you're going to ask this as well -- "What happens if you eliminate mosquitoes?"

有一個樣板課題已經證明了即使你去釋放少量這種經基因改造後的蚊子就可以讓你快速將蚊子消滅光。因此，CRISPR和類似的工具提供給我們真正的機會-存在於現實生活中的高效能干擾機會可以供我們使用來增強我們現在所有的直到最後直到完全消滅這很重要現在，當然很多人都在問我們這也是一個很普遍的問題我猜想你也會這樣問“你們把所有的蚊子都消滅了又怎樣?”

KK: I won't ask then, you answer.

凱：那我就不問了，你回答吧

FO: OK. In respect to this, I would just like to remind my colleagues that we have 3,500 mosquito species in this e more than that. About 400 of these are Anophelenes, and only about 70 of them have any capacity to transmit malaria. In Africa, we're having to deal with three or four of these as the major guys. They carry most -- like 99 percent of all the malaria we have. If we were to go out with gene editing like CRISPR, if we were to go out with gene drives to control malaria, we would be going after only one or two.

費蘭德：好的，鑑於這問題，我需要提醒我的同事告訴他們，在這世上有3500種蚊子或許比這還多。這其中400種是按蚊它們當中的70是有能力傳播瘧疾的。在非洲我們要去處理大概3到4個這種大傢伙它們能夠攜帶我們所擁有的99%的瘧疾。如果我們要利用像CRISPR基因改造系統，如果我們要利用基因去控制瘧疾，我們就只需要控制一兩種。

I don't see a diversity problem with that. But that's personal view. I think it's OK. And remember, by the way, all these years we've been trying to eliminate these mosquitoes effectively by sprayingthem -- our colleagues in America have sprayed with -- really bomb-spraying these insects out of the villages. In Africa we do a lot of house hold these are aimed solely at killing the mosquitoes. So there's really noproblem if we had a new tool.

我不認爲這有什麼多元化的問題。但是那僅是我的觀點我認爲這很好要記住，還有，在這些年來我們一直在嘗試去有效率的通過噴霧來消滅它們-我在美國的同事用炸彈噴霧工具來消滅將整個村子裏的蟲子在非洲，我們用了很多家用噴蚊子的方法所有這些都僅僅只能夠殺滅蚊子因此我們再發明個新工具也是沒問題的。

But having said that, I have to say we also have to be very, very responsible here. So there's the regulatory side, and we have to partner with our regulators and make sure that everything that we do is done correctly, is done responsibly and that we also have to do independ entrisk assessments, to just make sure that all these processes do not fall into the wrong hands. Thank you very much.

雖然我那樣說，但是我還是不得不說我也該越來越負責的說但是，我們也有監管的，我們要與我們的監管人合作要確保我們做的所有事都正確，都做的很負責任我們還要去做獨立的風險測定僅僅爲了確保整個過程萬無一失。十分感謝

KK: Thank you.(Applause)

謝謝(掌聲)