WSU News Archive

By Linda Weiford, WSU News

 

 

WSU scientist Terry McElwain, considered a national leader in diseases that infect humans and animals, addresses an overflow crowd of freshmen in the CUB.

PULLMAN, Wash. - Washington State University’s infectious disease expert Terry McElwain began his recent presentation to 450 freshmen by admitting that he’d never before lectured to first-year college students.

Nothing like a PowerPoint photograph of the anthrax-laced envelope mailed to NBC news anchor Tom Brokaw in the wake of 9/11 to lock in their attention.

The powdery white anthrax spores, first delivered by mail inside letters 11 years ago this week, infected 22 people along the East Coast, killing five, McElwain told the crowd in the CUB junior ballroom. Post offices closed. Subways stopped running. Congressional offices were evacuated. Testing laboratories were taxed.

 

"Most of you were just seven or eight when this was going on, but I’m sure you’re aware of its significance. A deadly infectious agent was used as a terrorist weapon against people in the United States,” he said.

 

The fact that contagious microbes can be unleashed naturally - such as jumping from birds to people - and intentionally - as when placed inside envelopes and dropped in the mail - was a wake-up call to a nation already made uneasy by the unexpected appearance of AIDS, West Nile Virus and avian influenza.

 

"The events of 9/11 placed more focus on the threat of biological threats and how unprepared the public health infrastructure was to deal with them,” said McElwain. This, in turn, spurred an increase in government funding for detection, surveillance and research of infectious agents, he said.

All of which McElwain knows plenty about. As associate director of WSU’s Paul G. Allen School for Global Animal Health and executive director of the Washington Animal Disease Diagnostic Laboratory, he is regarded as an authority on zoonotic diseases - those that can infect both animals and humans.

"We know that 60 percent of the diseases that infect humans have their origins in animals,” ranging from mad cow disease and the plague to avian flu, he told the students.

"A more populated, globally connected world makes it easier for infectious diseases to jump from one species to another and from one continent to another,” he said.

Even Butch the Cougar turned out for the lecture on global pandemics.

How tiny menaces have shaped big changes in human history is not only the stuff of headlines and bad dreams but also a topic of the new WSU freshmen course, "History 105 - Roots of Contemporary Issues.” The course is required for most freshmen. McElwain was its first invited speaker, said Jesse Spohnholz, associate professor and one of four WSU historians who designed the curriculum.

"Our current theme is ‘Our Shrinking World,’ and, in this case, how it has contributed to global pandemics and how it’s likely to contribute to them in the future,” said Spohnholz. "The idea is for students to understand the interconnection between history and infectious diseases.

 

"These diseases don’t just happen,” he said. "Often they’re the result of a complex alignment of ecological factors where human and animal populations play a role, as do agricultural practices and transportation.”

 

McElwain used the influenza pandemic of 1918 to get that point across to the students. The highly contagious scourge struck the world with vengeance during autumn, he said. An estimated 50 million people died worldwide.

 

Large numbers of WWI soldiers coming and going on ships and railroad cars contributed to the virus’ rapid spread, he said, while projecting a black and white photograph of a makeshift emergency hospital in Kansas where hundreds of sick young men lie in rows of cots.

 

In 2005, by reconstructing the lethal virus that infected those men and so many other young adults, teams of scientists announced that it was a bird flu that had jumped to humans. Because it mutated to become highly contagious between people, scientists are closely monitoring the bird flu strain circulating in Asia in case it, too, transforms to spread easily from person to person, said McElwain.

"By genetically sequencing the 1918 influenza virus, we have begun to identify what makes a flu virus able to spread so readily among people, a key factor in making a virus capable of causing a pandemic,” he said.

"The avian influenza virus you hear about in the news each year is adapting. Around the globe, we’re keeping a close eye on it,” he told the crowd. "Whether it’s bird flu, West Nile Virus or foot-and-mouth disease, a fast, effective response isn’t likely without good, solid surveillance systems in place.”

After McElwain’s presentation, studentsgathered their laptops and notebooks and exited the CUB into the cool September evening. But some, like Darcy Austin, paused to consider the dangers carried by infectious agents - which, until that night, she knew next to nothing about, she said.

"I can’t believe how crazy it is out there, the way all those diseases spread - by pigs, by birds, by mosquitoes, by airplanes. I had no idea!” said the wide-eyed freshman.

 

As for the bespectacled baby boomer scientist who delivered the lecture, she said: "He was so cool. He really made me think. When it comes to microbes, it’s a zoo out there.”

 

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