Sawbones: Monkey Escape

Speaker 1 Sawbones is a show about medical history, and nothing the hosts say should be taken as medical advice or opinion. It's for fun.

Speaker 1 Can't you just have fun for an hour and not try to diagnose your mystery boil?

Speaker 1 We think you've earned it. Just sit back, relax, and enjoy a moment of distraction from that weird growth.
You're worth it.

Speaker 1 All right, tomorrow meetings about some books.

Speaker 1 One, two, one, two, three, four.

Speaker 1 We came across a pharmacy with its windows blasted out.

Speaker 1 Pushed on through the broken glass and had ourselves a lucky rum. The medicines, the medicines, the escalat macabre

Speaker 1 Hello everybody and welcome to Sawbones, a marital tour of misguided medicine. I'm your co-host Justin Mackley and I'm Sidney Mackle.

Speaker 1 The hardest thing about doing video stuff, Sid, is that I have to fight my compulsion to always be

Speaker 1 crisscross applesauce in the chair like a baby. That's the way I do.
That's the way I always sit.

Speaker 1 And it's very hard to not sit crisscross applesauce like a baby, even though I know that it is bad for my posture and my health to sit that way.

Speaker 1 way it's just the way i do it i understand because for the longest time at my office my my clinic i have just been sitting on a stool specifically

Speaker 1 Our hairdresser uses uses this saddle stool. And I was so impressed with this like saddle shaped stool.
I thought it was so cool that Justin got me one for my clinic.

Speaker 1 And I just roll back and forth because it's a very small clinic from my desk to like my lab to into the exam room back.

Speaker 1 I'm just always mobile like on wheels and it's great, except it's killing my back. Yeah.
But I look so cool rolling around on my stool. I think you look cool.
Do I? No one has that.

Speaker 1 Well, even if you don't, you're gone so fast. You don't hear them make fun of you because you're on your stool.
You're like, zoom, you're gone. Now I don't know.
Now I'm questioning.

Speaker 1 What would can you imagine a conversation that someone would feel comfortable having with you where they're like, Sidney, we have to talk about the stool.

Speaker 1 I mean, you would, though. I wish, I mean, that's why

Speaker 1 Justin bought me a stool with a little like lumbar support, like back tiny, like thing on the back for me to start using ostensibly for my back pain however however

Speaker 1 is it because i didn't look cool no you look so cool babe so cool uh hey uh speaking of cool stuff that's happened uh you were telling me about a headline you were reading and i said wait wait wait sydney You could keep telling me about this and I'd love to hear it, but I'm going to deprive myself and say, let's record it.

Speaker 1 Let's record you telling me about this so we can really unpack this medical history as it happens. So Justin, I thought we would have a little fun today.

Speaker 1 Okay. I know that while you're listening to this, it is after Halloween, but we are actually recording on Halloween.
So and anything,

Speaker 1 as Mr. Curry says, anything can happen on Halloween.
Anything can.

Speaker 1 Now, this I read a story on Facebook today that when he originally filmed that scene from Worst Witch, he and the woman who was the head played the headmaster at the school

Speaker 1 was a friend of his, and she had brought a bottle of slow gin that the two of them drank all night.

Speaker 1 And he said it kept them very warm, but apparently it wasn't great for their concentration because it was basically unintelligible.

Speaker 1 And they had to make them reshoot the entire scene when they got back to London in the studio. But the end of the story was, Tim Curry said, but hooray for Jen.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Hooray for Jen.
And with the lyrics to the song, I don't know that it matters. No, it is a very sort of like

Speaker 1 ambling narrative. And thinking,

Speaker 1 Is that why the line, has anyone seen my tambourine? He might have just been sloshed like, I know I had it around here a second ago.

Speaker 1 Justin, this story did not happen on Halloween, but it sounds like the beginning of...

Speaker 1 kind of a fun scary movie one of those 28 one of those 28s yeah one of those 28s it could be the beginning of a zombie movie so i heard this story initially i was at work and my very dear friend john told me this story like did you read about this in the news and I he is a brilliant doctor of psychology and he did get some details wrong initially now I do like his version of the story better okay so thank you John because my this is what made my imagination run wild the original story said is did you hear about that truck

Speaker 1 somewhere that had like 50 monkeys in it and they were all infected with COVID and herpes and hepatitis and it crashed and all the monkeys are loose. I mean, chilling.
Can I say chilling? Yeah.

Speaker 1 Chilling. Chilling, but in the year of our Lord 2025, a mere Tuesday, I would say, honestly.

Speaker 1 Very impressive, but not out of the realm of possibilities as I understand it currently. Yeah, no, it felt right.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it felt right. And you have to know, when I heard this, I initially did not question all of the details because I thought, well,

Speaker 1 sure. Sounds good.
Yep. That sounds right.
Chuck full of monkeys, super sick, crashes. Why wouldn't it? No.
Why wouldn't it?

Speaker 1 The reason that John got some details wrong is actually not his fault. It was that the initial reporting of the story was a little inaccurate.
There were some, I don't know. I'm going to unravel this.

Speaker 1 There was some confusion as to the nature of the monkeys in terms of their health status.

Speaker 1 It's important monkeys know your status.

Speaker 1 It was confusing as to how many monkeys there were initially and what the threat to humans was. And so there were some initial details that were released that were wrong.

Speaker 1 And that was in the news. And then corrections were released.
But there's still, I mean, there's a grain. I don't know.
There's a grain of truth in this story.

Speaker 1 Media is often the first draft of history and it can take a couple passes to figure out exactly how many monkeys were on there, what kind of viruses and illnesses they had,

Speaker 1 if they were in funny costumes at all. That's a huge thing with monkeys sometimes is if you are going to be doing research, are you putting them in funny outfits that look like people?

Speaker 1 Are you dressing dressing them like a ballerina or a firefighter?

Speaker 1 Well, I don't know. You know,

Speaker 1 no one's doing a calendar with that. No one commented on whether or not the monkeys were in costume in any updated or previous versions.

Speaker 1 I'm just saying if they're going to do monkey research, there should be someone whose job it is to play with the monkeys and make sure they're having a lot of fun and whimsical time. Sure.

Speaker 1 No, that makes sense. Okay, good.
Okay, so what actually happened? I don't know. There was a truck transporting research animals.
So Rhesus

Speaker 1 monkeys. Research, I think.
Rhesus.

Speaker 1 Kind of rhesus monkeys. They're the monkeys.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I know about the rhesus monkeys. What do you know about rhesus monkeys? They're really important in evolution.
Well, they're important in DNA.

Speaker 1 And if you have seen movies where monkeys infect people,

Speaker 1 it's usually a rhesus monkey. Like, I think that in common understanding of what is a rhesus monkey, people are like, well, that's the one that got everybody sick in outbreak or something.

Speaker 1 I mean, like, right? Like, isn't that what we, if you have any sort of cultural understanding, you think about that, are these the monkeys that have things that you can catch? You can catch things.

Speaker 1 That's not really fair to the rhesus monkeys. That's really our fault.
But yeah, but they're not max fund owners, so whatever.

Speaker 1 So they're, they were transporting research animals from Tulane National Biomedical Research Center, uh, and the truck overturned on Interstate 59 in transit. It was just north of Heidelberg.

Speaker 1 A four-lane, ironically.

Speaker 1 This is in Mississippi. There were 21 rhesus monkeys on board.
Not 50. There were 21.

Speaker 1 I mean, if they're running at you all at once, that's still a lot of monkeys. And I'm not thrilled whether it's 50 or 21.
Either way, I'm running the other direction.

Speaker 1 I feel like if I'm a truck driver and they, and I have 20 monkeys in here and I'm looking at the truck like, guys, I don't know. I don't know.
I don't know.

Speaker 1 And they come to you and they're like, we got to get another 50 monkeys in this bad boy. There's no way.
There's absolutely no way.

Speaker 1 You can't account for 50 different monkeys, all those personalities, bathroom breaks, all that. It's too much.

Speaker 1 Structurally, they might write Hamlet eventually, but you're going to have to stop for the bathroom like constantly.

Speaker 1 I don't think that the truck driver was worried about stopping for the monkeys to go to the bathroom.

Speaker 1 Okay, he's going to have a big cleanup, but I guess it's his truck. Now, what the...
But the truck driver is where some of this information starts.

Speaker 1 So what was initially reported, so this truck carrying 21 monkeys

Speaker 1 did

Speaker 1 go off the interstate and flip. Okay.
And the monkeys did escape. Yeah.
Okay. Those are true elements.
Did they escape before the crash? No.

Speaker 1 Think about this for a second. Not that I'm a slit.

Speaker 1 Yeah, not that they would tell you, but I saw, I've seen all the Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes movies, and I don't remember them, but I've seen them on planes and stuff.

Speaker 1 And I feel like maybe they started that. I feel like 21 monkeys.
Heck, 15 monkeys working together could take the truck. If they, yes, if they were cooperating.

Speaker 1 15 minimum. But I mean, they probably are like they're social creatures.
They probably were cooperating. Yeah, but how do you like get the get it going? It's a complex.

Speaker 1 Somebody has to be the leader. That's why they have to develop human speech.
In the Planet of the Apes movies, which I've seen but don't recall, they do develop human speech.

Speaker 1 I believe that is an element of them. Well, and I will say that the reason that Rhesus monkeys are so often used in research is because we share about 93% of our DNA.

Speaker 1 So it's a good model if you're trying to figure out a disease or a treatment or a vaccine or whatever that would work in a human.

Speaker 1 I would also say up front, I am going to be interchangeably using monkey and apes. I'm 44 years old and I'm not doing it.

Speaker 1 You are going to get emails. I'm not doing it.
I'm not doing it. You're not going to get emails.
I'm 44. I'm not doing this.
I'm not doing crocodile and alligator. I'm not doing it.
Okay.

Speaker 1 I'm not. I'm sorry.
I'm not going to get it right and I'm not going to learn at this point. So monkeys and apes, crocodiles and alligators, dinosaurs and dragons, it's all the same.
What's up?

Speaker 1 Frog and Toad. Yeah, Frog and Toad's a really good one.
Actually, Frog and Toad, 100%. Same thing.
Ribbit? Got it.

Speaker 1 Got it. The ribbit ones.

Speaker 1 Listen, just when you write. Keep it up.

Speaker 1 Keep it up, frogs. I'll put you in with lizards.
When you inevitably write the emails complaining about this, and I know some of you will, please just address them to Justin. Please make it clear

Speaker 1 that I did not

Speaker 1 commit this crime. I won't, you can't get it.
This is not on me. Okay, so the initial report from the Jasper County Sheriff's Department,

Speaker 1 this is the initial report from the sheriff. The driver of the truck, this is a quote, told local law enforcement that the monkeys were dangerous and posed a threat to humans.

Speaker 1 We took the appropriate actions after being given that information from the person transporting the monkeys.

Speaker 1 He also stated that you had to wear PPE, personal protective equipment, to handle the monkeys. We actually said PPE equipment, but we'll forgive that.

Speaker 1 And then went on to say the monkeys were infected with herpes, hepatitis C, and COVID-19, and therefore were endangered to humans.

Speaker 1 And that even if they weren't infected with these diseases, they also are aggressive. So stay away.
So this was the information that was initially released, and it led to some great headlines.

Speaker 1 Monkeys with COVID and STIs escaped in Mississippi.

Speaker 1 There were lots of those.

Speaker 1 You can look them up. Now, that's not entirely accurate anymore.
And hopefully, all those sensationalized stories have been updated. What do you think? Have they all been?

Speaker 1 I can't imagine that people are going back and take the time. And we can hope, but yeah.

Speaker 1 Are we still talking about the driver or are you moving on from the driver? I was going to move on from the driver.

Speaker 1 Would you like to talk more about the driver? Yes, I would like to say that

Speaker 1 they're trying to hang this driver out to dry. For this, for this information, this misinformation that's what, yeah, they're like, the driver told us.
Okay, imagine I'm the driver, though. Okay.

Speaker 1 And my job in science is truck driver of the science, right? I'm driving the science. You're driving the monkeys.

Speaker 1 And they're like, you flip the monkeys out of your truck, which is, I would say, the number one thing you should not do. Don't let the monkeys escape.

Speaker 1 If they come to me and they're like, are these monkeys dangerous? Should we be careful? I would look at them and say, absolutely. Number one, don't ask me.

Speaker 1 I drive the truck. Absolutely.
You should take every single care you can. How many monkeys are back there? I don't know.
I didn't count. I drive the same way if there's 20 monkeys or 50 monkeys.

Speaker 1 You should act like there's 50. I don't know how many are running around.
They could be sick as all get out. Just be really, really careful.
Well, but it's weird. Okay.
I know what you're saying.

Speaker 1 And I do think that when it comes to escape monkeys, we should kind of take like.

Speaker 1 When you're working with infectious materials, when you're working in healthcare, you're often taught the sort of the idea is anyone anyone could be carrying a blood-borne pathogen.

Speaker 1 So you should always be protecting yourself and your patient as if that is the truth, right? You don't need to know, does this patient have something I could catch?

Speaker 1 You should be operating in a way that assumes they could. Yes.
Right. I mean, that's the safest way to always, you know, protect yourself.
And so I do, I agree with that.

Speaker 1 However, however, specifically, where did COVID, hepatitis, and herpes come from? He's covering his bases. He's just covering his bases.
He didn't know. Why those three?

Speaker 1 He knew it was one of the bad ones, and those are the ones he could remember off the top of his head.

Speaker 1 Don't come to someone who's just made the biggest whoopsie of their entire life and ask them if caution should be the watchword. Obviously, they're going to say, yes, take every precaution.

Speaker 1 They could have, I don't know, COVID, hepatitis, herpes. That's all the ones I can think about at the moment, but they could have any of it.
Please be extremely careful.

Speaker 1 And then they're like, he said he had three different things. Trust us.
Trust us, guys. This guy, this guy is a straight shooter who knows what he's talking about.
I mean, the sheriff's.

Speaker 1 This guy just up into the truck full of monkeys. Do not ask him questions.
The sheriff's department felt confident enough that they released this information. Now.

Speaker 1 This guy felt confident enough that he released the monkeys. Now we shouldn't be listening to him.

Speaker 1 Now, Tulane officials reached out to the sheriff's department and said, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on. Hold on.
But first, they wanted to make it very clear that these were not their monkeys.

Speaker 1 They are not our monkeys.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 They were not in charge of transporting them. They were not in charge of the company that was transporting them.

Speaker 1 This is not honestly. No, I mean, they might have come from our facility, but these are not our.
We are not. We will help you, but this is not us.

Speaker 1 Tulane did not do this.

Speaker 1 Don't blame, not our monkeys, not our circus. Okay, they did.

Speaker 1 But they said, but we can assure you they are not infectious. And so later, not our monkeys, but they're not infectious.
Okay. Later, Sheriff Randy Johnson came back out and said,

Speaker 1 yes, the monkeys are not, they are not harboring disease. They are not dangerous in that way.
Nevertheless, Johnson said the monkeys still need to be neutralized.

Speaker 1 This in quotes, because of their aggressive nature.

Speaker 1 And Tulane went on to say, you've been talking, you've talked so much after you said Randy Johnson.

Speaker 1 Okay, go ahead. Tulane did go on to say that the 21 monkeys had recently received checkups confirming that they were pathogen free.
So they just got checkups. at Tulane.

Speaker 1 They are not carrying any illnesses and

Speaker 1 it's not our problem. That's what Tulane said.
And Randy Johnson said, I don't know. I was just repeating the truck driver.
Randy Johnson also is best known for annihilating a bird with a fast pitch.

Speaker 1 So I don't know if we want to be taking his word on anything. I'm assuming it's a different Randy Johnson.
Have you ever seen that video, though? I have seen that video. It's terrible, obviously.

Speaker 1 I'm sure Randy's still beating himself up, and I doubt it's even the same Randy, really.

Speaker 1 If you think about it. I mean, statistically, it probably isn't.

Speaker 1 But let me say that obviously there was a lot of um miscommunication misunderstanding something happening in the early reports of this story could be maybe that's where the the root of it was a randy johnson

Speaker 1 i what they were already like the guy who threw the ball but like

Speaker 1 no but it it is i mean it begs the question one why did they think these monkeys had these three diseases and two i i mean for me it was a fun thought experiment what is the danger to people like what what are we really talking here yeah is the threat of these and also by the way all 21 21 monkeys did not escape.

Speaker 1 Only six escaped. I will say, as of yesterday's reporting.
They didn't know. Sorry.

Speaker 1 Three are still at large. Three monkeys are still at large.
How did they get it wrong whether or not all the monkeys were gone?

Speaker 1 What's happening? Why did they think they had herpes? I was trying to defend this guy, but in terms of whether or not there's still monkeys in there, that one should be easy.

Speaker 1 I mean, if you pop it open.

Speaker 1 And again,

Speaker 1 three monkeys are still at large. At the time of this recording, they may have, I don't know, maybe they're caught now, but three monkeys are still at large.

Speaker 1 They still should be considered a threat because they could attack a human. So don't approach them.
If you're in this area, please don't, if you see one of these monkeys, call the authorities.

Speaker 1 Do not try to talk to the monkey or

Speaker 1 capture the monkey yourself. I would also build on that, say, and Sid and say, not just these monkeys.
I would say if you see any monkeys in public, you should not try to apprehend them yourself.

Speaker 1 Yeah, don't try to apprehend themselves. They are so strong.
I don't know if you saw Chimp Crazy on HBO Max, but they're extremely strong. So, yeah, don't approach them.

Speaker 1 And I will say, that was another thing. The reports of how big Rhesus monkeys are varied wildly.

Speaker 1 Like the initial, one of the headlines, I think from the New York Post, was like 40-pound monkey with STDs on the loose or something.

Speaker 1 It was like the headlines about King Kong, like murderous monkey rampages through city. There were later accounts where they were like, well, average Rhesus monkeys are about 21 pounds.
So

Speaker 1 that's what makes these scientifically juiced rhesus monkeys all the scarier right how they double their size so i want to talk about this like this thought experiment okay of what happens when monkeys escape if they are infected with some sort of agent uh but before we do that we do have to go to the billing department let's go

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Speaker 1 it seems wild that we get paid to do that what we're doing sydney hypothesize about monkey disaster but let's not hypothesize about monkey disaster for a second because if you could just speak on this real quickly monkey disaster this is not a uh it is so close to it is the at the core of why you became a physician monkey monkey disaster is sort of your heart and is your heart i guess i I guess kind of, yes, in the sense that I, and I have said this, I think I'm on the record saying this.

Speaker 1 You can't walk it back.

Speaker 1 It's the truth. And I don't know, as I get older, it seems sillier, but it is still the truth.
I was inspired to go into medicine when I read the book, The Hot Zone, when I was 12 years old.

Speaker 1 And I learned about hemorrhagic fevers and the idea of trying to find where did these...

Speaker 1 Where did these viruses cross from animals into humans? When did that happen? How did that happen?

Speaker 1 And then using those sorts of that sort of research to then find effective treatments vaccines cures whatever for viruses that was and and yes a lot of that story involves monkeys so there you go there you go that is that is very true uh justin i will say this is not the first time that research monkeys have escaped this as i mean this happens more than you'd want to think about they're so smart they're so smart they've seen the inside of the lab of course it happens a lot they're smart and i think that if you, you know, you get used to working with them and I don't know, like all it takes is like you, you don't close one cage, really.

Speaker 1 This is I'm glad we're taking a moment to talk about how easy it is to let monkeys escape because it is a problem.

Speaker 1 Well, last year, just last year in November, 43 rhesus monkeys, so all 43,

Speaker 1 not six, 43 rhesus monkeys escaped from a biomedical facility called Alphagenesis in Yamassee, South Carolina because somebody like forgot to latch a gate. I mean, it was that simple.

Speaker 1 Somebody didn't lock in. Are you serious with this? 43 monkeys escaped into the surrounding

Speaker 1 Genesis? Have you not seen an episode of Black Mirror? For God's sake, Alphagenesis? Does this feel like it in the desert? And you let monkeys escape from it? No, no, no, no, no.

Speaker 1 We're in South Carolina, honey. South Carolina? In the deserts of South Carolina? No, no, no.

Speaker 1 How did you turn South Carolina into a desert, you maniacs? What are you doing?

Speaker 1 It It does feel it felt to me like the beginning of a video game. Alpha Genesis.

Speaker 1 43 Rhesus monkeys.

Speaker 1 They were young and they were healthy. And it took them, I will say, it took them a total of two months to round up all of the monkeys.

Speaker 1 It was not until January of this year that they found the last of the monkeys and got them back to the facility.

Speaker 1 And they have a cute picture in like the news stories where they followed it of one of the monkeys that they captured, like back in the lab, eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Like, I'm home.

Speaker 1 What a wild day.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean, well, I mean, I don't know. They two months, two months they survived.
Anyway, so this is a thing that happens. I don't want to just blame this one truck driver.

Speaker 1 And certainly Tulane wants you to know it was not them.

Speaker 1 I would say, if it could get out of Alpha Genesis, I'm not going to blame this truck driver at all. That's got to be the most vulnerable point for an escape, right? That's what they're planning on.

Speaker 1 Well, if you think about like in heist movies or in even movies like

Speaker 1 superhero movies where the villains being transported to Arkham or whatever, you know what I mean? Like, that's that's when you break out.

Speaker 1 That's when you get loose. Yeah, absolutely.
That makes total sense. Yeah.
So I want to talk about this thought experiment. What if they had been infected?

Speaker 1 First of all, the fact that I heard this and I didn't immediately think, well, obviously you wouldn't infect them with all three. Like, why would they be infected with all three?

Speaker 1 I don't know why that didn't give me more pause.

Speaker 1 And I, as a scientist, feel bad about that because I don't know what science you're doing if you're infecting this one monkey with herpes, hepatitis C, and COVID-19 just to see what happens.

Speaker 1 That's not. It's like TikTok science.
Yeah, that's not a...

Speaker 1 So already,

Speaker 1 I cannot imagine a research scenario where you were just giving a bunch of monkeys all three of these things and then like, now let's put them in a truck and see what happens. That's not.

Speaker 1 Why would you be doing that? So already this doesn't make sense. but let's talk about it one thing at a time.

Speaker 1 First of all, the question has to be, if they're going to spread disease, can you catch that disease from the monkey?

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's first. Question one.
Can you get COVID from a monkey? Can you get COVID from a monkey? Now, it is true that many, if not all, non-human primates can carry COVID-19. We have seen this.

Speaker 1 Rhesus monkeys were used in some of the early, as we were trying to understand in those early days of COVID, can you get it more than once?

Speaker 1 There were early studies on rhesus monkeys, giving them COVID and then trying to reinfect them with COVID to see if they could. Oh man, wasn't that a bummer?

Speaker 1 Wasn't it? You remember what a bummer that was, everybody?

Speaker 1 Remember when we figured out you could get COVID more than once? Man, we were really hoping that wasn't the case. Hachi Machi.
Oh boy, that was a bummer.

Speaker 1 Now, I will say what's interesting is that when it comes to is this a zoonotic disease, meaning or is this something we catch from animals, the research on COVID has not indicated that absolutely, while there are many animals that can catch COVID, we know that that's true, that in terms of a huge reservoir of disease that is spreading to humans on a regular basis, animals don't really play a big role in that.

Speaker 1 I found a study that conclusively proved that a hamster gave somebody COVID,

Speaker 1 or at least it looked like it did, that they felt pretty confident that the person got COVID from a hamster.

Speaker 1 I could not find,

Speaker 1 even though people kept referencing that there had been cases of primate to human COVID transmission, I couldn't actually find that study.

Speaker 1 It is theoretically possible, but it is thought that the risk of you catching COVID from a monkey with COVID, even if the rhesus monkey does indeed have COVID, the risk of you catching COVID from that monkey is pretty low.

Speaker 1 It's pretty unlikely. Now,

Speaker 1 reverse zoonosis, meaning can we humans infect animals with COVID? That is a much bigger threat.

Speaker 1 We are much more likely to give a monkey

Speaker 1 than a monkey is to give us covid and you're and you're brave to say it no it's true i know you're i know and that's why it's so brave sydney we are much more of a risk to monkeys you hear that monkeys we see it i didn't mean it as a threat i did that sounded i don't mean it like a threat we're oning i'm owning that like monkeys yeah we are the most dangerous primate we're the most dangerous game

Speaker 1 so it okay it hypothetically possible that if you release dozens of monkeys with COVID into a community, could somebody get COVID? I mean, scientifically, it is possible.

Speaker 1 It's very low risk, very low risk that you're going to catch COVID from a monkey. Hepatitis C, that's our next one.

Speaker 1 So very specifically, and I don't know if initially it came from the truck driver, if the truck driver heard it from somebody else, somebody loading the monkeys in, I don't know, but hepatitis C virus was also indicated as one of the things that the monkeys have.

Speaker 1 No, you can't catch hepatitis C from a rhesus monkey, but there is a caveat to this. I think this is very interesting.
So I was reading about

Speaker 1 what can get hepatitis C

Speaker 1 to humans, of course, which there is a treatment that is a cure now for hepatitis C. So I always feel like as a public service, I should always mention that.
We didn't use to. Now we have them.

Speaker 1 And it can be an eight or 12 week treatment course and we can cure it. And that is a breakthrough.

Speaker 1 Talk to your healthcare providers. Anyway,

Speaker 1 this is tricky because the only natural reservoirs for hepatitis C virus are humans and chimpanzees,

Speaker 1 not rhesus monkeys.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 However, it's not like it is for a variety of reasons, we don't tend to do research on chimpanzees. It's not as easy, okay?

Speaker 1 But we do a lot of research on rhesus monkeys. So there has been an effort to try and give hepatitis C

Speaker 1 to rhesus monkeys. Sorry, sorry, monkeys.
Sorry. So that we could study it better.
And specifically in 2015, 2015, there was a study called hepatitis C virus infects rhesus macaque

Speaker 1 hepatocytes, liver cells,

Speaker 1 in simionized mice. And basically what researchers were trying to do is put monkey liver cells into mice

Speaker 1 and infect those liver cells with hepatitis C virus.

Speaker 1 And they were able to, what they found is that rhesus monkeys have specific, like their immune system specifically defends them against hepatitis C virus. That's why they they don't get it.

Speaker 1 And they were finding ways to skirt it. Like they were finding ways around it so that they could inside.
It's a bad idea, science. Why?

Speaker 1 They can't get it. And so you mix monkeys and mice to see if you can give them hepatitis? It's for a research model.
It's a research model.

Speaker 1 This is maniacal. Listen.
Stop doing science. Listen.
That's enough science. I just told you that we have an effective cure for hepatitis C virus now in humans.
How do you think we got there, Justin?

Speaker 1 I don't know, man. I know.
I don't know. I know.
What I'm saying is,

Speaker 1 you shouldn't be able to catch hepatitis C from a rhesus monkey that escaped from a lab, but scientists are trying to fix that.

Speaker 1 Fantastic.

Speaker 1 Any day now, we should be getting hepatitis from monkeys. Thank you, science.
You can from a chimpanzee.

Speaker 1 They're the same thing. Oh, Justin.

Speaker 1 So, so, I mean, generally, I would say no. Like, you would not expect a rhesus monkey is infected with hepatitis C because at this point, that is only something they are attempting to do in labs.

Speaker 1 Hang in there.

Speaker 1 Keep up the good fight, y'all. No, we're A.
And hey, when it all goes terribly sideways and they all turn into zombies, don't say we didn't tell you so.

Speaker 1 Okay. It's not like they're going to escape from the truck we transport them in, Justin.

Speaker 1 They did. Okay.
28 years later. That's the movie about the zombie monkeys that have mice powers.
Now, good. They can transform into mice with thought? Neat.
Now, when I read this.

Speaker 1 And they can get hepatitis.

Speaker 1 What's interesting is as I was sitting here debating this with my colleagues when we first heard about this story, and I thought, what could you actually catch from a monkey?

Speaker 1 I would have thought COVID, yes. I was kind of surprised that it's not a bigger threat.

Speaker 1 I would have thought, like, well, Hep C, I don't know if monkeys can catch Hep C, but if they can, I figure if they bite you, like that seemed reasonable to me.

Speaker 1 In my mind, before I did any research, herpes seemed like the least likely candidate because when you think about herpes and all they said was herpes and this is this is difficult to begin with because there's lots of herpes a lot of herpes there's a lot of herpes viruses so when they say the monkeys have herpes well what do you mean by that so probably when you think of herpes justin and i do you think of two things yeah what two things do herpes cause um

Speaker 1 genital sores and mouth sores there you go that's i mean right that's what most people think of right?

Speaker 1 And what you're, what you're referencing is herpes simplex virus one and herpes simplex virus two, HSV one and two. Is it easy?

Speaker 1 So those two specific herpes viruses are the ones that most of us think about. Herpes virus one, generally speaking, causes the mouth sores.
Herpes virus two can cause the genital sores.

Speaker 1 There can be some crossover, but generally speaking, this is what you're thinking. Okay.
Okay.

Speaker 1 That is not really what monkeys tend to get though.

Speaker 1 And so if you're going to say like the monkeys have herpes I'm going to wonder what is the most common herpes that a monkey can have I'm not going to be thinking about herpes virus one and two in a monkey and there is a very common and if you're not thinking about it then nobody is nobody's thinking about it so I would suspect if we're if we're playing with this if we're playing in this space herpes virus B herpes B or just B virus is what it's often called is a herpes virus in monkeys that is similar to HSV1

Speaker 1 the one that causes cold sores. It's similar to what humans get.
And so that's the most likely thing that these rhesus monkeys would have. If they had a herpes virus, that is the most likely thing.

Speaker 1 And while it does also cause mouth sores, it can cause the little ulcers, just like HSV-1,

Speaker 1 it also can cause more serious infections, which is also true for HSV-1. It can cause things like encephalitis, which is inflammation of the brain.
It can do that in monkeys.

Speaker 1 And herpes B virus can and has done that in humans. There have been multiple cases, specifically in research settings.

Speaker 1 So, like scientists in a lab, people who work with rhesus monkeys on a regular basis, veterinary settings, zoo settings, places where you would come in contact with a lot of rhesus monkeys.

Speaker 1 There have been cases where people have either been bitten by one of these monkeys, or in one case, I think some like fluid was splashed into a scientist's eye and they caught hepatitis B virus

Speaker 1 from the monkey. And I mean, this don't laugh because

Speaker 1 it can be a fatal infection. So it's a very serious infection.
The idea that I would laugh to that privately to myself and you would dox me like that is truly untenable.

Speaker 1 I thought we had a partnership. Truly, truly unfathomable.
We're on camera. I know, but there's edits.
There's edits. I don't even know if we're going to use this video.

Speaker 1 We will use this audio where you just absolutely annihilated me, though. I'm sorry.
I was just, well, I was just imagining.

Speaker 1 I was trying to stop you before you went down a joke path you should wear glasses i mean

Speaker 1 in the lab you should wear goggles anyway the point is i had initially thought

Speaker 1 herpes

Speaker 1 herpes was the least likely but if we're talking herpes b virus that is probably the biggest threat of everything we've discussed in terms of monkey to human transmission because it has indeed happened i don't want to say frequently it's not frequently but it is definitely a danger when you were doing laboratory science with these animals you you could catch herpes from them.

Speaker 1 Okay. So that's the one that I think is the most realistic.
All of this being said, what is the risk from a population of infected monkeys that spill out of a truck to the surrounding humans?

Speaker 1 Unbelievably high. Not pretty low.
It would like the chances that they have hepatitis C are pretty much zero unless some weird new science has been done in a lab.

Speaker 1 And who would be doing that, alphagenesis?

Speaker 1 Then they're not going to give you hep C because they almost certainly don't have it.

Speaker 1 If they did if we did find a way to give rhesus monkeys hep C then I guess they could pass it to you if they bit you or if they shared bodily fluids with you It would be highly unlikely for you to catch COVID from one I guess if we imagine a scenario where a ton of rhesus monkeys I mean like dozens of rhesus monkeys at the peak of COVID infection at their most infectious moment are surrounding you right in your face and just expelling respiratory droplets at you for

Speaker 1 I mean we're we're going to say at least 45 minutes to an hour, right? Yeah. Right at close range, perhaps, but generally speaking, you're probably not going to catch COVID from a monkey.

Speaker 1 And then when it comes to the B virus, it's possible, but you still would need direct contact. You're still going to have to get pretty close to these monkeys.
So

Speaker 1 I was trying to come up with a number, like how many monkeys could have spilled out of that truck infected with hepatitis C, COVID, and herpes that I would actually be concerned.

Speaker 1 And I feel like there is no evidence-based, I mean, it could be infinite. Like there's no saying if you had infinite monkeys

Speaker 1 and you infected some of them with it, if you had infinite amount of time, eventually everybody would have herpes.

Speaker 1 I mean, if they're biting people, yeah. I guess

Speaker 1 if we surmise that what that truck driver or what Randy Johnson or what whoever gave these gentlemen information meant was B-virus, I would be concerned.

Speaker 1 about enough density of monkeys that they would start attacking people. And then, yeah, that would be my only concern.

Speaker 1 Thank you so much for listening to Sawbones, a marital tour of misguided medicine.

Speaker 1 I was trying to give you one less thing to worry about. And you made a whole long list of things to add in their place.
I cannot emphasize enough. Three monkeys are still at large.

Speaker 1 Do not approach them. Do not approach them.
Do not attempt to apprehend the monkeys, you fool. Or chimps, if you can tell the difference.
Good on you.

Speaker 1 Thanks so much to the taxpayers for use of their song medicines as the intro and outro of our program. And hey, we do lots of different kinds of episodes of Sawbones.
And

Speaker 1 we're curious sort of what you guys think,

Speaker 1 the folks out there in the listening world. If you'd like to weigh in, we'd love to hear from you.
There's a link in the description of this episode.

Speaker 1 So if you would go check that link, there's a survey there. If you would click it and take that survey, gosh, I'd sure appreciate it.
Thank you so much. And oh, Candle Knights.

Speaker 1 It's coming up on December 6th. And if you would like to come see the show, you can do that.
And I think that you should do that because it's going to be really, really good.

Speaker 1 We're going to have skits. We're going to have excitement.
We're going to have music. We're going to have music.
We're going to have a lot more fun. You can get tickets in person.

Speaker 1 If you go to bit.ly forward slash McElroy Tours is the address. You can get in-person tickets, but there's also a streaming option that's going to be out December 19th at 9 p.m.

Speaker 1 We will be watching that live in the chat if you want to do that. Or you can get tickets to live version 7 p.m.

Speaker 1 6th of December at the Keith Alby Performing Art Center. It's going to be huge.
It's a beautiful theater, too. The Keith Alby is an old theater here in Huntington.
Yeah, they just refurbished it.

Speaker 1 It's gorgeous. So, and come visit Huntington.
There's so much great stuff to do here.

Speaker 1 All the proceeds for this event are going to go to Benefit Harmony House, which seeks to end homelessness in our area and support people experiencing homelessness.

Speaker 1 It's a wonderful organization, and we're very happy to be supporting it. Absolutely.
That's going to do it for us for this week. Until next time, my name is Justin McElroy.
I'm Sidney McElroy.

Speaker 1 And as always, don't drill a hole in your head.

Speaker 1 All right.

Speaker 1 Maximum Fun, a workaround network of artist-owned shows, supported directly by you.