Fungi: The coming pandemic? | Emily Monosson

Today, I'm joined by Emily Monason, who's a trained toxicologist who now writes about our impact on the natural environment. She's the author of several books, including Blight, Fungi and the Coming Pandemic. Emily, great to have you on today. Thank you for having me. So let's talk a little bit about fungi and pandemics. You know, I think in in the context of the covid pandemic, certainly in general, folks are aware of viruses and pandemics. Folks who have also read about bacterial illness or different sources for possible pandemics would have some familiarity there. But when we talk about fungi and pandemics, talk a little bit about that. Why is this less familiar to folks? And what is the connection between fungi as possible agents of a pandemic? OK, so I think first of all, I should clarify that when people when when I talk about pandemics, usually it's in the book, it's most often in other species. So there are other species experiencing pandemics in humans. We are experiencing fungal epidemics, so outbreaks of emergent fungal pathogens or at least one emergent fungal pathogen that I write about. And so and that is something that's been in the news quite a bit lately, which is a yeast fungus that has really frightened many public health workers. What is it that is so frightening now about this particular fungal pathogen? So this is a pathogen that's emerged in, say, the last decade or so. So that's pretty new. It's something that for I should also clarify that it tends to impact patients who are compromised. So already hospitalized. But once it does infect somebody, it's very hard to treat. When this fungus emerged, what was odd was that it emerged in four different continents kind of at the same time. So if you can imagine if the COVID virus, you know, we know it emerged in one place at one time. And this is four different places. All of a sudden, this fungus seemed to have popped up and started to infect people. Then it's resistant. Many of the strains are resistant to the antifungal medications that we have. And three, it's very rare for a fungus to be transmitted from person to person. But this fungus can be transmitted between patients. It's very difficult to clear from a hospital room. So I think it's just been a very different kind of pathogen and pretty frightening for those. And it's been spreading. So before COVID, I think there were a couple hundred cases. Now there are thousands. And so health workers are trying to get on top of this before it spreads further. So talk a little bit about that difficulty in clearing it. I think, again, in thinking about what is more familiar to people in our audience, we talk about cleaning and we talk about disinfecting and these sorts of things and what can live on cloth versus a hard surface or these sorts of things. What are the properties that make this difficult to clear? So I'm not sure. So first of all, I didn't name it. This is called candida auris. So it's a yeast fungus kind of yeast, but there's lots of different kinds of yeast. So this fungus seems to colonize hospital rooms. It can colonize equipment. And in the very beginning, when it was first discovered back in 2016 or around then, hospitals where patients had candida auris, one of them had to take out ceiling tiles and remove stuff from the room because they could not disinfect the room. That was because they didn't understand at the time that it could withstand the disinfectants used to clear viruses and bacteria from a room. So they can do better now in cleaning up this equipment. But still, they find it's very hard to disinfect equipment, which is how it can spread. And so it's just it's it's kind of a novelty and they're just beginning to understand it. When it comes to the disease that it can cause in humans, talk a little bit about that. So I'm I'm not a physician, so I can't speak to the specifics. I just I it's I think it can infect your bloodstream. And once it infects the bloodstream, it can cause a lot of different problems. I think eventually leading to sort of a shock, septic shock or something like that. Again, not a physician, but it is very hard to treat. And some of them are there's only three or maybe three real main classes of antifungal medications. So we have a lot of different antibiotics. A lot of us know we've been through a lot of different kinds of antibiotics. When one doesn't work, you try another and another. Right. This there's only three, I think, classes of antifungal medications. And so this fungus has been resistant to one or two or in rare cases, all three classes. And so there are physicians in the position of telling somebody that they can't treat them because there is no treatment. So that's what's frightening about this. Right. Again, you know, it infects the sickest of the sick and it tends to be in hospitals and long term care facilities and those sorts of places. When we talk about the effect of fungi potentially on the food system, this seems to be another area of concern. If I understand the research correctly, talk a little bit about that and whether are there particular fungi that present the greatest threat to the food system? Yeah. So there are certain kinds of fungal pathogens that are well known in agriculture. One of the longest best known or sort of longest running fungal pathogen is a rust that infects wheat. And that's sort of considered to be maybe one of the biblical kinds of plagues. But the fungus, what I write about is one that infects banana crops and banana plantations. And so it is one that really strikes fear into banana growers once it takes hold on a banana plantation. It can be very difficult to clear that because so just because of how fungi grow and that sort of thing. So, yeah. And so in other major crops, rice, wheat, the bananas, potatoes have a fungus-like kind of organism along with other kinds of organisms. And so, you know, the sort of apocalyptic scenario, if you wanted to imagine one, which I think is probably the background for some kinds of apocalyptic literature, is what happens when multiple fungi affect all those staple crops at the same time. We haven't had that scenario, but you can imagine that would be a problem. It seems that there is interest, I guess, is the way I would put it in using genetic modification to manage fungal crop disease. Genetic modification is controversial, I think, without placing any kind of value judgment on it. You know, my audience knows my view and in the experts we've talked to, there does not seem to be good evidence that genetic modification poses a health risk to humans, even though it's popular to assume that it does. Can you talk a little bit to the extent that that we know now what role genetic modification may play in making crops resistant to fungal infection? So I think that there are there's some hope and there are scientists working on finding genes that will impart resistance on those crops against the fungal pathogen. The benefit of this is that they don't need to use the fungicides, which the fungi evolve resistance to very rapidly. And then the question is, well, can't they evolve resistance to a genetic kind of resistance that might be sort of a protein or receptor that's expressed in the plant that's been modified? And I think that there are precautions. There are ways to do this without that happening as well. And so I think that there is hope that that might be one way to protect crops from pathogens is to impart them with resistance. And some of these resistances come from closely related plants, if not sort of the same kinds of like in bananas, they can find a resistance gene in other strains of bananas and put it into the kind of manner that we like to eat. So, you know, it's not a transgenic coming from a different organism. Yeah. One of the things I've read and this is only going to deal with part of the problem is that the kind of more regenerative agricultural technique of crop rotation between more significantly different crops can be useful because, as you're saying, the ability of some of these fungal pathogens to affect one crop would be limited in crops that are different enough. But obviously, we know that with monoculture practices and big agriculture, this is just often not done. Yeah. Yes, that's true. And not just crop. You know, in addition to crop rotation, there's also just intercropping growing different kinds of crops within that, you know, that are could also be food productive crops. And so that can also stop something like fungus from spreading because it spreads through the air. So if you have a different crop growing between blocks of crops, a fungus might not be able to spread as easily. So there are different kinds of strategies. Can you talk a little bit about. Well, to contextualize this, I don't remember the name of it, but there is some mushroom documentary on Netflix that I saw like a year ago, which is fascinating. Do you know what I'm referring to? Fantastic. Yeah, it's like fantastic mushrooms or I don't I don't remember the name of it. Guys, fantastic fungi, something like that. So one of the things that is sort of explained in that documentary is this incredible ability of just, you know, a gentle a gentle wind to spread spores large distances and make it so that all different types of fungi, mushrooms, et cetera, just grow in large swaths of land. And so when you see that, you get the sense that it would be extremely difficult to limit the spread of many of these organisms, particularly when you think about, OK, something like covid we know about droplets and coughing and to some degree surfaces. But this idea of it's just this ethereal cloud of spores that just can very quickly cover. So is is that an accurate representation when we think about the ones that would either cause this condition in humans or that would cause blight to spread when it comes to crops? Is that accurate? Is that how we should be thinking of how easily these things spread? So partly accurate. And so, first of all, most of the most fungi are not harmful. So, of course, point to make. So we are. And just to clarify, so yeasts don't tend to spread like that by producing spores and spewing them all over the place. So that isn't one concern. That's not a worry with something like candida auris. Yep. But for those that are out in the environment, like the ones that impact agricultural crops, yes, many of them spread by spores. I have one scientist. I can't remember the number. It was like bazillions of spores over a crop that's infected with this particular fungus. And so, you know, it's they can travel across oceans, you know, depending on the types of spores, they can travel miles. We are breathing tens of thousands of spores probably all the time. It's just that most of them aren't bothering us. Yes. So, yeah, there are fungal spores everywhere. Last thing I want to ask about when it comes to bacteria and viruses, there are all sorts of discussions about weaponizing such organisms in order to create bioweapons, to use them in war, to do all sorts of horrible things. Do fungi lend themselves to such a threat and manipulation? Is or is there something about them that doesn't makes it so that we don't need to have that as a concern? Well, that's something that I have never thought about before in terms of. Really? No. Oh, boy. Come across it. Reading it in my first thought when you said that is you could do that, but it would be how would you control it? Right. Well, that's what makes it seems like it would make it so volatile because of the spores that get blown, blown everywhere. It seems as though it would be extraordinarily, extraordinarily difficult to target or control in any way. I would think that's true. I mean, some of the problems with these crop fungi is that they are global. They don't just stage in one country or one region. They tend to spread around the world, you know, because we carry spores around. Growers carry spores around. The air carries spores around. So I think that would be a tough thing. But I can't answer that question. I haven't really. Yeah. I mean, I'm not trying to give anybody any ideas. It's just more of a curiosity given given where we are, you know, in 2023 with the sort of global circumstances that we that we have. OK, well, we'll leave it there. We've been speaking with Emily Monason. One of her books is Blight, Fungi and the Coming Pandemic. I really appreciate your time and insights today. Well, thank you for talking to me.