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[Music] in 1993 on an indian reservation in the southwestern united states young navajo indians were dying at an
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alarming rate more than 20 people would die from the mysterious disease one that health officials had never seen
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before but the navajo medicine men provided a critical piece of information which led
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investigators around the world to a most unlikely killer [Music] covering 25 000 square miles of high
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desert in four states utah colorado new mexico and arizona is a navajo indian reservation in an area known as the four
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corners it's the largest navajo community in america with some 1200 members of the
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tribe living throughout the desert hills the scenery brings thousands of tourists
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each year a vital source of revenue for the navajo who have inhabited the area for
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centuries but poverty is endemic and was a fact of life for people like nineteen-year-old meryl bahi
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but meryl bahi had something that set him apart merle was a very phenomenal person but
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where he stood out was his running ability and i think if you talk to anybody that saw
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him run you know they would tell you that it was a gift that he had in running and he loved to run
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meryl bahi was so fast he won a full scholarship to the santa fe indian school a boarding school that was miles
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away from his home both physically and culturally he didn't really know how to put a sheet on a bla on a bed or
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you know it was like he threw the blanket on and that was this that numeral you um
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you put this down first so i i had to show him how to to make up a bed bahi slowly adjusted to his new life he
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did well in school but the transition to life in the city was difficult until he met florina woody
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something magical happened he met another navajo girl at a pueblo school and they fell in love so intensely that
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the track coach decided to make florina the manager of the track team to hand out the towels so that
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merrill would keep his mind on his running not long afterwards they had a son maurice and planned to get married but
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shortly after the baby was born florina woke up one morning with what she thought was the flu
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she was all cold she kept you know having these chills and it was it was something like
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you're getting a cold or getting sick from a common cold their lungs were white out meaning they
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were just solid they should usually be dark from from the air and they obviously had something in there fluid
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in there doctors raced to find out what was wrong they administered oxygen to help florina
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breathe but she went into shock i saw one of the nurses coming out of her room all disturbed and she was crying
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and i i knew there that something was happening none of the standard procedures worked
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and florina's heart stopped beating the pressure on her lungs was simply too
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much for her body to bear the cause of death acute respiratory failure florina woody died on mother's day
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she was just 21 years old and they told us that she was gone then they allowed us to go to our room
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i just couldn't believe that my my baby has gone i didn't want to leave her i just want
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to hang out right there doctors had no idea what had caused florina's sudden death
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and they feared that whatever kill florina woody might be contagious florina's death was a particularly cruel
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blow to merrell bahi the mother of his infant son was dead as bahi prepared flo farina's funeral he
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too started to develop similar symptoms meryl bahi was beside himself he wasn't feeling well
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but it didn't occur to him that that it could possibly be the same thing that affected florina merrill's physical
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condition quickly deteriorated and he was rushed to the crown point hospital the same hospital that treated florina
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after an initial consultation merrill did not want to be treated where florina died so his family drove him to the
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indian medical center in gallup an hour away shortly before arrival merrill lost
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consciousness as doctors rushed him into the emergency room he died the cause of death
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acute respiratory failure meryl bahi was only 19 years old ironically merrill died during florina's
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funeral service which was taking place directly across the street from the hospital
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the freedom was going on and there we had a meeting with our medical investigator
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and meryl's family were coming in for a flow's journal and they were told there
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and everything just started happening here and there and that's when i went to
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shock health authorities had no explanation for what killed the young couple the
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only way they could determine the cause was to perform a complete autopsy but autopsies are not permitted in the
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navajo community it's forbidden in among traditional napos to have autopsies done and the napa tribal
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government can forbid that if they want to and i don't think the government people really understood
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that we have that sovereign power to do that even if it's a medical emergency
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but with her daughter and future son-in-law dead beta begay wanted answers she took the unusual step of defying
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tradition and the tribal elders by giving doctors permission to perform the autopsies
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the autopsy findings took on a new importance when merrill and florina's infant child maurice also fell ill
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he was rushed to the hospital and quarantined what is it where did it come from or
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what is is it gonna is it gonna be here or how you know i asked i had that i had those questions
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and i wanted to find out as authorities awaited the autopsy results the disease continued its deadly
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rampage within a week of florina and meryl's deaths the number of dead had risen to
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six and each day more people were being hospitalized with symptoms new mexico officials feared
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they had an epidemic on their hands and panic gripped the region we were getting calls from concerned
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citizens and concerned physicians and concerned school administrators and concerned everybody
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and that always will happen when something as dramatic as this and as frightening as this is occurring and
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when you do really don't have any good answers the autopsies on merrell bahi and
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florina woody answered few questions the mystery illness could not be identified
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and until it was more people were destined to die doctors in the four corners area are on
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alert to a deadly respiratory illness may 1993 navajo radio stations in the four
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corners indian reservation broadcast an alert young navajo were dying at an alarming
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rate and new cases were being reported every day so little was known that health
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officials were not able to tell listeners what precautions to take against the disease
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it was frightening for people who came down with a fever and cough and headache at the time as a physician we're sending
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people home who we had to accept the possibility that they could drop dead within hours of leaving the hospital
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the outbreak was now national news and since it appeared that only navajo were affected it was dubbed the navajo
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flew there was pandemonium it's impossible to keep a string of deaths like this a secret for very long
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one possibility was bubonic plague the dreaded black death that killed millions during the middle ages and still strikes
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more than a thousand people worldwide every year plague symptoms particularly the high
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fever muscle pain and fluid buildup bore similarities to the four corners disease
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bubonic plague still crops up in new mexico from time to time and so the state is very well equipped
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to do that test and much to the to the uh chagrin of the investigators um the test
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was negative it was chagrin because they still didn't know what had killed this young couple
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another possibility was pneumonic plague a highly contagious disease it attacks the lungs and kills quickly which is
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what happened to the four corners victims since it could be treated with large doses of antibiotics doctors actually
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hoped that this was what they'd find but the autopsies turned up something different the capillaries of the victims
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had collapsed leaving the lungs wet like large sponges this was not consistent with pneumonic
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plague and it did not resemble anything medical investigators had ever seen before
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and it was very puzzling and it was it was frustrating because you felt like how come we're not smart
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enough to figure this out you know this shouldn't be that hard so i haven't had i haven't had that many
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cases at one time but i didn't understand local health officials called in the centers for disease control in
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atlanta georgia the cdc special pathogens team was sent in to look for possible causes
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and they started their investigation in the trailer that meryl bahi and florina woody once called home
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we had no idea what this was we didn't know whether it was contagious we didn't
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know whether working with the tissues was going to be dangerous we didn't know
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whether you could get this in the laboratory or from somebody outside in the field
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the outbreak was considered a bio safety level for hazard the most lethal designation
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dressed in specially designed suits to keep them free from any contagion cdc specialists searched the trailer and
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the surrounding area they wore something like that you know the astronauts that they're they're sending
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off to outer space and you know how they dress they were dressed like that when they came to our
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place and that was even scarier that there was fear they they scared us while the medical community turned to
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their scientific experts the navajo turned to their own specialists the traditional healers or medicine men who
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were responsible for the health of the reservation they said they were familiar with this disease and that it had struck
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before they were saying that this outbreak had occurred in this century in 1933 and 1918 when
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it was preceded by two years of plentiful rains and heavy winter snows in the mountains
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the tribal healers said the heavy rains had resulted in a dramatic increase in the number of mice on the reservation
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and they suspected there was some connection between the large number of mice and these deaths but they could not
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say what it was there was an old naval saying that i learned as a child that if a mouse ever runs over your clothing
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you should burn it and nobody ever knew what that whole thing meant records indicated that there were heavy
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rains in 1991 and 92 the two years preceding the current outbreak but health officials could not find any
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link between the rain the growing deer mice population and the outbreak meanwhile in what's known as the maximum
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containment section of the cdc labs an area reserved for the study of the world's most dangerous germs and viruses
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investigators performed an elisa test or enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay on the tissue samples from the victims
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when a disease strikes the body reacts by producing antibodies which are unique to that disease
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the elisa test can isolate those antibodies in order to compare them to the thousands of samples in the cdc
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files comparison after comparison was made and no matches were found until the investigation took an unexpected turn
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one that would take medical detectives back in time and halfway around the world
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[Music] within six weeks of florina woody and merrell bahi's deaths more than 12 other
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young people had also died of the same mysterious disease investigators got a break in the case
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when a tourist from iceland after visiting the reservation developed symptoms of the disease
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investigators now realized the outbreak was probably environmental and was not confined to the navajo
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unfortunately somebody sort of identified this as a navajo disease which it very obviously wasn't
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because we were seeing there there were other cases occurring in in navajos but but that that was
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particularly offensive i think to people when cdc investigators compared the antibodies from the outbreak victims to
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those in their vast file of known diseases they made a surprising discovery the only sample that was in any way
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similar was one that was 40 years old it was a sample taken from a soldier stationed in korea in 1950
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during the korean war more than 3 000 troops developed high fevers and kidney failure about 400 died
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doctors called it hantavirus because it was traced back to korea's han tan river
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that region was home to large numbers of striped field mice feces and urine from infected mice
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carried the virus when it dried out it became airborne and was then inhaled by the soldiers
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from there the virus attacked the kidneys but investigators were uncertain whether this was the same as the four
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corners virus there had never been a hantavirus reported in north america and the four
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corners disease attacked the lungs not the kidneys i had no idea what honda virus was
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and look looked in you know my textbook which had a very short section on it and of course it describes a disease
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that occurs in asia which which sounded nothing like what we were dealing with was this the same disease
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and if so how did it travel from korea to a north american indian reservation cdc investigators then remembered what
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they'd been told by the navajo traditional healers the medicine men had said when a
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remarkably wet winter was followed by the masting of the the pinyon trees when the penum trees put out
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an abundant supply of nuts the rodent populations in the state began to to grow and when that happened young navajo died
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investigators caught and tested deer mice from the four corners area they found the mice were shedding a
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virus with the same dna profile as the virus found in florina woody and merrell bahi
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but the dna profile of this virus was not identical to the korean hanta virus although the dna profiles were similar
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the strain from the navajo reservation was a new one unique to north america what we found when we did the comparison
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was that this was a new honda virus that is the sequence was far enough from any other known hanovers
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that we were convinced that it was a new virus it wasn't just a minor variant on one of the old viruses cdc
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scientists and navajo medicine men suspected the north american hantavirus had been around for centuries but since
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the cases were so isolated it had always been misdiagnosed the navajo made up a greater percentage
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of the victims only because they lived in more rural areas with large deer mice populations
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in the two years before the outbreak heavy spring rains created a bumper crop of pinyon nuts a rich source of food for
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the growing mice population authorities believe that merrell bahi and florina woody inhaled the dried
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urine and fecal matter from the infected deer mice when they were house cleaning
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or digging in their garden in my heart i think it's it was god's will that
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this is what was supposed to happen to both of them and they were meant for each other and
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they were meant to go together health officials recommend that masks and gloves be worn when cleaning rodent
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droppings and that people do everything possible to keep rodents out of their homes
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they also point out that the four corners outbreak was identified through the wisdom of the navajo medicine men
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and the scientists who were smart enough to listen we were discovering a an old disease
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that the traditional healers had discovered long ago and that was the i think to me that was the most exciting
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thing about this whole investigation the navajo using an entirely different approach looking at the balance of
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nature were able to identify factors that led them to the same conclusion that when
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rodent populations explode the way they did in the four corners in the spring of 1993
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young navajo died these two very different sets of people set out on very different paths and
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arrived in the same place [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] you