I'm here today to share with you an extraordinary journey - extraordinarily rewarding journey, actually - which brought me into training rats to save human lives by detecting landmines and tuberculosis. As a child, I had two passions. One was a passion for rodents. I had all kinds of rats, mice, hamsters, gerbils, squirrels. You name it, I bred it, and I sold them to pet shops. (Laughter) I also had a passion for Africa. Growing up in a multicultural environment, we had African students in the house, and I learned about their stories, so different backgrounds, dependency on imported know-how, goods, services, exuberant cultural diversity. Africa was truly fascinating for me.
今天很榮幸來到這裡 與大家分享一段驚奇的旅程 這是一段非常有意義的旅程 這也讓我 投入訓練老鼠的工作 讓牠們能夠 嗅出地雷,甚至是肺結核 來拯救人命 小時候,有兩件事讓我很感興趣 第一,是囓齒類的動物 我養過很多種老鼠 像是家鼠、倉鼠 沙鼠、松鼠 你們想得到的,我都養過,不信的話可以去問問寵物店老闆 (笑聲) 我對非洲這塊土地也非常感興趣 在這多元環境下成長 我認識各式各樣的當地學生 從他們身上學到許多東西 像是非洲的各種文化背景 包括外來的知識技能 物資、服務 以及豐富的文化多樣性 對我而言,非洲是個迷人的地方
I became an industrial engineer, engineer in product development, and I focused on appropriate detection technologies, actually the first appropriate technologies for developing countries. I started working in the industry, but I wasn't really happy to contribute to a material consumer society in a linear, extracting and manufacturing mode. I quit my job to focus on the real world problem: landmines. We're talking '95 now. Princess Diana is announcing on TV that landmines form a structural barrier to any development, which is really true. As long as these devices are there, or there is suspicion of landmines, you can't really enter into the land. Actually, there was an appeal worldwide for new detectors sustainable in the environments where they're needed to produce, which is mainly in the developing world. We chose rats.
我後來成為了一位工程師 從事產品開發 主要投入於探測技術 也就是對開發中國家 最實用的技術 然而,在這個業界工作 我對於這個以物質消費為主的社會 其商品生產機制 以及行銷手法 感到不以為然 於是我辭去那份工作,投入了真正需要關注的問題 也就是地雷 在一九九五年 黛安娜王妃在電視上宣布 地雷對於任何發展建設來說 無疑是一種阻礙 只要地雷還在 或疑似有地雷的區域 那裡就永遠是一塊荒地 但這塊未開發之地對新的開拓者來說 非常有吸引力 因為那是一塊 能讓他們進行長期開發 並且自由運用的土地 我們選用老鼠
Why would you choose rats? Because, aren't they vermin? Well, actually rats are, in contrary to what most people think about them, rats are highly sociable creatures. And actually, our product -- what you see here. There's a target somewhere here. You see an operator, a trained African with his rats in front who actually are left and right. There, the animal finds a mine. It scratches on the soil. And the animal comes back for a food reward. Very, very simple. Very sustainable in this environment. Here, the animal gets its food reward. And that's how it works. Very, very simple.
選老鼠的原因是什麼呢? 牠們不是害蟲嗎? 現在,這群老鼠 可說是完全顛覆了大家對老鼠的印象 老鼠是非常群居的動物 在畫面上你可以看到 這附近有顆地雷 有位受過訓練的操作人員 和一直老鼠正在搜索當中 老鼠不斷移動 牠找到了地雷 牠挖了點土 並得到了些吃的當作獎勵 非常的簡單 對環境完全無害 老鼠得到了吃的作為獎勵 就是這樣進行的 非常簡單
Now why would you use rats? Rats have been used since the '50s last century, in all kinds of experiments. Rats have more genetic material allocated to olfaction than any other mammal species. They're extremely sensitive to smell. Moreover, they have the mechanisms to map all these smells and to communicate about it. Now how do we communicate with rats? Well don't talk rat, but we have a clicker, a standard method for animal training, which you see there. A clicker, which makes a particular sound with which you can reinforce particular behaviors. First of all, we associate the click sound with a food reward, which is smashed banana and peanuts together in a syringe. Once the animal knows click, food, click, food, click, food -- so click is food -- we bring it in a cage with a hole, and actually the animal learns to stick the nose in the hole under which a target scent is placed, and to do that for five seconds -- five seconds, which is long for a rat. Once the animal knows this, we make the task a bit more difficult. It learns how to find the target smell in a cage with several holes, up to 10 holes.
為什麼用老鼠呢? 老鼠從50年代開始 便被使用在各種實驗中 老鼠的嗅覺受器基因 和其他哺乳類動物相比 比例高了許多 牠們有靈敏的嗅覺 此外,牠們還能為牠們聞到的味道做定位 然後告訴其他同類 我們要如何與老鼠溝通呢? 我們沒辦法跟牠們說話 但我們有個小東西,能發出聲響 這是在訓練動物時常用的工具 就是箭頭所指的那個玩意兒 它能發出一種特別的聲音 來加強動物的特定行為 首先,我們讓老鼠把咔噠聲和食物獎勵聯想在一起 所謂獎勵是用注射器餵牠們吃香蕉泥加花生 當老鼠聽到咔噠聲,就知道有東西吃了 咔噠,吃的!咔噠,吃的! 當牠們習慣了之後 我們把牠們放近一個有洞的籠子裡 接著牠們學會了 把鼻子探近洞口 下面就放著有特殊氣味的目標物 牠們會在那停個五秒 這對老鼠來說很長了 學會了之後,我們再把難度提高 讓老鼠學會 在最多有十個洞的籠子裡找東西
Then the animal learns to walk on a leash in the open and find targets. In the next step, animals learn to find real mines in real minefields. They are tested and accredited according to International Mine Action Standards, just like dogs have to pass a test. This consists of 400 square meters. There's a number of mines placed blindly, and the team of trainer and their rat have to find all the targets. If the animal does that, it gets a license as an accredited animal to be operational in the field -- just like dogs, by the way. Maybe one slight difference: we can train rats at a fifth of the price of training the mining dog.
接著 我們用皮帶繫住老鼠 在開放空間尋找目標 接下來,這些老鼠們 就要去找真正的地雷了 老鼠經過測驗 並且達到了國際地雷行動標準 就和狗一樣,須要通過測試 在四百平方公尺大的地方 地下藏著 數枚地雷 而訓練師和老鼠 必須找到所有地雷 完成的話,便能取得執照 成為合格的 巡雷鼠 順便提一下,這就像訓練狗一樣 但有稍許不同 我們只花訓練狗兒經費的五分之一 就可以訓練出能探測地雷的老鼠
This is our team in Mozambique: one Tanzanian trainer, who transfers the skills to these three Mozambican fellows. And you should see the pride in the eyes of these people. They have a skill, which makes them much less dependent on foreign aid. Moreover, this small team together with, of course, you need the heavy vehicles and the manual de-miners to follow-up. But with this small investment in a rat capacity, we have demonstrated in Mozambique that we can reduce the cost-price per square meter up to 60 percent of what is currently normal -- two dollars per square meter, we do it at $1.18, and we can still bring that price down. Question of scale. If you can bring in more rats, we can actually make the output even bigger. We have a demonstration site in Mozambique. Eleven African governments have seen that they can become less dependent by using this technology. They have signed the pact for peace and treaty in the Great Lakes region, and they endorse hero rats to clear their common borders of landmines.
這是我們在莫三比克的團隊 我們坦尚尼亞籍的隊員 教導三個莫三比克的同事 如何訓練老鼠找地雷 你可以從這些人眼中感受到驕傲的光芒 因為他們有技術 可以讓自己更獨立 減少依賴外來援助 另外,這個團隊 也需要有卡車和人力 才可以進行後續的實驗 但我們在莫三比克 訓練老鼠的經費其實不多 比起傳統的掃雷方法,我們大約每平方公尺 可節省六成的費用 這已經是合理的開銷範圍 以往每平方公尺2美元的花費,我們只需1.18美金 而且價格還可以壓更低 至於發展規模 如果能引進更多老鼠的話 就可以讓成效更顯著 我們在莫三比克有個實驗據點 十一個非洲國家的政府 藉由老鼠掃雷的科技,使他們對於國外技術的依賴 大大降低 這些國家已經簽署 對非洲大湖區的和平協議 同時也認可老鼠 可以進入國家邊界地帶掃除地雷
But let me bring you to a very different problem. And there's about 6,000 people last year that walked on a landmine, but worldwide last year, almost 1.9 million died from tuberculosis as a first cause of infection. Especially in Africa where T.B. and HIV are strongly linked, there is a huge common problem. Microscopy, the standard WHO procedure, reaches from 40 to 60 percent reliability. In Tanzania -- the numbers don't lie -- 45 percent of people -- T.B. patients -- get diagnosed with T.B. before they die. It means that, if you have T.B., you have more chance that you won't be detected, but will just die from T.B. secondary infections and so on. And if, however, you are detected very early, diagnosed early, treatment can start, and even in HIV-positives, it makes sense. You can actually cure T.B., even in HIV-positives.
然而還有一個必須考量到的問題 去年非洲大約有六千人 死於誤觸地雷 而去年全世界 大約有一百九十萬人死於肺結核 是傳染病裡的頭號殺手 特別是在非洲 猖獗的肺結核和愛滋病 是最普遍的大問題 世界衛生組織利用顯微鏡檢測 大約有四到六成的可信度 數字會說話,在坦尚尼亞 有四成五的人是肺結核患者 他們都在死前不久才診斷出感染了肺結核 這意味著,你罹患肺結核的話 很有可能檢查不出身體有什麼異樣 但依舊會死於肺結核第二期或是其他併發症狀 然而 若你能早期診斷出來罹患肺結核 還是有辦法治療的 即使是愛滋病呈現陽性反應,也是相同道理 你可以治療得好肺結核 甚至愛滋病也還有救
So in our common language, Dutch, the name for T.B. is "tering," which, etymologically, refers to the smell of tar. Already the old Chinese and the Greek, Hippocrates, have actually published, documented, that T.B. can be diagnosed based on the volatiles exuding from patients. So what we did is we collected some samples -- just as a way of testing -- from hospitals, trained rats on them and see if this works, and wonder, well, we can reach 89 percent sensitivity, 86 percent specificity using multiple rats in a row. This is how it works, and really, this is a generic technology. We're talking now explosives, tuberculosis, but can you imagine, you can actually put anything under there.
以我們通用的荷蘭語來說 肺結核稱為 tering(荷語) 其源自於 柏油的氣味 遠古中國人的祖先 與古希臘名醫希波克拉底 都曾經表示與證實 能夠從患者所咳出的氣體 判斷出此病患 是否得到肺結核 因此我們就從醫院取了些樣本 以相同的型式 進行實驗 訓練老鼠去檢測樣本 看結論是否一樣 我們也想從中了解 是否能利用為數眾多的老鼠 達到將近九成的敏感度 與八成六的準確度 此為我們的策略♫ 也就是所謂的共通技術 今日我們所探討的是地雷與肺結核 然而事實上 任何東西皆能列入考量
So how does it work? You have a cassette with 10 samples. You put these 10 samples at once in the cage. An animal only needs two hundredths of a second to discriminate the scent, so it goes extremely fast. Here it's already at the third sample. This is a positive sample. It gets a click sound and comes for the food reward. And by doing so, very fast, we can have like a second-line opinion to see which patients are positive, which are negative. Just as an indication, whereas a microscopist can process 40 samples in a day, a rat can process the same amount of samples in seven minutes only. A cage like this -- (Applause) A cage like this -- provided that you have rats, and we have now currently 25 tuberculosis rats -- a cage like this, operating throughout the day, can process 1,680 samples. Can you imagine the potential offspring applications -- environmental detection of pollutants in soils, customs applications, detection of illicit goods in containers and so on.
到底要如何執行呢? 此長條板子上放置有十個樣本 把這十個樣本同時放入籠子 一隻老鼠只需0.005秒 就能嗅出氣味,整個過程是十分迅速的 老鼠已進行到第三個樣本了 此為呈現陽性反應的樣本 老鼠聽到指令等著接受食物獎賞 由此來看 我們可以快速地確認 哪些病患呈現陽性反應 哪些是陰性反應 研究顯示 透過人工顯微鏡的觀測 一天可檢視四十個樣本 但藉由老鼠的檢測 相同數量的樣本 只需七分鐘而已 僅僅一個籠子 (掌聲) 僅僅一個籠子,就能飼養很多老鼠 目前我們擁有二十五隻老鼠 能夠篩檢肺結核 僅僅一個籠子,在一天的運作之下 可檢視一千六百八十個樣本 你能想像把此類的技術運用到 環境汙染偵測 像是土壤污染 或例行性的檢測 像是違禁物品的檢測等等
But let's stick first to tuberculosis. I just want to briefly highlight, the blue rods are the scores of microscopy only at the five clinics in Dar es Salaam on a population of 500,000 people, where 15,000 reported to get a test done. Microscopy for 1,800 patients. And by just presenting the samples once more to the rats and looping those results back, we were able to increase case detection rates by over 30 percent. Throughout last year, we've been -- depending on which intervals you take -- we've been consistently increasing case detection rates in five hospitals in Dar es Salaam between 30 and 40 percent. So this is really considerable. Knowing that a missed patient by microscopy infects up to 15 people, healthy people, per year, you can be sure that we have saved lots of lives. At least our hero rats have saved lots of lives.
不過目前先把焦點放在肺結核 我簡短地說明一下 藍色的長條圖 是使用顯微鏡檢查的數量 從非洲達累斯薩拉姆的五間診所 總共有五十萬的人口數 據調查已有一萬五千人完成檢測 其中有一千八百人證實染上肺結核 我們把那一萬五千個樣本拿回實驗室 由老鼠們再檢測一次 發現這些受測者的染病比率 上升了約三成左右 過去一年以來 我們...這數據當然不是很精準 我們藉由老鼠的幫助 大幅增加了肺結核的發現率 光是達累斯薩拉姆的五間診所 發現率就上升了三至四成 這可不是個小數目 如果經由顯微鏡檢測漏掉了一個病患 然後傳染給其他十五個人 一年下來 你可以想想 我們能拯救多少人命 至少我們的「鼠英雄」已救了不少人
The way forward for us is now to standardize this technology. And there are simple things like, for instance, we have a small laser in the sniffer hole where the animal has to stick for five seconds. So, to standardize this. Also, to standardize the pellets, the food rewards, and to semi-automate this in order to replicate this on a much larger scale and affect the lives of many more people. To conclude, there are also other applications at the horizon. Here is a first prototype of our camera rat, which is a rat with a rat backpack with a camera that can go under rubble to detect for victims after earthquake and so on. This is in a prototype stage. We don't have a working system here yet.
現在我們該做的 就是為這個技術制定一套標準化流程 這其實並不難 舉例來說,每個讓老鼠嗅聞的洞都有光線指引 每個樣本只要五秒鐘就能搞定 一點也不難 另外,需要標準化的 就是老鼠們的獎勵 所有一切都要朝半自動化發展 如此才能擴大這個檢測技術的規模 進而拯救更多人命 總而言之,這項技術能應用在許多方面 這裡有個例子 我們稱之為「攝影鼠」 讓老鼠的背上背個攝影機 讓牠們在地震或是其他天災之後 進入瓦礫堆底下 搜尋生還者 這目前還在實驗階段 我們還沒建構一套完整的系統
To conclude, I would actually like to say, you may think this is about rats, these projects, but in the end it is about people. It is about empowering vulnerable communities to tackle difficult, expensive and dangerous humanitarian detection tasks, and doing that with a local resource, plenty available. So something completely different is to keep on challenging your perception about the resources surrounding you, whether they are environmental, technological, animal, or human. And to respectfully harmonize with them in order to foster a sustainable world.
總而言之,我想說的是 你們或許認為這個計劃開口閉口都是老鼠 但它最終的目的還是為了人類好 這項技術讓脆弱的人類 能夠克服各種勞心勞力 而且極度危險的人道檢測工作 它的好處是利用本地資源就能解決一切 而且可行性很高 所以我們現在面臨一個重大改變 我們必須以全新的角度 來審視周遭的事物 包括我們與生態環境、 科學技術以及動物間的關係 為了這個世界的永續經營 我們必須與萬物和諧發展
Thank you very much.
謝謝各位
(Applause)
(掌聲)