Frédéric Keck: “Enlisting animals in a war against viruses”

Anthropologist Frédéric Keck studies health crises linked to animal diseases. Research director at the CNRS, he presented his latest work on animals “sentinels of pandemics” on Saturday in Galea.

Animals and humans in the same boat: in recent years, the pandemics that strike humans have mostly originated in animals, in the wild world or in farms. The Covid-19 does not seem to escape the rule: from bats to humans, the virus has made its way to become a global disaster. Vectors but also sentinels of the next epidemics, animals and the relationships we have with them are at the heart of the research carried out by Frédéric Keck, anthropologist, director of the Social Anthropologist Laboratory of the CNRS, author in particular of Pandemic Sentinels, Virus Hunter and China Border Observer (Zone Sensible ed.).

In the case of Covid-19, animals have been identified as sources and vectors of the virus. How can they also be sentinels to guard against new epidemics?

The animal is a vector of diseases because it carries the pathogen which is then transmitted to humans. Many diseases today are zoonoses, therefore animal diseases, the pathogens of which then trigger diseases to which humans have no immunity. Mosquitoes but also birds and pigs have often been the source of this type of disease. But animals are also sentinels because by observing them we can detect these pathogens before they are transmitted to humans. This requires regular monitoring work which protects both humans and the animals themselves. The term “sentry” is a military term, it is the one who is in the front line of the fight, who senses the first signs of advance of the enemy and who alerts the rest of the troops. We can enlist animals in a kind of war that humans wage against viruses. They are neither victims nor scapegoats but active partners.

So that means that we should still get closer to them, while we have instead criticized the fact that there is no longer a barrier between wildlife and humans?

We could indeed conceive of a humanity turned in on itself or animals confined to reserves, but we are very dependent on animals because of our consumption of meat and we must keep in mind that we have more and more domestic animals, cattle. If for 50 years we have been on the alert in the face of the growing number of zoonoses, it is because we have intensified the breeding of animals.

In wild animals, viruses mutate and evolve, but they then pass to domestic animals which are then good sentinels. The bat is scary because it is the source of many viruses, but the chain of transmission of the virus to humans remains to be explained.

How can we imagine “controlling” wildlife? What types of observation could we implement?

Bats have already been the subject of significant surveillance since the SARS epidemic in 2003. We are trying to study them without harming them. For other animals, such as wild boars, hunters can be a relay.

This obviously raises questions that have existed for a long time around hunting: does it allow us to better understand animals, to regulate their number … Wild sentinel animals can give rise to interesting relationships between virologists and hunters.

Observation of animals should also be followed by early warning. Is this what was lacking for the Covid?

In 2013, in a cave in southern China, there were cases of bats having transmitted SARS-type pneumonia to humans. This should have been relayed but China did not sufficiently communicate the information, it played its role of sentinel badly. For the Covid, we can only make assumptions, because the transmission chain has not yet been reconstructed.

In Europe, are we better able to detect a zoonosis very early and prevent its transmission to humans?

If we take the example of the Camargue, where there is a risk of disease transmission by mosquitoes, the French veterinary system is quite alert. The World Health Organization has always worked with veterinarians because for certain diseases such as influenza, the information they provide on viruses circulating in birds makes it possible to better adapt vaccination for humans.

Environmentalists, veterinarians and doctors should work hand in hand. Reconstructing the chains of interdependence between the natural environment, animals and humans makes it possible to better anticipate the next pandemic events.

At the start of the Covid pandemic, we spoke of a consequence of our lifestyles: trade liberalization, encroachment on nature, overconsumption … Isn’t that a somewhat obscurantist way of conceiving of a pandemic? as a punishment inflicted on man?

In history, epidemics have always been explained by moral faults, by the fact that man had displeased the gods or had allowed a foreign population to enter his home.

With modern ecological awareness, we say to ourselves that we behaved badly with nature, that she would take revenge. The Covid pandemic has had an accelerating effect on ecological awareness, some people will try to find a more balanced relationship with nature.

What is certain is that this pandemic has taken on an enormous scale for us because of our circuits of globalization.

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