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08/12/05
Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times --
It's spread by fire, earthquakes and dry dusty winds, three things Southern Californians know well. But how much do we know about Valley Fever?
Dr. Royce Johnson>> I had an individual who came here to interview for a position from the Midwest who had never been in California. When he came back in the days when we had a skin test, he turned positive, so he had actually caught the disease in the one day he was here.
Val>> And then, it's the next big thing in homebuilding. This machine can build a house in twenty-four hours, but it doesn't do windows.
It's all straight ahead on tonight's Life and Times.
Life and Times is made possible through the generous support of the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of medicine, health, science and education.
And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg.
Val>> It lives in dry, dusty climates and, in some rare cases, it can be fatal. It's a fungus called Valley Fever, Valley as in the Central Valley. There's not yet a vaccine and Bakersfield has been especially hard hit. That's where Sam Louie went to speak to some victims who've suffered some devastating effects.
Sam Louie>> Bakersfield sits at the southern end of the San Joaquin Valley about a hundred twelve miles north of Los Angeles. It's known for its oil, agriculture and ranching. But now Bakersfield has become known for something more troubling, a respiratory disease dubbed Valley Fever. In some rare cases, it can leave a person disabled or even lead to death.
In California, Kern County is considered the hub of Valley Fever with more than sixty percent of the cases diagnosed during the past fifteen years. Every Tuesday at Kern Medical Center in Bakersfield, Valley Fever patients come in for their checkups.
Maria Mendez>> Actually, he's talking a little bit more, but it's like whispering.
Sam Louie>> On this day, Maria Mendez brought in her forty-three year old husband, Carlos Mendez, to see Dr. Johnson.
Dr. Royce Johnson>> But he does seem to understand what you're saying better?
Maria Mendez>> He understands everything I tell him. I ask him questions and he'll answer me with movement sometimes.
Sam Louie>> Carlos caught a severe case of Valley Fever. His wife believes he got it while working at a fruit storage facility three years ago.
Maria Mendez>> They had to put tubes in him because they said he had gone into a coma. He was like that in ICU for like two days. After two days, he woke up and he woke up like this.
Sam Louie>> Carlos is now bound to a wheelchair, lives in a nursing home and has trouble speaking.
Maria Mendez>> Now that I think about it, it's kind of hard because I have to see him every day the way he is and sometimes it is kind of dispiriting to see him not recuperate so fast like before.
Sam Louie>> So how do you catch Valley Fever? Valley Fever is a fungus that lives in the soil most often in hot, dry climates. But the seeds of the fungus, known as spores, can travel across hundreds of miles. You get it by inhaling the spores. Dr. Royce Johnson specializes in treating patients with Valley Fever.
Dr. Royce Johnson>> Well, Valley Fever is an infectious disease, but not a contagious disease, caused by inhaling the spores of Coccidioidomycosis, a fungus that dwells in the soil throughout the southwest, but most particularly here in the southern San Joaquin.
Sam Louie>> More than half of the people who breath in the spores don't get sick at all. Others develop symptoms similar to a cold or the flu, but there are those on the other end of the spectrum, a small percentage, less than one percent, who come down with a more severe form of the disease. And Bakersfield residents aren't the only ones at risk. When the wind picks up the microscopic spores, they can travel far.
Dr. Royce Johnson>> It comes in from the low foothills rather than on the valley floor in the undisturbed soil, but it can fly seventy-five miles through the air. In fact, we have sea otters that catch Cocci and that's one of the reasons you can catch it throughout most of the southwest because it can travel quite a distance in the air.
Sam Louie>> Other events like earthquakes and fires can also disrupt the soil and send the spores flying over hundreds of miles of terrain. People who work or play outside may be more susceptible to catching Valley Fever, but it's not uncommon to get it by being in the environment for just a few hours.
Dr. Royce Johnson>> I had an individual who came here to interview for a position from the Midwest who had never been in California. When he came back in the days when we had a skin test, he turned positive. So he had actually caught the disease in the one day he was here and there are lots of stories like that.
Sam Louie>> Forty-three year old Edwin Mitchell caught Valley Fever last October. Today he needs a cane to walk and a neck brace for support. Mitchell says he lost fifty-five pounds and has yet to regain enough strength to return to work.
Edwin Mitchell>> Very slowly it hit me, but it hit me hard where it just took everything out of me where I couldn't do nothing. It took all my weight, so I think I was weighing about 123.
Sam Louie>> He believes he caught Valley Fever after working the past year at an oil field.
Edwin Mitchell>> I was always outdoors. In the oil field, you're always outdoors. You don't come in until it's time to go home. A lot of dust, mountains and all that. Like when the wind blows, a lot of dust blows, so, you know, that too.
Sam Louie>> So to keep his condition in check, Mitchell takes oral medications and must also get a weekly anti-fungal drug given intravenously.
Edwin Mitchell>> I worried about dying because the doctor told me, well, you know, if you don't take care of this, you can die.
Dr. Royce Johnson>> There is no real way to prevent catching it that's practical other than a vaccine, which unfortunately we don't have at this point.
[Film Clip]
Sam Louie>> At the Ranch Market in Bakersfield, volunteers talk to customers about Valley Fever and their organization, the Valley Fever Vaccine Project of the Americas. Mike Cooper is the President.
Mike Cooper>> Well, our goal is really two-fold. First of all, we're trying to develop a vaccine for Valley Fever to be able to vaccinate people so they don't catch Valley Fever in the future. Second of all, our foundation and our project is involved in a grassroots movement to educate the public and to make them more aware.
Sam Louie>> Periodically, they set up booths around town, complete with informational flyers in both Spanish and English.
Mike Cooper>> We're giving some medical information if they need it with regards to clinics and doctors they can see if they require treatment for it.
Sam Louie>> The organization is also in the process of raising two and a half million dollars for a vaccine.
Mike Cooper>> Now with the modern technology and everything and the improvements of molecular biology, we're on the verge of having a vaccine for Valley Fever now. It's been successful in studies with mice. We're currently doing primate studies with monkeys right now and we hope to be in human trial within the next twelve to eighteen months.
Cheryl Youngblood>> Well, if they get a vaccine, one shot and my husband would be alive. If the first vaccine works, none of this would be happening for me.
Sam Louie>> Cheryl Youngblood lost her husband, Mike Youngblood, in January of 2001. This is a picture of Mike before he caught Valley Fever. This is a picture of him taken just two weeks before he passed away.
Cheryl Youngblood>> He had lost over a hundred pounds. He was six foot tall and weighed under a hundred forty pounds, so he was literally skin and bones.
Sam Louie>> When Mike was first diagnosed with Valley Fever, Cheryl and her family were unaware of the disease and its deadly potential.
Cheryl Youngblood>> We were all excited, which was stupid because we thought it's only Valley Fever. He'll get well and take medicine and that will be done.
Sam Louie>> After taking drugs for treatment, Cheryl says her husband's health improved for a short time, but then started to fail.
Cheryl Youngblood>> He just went downhill. He started having strokes. He lost excessive amounts of weight. He had bad skin rashes and he finally literally faded away mentally and physically and was gone in January of 2001. He was forty-nine.
Sam Louie>> As for Carlos, his condition has improved, but Dr. Johnson doesn't think it will improve enough to allow Carlos to go back to work or live independently.
Dr. Royce Johnson>> And he became brain-damaged in all that process, so he has trouble talking and he has trouble walking.
Sam Louie>> Cheryl is hoping a vaccine will be developed soon so that no one else will have to suffer like she has.
Cheryl Youngblood>> How easy would that be to get one shot and never have to worry about Valley Fever? I mean, it's like polio. We don't worry about it anymore.
Sam Louie>> But until a vaccine is ready, doctors will do their best to treat those with Valley Fever, and volunteers with the Valley Vaccine Project of the Americas will continue to get the word out to the public about a tiny spore that can be devastating. I'm Sam Louie for Life and Times.
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Hena Cuevas>> The television show, "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" promises a house in seven days, but what about twenty-four hours? We spoke with Professor Behrokh Khoshnevis of the University of Southern California who says a house a day may not be that far in the future.
Behrokh Khoshnevis>> We envision a system that can automatically build a full-scale house in about twenty-four hours with all the electrical and plumbing imbedded and even painted or wallpapered using computer technology.
Hena Cuevas>> When you hear about the claims of building a house in twenty-four hours, that just sounds amazing. Where did the idea come from?
Behrokh Khoshnevis>> Well, basically it was a sequence of events that led to this idea. After the 1994 Northridge earthquake, like many houses, our house also got a crack in its wall. So I decided to get some plaster and putty knife and fill the big cracks that looked pretty bad. As I was doing that, it occurred to me that this simple tool, a trowel, had an excellent surface-forming capability.
Hena Cuevas>> From that do-it-yourself fix came this idea called contour crafting. With the help of USC's Information Sciences Institute, Khoshnevis has designed a device that he says will revolutionize construction.
Behrokh Khoshnevis>> This is the smallest scale contour crafting machine and it can make walls made with ceramic material.
Hena Cuevas>> The concept is similar to squeezing toothpaste out of a tube. The softened cement goes into the cylinder which then releases it into whatever shape has been programmed into the computer.
[Film Clip]
Hena Cuevas>> It continues placing layer upon layer until a wall is built.
Behrokh Khoshnevis>> Pieces in here are made out of concrete. This side is the smoother part. This side is the inner section of the wall. So the machine will lay two sections made out of concrete and then it fills the middle with more runny, less viscous, kind of concrete.
Hena Cuevas>> And the wall will be about the same thickness as a regular wall is today?
Behrokh Khoshnevis>> Pretty much so.
Hena Cuevas>> Khoshnevis says the technology can be applied to residential construction, building homes in a day for one-fifth of the current cost, and it can do more than just walls. The entire electrical and plumbing systems are also put in by the machine.
Behrokh Khoshnevis>> The system does the automatic tiling, the flooring. It can do, for example, kitchen counters. It can build cabinets.
Hena Cuevas>> One of the things it can't do are windows and doors. Why?
Behrokh Khoshnevis>> It will do window and door frames. But for certain things that are standard, factory-produced items, it really does not make sense to try to automate their fabrication. It takes about four to five minutes to hang a window or a door once you have a very accurate frame. This process, being really computer-driven, is very accurate.
Hena Cuevas>> But the process of finding the right material and its perfect consistency hasn't been easy. So what are some of the materials that you've been using because you have these different molds and some have worked and some haven't?
Behrokh Khoshnevis>> Right. Well, we've been trying different materials ranging from polymers, thermoplastics, masonry materials. You notice the parts that we've tried on that side really haven't performed very well, but the parts that we have built here on this side demonstrate a great performance.
Hena Cuevas>> So you mentioned this is the tallest forms that you have built so far?
Behrokh Khoshnevis>> That is true. The lower one that we built has not been filled in order to demonstrate the structural integrity of the shell. The bigger one has been filled with structural concrete. We have tested that sort of wall under hydraulic pressures and checked the performance against the performance of conventionally built concrete walls and the performance of the contour crafted wall is pretty much similar.
Hena Cuevas>> One of the things that is of great interest in Southern California is, are these structures -- or will they be -- earthquake-safe?
Behrokh Khoshnevis>> Well, contour crafting is a fabrication process. It pretty much produces whatever has been designed and, if the design specifies a thicker wall, if it specifies a lot of reinforcement elements inside the wall, contour crafting just implements what has been designed. Therefore, it could build structurally very sound buildings.
Hena Cuevas>> Khoshnevis says the machine would be most beneficial for quick reconstruction after a natural disaster such as an earthquake. So far, the United States Army and NASA are some of the organizations that have expressed interest in the technology. Are you surprised at all of the attention that you've been receiving because there's been multiple publications that have talked about your new invention?
Behrokh Khoshnevis>> I was kind of surprised, but to me, now it comes pretty naturally because homes are typically the biggest investment of every family, so people relate to this technology and to the promise that it has. Everybody, at least in the last three or four decades, has truly understood the potential of computers and what they can do. And now they see the computers for the first time are entering into a new domain which is near and dear to their hearts: their home.
Hena Cuevas>> Should construction workers be worried that they're going to be out of a job?
Behrokh Khoshnevis>> Well, I think there will be a transition. This thing is not going to happen overnight. I'm hoping that we'll start with emergency and low-income housing and gradually move into other applications. Typically when there is a technology that has breakthrough impact, it typically also has impact on the structure of the economy.
Hena Cuevas>> I'm sure there are a lot of skeptics. What do you tell them?
Behrokh Khoshnevis>> Well, I would tell them that time will show, that this technology will be the winner. There's no question in my mind that this is going to happen.
Hena Cuevas>> Fascinating technology. Thank you very much, Dr. Khoshnevis, for sharing.
Behrokh Khoshnevis>> Thank you, Hena.
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Val>> Okay, so Los Angeles isn't a pedestrian-friendly city, but hiking is another story. If you head out in the right direction, you can find yourself on a trail without a trace of the city in sight. Philip Bruce met one man who has made a career out of hiking.
[Film Clip]
John McKinney>> I've been writing about hiking for almost twenty-five years and I've been hiking my whole life really.
Philip Bruce>> John McKinney was born in Southern California and, by his own description, he's part beach boy, part mountain goat. He knows all the hidden little trails most of us never see. But today McKinney has brought us to a place that everybody knows, Los Angeles's Griffith Park. As we make our way past the Berlin Forest, named for Los Angeles's sister city, we've got plenty of company. In fact, the trails are busy everywhere you look and no one is happier about that than John McKinney.
John McKinney>> Right here in Los Angeles, we're leading the way for this hiking revolution. More than thirty million Americans call themselves regular hikers and here in Southern California we boast the largest Sierra Club outings group for hiking. We lead the way in hiking boots sales right here in Southern California and I think people are taking to the trail right now in record numbers, as you can see from all over this park.
Philip Bruce>> McKinney is a hiking writer for the Los Angeles Times. If you wonder what he does, you're looking at it. He walks around and writes about what he sees, how it feels and who he meets, and McKinney has seen plenty on trails like this.
John McKinney>> I've seen bears roaming the San Gabriel mountains, I've seen coyotes silhouetted on the ridge tops of the Santa Monica mountains. Right here in Griffith Park, I've seen a red tail hawk swoop down and pluck up a rattlesnake and take its dinner flying over the Golden State Freeway.
Philip Bruce>> The whole point of coming to Griffith Park is to prove McKinney's point that you don't have to load up the SUV and drive for miles to get the full nature experience.
John McKinney>> A hiker can start at lovely Fern Dell here amidst the redwoods and the sparkling stream and hike up to the Observatory now under reconstruction and up to famed Mt. Hollywood, which is every local hiker's favorite place to take out of town guests, and get a fabulous view of the city from one of these garden spots, Captain's Roost and Dante's View.
Philip Bruce>> McKinney calls this "Wild L.A." He's written a book by the same name, filled with trails, hiking tips and trivia tidbits like the fact that Los Angeles's first transmission tower is built here on Mt. Lee near the Hollywood sign or the fact that thirty-six workmen died back in 1933 trying to put out a big brush fire here in Griffith Park. Now if you get out early enough, you might see the ocean from here, right?
John McKinney>> You'd see the whole sweep of Santa Monica Bay down to Palos Verdes. You might see the Catalina Island, some of the Channel Islands, Anacapa and Santa Cruz.
Philip Bruce>> But even here in midmorning, you can still get a pretty good view. It's worthwhile, worth the walk.
John McKinney>> What I really want to do is motivate people to get off the couch, to get out of their car and explore this wonderful region that I call Wild L.A.
Philip Bruce>> Motivation may be great for the masses, but these hikers, most of them Griffith Park regulars, already get the point. They're true believers in McKinney's special brand of Wild L.A. evangelism. Regina Rhymes has even picked up some new words just by listening to the many different hikers. You've always got plenty of company out here?
Regina Rhymes>> Oh, I do. I love it early in the morning because I get to learn different languages like I learned how to speak the Korean language, just basic words, like hello.
Philip Bruce>> So they say nobody walks in Los Angeles.
Regina Rhymes>> Exactly. I think this is one of the best-kept secrets that there are a lot of walkers in Los Angeles and there are a lot of people in Los Angeles who do believe in working out. We don't have the liposuction, we don't have the luxury of going to a very, very nice doctor, but there's nothing like a very good wholesome workout in the mountains.
John McKinney>> This is a characteristic plant of the Hollywood hills, the sage. Um, isn't that nice?
Philip Bruce>> Um, that is nice.
John McKinney>> That just brings back memories and the most powerful of antihistamines too.
Philip Bruce>> But if you really want to clear your nose and clear your head, do what John McKinney's done and walk up the western edge of America.
Philip Bruce>> So you walked from Mexico to Oregon?
John McKinney>> I did.
Philip Bruce>> How long did that take?
John McKinney>> About four and a half months (laughter). I did it in chunks of fifty and a hundred miles. My original intention was to pioneer a California coastal trail, but a funny thing happened to me along the way. I threw away my notes and I became, instead of a wilderness jock, a sportsman. I became a traveler with something to learn.
Philip Bruce>> McKinney says the lessons are all around us and you don't have to walk across the country to find them.
John McKinney>> Critics say that our kids are suffering from obesity and lack of exercise. What a way to fill them with healthy pleasures. Get them on the trail. We talk about getting more and more computers in the classrooms and wiring our classrooms. Kids don't need to be wired. They need to be walked. They need to learn a different way. They need to be out on the trail.
Philip Bruce>> He is a man who enjoys his job and claims never to have a bad day when he's doing it. All of us should be so lucky.
John McKinney>> A day like this with fresh air and lots of sunshine and a lovely trail, you feel blessed. It doesn't get any better than this.
Val>> John McKinney's book is called "Wild L.A." And that's our program. I'm Val Zavala. For everyone at Life and Times, thanks for watching. We'll see you next time.
Life and Times was made possible through the generous support of the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of medicine, health, science and education.
And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg.
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