Females that won’t reproduce

Does 2020 need any more disasters? Genetically engineered 750 million mosquitoes are about to be released in Florida in 2021. Females that can't reproduce. Hey, we're doing that with teen-agers and getting slammed by the LGBTQ agenda groups if we object. But that's another disaster for down the road.

I don't like mosquitoes, but after Science in the 19th century first developed DDT as the answer to control malaria, typhus, body lice, and bubonic plague and bringing malaria cases to almost zero, that same Science then declared it an evil for Mother Earth when a non-scientist, Rachel Carson, published a book. I'm a little nervous about what else Science has in store for us. I suspect no one really knows why God designed the mosquito, nor do they remember how we got so many rogue plants, animals and fish (hint: someone brought them here to benefit or control something else).

The 737 Max is grounded

The U.S. has joined many other countries in grounding the 737 Max jet after two crashes killing a total of 346 people in 5 months. I often wonder why some lives are worth more than others. Half a million people, mostly brown and black, are killed each year by malaria, by mosquitoes, which could be controlled with DDT until a vaccine is found or appropriate sanitation developed to fight insect resistance. But no. Rachel Carson who was not a scientist writes a book 56 years ago, Americans get excited about "saving the environment" and in turn cause more Africans to die than all the Atlantic slave trade. Millions more are crippled for life. And counting the other vector borne diseases including Chikungunya, Zika, Dengue, West Nile Virus, and Yellow Fever, the annual death toll is 700,000.

Even this puff piece by pbs shows the dire predictions made at the time by scientists have come true. Claiming that resistance is the problem, is in part a problem. What if they hadn't killed off millions in the 80s and 90s? Environmentalists/climate cults will block any new pesticides that are effective using the same excuses, in my opinion.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/Rachel-carson-malaria-and-silent-spring/

Zika and microcephaly

I was listening to a radio news report on Zika on the car radio Friday morning, the mosquito borne pandemic, and almost hit the curb. (It was still dark.) The announcer urged caution for "women carrying children." Truth. It wasn't a clump of cells, a fetus, or even a baby. Children. How did that ever slip past the censor?

 http://www.cdc.gov/zika/geo/

 "It is not known how common microcephaly has become in Brazil’s outbreak. About three million babies are born in Brazil each year. Normally, about 150 cases of microcephaly are reported, and Brazil says it is investigating nearly 4,000 cases."

 http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/health/what-is-zika-virus.html?

Dengue and chikungunya

Will environmentalists relent and allow DDT in the U.S. again now that both Aedes aegypti and Anopheles quadrimaculatus mosquitoes have returned in force? Dengue fever, called break bone fever, and chikungunya, pronounced chik-en-gun-ye whose major symptoms are fever and joint pain (name means “that which bends up”) have been appearing in the U.S. due to travel and mosquitoes spread the virus.

Of course, the ban on DDT killed millions in Africa and Asia.  Will they relent for Americans?

http://www.examiner.com/article/dengue-fever-and-chikungunya-the-coming-threat

http://www.wired.com/2014/06/us-travelers-chikungunya/

Mosquito Borne Diseases: What Diseases Do They Carry? (pest-help.com)

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/debilitating-virus-infect/

Given a choice between dengue fever or another mosquito-borne disease called chikungunya fever, choose dengue every time. Neither has an available vaccine or treatment, but chikungunya (pronounced chik-un-GUHN-ya) is far more severe – it literally means “that which bends up” because patients are often stooped over from debilitating joint pain.

http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2164/15/174

HOMEMADE MOSQUITO TRAP

Items needed:
1 cup of water (200 ml water)
1/4 cup of brown sugar (50 grams)
1 gram of yeast
2-liter plastic bottle

HOW:
1. Cut the plastic bottle in half.
2. Mix brown sugar with hot water. Let cool. When cold, pour in the bottom half of the bottle.
3. Add the yeast. No need to mix. It creates carbon dioxide, which attracts mosquitoes.
4. Place the funnel part, upside down, into the other half of the bottle, taping them together if desired.
5. Wrap the bottle with something black, leaving the top uncovered, and place it outside in an area away from your normal gathering area. (Mosquitoes are also drawn to the color black.)
Change the solution every 2 weeks for continuous control.

This summer at Lakeside has been very wet—there was one point where we’d had rain 19 days in a row.  However, I’ve only had one mosquito bite.  So I’ll tuck this away for next year.  Since I don’t drink pop, I wonder if you couldn’t just add the yeast to some soda pop. Or are mosquitoes picky?

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Guess who's coming to dinner?

During the last two decades, Dengue Fever has been on the increase in Latin America and the Caribbean. It’s a mosquito transmitted disease with 4 virus serotypes, and having one doesn’t make a person immune-- he can get the other three. Each infection places the person at greater risk for Dengue Hemorrhagic Fever (DHF), a life threatening condition. There is an outbreak on the Mexican side of the Mexico-Texas border. So guess who’s coming to dinner? This is reported in a recent issue of JAMA. This content is free, and well worth reading when you get tired of hearing about bird flu and MRSA on CNN or Fox.

JAMA, although one of my favorite journals, has a strong liberal editorial bias when it comes to health issues which are impacted by current public policy, so no mention is made in this issue about U.S.-Mexico border security, only that, "Clinicians in the south Texas area and members of the public should be aware of the potential for DHF in addition to dengue fever in the region." Gee, thanks for the heads up.

JAMA also doesn’t go back to basics and point out that dengue fever, because it is mosquito spread, can be controlled with DDT. Although just a few mosquitoes can infect an entire household with the virus and those people can in turn infect co-workers and schoolmates, neither JAMA nor the WHO document it cites, mentions control of mosquitoes with DDT.

However, a 2005 document at Yale Global let it slip out:

"Dubbed "breakbone fever" when it was first diagnosed more than three centuries ago, because it causes extreme pain in the joints, dengue began its global spread around Asia during World War II, when it traveled with warring armies from country to country. After the war, Aedes mosquitoes and dengue flourished along with Asia's rapid population growth and urbanization and then was carried aboard ships and planes to Africa and the Mediterranean.

When the use of the insecticide DDT in Latin America was stopped in the 1970s after the apparent eradication of yellow fever, which Aedes mosquitoes also carries, dengue was able to stage a comeback in the New World."

The virus seems to be going first class these days, using airplanes to travel, plastic lids and containers for breeding, and residing in clean, urban settings. You definitely will not need to be living in a swampy rural area to get this virus. Dengue currently infects about 50 million people, particularly in Asia, and has researchers scratching their heads, looking at computer models, and apply for grants. "Warming globalists" will note in their hot air, alarmist messages how these diseases were once defeated, but will blame global warming on their resurgence without mentioning that DDT could be among the tools to help control them.

Maybe they think mosquitoes are on the endangered species list and need to be protected?

[Emerging Infectious Diseases also notes its mysterious suppression and then reemergence, but doesn't say why or how. The decade of the 1970s seems to hold the secret. . . could it be. . .? "In the Pacific, dengue viruses were reintroduced in the early 1970s after an absence of more than 25 years. Epidemic activity caused by all four serotypes has intensified in recent years with major epidemics of DHF on several islands. Despite poor surveillance for dengue in Africa, epidemic dengue fever caused by all four serotypes has increased dramatically since 1980. . . In 2005, dengue is the most important mosquito-borne viral disease affecting humans; its global distribution is comparable to that of malaria, and an estimated 2.5 billion people live in areas at risk for epidemic transmission."

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Remember the Tuskegee Syphilis Study?

That was a study that went on about 30 years in the 20th century among poor black men in the south to see what happened when syphilis went untreated while they were receiving "free" health care.

"The United States Public Health Service, in trying to learn more about syphilis and justify treatment programs for blacks, withheld adequate treatment from a group of poor black men who had the disease, causing needless pain and suffering for the men and their loved ones.

In the wake of the Tuskegee Study and other studies, the federal government took a closer look at research involving human subjects and made changes to prevent the moral breaches that occurred in Tuskegee from happening again."[CDC]

In my non-medical opinion, we're doing the same thing to black children in Africa under the guise of malaria research. I was absolutely sickened by the latest issue of JAMA (May 23/30, 2007, Vol. 297, No.20), which is entirely about malaria testing of combination drug therapy primarily on children of Afghanistan, Uganda, Zambia, Kenya, and Ghana. I don't understand all the big words, but I do know that while "healthy" children with high parasite loads were receiving short term medications, they weren't receiving insecticide treated bed nets, currently one of the more effective methods to combat malaria since do-gooder environmentalists inspired by Rachel Carson got DDT removed from the market in the 1970s.

I can also read the treatment outcomes--yes, no one died (oh goodie), but the side effects were observed (remember these are children!) which included anorexia, coughs, weakness, abdominal pain, vomiting, diarrhea, pruitus, seizures.

"The overall health of the children in this cohort was excellent. There were no deaths and no episodes of malaria that met WHO criteria for severe malaria. There were 19 episodes of malaria that were considered complicated and treated with quinine for the following reasons: single seizures, hyperparasitemia, inability to sit up or stand, persistent vomiting, and lethargy." ["Combination therapy for uncomplicated Falciparum Malaria in Ugandan children" p. 2210]

No one ever died from DDT. Not a bird. Not a baby. Just mosquitoes that killed babies. But every year more than a million people now die from a disease that was virtually under control in the 1970s. Most of those who die are children. JAMA is usually politically astute on social and political issues--left of center all the way. It's all aboard the global warming band wagon. It tippy-toes around the environmentalist disaster with this ridiculous comment:

"Following the collapse of the global eradication campaign in the early 1970s, malaria control programs around the world dwindled as funding dried up, technical guidance became confused and at times contradictory, and much of the global community seemed ready to accept that malaria was an unavoidable fact of life in tropical regions."

What nonsense! The eradication of malaria collapsed because somebody was more worried about bird eggs than African children living to adulthood. It's a very nasty disease to survive, let alone to die from. The survivors have life long disabilities. And there are many long term effects from the anti-malaria medications, to which the parasites are becoming resistent, so those meds are becoming stronger.

I shudder to think of all these people (pregnant women, babies and developing children) sleeping under or on pesticide treated nets and mats, the other brilliant plan to fight malaria. A ridiculously expensive plan, even if it were to work, and even if mats and nets could be distributed to every household in danger. It is so much easier, safer and cheaper to kill the disease at its source--the female mosquito! For 2003 it was estimated that in sub-Saharan Africa to get bed nets to 80% of the population would require 175.2 million insecticide-treated nets. I wonder how safe it is to work in a warehouse filled with thousands of ITNs, or to drive a truck load of them over bad roads in the hot sun to distribution centers. And roads. Are there roads by which these ITNs can get to the people who need them?

Meanwhile, the researchers/authors discuss how many women and children might be sleeping under the same net, and would that affect the number. How many angels dance on the head of a pin.