Posted on by Californiacontrarian

In a Perfect World

What do the following have in common?

 #1. An older gramma confined to bed suffering from fever,  joint and muscle pain, headache, and a rash.

#2. A young mother of three young kids, all under the age of five, who is confined to bed with symptoms of fever, rash, and joint pain.

#3. A young severely disabled infant with microcephaly.


All of the above noted individuals live in Honduras, and they all have separate medical issues . . . all of which are related to mosquitos. #1 has dengue fever, and this is not her first episode. Unfortunately there are four different serotypes, and so an individual can get dengue fever more than once, and a recurrent bout is often more severe. Hopefully this recurrent episode will not turn into deadly Dengue hemorrhagic fever with its internal bleeding and liver damage. #2 has Chikungunya, which is a self-limited viral infection spread by mosquitos. She has been in bed and unable to care for her children now for six days. Fortunately she appears to have turned the corner, although it is likely that her joint pains will persist for many months. The only good thing with Chikungunya is that one can only get it once, as there is only one serotype of the causal virus. #3 is an unfortunate baby whose mother had a Zika infection while she was pregnant. This child will probably never walk or talk, and will eventually die in this same orphanage which rescued him after his birth mother abandoned him.
At present Dengue is near endemic in some areas of Honduras. The Dengue virus is transmitted by female mosquitoes mainly of the species Aedes aegypti and, to a lesser extent, Ae. albopictus. This mosquito also transmits Chikungunya, Yellow Fever, and  Zika infection. This same mosquito also plays a critical role in the incidence and the transmission of malaria, which is more potentially lethal than either Dengue or Chikungunya. As best I can tell there is little or no malaria in Honduras, otherwise I am sure there would be a #4.
A recent Wall Street Journal article estimated that worldwide a child dies from malaria every two minutes!! That equates to over a quarter million children dying from malaria each year! Over the last fifty or so years since DDT was banned, that adds up to a lot of people dying of malaria. Some estimate that Rachel Carson and her 1962 book, Silent Spring, have been responsible for more deaths than Hitler.
The deaths from malaria are horrific, but there is also an enormous amount of suffering not only from malaria, but also from Dengue, Zika, and Chikungunya. All of these diseases require the mosquito, specifically the female mosquito, which is a critical part of the transmission and spread of these diseases. 
In a perfect world, the answer would be to get rid of the mosquito! In the past some pesticides proved to be successful in decreasing the population of mosquitos, and subsequently there was a decrease in the incidence of malaria. Unfortunately, especially for all of the dead malaria children, pesticides, specifically DDT, were banned about fifty years ago largely because of the arguments of environmentalists. Giving environmentalists the benefit of the doubt and especially with the increased thickness of some bird’s egg shells, it is probably not totally reasonable to blame them for the yearly quarter million children who die from malaria, in part because there is no DDT! Also, in a non-perfect world, it is probably not totally reasonable to blame them for the daily suffering of thousands of #1s, #2s, and #3s. 
Luckily, according to the same Wall Street Journal article, there is a new front on the war against the mosquito. Target Malaria is a Gates Foundation-supported research effort to develop genetically modified sterile female mosquitos. Target Malaria recently conducted a carefully controlled experimental release of these sterile mosquitos  in Burkina Faso following years of research and successful releases in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Wow it sounds like there is hope. Oops, apparently there is environmental “activist opposition promoted in recent years by United Nations agencies, such as the Food and Agriculture Organization, as well as by European governments, and European Union-funded nongovernmental organizations.” I do not pretend to understand the staunch opposition to relieving the suffering caused by these mosquito illnesses.

In a perfect world, perhaps we could require at least ten different members of each of these activist organizations to spend six to twelve months each year in Africa or in Latin America. Hopefully a fair number of them would contract malaria, Dengue, or Chikungunya, or in a perfect world, each would contract all three of these mosquito illnesses. I do not wish for them to die like the malaria children, but rather I would want them to report back after they had walked in African or Latin American shoes!

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