Zika Virus

March 3, 2016

Hello everybody out there in farm country. This radio commentary is brought to you by John Deere and the National Corn Growers Association. They are all friends, supporters, and allies of a healthy farm economy and prosperous rural America. Thank you. And now for today’s commentary—

If you read the paper, watch TV, or listen to the radio, I’m sure you have heard about the terrible Zika virus which can infect pregnant women and deform their unborn babies. Their babies can be born with abnormally small heads. Some infected individuals can be stricken with paralysis.

When this new year began, I had never heard of Zika virus. It has our attention now, having arrived in Mexico last year, spreading in Brazil, and moving north. Puerto Rico has 117 cases. It is transmitted to humans by mosquitoes. The World Health Organization (WHO) says it is a “public health emergency.”

Okay, what to do now? Well, we don’t have any vaccine to protect people. One solution is to genetically engineer male mosquitoes so that when they mate with a female, their offspring just die. That mosquito GE technology has been approved in Brazil, but not yet in the U.S. The American public strongly supports using genetic engineering to produce many of the drugs we use today. But some people that accept genetically engineered medicines are not sure about GE crops, even though both food and medicines enter the body.

Marshall Matz, a colleague of mine here at OFW Law, has a great piece on this very subject which just appeared in an AgriPulse publication. Why the public is willing to accept GE medicine but not GE food is hard to understand.

Now, besides GE mosquitoes – here is one other solution to fight the Zika virus.

An effective solution would be to just kill the mosquitoes. Spray them with DDT. DDT was outlawed in 1972 by the EPA. We haven’t used it since then. It was banned in most of Africa. DDT kills mosquitoes. They transmit not only Zika but also malaria. 20 million people have died from malaria in Africa since the ban.

Environmentalists say DDT harms birds, fish, and some wildlife and may be a danger to humans. However, Dr. Lyle Petersen, Director at the Centers for Disease Control, says, “Concern about DDT has to be reconsidered in the public health interest.”

When I was a kid, we were spraying DDT all the time. It didn’t hurt me, but it sure killed the flies and mosquitoes.

The Zika virus is spreading like wildfire and needs to be stopped.

If you would like to review my radio shows going back more than 20 years, just go on-line to www.johnblockreports.com.

Have a great weekend. Until next week, I am John Block from Washington, D.C.