It's an oft-stated cliche that our children our our future. That's the reason stories involving dire threats to children are considered so terrifying. It's why, for instance, Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End resonated so creepily. After all, as part of the end of civilization, a frightening change came over the children, who became far superior in abilities and mental power to their parents. Another example includes Greg Bear's Darwin's Radio, whose plot involves the human race being plagued by a new disease called "Herod's Flu," which causes pregnant women to spontaneously abort their fetuses, after which they become pregnant again. This heralds a mass evolutionary change in the next generation of children. It's such a common trope in literature, TV, and film that it even has a name, Bizarre Baby Boom. The flip side of this trope includes stories in which the human race ends because of sterility, as in Children of Men. Stories that speculate bad or bizarre things about the next generation tap into a very deep and primal human fear.
These sorts of stories are just a manifestation of human terror over the thought of something that threatens or changes our children. Perhaps the most famous real-life example of this was the thalidomide disaster, in which as many as 20,000 children were born with birth defects involving stunted limb growth as a result of using thalidomide, which was then prescribed as an antiemetic, during pregnancy. Similarly, another drug, diethylstilbestrol (also called DES), also caused birth defects including reproductive tract conditions. Now, combine fear of infectious disease with our fear and revulsion of something that changes our children, particularly if it causes birth defects.
Perhaps this is why recent stories of the Zika virus have produced such a major reaction, both in the news and in the form of conspiracy theories. Yes, it didn't take long for the conspiracy loons to latch on to the virus. First, however, let's look at a more mainstream reaction, which reminds me of the reaction to Ebola over a year ago.
This reaction, one of mostly fear, has been the primary manifestation of greatly increased interest in the virus over the last few weeks, ever since it was linked to serious birth defects in October. That's when this happened:
At the end of October 2015, the state of Pernambuco in northeast Brazil began reporting a dramatic increase in babies born with microcephaly, followed by the nearby states of Bahía and Paraíba. “Microcephaly is a very rare condition,” says Patricia Pestana Garcez, a neurodevelopment expert who studies the disorder at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil. “That was already something bizarre going on.”
Many of the mothers of affected babies reported Zika-like symptoms, including rashes and joint pain, during their pregnancies. So doctors decided to check it out. They found Zika in the amniotic fluid of two fetuses that had been diagnosed with microcephaly in the womb. It’s a small sample size, but it does show that the virus can cross the placenta and get to a developing fetus. On January 13, the Brazilian Ministry of Health announced that it had also found Zika in the tissues of two miscarried fetuses and two newborns who died shortly after birth.
Considerable debate has been going on regarding whether the Zika virus really is causing microcephaly, which consists of an abnormally small head, with incomplete brain development. Skeptics, particularly ones like me and many of my readers, know that correlation doesn't necessarily equal causation. It might, but in medicine much more often it does not. Regular readers of this blog also know that the more a condition is searched for the more it will be found, as milder cases are picked up that might not have been noticed before. Regular readers of this blog are probably familiar with what has sometimes been called the "awareness" effect, which is likely partially responsible for the surge in autism, along with broadening of the diagnostic criteria for autism-spectrum disorders, the surge known among antivaccine activists as the "autism epidemic," the same "epidemic" they blame on vaccines. Similarly, screening programs always turn up subclinical and mild cases of the condition screened for, leading to an increase in apparent incidence.
Thus it's not surprising that it's unclear as of yet whether there is a true correlation between the Zika virus or even whether there is a true surge in cases of microcephaly, as this recent Nature article discusses:
This ‘awareness’ effect is well known and inevitable, they say, and must be revealing cases that would have gone unnoticed under normal circumstances. They also say that a high rate of misdiagnoses among reported cases is likely because the diagnostic criteria being used for microcephaly are broad.
Lopez-Camelo and Orioli presented their analysis in Portuguese-language reports, and, after Nature’s enquiries, provided an English version of the summary (ECLAMC Report).
They say that from the epidemiological data available, it is impossible to establish the true size of the surge in microcephaly, and whether there is any link with the Zika virus. In particular, large 'prospective' studies, in which pregnant women in areas of Brazil experiencing Zika outbreaks are monitored to see how many of their children develop microcephaly are needed, they say. Several research groups in and outside Brazil are already planning such studies, and some have begun.
In particular, the investigators, Jorge Lopez-Camelo and Ieda Maria Orioli, from the Latin American Collaborative Study of Congenital Malformations (ECLAMC), point out that the criteria for diagnosing microcephaly are not clear and it is not a trivial problem to estimate the expected number of cases of microcephaly in a population. They note that the Live Birth Information System (SINASC) database records about 1% of birth defects in live births for an expected rate of 3%, which means that an active search for a specific defect could result in an increase of as much as 2/3 in the number of cases usually recorded, even in the absence of an increase in incidence of that particular birth defect. Also, right now Brazilian health authorities are treating all fetuses with head circumferences more than two standard deviations below the mean and newborns with a head circumference of less than 32 cm as suspected cases. These are broad criteria that will inevitably diagnose many children within the normal growth range who don't have microcephaly. Confirmation of the diagnosis requires not just small head circumference, but small brain size and a decreased rate of brain growth. Consequently, it is quite likely that many of these cases will be reclassified as not having the condition.
Fellow ScienceBlogger Tara Smith points out the same thing, namely that we aren't sure whether Zika virus is causing an outbreak of microcephaly. Although the circumstantial evidence is very suggestive now, but we don't know how common microcephaly really is in Brazil or other countries affected by the outbreak, nor will we know for sure until the proper large scale epidemiological studies are done. Certainly there's enough evidence there to raise justified concerns, but there's an incredible amount of uncertainty, and humans tend not to deal with uncertainty very well at all. Similarly, Zika virus has been linked to Guillan-Barré syndrome. This connection is less uncertain, but still has a lot of uncertainty surrounding it.
This uncertainty is compounded by the characteristics of the Zika virus. It is, of course, a virus that's transmitted by mosquitos (A. aegpyti is its primary vector) that's in the same family of a number of other mosquito-borne viruses, such as dengue, yellow fever, and chikungunya. Sexual transmission of the virus has also been reported, but appears to be, although not impossible, quite rare. Overwhelmingly, the primary means of transmission is by mosquito. Unfortunately, as is the case for many viral illnesses there is no treatment, nor is there a vaccine yet available. Moreover, the incubation period of the virus is not known, and the majority of people infected with Zika virus, as many as 80% of them, don't know they were infected because in them the infection is asymptomatic. The other 20% who do become sick suffer from fever, rash, joint pain, conjunctivitis, muscle pain, and headache lasting for several days to a week or so. Of course, likely the reason for a lack of urgency to develop a vaccine for Zika virus is because most people who get the virus don't get sick and the vast majority of those who do suffer a relatively mild viral illness. It wasn't until this suspected link between this virus infecting pregnant women and the subsequent delivery of babies with microcephaly that there was a groundswell of interest in combatting this virus.
As a result of the strongly suggestive evidence linking Zika virus to microcephaly and Guillan-Barré syndrome, at this time it seems prudent to take measures to try to halt its spread in areas where its mosquito host is endemic, which includes large swaths of South and Central America, as well as the southeastern United States, particularly Florida. There has not yet been any transmission of the Zika virus within the US, and mosquito control in the US is better, with more houses with screens and air conditioning, unlike many of the countries currently affected.
Unfortunately, the news coverage has brought out the conspiracy loons, many of whom are the usual suspects. Oh, boy, has it ever! The stupid doth flow from many of the usual suspects, particularly from the antivaccine crankosphere, where, for example, Marco Cáceres declares that viruses are always the easy scapegoat. He doesn't say what he thinks the real cause of the apparent increase in incidence of microcephaly in Brazil is, but he lays down the naturalistic fallacy hard and heavy, saying it's always easy to blame the virus:
The media, along with many within the scientific, medical and public health communities, have irresponsibly pushed the idea that a virus is like a terrorist—something threatening that we must attack and destroy before it attacks and kills us. The same thoroughly unscientific mentality has been disseminated widely with regard to bacteria, disease, and fever.
The truth is that we carry lots of viruses within us all the time, and they don’t harm us in the least bit. And some of them actually do good things for us.
All of which is true but irrelevant to the question of whether the Zika virus is causing microcephaly in South America. Yes, we have a lot of harmless viruses in our cells, but we are also susceptible to lots of viruses that are not benign, viruses that do cause disease, death, and, yes, sometimes birth defects. Cáceres makes it clear where he's coming from, though, when he quotes a chiropractor who asserts without evidence that, by and large, the "viruses that cause the common cold and the flu infect mainly your weakest cells; cells that are already burdened with excessive waste products and toxins are most likely to allow viruses to infect them." Um, no. Of course, if you subscribe to the belief that viruses don't cause disease and it's all "toxins," you can sell lots of "detoxification" treatments to treat a viral illness whose natural history is benign in the vast majority of people infected with it.
Which leads us to a new quack-friendly website that I hadn't really paid much attention to before, TruthKings. Here's a hint. Whenever a website is called something like TruthKings, you can be pretty sure that it is not dedicated to science or science-based medicine. Sadly, this site doesn't disappoint, asking: Is Tdap vaccine in pregnant women the real cause of birth defects? If you really want a laugh, you should go to the source, Brazilian Shrunken Head Babies, where the arguments are lame even by antivaccine loon standards. It's basically pure speculation "bolstered" with several paragraphs beginning with the word "FACT" in—what else?—all caps. Here's a taste:
FACT—According to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) adequate testing has not been done in humans to demonstrate safety for pregnant women and it is not known whether the vaccines can cause fetal harm or affect reproduction capacity. The manufacturers of the Tdap vaccine state that human toxicity and fertility studies are inadequate and warn that Tdap should “be given to a pregnant woman only if clearly needed.”
Ah, yes. The antivaccine fallacy known as argumentum ad package insert. Of course, Tdap isn't recommended until late in pregnancy, too late to be likely to cause birth defects as severe as microcephaly. Moreover, Tdap is quite safe during pregnancy. Let's just say that the rest of the screamed "FACTs" consist of little more than speculation, appeals to ignorance, and confusing correlation with causation.
Perhaps my favorite conspiracy theory involves something that you really must have expected. What are we lacking so far in these conspiracy theories? Come on! Think! What causes all evils. GMOs, of course! And the CDC and WHO are happy about it, of course! Take a look at another conspiracy yarn from TruthKings, which bases its GMO mosquito speculation on a "report" from Honey Colony:
Is it just a coincidence that the recent outbreak of infections is concentrated in the same region where a genetically modified mosquito farm was first introduced in 2011 and 2012? ( You may rethink that trip to attend the summer Olympics in Brazil.)
In July 2015, following the release of OX513A strain of male mosquitoes into the wild in Juazeiro, Bahia, Northeast Brazil, biotech company Oxitec proudly announced they had “successfully controlled the Aedes Aegypti mosquito – that spreads dengue fever, chikungunya and Zika virus – by reducing the target population by more than 90 percent.”
Not surprisingly, Mike Adams at NaturalNews.com has jumped on this particularly bandwagon, because, of course, it's anti-GMO, and he can't resist taking it a step farther:
The Zika virus, in other words, might not even be an accident. If you give these scientists the most optimistic credit possible, you might say they intended for a positive outcome but didn't realize the risks of what they were doing. But a more pessimistic analysis of their actions might reasonably conclude that they're testing a bioweapon delivery system against humanity.
Only time will tell which interpretation is correct. Whatever the outcome, make no mistake that today's biotech science is incredibly foolish, and the actions of these biotech corporations are putting the very future of humanity at extreme risk. Now, it seems, humanity is beginning to witness the true cost of arrogantly playing God with nature.
Of course, no conspiracy theory about "depopulation" would be complete without bringing Bill Gates into the mix, which Alex Jones promptly does. Seriously, this is some super high grade conspiracy nonsense:
The video is deliciously nuts. Jones' minions can't seem to make up their mind whether Zika virus is a radical plot by Bill Gates and company to depopulate the world or whether, as John Rapport says in the video, a scam, with the Zika virus not being real. In the conspiracy theorist's mindset, I suppose it can be both.
Why is it that in these scenarios GMO scientists are portrayed in as caricatured a fashion as an evil overlord, a James Bond movie villain, only not as clever? If I were an evil overlord or a Bond villain intent on asserting my power and I wanted to use some sort of bioweapon, a genetically engineered mosquito would be one of the last things I'd choose, if only because you can't control where they end up. Ditto a "bioweapon" in the form of a disease like that caused by Zika virus. Again, you can't control it, and, besides, what's the good of a bioweapon if all it does is to cause birth defects, particularly if it can't be easily proven that the virus is the cause? What purpose would such a "bioweapon" serve? How could a dedicated supervillain use it to achieve more power?
Even the worst Bond villains were cleverer and less unfocused than this.
Expanding on the video above, though, perhaps my favorite conspiracy theory comes from—who else?—John Rappaport, who calls the CDC the "medical CIA." Why? Let Rappaport tell you about the CDC's pidemic Intelligence Service (EIS), who, according to him, "creates disinformation on a scale that must make the CIA jealous" and "invent medical reality out of thin air." To what end? Well, that's never made very clear, but Rappaport sure is suspicious. Through their "several hundred investigations a year" around the world, the EIS is spreading disinformation:
When I say control of information, I mean disinformation. That’s what the EIS is for. They’ve never met a virus they didn’t love, and if they couldn’t find one, they pretended they did.
They front for the medical cartel. And they provide cover for the crimes of mega-corporations. There’s a town where poverty-stricken people are dying, because horrendous pesticides are running into the water supply and soil? No, it’s a virus. There’s a hotel where the plumbing is broken and human waste is getting into all the bathrooms, and they want this hotel to be the epicenter of a new epidemic? No, it isn’t the plumbing, it’s a novel virus never seen before by man. There’s a section of a city where the industrial pollution is driving people over the edge into immune-system failure? No, it’s a virus.
And in Brazil:
The Brazil op has several dimensions. I’ll point out one here. The Zika virus, as in other cases, will be strongly linked to global warming (yet another example of bereft “science”). This tune will be sung: mosquitoes that carry disease are expanding their territory because of warming, and therefore people who once considered themselves safe from these “exotic” viruses will fall ill and die. Bottom line: to limit warming, the planet must adopt cap and trade, carbon taxes (and lower energy production). This is the Globalist agenda. It is intended to drive countries deeper into misery, debt, and chaos—thus making it easier to install a wider and wider global management system.
And this line of psy-op and propaganda begins with the virus hunters of the EIS. They control and own the chokepoint of disease research. They blow up their scanty findings into ex-cathedra pronouncements.
And of course, this strengthens the vaccine establishment because, for every virus, there must be a vaccine: the shot in the arm, loaded with toxic chemicals and a variety of germs.
The EIS. The CDC’s band of brothers. The medical CIA.
Bravo, Mr. Rappaport! You've come up with the most elaborate Zika virus conspiracy theory I've come across thus far! Truly impressive. While mere amateurs like Mike Adams just think that our New World Order masters are testing bioweapons through genetically modified mosquitos, only Rappaport appreciates the full scope of the conspiracy, tying together anthropogenic global climate change, viruses like the Zika virus, and vaccines as part of a nefarious plan to inject babies with "toxic chemicals" and keep you and me under the thumb of big pharma.
Now that's a conspiracy theory. All it lacks are our Reptilian overlords. I expect they'll be along soon enough, as will the Zika virus quackery; that is, if it isn't along already. (Oh, crap. The homeopaths have discovered Zika virus.) That might be a topic for another post.
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Those are some funky-looking mosqitoes right there.
Zebra-Mosquitoes?
Oh no, Orac has discovered TVTropes, we may never see him again.
Is just a coincidence that an attempt to reduce the mosquito population was first performed in an area where morbidity from mosquito-borne diseases was especially high? At the risk of sounding conspiratorial, I'm going to go out on a limb and guess "No".
Oh man, remember back in that one other comment section where I joked about the GMO moqsquitoes being "bio organic weapons" á la Resident Evil?
The hilarity of Mike Adams actually thinking so is just staggering. My mind is blown at the sheer stupidity.
Almost as staggering as my inability to spell "mosquito"...
I saw somewhere that the Zika-delivering-GMO-mosquitos were created by Bill Gates to help with his plans to reduce the human population on earth - especially the black part. Looks like using vaccines for that purpose isn´t working fast enough.
And, like Orac, I think that it is an insult to be portraited not only as evil (I work/-ed in the broadest sense with GMOs) but as incompetent! :-)
Amethyst@#1: Aedes albopictus - not aegypti.
StrangerInAStrangeLand@6: Hey, if the hat fits. Six years of Evil Medical School and all you've got to show is mosquitoes that can't get it up? Where are the sharks with frickin' laser beams attached to their heads?
#7 - Really neat-looking critters. Sadly, they are mosquitoes after all, so I can only appreciate their neatness so far...
Oh, I've known about TVTropes for a long time... :-)
Six years of Evil Medical School and all you’ve got to show is mosquitoes that can’t get it up?"
Hey, you get to be called doctor.
And wouldn't you know it but Mikey asserts that the Powers-that-be are now suppressing a cure for Zika-
it could be something like Sweet Wormwood ( Artemisia) from Chinese medicine- because it's *natural*. I recently heard about the same plant from Null.
I sometimes think that our alt media honchos must have a designated Nervous Nelly (tm) ( or Nick) in their employ serving as a barometer to gauge whatever worries the general public most.
" Hey Nick, what's making you feel more panicked today: the Zika virus, street gangs or the national debt?"
I suppose that as legitimate news outlets cut back on operations to save money they leave a gap that half wit opportunists fill. They tell us that their audience are growing by leaps and bounds but at least one of them doesn't understand that numbers that come up from an internet search do not equal the number of people who are reading.
Denice Walter,
I'd wager that the majority of these joker's audiences are transitory consisting of people who are pissed off about their medical care or the government, dabble in this alternative media and then see how ridiculous it is at some later point. The die-hard fans have to be pretty small because of how wide the net is cast with illogical stances on so many issues.
Just because I have Methanobrevibacter smithii in my gut and it helps me with my hydrogen metabolism doesn't mean that Clostridium tetani isn't going to contort my body into a painful, twisted grotesque with death the likely and welcome escape at the end.
Mr. Rappaport is a textbook example of crank magnetism. He managed to work global warming and one-world government into that screed. The concept that there are methods by which we might come to know things, whether by testing tissue samples and finding things that are definitely viruses but ones we haven't seen before, or measuring the infrared absorption cross sections of a molecule whose concentration in the atmosphere is increasing, seems foreign to him.
@ Not a Troll:
Sure. However, the die-hards are the ones who support woo-meisters by buying products. You know the old 80/ 20 rule:
20% of customers account for 80% of sales.
Interestingly, there are data on how much one of these charlatans earns ( LOTS!) via business sites and from data about sales of so-called 'premiums' for a land-based non-commercial radio station. The woo-meister provides premiums and is paid for them by the station - or sues them if he isn't.
Not a Troll@11:
Pfft, any idiot can get that from Woolonga.
Or for that matter, by graduating from certain alt-med programs. I know our host likes to refer to the ND degree as "not a doctor", but realistically, I suspect that most people with that degree do refer to themselves as "Dr. $LASTNAME".
Has @17 -- Reminds me of an old New Yorker showing a maitre-d on the phone at a fancy restaurant, saying.
"Very well, two at 8 O'clock for Dr. Jones. May I inquire, are you a medical doctor, or merely a PhD?"
All these purported evil plans and yet our population keeps growing and growing and growing.
I really like both sci-fi books you mentioned at the start, Orac. Childhood's End is more mystical than some of Clark's other books (but very poignant when humanity realizes it's losing it's children forever, whereas Bear's book was more scientifically based and didn't end as cleanly (hence it's sequel). Both go well into how children are cared for by society. I still need to watch the mini series just out for Childhood's End.
palindrom@19: You remind me of a sometime collaborator, an Australian who divides his time between there and Berkeley (when he's not attending conferences) and is married to a woman with family on two other continents. As you might expect, he does a lot of international travel. But he avoids giving the airlines both his degree and his occupation: he is afraid that someone will see "Dr. [redacted], Research Physicist" on a passenger manifest and jump to the conclusion that he is a physician.
I see that TwoofKings can't even get the Tdap angle right: Boostrix is supposed to have been made mandatory (it wasn't; Portuguese PDF), thus delivering a thimerosal payload (which it doesn't contain). They've also got the timing wrong; the recommendation came in 2014, not "last spring" [sic].
Something tells me that delivery of prenatal care in Brazil might be less than uniform in any event, and the whole thing excludes the geographical clustering.
At least AoA briefly glommed onto seasonal flu vaccination, which has a marginally better timeline.
One is thus left with some sort of vaccine–ZIKV "synergy." Except when it's "another medical false flag like Ebola. (These comments also have a couple of tetracycline angles that are new for me, e.g., "It is curious that an antibiotic Tetracycline is used as an antibiotic on farm animals. This antibiotic is also used as a quasi antidote to the gene that was inserted into genetically engineered mosquitoes to combat the mosquitoes that spread the Zika virus.")
Fast? Furious? I don't think you ever even really considered the import of the NAFTA super-highway and what it has to do with all of this... misdirection.
I especially like this tweet, found in this Twitter conversation from Tara's links:
this Twitter conversation in reference to trying to cram a chunk of DNA almost as big as the entire Zika genome into the latter's single strand RNA:
^ my I made a mess of that
As penance, I offer this comment from one of the dopier commenters on a CBC article on Zika:
Sadly, because my work travel is all booked through a University system, they insist on using the title.
Indeed it has happened. I have been tempted to respond with "I am a proper Doctor", but realise that might not go over so well when they have an ill passenger on board, so I use "I am not that sort of Doctor" which makes me sound like I am some sort of crank. But so be it.
On topic, the GM mosquito argument is particularly mind-numbingly ignorant. Firstly, the 2015 release was thousands of km away from where the problem is, the 2011 release was closer, but those mosquitoes would have well and truly died out by now.
Apparently, the ZIKV was supposed to pick up the PiggyBac transposon from the GM mosquitoes that contains the tTA gene and pass it on to pregnant women, from whence it causes birth defects by being incorporated into the genome of the fetus. Someone has failed to explain to the conspiracy theorists that ZIKV is a ssRNA virus.
I'm really disappointed in the conspiracy-shouters, who are usually much quicker on the trigger.
After all this time, still no connection made to chemtrails or Morgellons.
And Rand Paul dropping out of the GOP presidential sweepstakes.......................................................................
Connect those dots!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Rappaport missed something: The Malthusian angle!
CDC is just a cover, and EIS is really a dark op subsidiary of The Mossad.
Teh Jews and Teh Atheists want to force all these pious Central and South American countries to legalize abortion and promote contraception, "or else" they'll be bankrupted by the tidal wave of microcephalic children.
Promoting contraception is the first step toward abandoning all sexual morés, paving the way for gay marriage, and the spread of atheism to thwart the War of Armageddon, thereby derailing the Second Coming and consigning all of humanity to everlasting damnation and the eternal triumph of Satan!
You read it here first!
I forgot, what about the holistic docs dropping dead all over the South?
GENETICALLY ENGINEERED ZIKA INFEKTION!
Dangerous Bacon, but the brave Harold Buttram was felled On January 27 2016; he was only 90!
http://janauglefcs.com/tribute/details/1205/Dr-Harold-Buttram/obituary…
@ Dangerous Bacon:
Most seriously, he of null ability just discussed the said conspiracy to off the brave maverick-y altie docs but his astute investigation found ABSOLUTELY no pharma plot but rather the doctors - and he was friends with some of them- didn't live a correct healthy vegan exercise-centric lifestyle so off they went into that good night.
Now if they had listened to him....
There's a good overview and take-down of the GMO Zika skitter conspiracy by Mark Lynas in The Guardian. He links to Science Sushi at Discover blogs who goes into more detail.
In essence, conspiracists get the locations wrong and the dates wrong as well as the basic science wrong (e.g. DNA from skitters won't be leaping into the virus which has RNA, and even if it did, the leaping DNA is about as large as the whole viral strand so would be pretty hard to miss).
http://tinyurl.com/hv4lwqz (Guardian article)
http://tinyurl.com/zowkh8u (Discover blogs article)
Dude, even the Romans knew that it's easier to keep control of the population when they're happy, affluent, and in good order.
Again, I suggest to the totally competent conspiracy that they should be spending their efforts on keeping me from attaining a billion dollars.
p.s. I see Doug at 23 already made that RNA DNA point. Sorry. Should have read more carefully.
Since Zika usually doesn't have any symptoms, doesn't that mean you should dilute something that doesn't cause any symptoms to make the remedy? Like water, for instance? Water diluted in water has to be super powerful!
My one big disappointment re the Zika drama is that cancer quack, conspiracy loon and self-described humanitarian "Dr." Leonard Coldwell has been suspended from Facebook for 30 days after being reported for hate-speech posts. Otherwise he would be cranking up the conspiracy volume to his own gullible audiences on Facebook, and doing so most entertainingly and illiterately. As it is, he has had to satisfy himself with posting links to the Mike Adams/Natural News lunacy on his own blog.
And by the way, @Dangerous Bacon, yet another "holistic" doctor in Florida has bitten the dust. More grist for the conspiracy mill indeed.
http://www.healthnutnews.com/our-local-holistic-friend-doctor-found-dea…
Give him time. Give him time. He'll figure out a way. :-)
Robert "The Great White Hoax" Catalano in 2014 as well, for those keeping score.
Timely discussion by the Orac. I just read one of the worst articles from medscape about zika a few days ago. Little to no evidence-basis in the article. Followed by 30+ medical comments of "wtf did medscape just publish ?"
Run for your lives, Jenny McCarthy is getting augmented....
As a slight aside, I'd recommend the book 'The Dead Hand', which describes, among other things, the Soviet biological weapons program. Whereas we took the attitude that with enough nukes to kill everyone several times over we didn't need biological weapons as well, the Soviets went ahead, and amongst the horrors they came up with was a virus that starts with a 3 day cold, then death a few weeks later, so it can fully spread before its picked up. That's what a proper depopulation virus looks like.
Some of the weapons are probably still around today. Sleep well.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Dead-Hand-Reagan-Gorbachev/dp/1848312997
I recently unfollowed someone at Twitter because she apparently took one look at Zika and dove into full-scale conspiracy theory, with GMOs and mention of polio virus and HIV. I decided I wasn't up to refuting her, and didn't want huge amounts of that on my feed.
I can think of at least two science fiction stories that involve the sort of bioweapon Andrew Dodds @40 points at, with the first symptoms looking like the common cold:
(spoilers ahead for deades-old stories)
An odd attempt to use an engineered disease to gain political power is part of the plot of Edgar Pangborn's novel A Mirror for Observers; and James Tiptree Jr.'s "The Last Flight of Dr. Ain" describes a misantropic scientist right out of the "they're trying to depopulate the earth" conspiracy theories.
(It should be no surprise to anyone who knows the two writers which one manages something in the shape of a happy ending.)
Slatewiper by Lewis Perdue features engineered viruses that trigger on race-related genes. The sort of thing that Mad Scientist Gates and his lackeys at the CDC are undoubtedly working on to wipe out the darker-skinned populations. Just adding my bit to the conspiracy mix.
I remain amazed that the people trying to depopulate the world do such a bad job of it.
"I remain amazed that the people trying to depopulate the world do such a bad job of it."
That's because conspiracies require large bureaucracies to operate. The evil genius at the top is a figurehead. They just send him glowing progress reports (and sharks with lasers) every month to keep him busy and satisfied.
The whole "TDaP shrunk my baby's head!" myth can be quickly dispelled. Not only has the exact same TDaP vaccine been administered to countless pregnant women in the US since at least 2012 without any serious side effects whatsoever, but the TDaP vaccine is typically administered between week 28 and week 32 of a pregnancy -- at which time a defect such as microcephaly has already developed and is visible on ultrasound images.
The mystery why the zika virus has not led to an increase of microcephaly prevalence in Africa and Asia, where it has been endemic for at least 6 decades and possibly far longer, can also be explained from the fact that it is exactly this endemic nature that prevents these birth defects: women there usually get infected by zika long before their first pregnancy, after which they develop immunity and thus protection for their yet-to-be-conceived children.
OK, so there was a lot of really misplaced carping about notation at Dr. Amy's joint before she turned off comments because they were "crashing the site" (Disqus is externally hosted, so I have no idea how this came to be).
Refortix/Boostrix is Dtap or, in Brazil, dTpa.
There is no reason whatever to suppose endemicity. There's little data that I'm aware of about population immunity. "Six decades" is right out for something that had a comfortably sylvatic lifestyle.
I'm a bit weary at the moment, the possibility that I've read positive is purifying selection – with the host–vector cycle limiting nonsynonymous substitutions – leading to a more enthusiastic viremia.
^ "but the possibility that I've read about positive"
Told you I was weary.
This requires an anti-vaxxer to consider evidence that contradicts their deeply held belief that vaccines are the EVIL!!!!eleventy-one.
It will never happen.
There's PMID 19788800 ( https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2819875/ ) and 13163397 ( http://www.jimmunol.org/content/72/4/248.abstract ). Wikip-ia mentions some other study where all the adults were seropositive, but gives the wrong reference.
I think it's safe to say there are at least places where the human population was very likely to get it sometime during their lifetimes. It's just hard to say how much area and how many people that encompassed with the little data available.
Get some sleep, Narad!
If anybody is looking for a musical recommendation, Firewater's "Psychopharmacology" is a personal favorite.
I typically start with the second track for some reason.
I'm afraid that neither of these two items cuts the "safe to say" mustard from where I sit.
Narad @46
Wrong. See the CDC page: http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd-vac/pertussis/recs-summary.htm
In the US, DTap is the vaccine for infants and young children, with the final dose given around age 5.
The vaccine for older children (7 and up) and adults is Tdap – the GSK version being Boostrix –and is not the same vaccine: less diphtheria toxoid in Tdap.
While I myself am guilty of incorrect capitalization (yeah, I thought it was TDaP until I checked just now), as someone with different family members receiving either vaccine depending on age, I’ve paid attention to which vaccine is which. And neither one is the DTP flogged by the conspiracy crowd.
Duh. DTaP.
I'm going to call that a Freudian slip stemming from the apparently waning immunity conferred by the "a" component.
In other news...
Dan Olmsted ( AoA) ponders why leaders of his own political party seem to be avowed vaccinators whilst the opposition has members who agree with him.
Where I live one news broadcast spread that GMO mosquito conspiracy as if it it where a confirmed fact. The place I live in.
Peripes, #57; If it were an actual licsenced broadcast company and not mearly the 'chicha press' spreading such slander then they most likely felt very strongly *encouraged* to do so -- To take the heat off the new GMO maize and soybeans that resist 2,4-d. <-- If how that stuff wiped out my passiflora incarnata from yards away** is any indication, it is extremely nasty.
Although they approved it just last April, vast areas were probably already saturated with pirated seed and Enlist Duo™ beforehand (after US EPA cleared the corn and Enlist back in October, 2014).
http://www.gmwatch.org/news/latest-news/87-news/archive/2015/16069-braz…
**residental lawns as well as the adjoining soybean field some 50 yards distant from the plants
Right. I was tired, but there was at least the inconsistency with dTpa to signal the error.
"It’s also worth remembering that few people who run for president win the first time out"? It's just sad that D'Ohlmsted clings to his "investigative journalist" trappings. (See also "Hey Pregnant People," where he again gets his fact wrong.)
Twice as many people means twice as many dishes, madam.
@justthestats:
Could you hip me to that one? I'm currently looking at PMIDs 26482390 and 25001879.
the brave Harold Buttram was felled On January 27 2016; he was only 90!
We still have Blaylock. Who has now boarded the Chemtrail crazy-train.
yet another “holistic” doctor in Florida has bitten the dust. More grist for the conspiracy mill indeed.
Some see personal tragedy, some see an opportunity for grifting. Amanda Mary Jewell sells tickets to, then regretfully cancels a "Taking control of your health" seminar.
https://www.facebook.com/MotherNatureAndYou/posts/897819826980443
I just want to give Orac and y'all a huge thank you. Haven't had time to keep up with all this nonsense re: sterile mosquitos birthing zika-infested progeny, et. al..Huge bow.
so why the FDA didnt approve Oxitec's mosquito yet? If its so good, pls release a few thousand in florida soon! hahah no, the FDA is afraid and just waiting to see the results abroad first.
http://www.fda.gov/AnimalVeterinary/DevelopmentApprovalProcess/GeneticE…
@Raf - What are you actually trying to say? Thanks.
Nov. 25, 2015
http://www.wsj.com/articles/epa-revokes-approval-of-dow-chemicals-enlis…
http://sustainablepulse.com/2015/11/25/us-epa-revokes-herbicide-registr…
^^ How very timely. Raise your hands if anyone believes the EPA took this expedited action solely because the Earthjustice people asked them nicely.
Dow. They... knew.
** "Specifically, Dow did not submit to EPA during the registration process the extensive information relating to potential synergism ic cited to the Patent Office..."
http://www.panna.org/sites/default/files/2015-11-24%20EPA%20Voluntary%2…
Raise your hands if anyone believes the EPA took this expedited action solely because the Earthjustice people asked them nicely.
So what are you saying here, Gilbert: that the Lizard People got to the EPA - AS WELL AS THE SECRET SERVICE?
I've decided to wait the results of the recently started prospective studies to see if Zika causes microcephaly or what the relationship is.
Still, I found this article from this morning interesting because it suggests the Brazil investigation started with an unusual number of babies with what certainly appears to be microcephaly.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/07/health/zika-virus-brazil-how-it-sprea…
Did you miss the "it's patented by the Rockefellers" angle, coming from a bunch of people who can't tell the difference between the ATCC catalogue and the US Patent Office, and who apparently believe that you can just order up controlled biological specimens by filling in fake details on the order form?
Well, duhh! Robert L. Bell #69. I should have thought that would have been the obvious observation without the need for requesting further revising and extending of my remarks as I have, thusfar, served as a steadfast reference alluding to the dirty revolving door smeared of explosive diarrhea from the typical salmonella spreading, viscious vacillating vectors of vile oscillating between industry and its antecedant regulatory agencies. I should have thought my continuous harping on those hemp-hating, hemipened herpitars of hypocrisy (aka Tom Vilsack, et. al) as is demostrated via brief perusal on my previous postings here and there might have brought the price of renting a clue down to even the level of mediocre belly-crawling, reptillian yes-men. I thought wrong.
@Narad:
The W-dia article says:
and cites PMID 12995440 for it, which doesn't seem to be the right reference. I suspect that they might have meant 13077697, which I don't have easy access to, but has the same author and is in the same journal. Or they might have completely botched the citation. I tracked that paragraph down to when it was first added, and the wrong citation was in the original.
@Narad:
Never mind, found the right PMID: 13157159
I'm a little confused here. If the Zika Virus has been around since the 1940s and the fact that there are 35 other countries across the globe that have confirmed cases of Zika virus illness, but none are having any microcephaly reports ...WHY is it so hard to believe that the TDAP vaccination that was recently implemented to be given to pregnant mothers in Brazil and now there is an explosion of microcephaly in babies being born? "Conspiracy theorists" term is simply a derogatory term given to demonize critical thinkers and to hide the TRUTH. What a sad, sad, sad world we live in. Those that are knowingly covering up truth and LYING everyday and calling it "news" are truly pathetic, evil beings.
The first notable outbreak of ZIKV was in 2007, followed by the much larger one in French Polynesia in 2013. "Been around since the 1940s" is meaningless. It circulated among animal hosts.
This is a non sequitur. Where's all the microcephaly due to Tdap in, say, the U.S., which has the exact same recommendation as Brazil's new one? (Do not even think of pulling out the "mandated" line.)
As am I, but French Polynesia is retrospectively signaling (PDF):
"In light of the increased incidence of microcephaly reported in Brazil, a review of birth data by authorities in French Polynesia indicated an increase in the number of central nervous system malformations in children born between March 2014 and May 2015. 18 cases were reported including 9 microcephaly cases compared to the national average of 0 to 2 cases of microcephaly per year."
Look and you shall find, etc. The H5N1 blog is a handy news aggregator.
The relevant part of that one is here, but the following discussion section looks to be an entertaining read.
(Open-access here, if anyone else is following along.)
Vilsack approved a 15-cent per tree tax on Christmas tree sellers, as a result of over 3-years of lobbying from the Christmas tree industry... The purpose of the tax is to fund an advertising program by the U.S. Department of Agriculture promoting the sale of real Christmas trees.
^^He is actually inadvertantly helping the environment by taking land away from the exponentially more pernicious practice of farming corn for ethanol fuel, after all.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Vilsack#Secretary_of_Agriculture
http://civileats.com/2016/02/08/colorado-will-soon-be-home-to-certified…
Lizzard people. You can't trust 'em; you can't slit open their bellies and crawl inside to survive a chilly arctic shortwave trough.
** Oh, yeah; He's definately a lizzard person. But maybe, just maybe, because he cracked a couple pot jokes with Bill Clinton, he's a *good* lizzard person like Robert Englund's character ,Willy, in the 1983 mini-series masterpiece, "V".
The strains known about in the 1940s weren't able to be transmitted from person to mosquito or from person to person. That meant that the mosquitoes had to be infected by monkeys. That meant that the only people who got it were people within a mosquito's range from monkeys. How likely do you think it would be that people would notice that there was a bit of a higher rate of a very rare birth defect in those backwoods areas?
Actually, the US has already had its first case of Zika-related microcephaly. But I think you're missing the bigger picture, which is that Brazil has had 75 times as many cases as the next country down in the list of countries affected by this outbreak, and a million times as many cases for several of them. A very, very tiny percentage of those cases lead to microcephaly, so it's not surprising that there aren't many reports of cases from other countries.
WHY would Tdap only do this in areas in Brazil that have Zika outbreaks, with the microcephaly rates corresponding well to the infection rates? That doesn't make sense.
WHY would Tdap make the babies test positive for Zika? None of the diseases Tdap protects against are even viruses. That doesn't make sense.
Critical thinking means that you should ask questions like whether ten times the normal countrywide rate of babies with microcephaly being born in just one state of Brazil and to a lesser extent a few of its neighbors is likely to be what you'd see if the increase was the result of a countrywide policy change. Critical thinking means you would wonder if the best way a group of educated public health workers could come up with to hide the TRUTH about the cause of a cluster of birth defects would be to blame it on some new exciting rare disease instead of, say, picking some run-of-the-mill industrial chemical with known birth defect inducing qualities and claiming that they tested high for that.
Critical thinking means you identify which explanations you are most sympathetic to and challenge them ten times as much as the ones you like the least. Critical thinking is HARD.
So far, I haven't found any better alternatives. :)
If one is very observant, Patton Oswald can be seen to lick his own eye {not really, he's not derived of any kind of proper earthly lizzard) -- He's also Tom Vilsack's life-partner.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urglg3WimHA
@82 - as far as i know, there are no confirmed cases that are directly related to infection from zika.
@MarkN:
Confirmed by the CDC:
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/17/health/hawaii-reports-baby-born-with-…
i guess science is just going to be tossed out the window on this.
@MarkN:
Well, ok, the CDC confirmed that the mother and child tested positive for Zika. It didn't confirm causality. That was the headline writer's bad but understandable decision to write.
In other headlines on today's "Stupid News", "Levi Quackenboss" at AoA and on her own blog is linking microcephaly to pesticides, while Mike Adams at NN is going for GM mosquitos.
Yah, Robyn Diann Ross isn't the sharpest tool in the shed. Somebody might want to interrupt her Na-channel babbling to point out that the happily organic pyrethrin does the very same thing just to see what happens.
Rebecca Fisher #88, that “Stupid News” included a couple pretty much unassailable links:
http://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/brazil-pesticides/
^^ The People do not want it nor the statistical increase in disease 'it' comes with.
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/aug/23/hawaii-birth-defects-pes…
I don't think the discussion about vaccines can be written off as anti-vaccine hysteria in this case. The link to Zika is tenuous at best, as Brazil's own government has confirmed that only 6 of the babies born with microcephaly actually show evidence of the virus.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-would-it-take-to-prove-t…
The JAMA study that you reference did not investigate microcephaly. They concluded that Tdap was not linked to chorioamnionitis, hypertensive disorders, or pre-term births. That is not the same thing as the vaccine being "safe", and most certainly does not rule out a link to microcephaly.
I think vaccines have been one of the greatest advances in human history, but that does not mean they are safe for pregnant women. GSK itself says they do not recommend their vaccine during pregnancy unless it is "clearly needed", due to a lack of adequate research on its side effects.
Incidentally, almost a third of microcephaly cases have been reported in Pernambuco, which has the highest rate of population growth in the country and has vaccinated tens of thousands of women over the past year. While many women who have taken the vaccine have given birth to perfectly healthy babies, I think at the very least, an interaction between Tdap and Zika can be suspected. The science is always more complicated than we want it to be.
@Elle - Given that Tdap is given to pregnant women in the third trimester, well after microcephaly would have developed, yes, it *can* be written off as anti-vax hysteria. Unless you believe that the vaccine can cause birth defects before it's administered?
Boostrix is U.S. Pregnancy Category B. This is about as good as it gets. I'll leave the enumeration to anyone who is interested and not about to turn in.
ALL THIS AND NOTHING ABOUT THE INVENTION OF SYPILLIS , GONOREHEA, HERPES???
FUCK YOU SCIENCE YOU SERVE THE DEVIL AND SO DOES ALEX JONES THE REAL TRUTH KINGS KNOW FACT FROM FICTION AND WE KNOW FACT FROM CONSPIRACY! NOW GO CONTINUE YOUR SUPPORT FOR THE INVENTORS OF THE STD`S AND THE HIV AND GO DEFEND THEM AND MAKE CONSPIRACY DOCTORS LOOK LIKE DEVILS!!!!!!!
FUCK YOU, SCIENCE! YOU SERVE THE DEVIL AND SO DOES ALEX JONES THE REAL THE REAL ALEX JONES**. TRUTH KINGS KNOW FACT FROM FICTION AND WE KNOW FACT FROM {FALSE FLAG} CONSPIRACY {CONSPIRATORS AND THEIR EXPLOITATIVE NAKED SHAMEFUL SCHEMES)! NOW GO CONTINUE YOUR SUPPORT FOR THE INVENTORS OF THE STD`S AND THE HIV AND -- GO DEFEND THEM AND MAKE {YOURSELVES TO LIE IN BED WITH} CONSPIRACY DOCTORS PHARMA SHILLS AND THOSE WHOSE STOCK PORTFOLIO IS LADEN WITH PHARMA SHILL FILTHY LUCRE AND THOSE WHO MAKE COMMERCIALS SAYING "ASK YOUR DOCTOR IF" AND THOSE WHO TAKE THE ADVERTISING REVENUE FOR SHOWING THEM ON THE TV AND THOSE WHO WOULD TAKE THE BEAUTIFUL AND YOUTHFUL AND CAUSE THEM TO LOOK LIKE DEVILS {IN THE NAME OF SELLING PIMPLE CREAM}!!!!!!!
^^THERE. FIXED THAT FOR YOU.
Congratulations, Zaakir mungrue #95; Under the new federal American standard of Common Core education, you pass grammar class for choosing not to use *unfriendly* numbers in the uniquely individual presentation of your treatise.
**http://planet.infowars.com/groups/the-real-alex-jones/
Just... wow.
Nothing like letting your freak flag fly
@Elle:
Care to explain how or why a small dose of a few modified-to-be-inactive proteins from bacteria could "interact" with a single-stranded positive sense RNA virus with a small genome, or why we didn't notice it happening with other, more common members of the same virus family?
@ZAAKIR MUNGRUE:
IF SYPHILIS WAS INVENTED IT WAS DONE BEFORE THE 1500'S, PROBABLY IN THE AMERICAS. GIVEN THE TECHNOLOGY OF THE TIME I WOULD BE VERY IMPRESSED THAT SOMEONE COULD INVENT IT. BY THE WAY, LOWER CASE LETTERS HAD ALSO BEEN INVENTED AT THAT TIME.
This talk of 'upper case' and 'lower case' is just part of the conspiracy to conceal the existence of the other 10 letter cases that were bequeathed to us by the Pleiadean aliens.
After you've mastered those 10 letter cases you can tackle verb conjugation for the time traveler:
http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~param/quotes/guide.html
My favorite unsung case is the justin. The case of the vanishing room is also a great one, but has, perhaps, been sung.
@ZAAKIR MUNGRUE:
ALL THIS AND NOTHING ABOUT THE INVENTION OF SYPILLIS . . . ???
Well, Big Pharma doesn't want people to know about their handy Acme Time Machine and how they used it to go back to 10,000 BC and drop SYPILLIS(sic) on the population.
The poor typesetter apprentices!
One of the better moments from one great aunt was giving me a children's typesetting kit with rubber type and its own type case (but not one of the kewl rotary ones).
Turns out that TruthKings is the creation of Sherri Tenpenny.
https://i1.wp.com/reasonablehank.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Tenpenn…
That is the most awesome thing I've seen so far today.
For those that didn't get the joke in my last comment, there was a time when upper and lower were actual big, heavy cases full of metal, and guess whose job it would probably be to move them when a new set was needed.
Hilarious.
It's particularly amusing because my cancer center's network wouldn't let me connect to TruthKings the other day. The message I got was that the site was blocked and the reason for its being blocked was listed as a single word: "Pornography."
I can't argue with that.
-btw-
What Creative Genius (tm) thought up the *imaginative* and *meaningful* name for the website?
The newest theory now is Monsanto chemicals used to kill mosquitos as the agents that cause microcephaly. People love an evil corporation storyline.
“Now we have a January 27 Associated Press story out of Rio, published in SFGate: ‘270 of 4,180 suspected microcephaly cases confirmed.’ That’s called a clue, in case you’re wondering. Of the previously touted 4,180 cases of microcephaly in Brazil, the actual number of confirmed cases so far is, well, only 270. Bang. But wait, there’s more. AP: ‘Brazilian officials said the babies with the defect [microcephaly] and their mothers are being tested to see if they had been infected. Six of the 270 confirmed microcephaly cases were found to have the [Zika] virus.’ Bang, bang, bang. Out of all the microcephaly cases re-examined in Brazil, only six have the Zika virus. That constitutes zero proof that Zika has anything to do with microcephaly.”
And how long before the arduous task is delegated to the over vigilant and particularly extra specially-enabled, competent derpy douchebag legions of campaign-promised-jobs-for-underpriveledged-control-freaks-who-don't-read-to-well Community Development 'officers' or real SWAT with their 3'rd grade education, SPAS-12s( Special Purpose Automatic Shotgun), and flashbangs? Will they be discrete in differentiating between the small baby screeching in the crib or Gimpy, the 5.5 legged mantis sitting on the mantlepiece from mosquitoes when using their State-sanctioned discretion for when to pop off their impressive collection of job-doers?
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/13/health/prepare-for-guerrilla-warfare-…
Pyriproxyfen? Small problem: people don't have sesquiterpenoid hormones.
the quoted paragraph @113 ..... What's that saying, better to remain silent than to speak up and remove all doubt??....nothing like removing all the doubt
"Pyriproxyfen? Small problem: people don’t have sesquiterpenoid hormones."
But according to the document released by the physicians in Brazil and Argentina, humans share some significant fraction of their genome with mosquitoes, so something something. They have refrained from using "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny" but just barely.
The whole document is a polemic, sloppy and without a shred of supporting science.
@Narad #115(and all here. I lurk but don't post)---thank you for swatting(intentional pun) these conspiracy theories. Can you please explain Pyriproxyfen? Small problem: people don’t have sesquiterpenoid hormones. All I have to offer for folk on a forum where I am active is the WHO safety/tox studies. But you know how well that goes over re: gvt data.Thx.
Be careful what you wish for. You might just get it In a few hours.
@Beth:
It sounds as though a more detailed explanation is coming down the pike, but what I was referring to was that the cranks I've seen touting this have latched onto the words "juvenile hormone" without bothering to figure out that they actually mean something specific.
That's what the GMOs are for, of course. ;)
Thanks @ Narad. I imagine you've heard that those reports were influential enough to have one locality suspend use of pyriproxyfen while the fed Brasil gvt disagrees. To state the obvious, these peddlers haven't any idea how much they are terrifying the people of Brasil while they themselves luxuriate in filtered/purified water. Imagine not feeling safe to drink the only water you have access to.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/zika/12157747/Zika-virus-Braz…
I heard on one science radio program this weekend one scientist rant that Zika is a minor problem compared to dengue and yellow fever. I think it was Science Friday, and the ongoing work that has been going on for years to eradicate the mosquitoes that carry those diseases, which are not native to the Americas:
http://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/could-genetically-engineered-inse…
Well I will say even with the birth defect issues (and I'm not sure dengue or yellow fever are completely safe when you are pregnant either), if I had to get one of the three I'd pick Zika.
Congratulations to our beloved host. He was mentioned in a Dutch newspaper, in an article on conspiracy theories around the zika virus.
@ Beth
This.
I see the organic food/anti-GMO (and anti-vaccine) movements as being lead by arrogant people blind to their own privileges as westerners living in a ordained, sanitized society, with easy access to clean water and food.
They are crying with their mouth full, as we say in French.
The recklessness with which they spread rumors so they can paint themselves as white knights heralding the Thruth is just infuriating me.
Many "conspiracy theorists" are now saying that the real cause is the use of a larvacide made by Sumitomo that has been added to the water in Brazil a few years ago. This could explain why the outbreak of microcephaly is only happening in Brazil
Just read a newspaper article about the WHO urging consideration of GM mosquito release to help control spread of the Zika virus.
"Environmentalists" (largely unnamed) are Concerned about the effect of "wiping out" Aedes egyptii in Brazil through release of GM mosquitoes (though I haven't heard of anyone expecting total eradication via this method). Odd how there wasn't an environmental catastrophe years ago when Brazilian authorities succeeding for a time in eradicating the species (which is non-native anyway).
The difference on this occasion is, of course, that we are talking about the Evil GMOs, about which there can be no doubt of Evil.
The Washington Post reports that Oxitec still enjoys mild popularity.
whatever. theories or not, incidents, neural related defects have been happening in non related areas. attributed to many things. here are facts. each can make their own conclusions. there are also clusters of something even more severe, anencephalia in Washington state ocurring since 2010 http://www.nbcnews.com/health/kids-health/bizarre-cluster-severe-birth-… . Hope someone does not start saying it was zica (the catch it all). Also identified since the 90's other clusters in the Mexico-US border https://www.dshs.state.tx.us/birthdefects/NTD_border.shtm . http://www.ipsnews.net/1998/06/health-birth-defects-continue-in-us-mexi… (Cluster of babies in Texas born without brains Pollution suspected as cause of defect) Not Zika either. And BTW, CDC and other sources still can't "confirm" connection of microcephaly with virus, they use "possible link". http://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/birthdefects/microcephaly.html there is a need for studies to back it up. not just "it seems or looks like". supposed to use science, even if science sometimes is used to deny results, such as the tobacco induced cancer (decades ago) which" disproved" a link http://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/21/2/87.full
in 50 years 98 % of humans will have microcephaly. The world will be a massive barbaric idiotcracy, similar to a Trump presidency. The 2% of normal intelligent humans will cluster in France, the last outpost of decent humanity.
bingo, is that the outline of your next self-published science fiction story?
@Chris, I think (hope) bingo is being sarcastic.
The pro-life people may have a big fight in the future, as desperate pregnant women who have been infected with Zika start lining up in front of abortion clinics. God help these women if this becomes the case. I've read about the horrors of Microcephaly, and no woman (or baby) should have to go though this. A good case for keeping abortion legal, wouldn't you say?