Zika Virus Officially Causes Rare Microcephaly Birth Defects, CDC Says (cnn.com) 106
An anonymous reader writes: The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Wednesday the Zika virus causes microcephaly and other birth defects. "This study marks a turning point in the Zika outbreak. It is now clear that the virus causes microcephaly," CDC director, Dr. Tom Frieden said. The CDC previously said it was likely the virus in pregnant women was the cause of the rare birth defect that results in an underdeveloped brain and that more evidence and research were needed to conclusively say it is causal. "We started using criteria about a month ago to see which ones had been met and which ones had not been met. We wanted to do this in a systematic and calculated way," said Dr. Sonja Rasmussen, lead author of the New England Journal of Medicine special report. There's was also no alternative explanation to account for the increase in these congenital defects among women who had the Zika virus during pregnancy. The CDC says they are not yet ready to conclude the virus causes Guillain-Barre syndrome. The World Health Organization (WHO) has reported more than 1,000 cases of microcephaly and other fetal malformations believed to be associated with the Zika virus from six countries.
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DDT is actually extremely safe. The president of Monsanto actually drank it during a press conference. It was fear mongering that got it pulled, not any sort of real science.
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And thanks to the anti-DDT FUD, millions of people perished from polio in Argentina. All of these environmental actions always have unintended consequences.
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It would be true if he had said "malaria"
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It would be true if he had said "malaria"
Trouble wit DDT at base is that it is just another 'cide. While the tinfoil hat and chemtrail crowd hold it up as some sort of magic cure-all, we would have done is killed off birds, and insects would have developed resistance.
DDT isn't majick, folks.
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During hard times stores like Walmart do better and stores like Bloomingdales do worse (making things very simple here)
Are making "money off of people's misfortunes" buy selling your Bloomingdales stock and buying Walmart? NO.
Then why is buying Monsanto (if it does indeed sell products that would help in Zika infected areas be an examples of "money off of people's misfortunes"
Re: Monsanto stock (Score:1)
If that's what makes you happy. The average pharma CEO only has 5 yachts.
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Re:DDT (Score:4, Interesting)
Gotta love dumb-asses...
Re: DDT (Score:1)
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"DDT is actually extremely safe."
It isn't overly toxic to humans with intermittent exposure, but its a far way from "extremely safe". It has been linked to miscarriage, certain cancers, birth defects, endocrine problems, etc though in pretty low rates and requiring moderate to heavy exposure. However that is not why its use was limited, it has significant environmental impacts, primarily being the thinning of egg shells in many bird populations resulting failed offspring (cracked/crushed eggs) and thinnin
Zike immunity (Score:3, Interesting)
I have an office in Singapore and I do spend part of my time in South East Asia
Zika is no stranger to South East Asia - and in fact, when Zika was first discovered in Uganda in the 1970's, a 'discovery' followed, testing human blood from other tropical regions all around the world and it was found that (back in the 1970's) that human blood collected in the South East Asian region already showed signs of Zika immunity
True, in the South East Asian region (from the Philippines to Thailand, from Indonesia to Vi
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Even if your theory is right, what do you say to the current pregnant mothers?
"Don't worry, you'll get a microcephalic baby, but that's for better good so don't worry, in 100-200 years there will be enough immunity in South America. We should even bring Zika to the US to make sure the population gets immunity."
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The Darwinian natural means of acquiring immunity to Zika is for those babies born with microcephaly to not have children - on a 100 to 200 year time scale, that can happen.
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One difference may be that people native to the Americas have a far more limited number of human leukocyte antigens (HLAs) which are involved in innate immunity. In 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus [wikipedia.org], Charles Mann goes over this issue in some detail. HLA diversity is an important aspect to innate immunity - each antigen is capable of "seeing" a specific type of foreign protein and generating an immune response for it. The more kinds of HLAs an individual has, the more diseases he or she c
An expected conclusion (Score:5, Interesting)
At the beginning it was all very fuzzy and cases very uncharacteristic for viruses of the same family, but the research that has been done in the last few months is admirable, it is now completely clear that, even if it was unexpected, Zika acts like its mild fever type of related virus in adults (like Dengue and Yellow Fever) but becomes much more like the neurocentric cousins of the family in embryos (like West Nile and Japanese Encephalitis). Anybody that is following the reports, even if only the titles, was expecting this conclusion from the CDC and WHO.
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A virus is what most likely will take out humanity given enough time.
The Zika virus is just a warning.
Re: An expected conclusion (Score:1)
Yep, that's why they created it.
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Put it another way. Even 100,000,000 deaths spread out across the world would do little to population figures.
At 7 billion people 70,000,000 is one percent of the total population.
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Viruses can kill of large percentages of populations, but they are never 100% effective. Humanity would survive.
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Viruses actually evolve to not kill their host as this is a kind of evolutionary suicide.
That fact does not help us. Viruses evolve by having the unsuccessfull variants die out. If such an 'unsuccessful' virus wipes out humanity, it will die out - but only after killing all of us. We can't leave it to evolution on this one.
The question is - can the next killer bug decimate us faster than Big Pharma invents new stuff?
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Zippy the Pinhead will be amused.
But no-one here is old enough to know who he was.
Are we having fun yet?
Taco sauce on Ding-Dongs . . . yummy!
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Some of us are old enough. And Zippy is still in print in some newspapers, though not that many of us pick up real newspapers anymore. For anyone using Emacs, there is still an "Esc-x psychoanalyze-pinhead" command to crossconnect a Zippy quote generator to the old Eliza chatbot.
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Good. The fewer children in the world the better.
Children (especially this generation) are selfish entitled brats, just absolutely disgusting creatures. Fuck your special snowflake.
(I'm a teacher by the way. Maybe I less hate kids than I hate the way they are raised by their parents. But regardless, had a long day and need to blow off some steam.)
Where you live, maybe. Don't tar all of humanity with the same brush.
And as thats probably the USA guess what? They grow up to be selfish entitled brats. Your adults behave like gigantic toddlers.
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You would think we'd at LEAST get some actual biological Zombies out of this. . .
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I am still waiting for some information on why the Zika virus causes these defects. So far all that has been established is that they are linked. That isn't good enough to prove a vaccine is even the correct answer. I am not virologist or a neuroscientist or immunologist, or even a medical professional. Still for all the information I have got on it could be that an elevated presence of Zika anti-bodies causes birth defects!
While a vaccine is 'likely' to be the right solution and therefore should be wor
Re:Turning point? water is wet (Score:5, Insightful)
I am not virologist or a neuroscientist or immunologist, or even a medical professional.
No need to mention that, t was obvious from the rest of your post. Certain viruses are able to attack stem cells, some of them cause miscarriages, some just damage the cell and cause severe defects. Google is your friend, anti-vaxxers are not your friend.
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There isn't much money in preventing disease, but in parts of the world where healthcare is a job for the free market, this sort of thing is a political issue that attracts a lot of passionate people who shout at one another on FB and blogs. Big Pharma must secretly love those who oppose child vaccination campaigns and public healthcare provision.
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I have been waiting to hear a clear statement from CDC on this as well. Its highly relevant information for a lot of people considering traveling.
At least until the virus becomes more active in the Southern US, which it likely will anywhere. The carrier mosquito is present. Its also an STD but given how it presents no different than a cold in adults it would be pretty much impossible to try and prevent infected individuals form traveling here.
If the risk isn't mostly gone post removing from the infection
Re:One thing no-one has said... (Score:5, Informative)
Replying to my own post!
They have updated the page.
http://www.cdc.gov/zika/pregna... [cdc.gov]
According to the last Q:A after the virus has cleared from the blood you appear to not be at elevated risk for birth defects.
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Re: More important than Ebola research? (Score:1)
It affects white people.
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Build a wall (Score:5, Funny)
We need to put screen doors in the wall on the southern border to keep the mosquitoes out.
And make Aedes aegypti pay for it.
It's for real this time, I promise! (Score:1)
Hey guys! You need to watch out for SARS, H1N1, H151, mad cow, swine flu, Ebola, Zika, etc! It's really dangerous.
When there is a real dangerous pandemic the idiots who cry wolf at the WHO and media will cause the untold deaths of millions.
Re:It's for real this time, I promise! (Score:4, Insightful)
Someone forgetting that malaria was common in North America as far north as southern Quebec up until 100 years ago when swamp draining and spraying became the norm. Simply because you don't think it's actually a problem or "a real dangerous pandemic" doesn't mean it won't cause serious problems for general healthcare.
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Montreal had malaria ONE YEAR when the winter did not get cold enough to kill off the mosquitoes. You're really cherry picking your data here.
Don't be an idiot. [rideau-info.com] That was 1832, fun reminder time that malaria was the "bad air" disease and was also labeled as "swamp disease or lake disease." The further you dig in historical records, the more you find that people had it and the symptoms were missed because they didn't know what they were looking at. Plus there were a lot worse in terms of diseases during that period, like small pox, dysentery. Both of those were endemic during the building of the canal with people all over Upper and parts of Lo
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Hey guys! You need to watch out for SARS, H1N1, H151, mad cow, swine flu, Ebola, Zika, etc! It's really dangerous.
When there is a real dangerous pandemic the idiots who cry wolf at the WHO and media will cause the untold deaths of millions.
For those of us in an infected area and are trying to conceive I say thank you for your thought-inspired wisdom. The caring you show for others is your gift to mankind. Let me say one more thing. THANK YOU from the bottom of my heart. I mean it. Without sarcasm like yours life would not be worth it.
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Return of DDT? (Score:2)
This does make me wonder if the CDC and the FDA will review the ban on DDT. Some of the original research causing its ban has been called into question, and it remains used very effectively to control malaria in many parts of the world.
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I seem to remember that it's use is still allowed in some places as kind of "shock treatment" -- used briefly, before much adaptation can occur to knock back insect populations significantly, while applying more sustainable control methods which on their own take a long time to reach peak effectiveness.
IIRC, the big problems with DDT were rapid adaptation in target populations and the negative effects to birds of persistence in the food chain. Used in a very controlled manner, these negatives I think are l
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Yeah because mosquitos don't become resistant to it *eye roll* Also, "...better malaria control has generally been achieved with pyrethroids than with DDT." So no. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
As well, There is a substance called BT, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] which is a natural substance, and pretty specific in what it kills. We use BT tablets in our pond, and while nuking the mosquitos, the fish, and especially the frogs, are not bothered a bit. Narrow spectrum heaven.
While the target insects over time can develop immunity, it appears that BT can be fine tuned once a group has developed some immunity. Not perfect, but what is.
Meanwhile Ted Cruz will try to ban abortions (Score:4, Insightful)
Abortion is the only smart choicefor a woman who finds she's pregnant and positive for Zika at the same time.
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I still have doubts (Score:2, Interesting)
i wonder why Columbia, the second biggest hotbed of Zika has no increase in birth defects.
http://crofsblogs.typepad.com/h5n1/2016/04/zika-in-colombia-week-13.html
Tin Foil Hat Trigger:
also i still don't like that the area where Zika is prevalent in Brazil was putting pesticides (pyroproxifen) in the drinking water.
https://mauihawaiitheworld.wordpress.com/2016/03/22/zika-virus-controversy-is-it-a-scam/
F* the Luddites (Score:5, Insightful)
Release those GMO mosquitos that eliminate the species spreading Zika
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I'd like to see that too. The mosquito life cycle is only weeks long, if we spend a few years creating and releasing GMO mosquitoes all over the world then maybe we could make the populations collapse.
I'm not a huge fan of genocide of any particular species, and I realize there would be other effects of a sudden lack of mosquitoes, but that's one species that I wouldn't mind being rid of. They spread so much disease that I question if the ecosystem would really be that much worse off without them.
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It turns out that a lot of benign species, like damsel flies and fish flies, are ready to occupy the mosquito ecological niche. The world will not miss them.
Does this put ALL primates at risk? (Score:2)