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Zika Virus Outbreak Prompts CDC To Expand Travel Advisory (washingtonpost.com)
turkeydance writes: The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is asking pregnant women to avoid 22 countries that have seen outbreaks of the Zika virus. That's up eight from just yesterday. Disturbingly, the mosquito-borne virus, which may be causing abnormally small heads in newborns, has also been linked to yet another debilitating disease. The Zika virus has been spreading rapidly over the past several months, most prominently in Brazil. Its spread has been associated with a dramatic increase in microcephaly, a rare condition in which babies are born with abnormally small heads.
... which isn't mentioned in the summary. It's apparently the Guillain-Barre syndrome.
This just in... CDC suggests avoiding this planet, cites the possibility of disease.
want to cut funding for the CDC.
Nice, editors.
which may be causing abnormally small heads in newborns,
a rare condition in which babies are born with abnormally small heads.
This message messaged to you by the redundant department of redundancy department.
I was in the Kona, HI airport yesterday and someone had a mosquito net over his head. It wasn't to protect him from mosquitoes, it was to protect the local mosquitoes from him. I believe he had just been released from a hospital after arriving from South America.
1. The Zika virus has been Africa and Southeast Asia since forever.
2. They don't seem to have microcephalic cases like Brazil has.
3. The virus was introduced into Brazil sometime around 2015.
4. 2015 Brazil sees a 10x increase in microcephalic cases.
So far that seems compelling that Zika is causing the cases. But why aren't we seeing the same thing in Africa or Asia? It's not like the Zika virus in Brazil has had thousands of years to mutate into a version that causes microcephaly, but not the original strain in Africa and Southeast Asia. It's the same virus.
It's not like the people in Brazil don't have the same "immunity" that people in Africa and Southeast Asian people have -- a large percentage of the Brazilian people *have* West African ancestors where the Zika virus has been found.
Here's an alternate hypothesis: some kind of chemical has been introduced into Brazil in 2015 that's causing the birth defects. Maybe a pesticide that hasn't been properly tested, or a morning sickness drug that wasn't tested.
Citations:
For pesticides and birth defects: http://www.counterpunch.org/20... http://americanpregnancy.org/p... and http://www.beyondpesticides.or...
Pesticides and microcephaly: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm... and http://www.gmls.eu/beitraege/1...
For morning sickness drugs: http://www.aboutkidshealth.ca/...
Holy Batman, what a mess of a summary! It must be linked to yet another debilitating but apparently not so rare condition in which Slashdot editors are born with abnormally small heads.
Thank you for that. So Guillain-Barre and microcephaly (abnormally small small heads), not to be confused with bureaucracy (abnormally small brains).
So this is how the Morlocks evolved.
I think it would be helpful if they medical people in the affected countries would take statistics on how many children were born to woman known to be infected with Zika and keep track of how many were babies were born with microcephaly vs. those who were not. If Zika really is involved then the ratio
#microcephaly & zika/ #no microcephaly & zika should be significantly different than the ratio #microcephaly & no Zika/#no microcephaly & no Zika.
I've seen in the news items of women who were tested for Zika after microcephaly, but that's just confirmation basis. Without the ability to compare the ratios I don't think it's clear that one can conclude that Zika causes microcephaly.
Does anyone know if those statistics have been published anywhere accessible? A google search on papers leads to the Elsevier paywall making the papers useless to me as I don't have an account with Elsevier.
"You must be great fun at parties."
Born with abnormally small heads?
After the failed aids experiment maybe they got it right with zika.
Speaking of which, Latin American governments have started advising their women not to get pregnant for anything b/w 1/2 - 2 years. And already, the media has started bitching about the availability of contraceptives. If I were a Latin American woman, I'd abstain for the period of time that the risk is there. Rather than accidentally get pregnant and have to make a decision on abortion.
Since when is Brazil and Central America white countries?
And if you were a latin american woman (or even a woman, or even in a relationship) you might figure out that abstaining from sex for two years while of childbearing age might not be something you want to do for an enormous number of reasons.
Abstaining: only a stupid person recommends this for any kind of health reason short of severe physical infirmity.
Children of Men takes place in 2027. Just sayin'.
WRONG!!! A LatAm woman would have to be pretty stupid to produce a baby that would risk getting major brain defects from the virus. Her libido would be less important than not having a baby that she might want to abort. This has nothing to do w/ marital related abstinence.
Editors, fix that.
Bruce Perens.
Brazil should follow their example
50% of babies across latin america are unplanned. It's a Catholic region. Sexual violence is a serious problem. Access to birth control is difficult. In many cases, denying a man sex is not going to be conducive to a happy or healthy life.
Abstaining is a ludicrous solution. Birth control is the _only_ solution that is going to deal with this in the short term, and in the long term, education of women. Not even sorting out the mosquitos is going to do as much.