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Zika Virus Officially Causes Rare Microcephaly Birth Defects, CDC Says (cnn.com)
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.
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.
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 Vietnam), there were babies born with signs of microcephaly born from time to time - but because there were no 'sudden increase' of the number of babies born with microcephaly, there was no concerted effort looking for the microcephalic babies
In other words, the thousands of babies born with microcephaly in South American countries could largely be caused by the lack of natural immunity to the Zika virus of the people living there
Perhaps 100 or 200 years from now the number of 'Zike Babies' would drop, as more and more people acquired the immunity of the Zika virus via natural means
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Umm no Potsy it is not safe: "EPA states that DDT exposure damages the reproductive system and reduces reproductive success. These effects may cause developmental and reproductive toxicity"
Gotta love dumb-asses...
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/