That's the Zika virus, Ole Joyful. It's prominent in Brazil, Columbia and El Salvadore.

I listened to an NPR program about mosquitoes. Apparently there are thousands of different kinds, and not all bite people and transmit disease. Many are food sources for other animals. They aren't all out at night either, we have some new ones here in So. CA which are out in the daytime. I think it's called something like the tiger mosquito.

All the press about this prompted me to go out to my pot ghetto, junk yard, also the trash can area and clean out, toss out, eliminate any places where even a little bit of water can puddle. Some can breed in a thimble of water or less.

I have suffered a great many mosquito bites in my lifetime, but none lately. (tap tap)

Malaria, a mosquito vectored parasite, has been the primary killer of humankind for centuries. Zika has been active in those parts of the country for a very long time but has only now garnered attention because it has jumped the boundaries.

Terrible thing.

It rather appears at this point that only one kind of mosquito appears to be the carrier, they think, and it does live in those few countries.

ole joyful

Big Island of Hawaii has had an outbreak of dengue fever, and has been slow to address it adequately. I think the first cases were diagnosed in November. It was just declared an emergency.

On the Thom Hartmann radio show Wednesday morning, Thom told how the virus is found in many countries, but only those where the babies are born with deformities, have been sprayed with a chemical, made by Monsanto, that interrupts the life cycle of the Zika mosquito. In the countries where the spray was not used, people bitten by the mosquito get sick, but it doesn't result in damaged babies.

Those wee mosquitoes can be awful. France started to build the Panama Canal but bailed out due to engineering problems and high mortality of the workmen from disease. Much of the disease was mosquito borne. The US finished the job.

My neighbor had West Nile virus. It very near killed her, she has permanent neurological damage. She is on a list of survivors and has to go in regularly for continual testing and monitoring. I go with her and it's close to an all day ordeal. I am so happy she survived it, very very bad disease. It unfortunately is not always caught right away as what it is. They didn't get hers right until she was admitted to the hospital and was near death. They put out mosquito traps around our houses checking for carriers.

I hate mosquitoes, Louisiana and Texas have an abundance!

Timing is everything. jemdandy, You may know that the medical discovery that mosquitos were the vector for yellow fever and malaria wasn't known at the time of the French Panama project. These two diseases were uncontrolled at that time and proved to be major problems that, along with others, caused the French to abandon their work. The scientific breakthrough by a Cuban doctor, proven only a few years before the Americans restarted the project, allowed these diseases to be minimized by controlling the mosquitos. In the absence of these timely advances, the Americans would likely have suffered the same fate as the French.

David McCullough's "Path Between the Seas" spins the tale and tells the history in a most entertaining way.

Would it surprise anyone to find that Monsanto is behind the problems in Brazil? Not me.

I was reading David McCullough's book while on the month-long Semester-at-Sea voyage in 2011, where one of the stops was in Panama. The book is tremendously detailed, which make it interesting and entertaining, but which also makes it very long. By the time we reached Panama on the voyage, I had only read as far as the failed French effort to build the canal, and just the start of the American effort. We then visited the canal and toured the control room which was fascinating, but it also was a sort-of spoiler for the ending of the book.

I commented to someone that Mr. McCullough captured what a truly massive undertaking building the canal was, partly by making reading his book nearly as much of a herculean task.

Monsanto is reviled in Hawaii. I'm sorry for all the workers (600+) losing their jobs on Maui now that Alexander & Baldwin is ceasing sugar production. I'm not sorry if this means an end to the herbicides and fertilizers sprayed in excess over the whole valley planted with cane. It may only be 'less', as A&B says they plan to continue some 'agriculture' on the land. Big guesses as to *what* will be produced. Some bets are on pot!

I read an article a couple of days ago that was likely based on the same original source as the radio show shymilfromchi1 heard. It brought up the fact that Zika has been around at least since the 1940's in Africa, and has never been linked to microcephaly before. It further asserts that Zika is currently widespread around South America and Central America, but that only in some areas of Brazil has there been a marked increase in the incidence of microcephaly, and that these areas are where the Brazilian Government has been using a larvacide in the drinking water to combat disease carrying mosquitoes. The report notes that the action of the larvacide is to interfere with the development process of the mosquito larva so that it doesn't become a fully-formed viable adult mosquito, and surmises that it plausibly could be similarly affecting human embryos.

However the site I originally found the article on seemed dubious at best., and seemed to take assertions by Monsanto that they are not the ones that manufacture the larvacide and that in any case the larvacide could not have caused the microcephaly as proof-positive that Monsanto is involved and is evil.

Many other "mainstream" news sites are now running stories declaiming any link, and dismissing those stories as nothing more than conspiracy theories. These "mainstream" stories seem as if they were copied verbatim from a Monsanto press release.

As far as I can tell the known truth is:

1. The zika virus is rampant in some parts of South America and present in Central America

2. There has been an increase in mircocephaly in some parts of Brazil.

3. Most "news" providers are more interested in providing a good story, and are not very good at reporting the "truth" in cases where the "truth" is "We Don't Know"

This story seems to present the facts well, and seems fairly unbiased

http://www.sciencealert.com/argentinian-report-says-monsanto-linked-pesticide-is-to-blame-for-microcephaly-outbreak-not-zika

thought I heard one case in Indiana? and now? found in men's semen? and can stay for some time? I've been watching everything as sil's sister is suppose to go to costa rica...and they're showing up there...already one or 2 Olympic women soccer players are bowing out...I sure hope they can find more information and do something besides spray everywhere...

For my taste, McCullough is the gold standard when it comes to engrossing but thoroughly researched history tales. Path Between the Seas, Truman, Wright Brothers and most of the others are all books on what one might think to be ho-hum topics but that turned out to be page-turners because of his skill and creative abilitities.

bob, are you the one who said they worked in a library? If so, it's surprising you would find McCullough's work hard to get through. The ultimate spoiler for Path is Yes, there is a canal, so you know how the project ended.

I would say it was an engrossing page-turner, that was interesting enough that I wanted to read every single, detailed page. There just are quite a lot of pages and there were only 6 days at sea before reaching Panama. In addition to reading Mr. McCullough book, I was reviewing and organizing photos from the two previous shore trips, attending classes and lectures, researching shore trips for future ports-of-call, remotely debugging a problem back at the University, participating in shipboard activities, and writing, editing, and re-editing the blog I was making for the trip. https://bobcville.wordpress.com/2011/05/30/heads-of-state-diplomats-celebrities-rock-stars-and-me/

Then once I had visited the Canal, (and had the ending of the book spoiled) the impetus to learn as much about it before arriving was gone. The rest of the trip had fewer days at sea, and more shore trips, so I didn't get a chance to finish the rest of the book before the end of the voyage.

Got it, too long for the available time, at that time. Give it another shot if the subject still interests you. For my taste, I consider it to be one of his best works. .

They said that a major means of control is to irradiate millions of male mosquitos, which seems to leave them eager for the chase ... but unable to share anything of worth when they find a partner/partners.

Leading to new generations of mosquitoes being left unborn.

ole joyful

Re the Monsanto larvicide/Zika story, you might want to read this at Huffington Post:

A Viral Story Links The Zika Crisis To Monsanto. Don't
Believe It.

It would be a shame if bad information led to more Zika
virus infections.

Huffington Post 02/16/2016 04:10 pm ET

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/zika-monsanto-pyriproxyfen-microcephaly_us_56c2712de4b0b40245c79f7c