E&E news reports:
A whole new set of ungovernable pathogens are being loosed on the world’s blood supplies. A warming climate has allowed blood-borne tropical diseases to flourish where once they were unheard of, and they’re getting around.
The state of blood supplies became worrisome after tennis star Arthur Ashe’s death from AIDS 20 years ago in 1993 — the result of an HIV-tainted transfusion administered during a routine heart bypass operation in the late 1980s.
Hospitals and blood banks now routinely screen potential donors for HIV and hepatitis in order to keep these diseases from accidentally finding their way into patients. But recent outbreaks of diseases such as West Nile fever, dengue fever and malaria — all carried by mosquitoes — have posed new problems for the health of European blood banks.
I’m all for the liberal use of DDT anywhere on the planet. Any country with a malaria problem should use as much DDT as they want. On the other hand, malaria was eliminated from the USA long before DDT was first used as a pesticide. Malaria was also eliminated from Panama before DDT was used as a pesticide. DDT is good stuff but don’t pretend it is the only way to control malaria.
How about letting the countries currently suffereing from mosquito-born disease use the same highly effective weapon we used to eliminate it here in the first place? Malaria was rampant in southern Florida throughout history untill concerted efforst utilized DDT to all but eliminate it along with typhus and dengue fever.
How about increasing wages worldwide along with declining air fares? If we kept tropical people in the tropics, they wouldn’t bring tropical diseases to the rest of the world. Wealth happens. Travel happens. Diseases happen. Deal with it.
Mosquitoes and the pathogens they carry have always been the greatest killers of mankind. This is nothing new.
Couldn’t have anything to do with the lack of pest contro,l or immigration policies (or lack there of) or illegal immigration, no, it has to be global warming.