West Nile virus continues to spread

Every summer, it's like clockwork: the weather gets warmer, the mosquitoes come out, and the West Nile Virus fears are back with a vengeance. And when there's particularly wet weather, like there has been in various parts of the country in recent weeks, the corresponding boom in the mosquito population makes these fears well founded.

But in one of the country's major population centers, the danger could be even greater this year. The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) has said that budget issues could seriously reduce the state's mosquito-killing program. And that's in spite of the fact that Pennsylvania had 14 confirmed cases of West Nile last year - one of which was fatal.

I've kept you up to date on the growing West Nile Virus issue since it first popped up here in the U.S. during a 1999 outbreak. West Nile is a group of mosquito-borne diseases that originated in Africa. They are spread by mosquitoes but carried by all manner of birds. The mosquitoes contract the disease from infected birds, and then pass it on to people. When West Nile is contracted by a human, it causes a brain infection, which leads to encephalitis (swelling of the brain) and, sometimes, death.

Bureaucrats in the Pennsylviania State Senate slashed the state's successful insecticide program which had been in operation since 2003. The program had been effective at dropping the number of West Nile cases and had effectively reduced the number of West Nile cases from a high of 237 (including nine deaths) in the year before the program launched, to a mere handful.

That's right: the desk jockey politicians probably blunted the only effective program that the state government had ever put into motion.

In spite of the fact that 2009 marks the 10th anniversary of the appearance of this awful Third World disease on American shores, local and state governments continue to wrestle with the solution to the problem: wiping out as many mosquitoes as possible. It seems devastatingly simple. And yet … there seems to be no easy solution.

And if you ask me, the cause of all of our woes with West Nile can be traced back to the DDT ban of 1972. DDT, a ruthlessly effective pesticide, was used with great effect to kill crop-eating pests, as well as mosquitoes until the book Silent Spring cited DDT as the prime example of the overuse of pesticides. The battle to ban DDT was one of the earliest fights in the environmental movement - and also that movement's first significant victory.

But because of the largely baseless fears raised against pesticides like DDT, states and municipalities are charged with killing mosquitoes to keep the populace safe from diseases like West Nile … but they are often condemned for using pesticides to do the job. It's an absurd catch-22.

In Delaware last summer, the mosquito problem became so out of control that the state DEP shifted from spraying insecticide from trucks, to spraying from low-flying planes to cover more ground. Residents were outraged, and feared that the spray would harm pets, plants and people. And now, in spite of the fact that these insecticides must be applied quickly to keep mosquitoes from breeding, there are state-mandated waiting periods of up to three days before spraying can be conducted - so the residents have time to leave the area (to avoid a nonexistent threat).

Meanwhile, the real danger - West Nile Virus - goes unchecked. But perfectly safe, environmentally sound, and economical DDT rides the bench. And this is in spite of the fact that DDT had been employed for decades before its needless ban - with no ill effects.

But I guess, in the end, this is what the environmentalists really want … after all, West Nile Virus is a naturally occurring part of the environment.

Daddy damage

There's an unsettling new report that puts a dark twist on the phrase "chip off the old block." A review published in the British medical journal The Lancet says that kids whose fathers suffer from depression, post-traumatic stress, or addiction to drugs or alcohol are at a greater risk to develop mental health issues themselves.

Of course, this seems like an amazingly logical - even obvious - conclusion. But believe it or not, the effect of a father's mental state is far less studied than the impact of the mother's mental health.

While the study makes sense, I do believe that it drew some particularly broad conclusions. For example, it theorized that a dad's "mental health issues" automatically go hand-in-hand with other problems that can impact children, such as an inability to support the family financially. There was even the suggestion that these dads cannot give the necessary emotional support to their children. Sometimes true, to be sure … but not the sort of thing that can be quantified by research.

Frustratingly, the researchers also concluded that they "don't have the evidence to be completely sure that things will be better for their children if the men get treatment." So … if the men are cured of their depression, they won't be any better fathers? It seems to contradict the so-called findings of this weak study.