SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
'Dystopian Future': Women Warned Against Pregnancy As Zika Spreads
Study suggests Zika virus could eventually reach regions of the United States 'in which 60 percent of our population lives,' says director of NIH
Jan 26, 2016
Following a warning from the World Health Organization that the mosquito-borne Zika virus is likely to spread to all countries across the Americas except for Canada and Chile, the U.S. director of National Institutes of Health (NIH) on Tuesday called for intensified efforts to study the link between Zika infections and birth defects in infants.
In a blog post, Dr. Francis Collins cited a new study in the journal The Lancet, in which infectious disease modelers calculate that the virus has the potential to spread across warmer and wetter parts of the Western Hemisphere as local mosquitoes pick up the virus from infected travelers and then spread the virus to other people.
"The study suggests that Zika virus could eventually reach regions of the United States in which 60 percent of our population lives," Collins wrote. "This highlights the need for NIH and its partners in the public and private sectors to intensify research on Zika virus and to look for new ways to treat the disease and prevent its spread."
Since November, Brazil has seen nearly 4,000 cases of microcephaly--a neurological condition in which the head is very small because of an abnormally developed brain--in babies born to women who were infected with Zika during their pregnancies. So far, 46 babies have died. There were only 146 such cases in 2014.
As CNN reports, "Other Latin American countries are now seeing cases in newborns as well, while in the United States one Hawaiian baby was born with microcephaly after his mother returned from Brazil. In Illinois, two pregnant women who traveled to Latin America have tested positive for the virus; health officials are monitoring their pregnancies."
And on Tuesday, the Arkansas Department of Health said a person who recently traveled out of the United States has tested positive for the Zika virus.
Meanwhile, authorities in Brazil, Colombia, Jamaica, El Salvador, and Venezuela were urging women to avoid getting pregnant altogether.
"Think about that," environmentalist and 350.org co-founder Bill McKibben wrote at the Guardian on Monday. "Women should avoid the most essential and beautiful of human tasks. It is unthinkable. Or rather, it is something out of a science fiction story, the absolute core of a dystopian future."
Warning of "an emerging epidemiological apartheid," McKibben argued the Zika outbreak--which has been blamed at least in part on climate change--is evidence that "we need to face up to the fact that pushing the limits of the planet's ecology has become dangerous in novel ways."
An Urgent Message From Our Co-Founder
Dear Common Dreams reader, It’s been nearly 30 years since I co-founded Common Dreams with my late wife, Lina Newhouser. We had the radical notion that journalism should serve the public good, not corporate profits. It was clear to us from the outset what it would take to build such a project. No paid advertisements. No corporate sponsors. No millionaire publisher telling us what to think or do. Many people said we wouldn't last a year, but we proved those doubters wrong. Together with a tremendous team of journalists and dedicated staff, we built an independent media outlet free from the constraints of profits and corporate control. Our mission has always been simple: To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good. Building Common Dreams was not easy. Our survival was never guaranteed. When you take on the most powerful forces—Wall Street greed, fossil fuel industry destruction, Big Tech lobbyists, and uber-rich oligarchs who have spent billions upon billions rigging the economy and democracy in their favor—the only bulwark you have is supporters who believe in your work. But here’s the urgent message from me today. It's never been this bad out there. And it's never been this hard to keep us going. At the very moment Common Dreams is most needed, the threats we face are intensifying. We need your support now more than ever. We don't accept corporate advertising and never will. We don't have a paywall because we don't think people should be blocked from critical news based on their ability to pay. Everything we do is funded by the donations of readers like you. When everyone does the little they can afford, we are strong. But if that support retreats or dries up, so do we. Will you donate now to make sure Common Dreams not only survives but thrives? —Craig Brown, Co-founder |
Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.
Deirdre Fulton
Deirdre Fulton is a former Common Dreams senior editor and staff writer. Previously she worked as an editor and writer for the Portland Phoenix and the Boston Phoenix, where she was honored by the New England Press Association and the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies. A Boston University graduate, Deirdre is a co-founder of the Maine-based Lorem Ipsum Theater Collective and the PortFringe theater festival. She writes young adult fiction in her spare time.
Following a warning from the World Health Organization that the mosquito-borne Zika virus is likely to spread to all countries across the Americas except for Canada and Chile, the U.S. director of National Institutes of Health (NIH) on Tuesday called for intensified efforts to study the link between Zika infections and birth defects in infants.
In a blog post, Dr. Francis Collins cited a new study in the journal The Lancet, in which infectious disease modelers calculate that the virus has the potential to spread across warmer and wetter parts of the Western Hemisphere as local mosquitoes pick up the virus from infected travelers and then spread the virus to other people.
"The study suggests that Zika virus could eventually reach regions of the United States in which 60 percent of our population lives," Collins wrote. "This highlights the need for NIH and its partners in the public and private sectors to intensify research on Zika virus and to look for new ways to treat the disease and prevent its spread."
Since November, Brazil has seen nearly 4,000 cases of microcephaly--a neurological condition in which the head is very small because of an abnormally developed brain--in babies born to women who were infected with Zika during their pregnancies. So far, 46 babies have died. There were only 146 such cases in 2014.
As CNN reports, "Other Latin American countries are now seeing cases in newborns as well, while in the United States one Hawaiian baby was born with microcephaly after his mother returned from Brazil. In Illinois, two pregnant women who traveled to Latin America have tested positive for the virus; health officials are monitoring their pregnancies."
And on Tuesday, the Arkansas Department of Health said a person who recently traveled out of the United States has tested positive for the Zika virus.
Meanwhile, authorities in Brazil, Colombia, Jamaica, El Salvador, and Venezuela were urging women to avoid getting pregnant altogether.
"Think about that," environmentalist and 350.org co-founder Bill McKibben wrote at the Guardian on Monday. "Women should avoid the most essential and beautiful of human tasks. It is unthinkable. Or rather, it is something out of a science fiction story, the absolute core of a dystopian future."
Warning of "an emerging epidemiological apartheid," McKibben argued the Zika outbreak--which has been blamed at least in part on climate change--is evidence that "we need to face up to the fact that pushing the limits of the planet's ecology has become dangerous in novel ways."
Deirdre Fulton
Deirdre Fulton is a former Common Dreams senior editor and staff writer. Previously she worked as an editor and writer for the Portland Phoenix and the Boston Phoenix, where she was honored by the New England Press Association and the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies. A Boston University graduate, Deirdre is a co-founder of the Maine-based Lorem Ipsum Theater Collective and the PortFringe theater festival. She writes young adult fiction in her spare time.
Following a warning from the World Health Organization that the mosquito-borne Zika virus is likely to spread to all countries across the Americas except for Canada and Chile, the U.S. director of National Institutes of Health (NIH) on Tuesday called for intensified efforts to study the link between Zika infections and birth defects in infants.
In a blog post, Dr. Francis Collins cited a new study in the journal The Lancet, in which infectious disease modelers calculate that the virus has the potential to spread across warmer and wetter parts of the Western Hemisphere as local mosquitoes pick up the virus from infected travelers and then spread the virus to other people.
"The study suggests that Zika virus could eventually reach regions of the United States in which 60 percent of our population lives," Collins wrote. "This highlights the need for NIH and its partners in the public and private sectors to intensify research on Zika virus and to look for new ways to treat the disease and prevent its spread."
Since November, Brazil has seen nearly 4,000 cases of microcephaly--a neurological condition in which the head is very small because of an abnormally developed brain--in babies born to women who were infected with Zika during their pregnancies. So far, 46 babies have died. There were only 146 such cases in 2014.
As CNN reports, "Other Latin American countries are now seeing cases in newborns as well, while in the United States one Hawaiian baby was born with microcephaly after his mother returned from Brazil. In Illinois, two pregnant women who traveled to Latin America have tested positive for the virus; health officials are monitoring their pregnancies."
And on Tuesday, the Arkansas Department of Health said a person who recently traveled out of the United States has tested positive for the Zika virus.
Meanwhile, authorities in Brazil, Colombia, Jamaica, El Salvador, and Venezuela were urging women to avoid getting pregnant altogether.
"Think about that," environmentalist and 350.org co-founder Bill McKibben wrote at the Guardian on Monday. "Women should avoid the most essential and beautiful of human tasks. It is unthinkable. Or rather, it is something out of a science fiction story, the absolute core of a dystopian future."
Warning of "an emerging epidemiological apartheid," McKibben argued the Zika outbreak--which has been blamed at least in part on climate change--is evidence that "we need to face up to the fact that pushing the limits of the planet's ecology has become dangerous in novel ways."
We've had enough. The 1% own and operate the corporate media. They are doing everything they can to defend the status quo, squash dissent and protect the wealthy and the powerful. The Common Dreams media model is different. We cover the news that matters to the 99%. Our mission? To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good. How? Nonprofit. Independent. Reader-supported. Free to read. Free to republish. Free to share. With no advertising. No paywalls. No selling of your data. Thousands of small donations fund our newsroom and allow us to continue publishing. Can you chip in? We can't do it without you. Thank you.