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The Zika Virus is triggering all sorts of fear in much of the warmer areas of south and central America, and recently spreading to the US via semen of a man who visited the area. (There are only 31 cases of the virus being found in the US to-date, all from travelers.)
The fear is caused by linkage to microcephaly birth defects, but so far the science behind that linkage is unproven.
The World Health Organization is becoming alarmed:
"The level of concern is high, as is the level of uncertainty," WHO’s director general Dr. Margaret Chan said. "We need to get some answers quickly."
Guillain-Barre syndrome, a rare autoimmune disorder that can lead to life-threatening paralysis also seems to be linked with the Zika.
But this isn't the first outbreak of the Zika virus. Its been around for decades. And prior outbreaks did not exhibit any linkage to Microcephaly or Guillain-Barre.
[Continues.]
There are now articles starting to appear that link the microcephaly with something that has an actual scientific cause of birth defects. And these articles are pointing to another Monsanto product.
According to one news site the birth defects may be due to a chemical larvicide component used by the Brazilian Ministry of Health against Aedes (mosquitoes).
Original Portuguese article here.
“Pyriproxyfen is a growth inhibitor of mosquito larvae, which alters the development process from larva to pupa to adult, thus generating malformations in developing mosquitoes and killing or disabling them. It acts as an insect juvenile hormone or juvenoid, and has the effect of inhibiting the development of adult insect characteristics (for example, wings and mature external genitalia) and reproductive development. It is an endocrine disruptor and is teratogenic (causes birth defects).
“Malformations detected in thousands of children from pregnant women living in areas where the Brazilian state added pyriproxyfen to drinking water is not a coincidence, even though the Ministry of Health places a direct blame on Zika virus for this damage, while trying to ignore its responsibility and ruling out the hypothesis of direct and cumulative chemical damage caused by years of endocrine and immunological disruption of the affected population,” according to the report by Physicians in the Crop-Sprayed Towns.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday February 15 2016, @04:20PM
http://sitem.herts.ac.uk/aeru/ppdb/en/Reports/574.htm [herts.ac.uk]
Your first case is extremely likely to be a problem. Would not be the first time someone cut corners, or used a weird non-active ingredient that unfortunately was extremely active after all. Reminds me of roundup, where the solvent soapy crud used to make it easy to spread is believed by some to be more toxic to humans than the active ingredient itself which is pretty harmless unless you're a specific kind of photsynthesizing plant.
This specific molecule does seem mostly harmless. Not sure why its being pushed other than the traditional "Monsanto is evil". Which they may be, but that has nothing to do with this molecule being unusually newly found to be naughty.
The LD50 for mammals is insane, 5 grams per Kg of body weight? I can see why they use this stuff in pet flea powders. Which brings up the interesting question, if you dust cats for decades with this stuff, and every mg of the stuff ends up inside the stomach of the cat or the owner, why hasn't the world already had an epidemic in cat-land and human-land? This stuff isn't new.
The second question relates to the degradation section of the pesticide report.
So its permanently stable in dark water, but the half life is a couple days in the sunlight. So spray a lake that supplies drinking water, and if its shallow the UV breaks half of it down every ten days. But if its a deep lake, or full of sediment or algae that block sunlight, it just accumulates more or less forever.
There is probably a correlation/causation effect at work. You have a massive epidemic, you have lot of victims. That doesn't mean every car accident and industrial accident was caused by a virus carrier, it just means practically everyone is sick or a carrier, so every idiot who drops a hammer on their foot probably was also independently sick.
As a psyop, if this is yet another "Monsanto is evil" then this is probably being pushed as a distraction from whatever they really did. Including possibly nothing at all.