said the cdc about myaglic encephalomyelitis, never, while fiscal conservatives lobbied its budget down to zero.

With our wonderful CDC totally oblivious for the need for establishing any type of screening protocol?

Hemachromatoisis is a disease that affects one in 200 Americans.

My spouse's family found out that they had it, on the maternal side of the family. How did they find out? When three of the four uncles died of it - that is how!

So it is far more pernicious than just being one in 200 - as in whatever family has it, the people die of it and it wipes a great deal of that entire family line out.

I suspect that Bee Gees brothers had it. Two of them died early of heart attacks. And drugs were blamed, even though the drug lifestyle had been avoided for over a decade before they died.

If a person knows they have the disease, they can get a simple treatment that is not that expensive and will save their life. In women, if untreated the disease can cause early menopause, before the age of 30. Infertility. Lethargy and heart problems. Often the heart and other organs enlarge. With death usually before age 55. Men have the same problems, minus the menopause situation.

Anyway I imagine that the entire reason we are now all being worked up into being afraid of this "killer disease" is that they want to sell lots and lots of DEET. Which is known for causing breast cancer, but who ever cares about that?? as long as the Big Pesticide Big Pharmaceutical companies can make a profit.

That being said, we woefully underfund medical research in this country, much like everything else that is not the war machine or the pockets of billionaires.

Hemachromatoisis is largely a hereditary disease or caused by having repeated blood transfusions. Yes there should be more research done about better research options and more accurate ways to properly diagnose it, but I don't understand what relevance that has on a virus spreading through the populations of South and North America.

Sorry your husband's family has gone through that but frankly I don't understand the blame you lay on the CDC here. Its a rare genetic disease, and hence runs in families, yes its tragic, and there should be better diagnostic screening, but you rant seems to have left all reason behind.

I also have no idea what you last paragraph is about, then I read your username and remember that you have yet to post anything accurate about any medical issues yet. If you have done so, it was purely by accident.

😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😜

pro-quack advocate.

Many posters here have tried to point out this poster's fallacies, where they are incorrect in their assumptions and facts, and they are immune to correction. Instead they mindlessly repeat the same same talking points in practically every thread involving science, they take the contrarian position for no better reason than ideology.

doled out by those incapable of reading the literature for themselves.

to traditional medical therapy is effective, even when this has been demonstrated to not be true. Is anti-GMO without evidence, in fact even going so far as to not understand the underlying processes of biology regarding genes and their expression. Generally speaking, they display a complete ignorance of science, the scientific process and is seemingly proud of this fact.

i'm not going to deign to respond.

if you want to discuss the science i'll gladly do so.

as an epidemiological agency, cdc should be investigating what actually is a risk to most americans (eg diabetes), not what looks most impressive splashed across the nightly news.

make an effort to read, you useless self-proclaimed "skeptic".

generally related to obesity and lack of exercise, we have developed methods of treating the disease until cures are found. What is the CDC supposed to do? Order people to go to the gym and eat their vegetables?

Type 1 is tougher, no definitive cause has been found, though it is thought that genetics may play a role, possibly even environmental factors. It should be noted that this disease is much rarer than type 2.

Thank goodness for genetically modified bacteria, or a lot of these people will suffer(and possibly die) from the resulting insulin shortage. There is promising research in either repairing or replacing the pancreas, allowing for outright cures, which would be awesome, have a friend who has difficulty managing her type 2 diabetes. Hopefully a cure can be developed.

i'm less willing to blame the lazy sick ppl than long days, low wages, and no energy to cook; nevermind the corrosive influence of capitalism and the junk food high fructose corn syrup they've been pushing on us all these years. not that people who don't don't take care of their health are uwilling victims, etc, but i think it's more complicated than you paint it.

it's the management part which is the bitch tho, eh? any of those therapies you've mentioned sound a-okay to me, and are fully worthy of further funding. zika, not so much.

i work for a patient group in which they have neither discovered the cure nor are they trying to. imo it's intellectual laziness on the part of the medical profession as well as leading epidemiological agencies which let's face it, should really know better.

cdc needs to learn to take their own damn advice

it's the potential. Now, technically you could call it a "potential epidemic", but if you wait for it to truly be an epidemic, it may be too late.

It is an epidemic, not just here, and shows every sign that it will spread.

Not addressing something that has had tens of thousands of cases in the last year would be imbecilic. To sit back and wait for the epidemic to spread here? Well, if we did that we'd deserve what we got and qualify for a Darwin Award at the national level.


Then again, there are those who let their anti-corporatist POV dictate their facts.

would that also be imbecilic? newsflash: they're already WAY behind the curve. terrorism, zika are not worthy of our federal money.

Stopping epidemics is about numbers, about math.

Now if they could come up with a vaccine for it, then we would start hearing about it.

and it was some fucken scam to make a bunch of money while effectively giving injectees lyme (OspA).

fortunately my friend blew the whistle. now they call her crazy for being antivaccine.

Would we be better off waiting for the number to balloon to 4,000 or 40,000 before declaring it to be a public health issue? Epidemic status is a function of how quickly something can spread rather than how many people have been affected by it. Perhaps you are confusing it with pandemic.

to intermittently distract us with some scary international superbug in order to distract from more pressing domestic issues

I am interested in epidemiology and public health and call bullshit on your evidence-free claims.

and i'd love to read you argue, with evidence, that cdc awards funds proportionately.

Go peddle your bs to someone else.

An epidemic!

Before you and the rest of your cohorts proclaim this or that mis-fact, maybe you should use a dictionary?


http://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/89/7/11-088815/en/
The classical definition of a pandemic is not elusive
Heath Kelly a

a. Victorian Infectious Diseases Reference Laboratory, Department of Epidemiology, Locked Bag 815, Carlton South, Vic. 3053, Australia (e-mail: heath.kelly@mh.org.au).

Bulletin of the World Health Organization 2011;89:540-541. doi: 10.2471/BLT.11.088815

Doshi argues cogently that the definition of pandemic influenza in 2009 was elusive but does not refer to the classical epidemiological definition of a pandemic.
1 A pandemic is defined as “an epidemic occurring worldwide, or over a very wide area, crossing international boundaries and usually affecting a large number of people”.2 The classical definition includes nothing about population immunity, virology or disease severity. By this definition, pandemics can be said to occur annually in each of the temperate southern and northern hemispheres, given that seasonal epidemics cross international boundaries and affect a large number of people. However, seasonal epidemics are not considered pandemics.

I was originally responding to someone disputing the notion that a relatively small number of cases could constitute an epidemic. I suggested that perhaps they were thinking of a pandemic, which is a large-scale epidemic. Nothing amuses me more than people who recommend a dictionary to people who are already using a word correctly.

nt

You're just switching from one topic to another to avoid having to defend your earlier assertion. It's a common rhetorical tactic but one that doesn't fool me. Better luck next time.

please show me where in this discussion i have asserted this is not a funding equality issue

You tried to make it into a funding equality issue when we were talking about something else. I have no issue with funding equality but that wasn't the subject at hand, and you don't get to unilaterally decide what the agenda is.

funding equality?

i'm honestly not following you.

That's a creative allegation. You then admit to being unable to follow more than one major news story at a time?

Or are you merely alleging that people not as mentally disciplined and clever as you are unable to follow more than one story at a time...?

The plan is to stop it before it becomes an epidemic. As long as the number of people in the US who are infected is low, there won't be many mosquitoes carrying the virus.

I am all for careful reporting of the news, but Zika is now like "Weapons of Mass Destruction."
The issue of deadly Zika will be drummed into our heads ad nauseum. The result being, I am quite sure, that many pregnant women will be loading themselves up with DEET even though the last thing a pregnant person should do is spray themselves head to toe with a carcinogen.

zika is the metaphorical equivalent of cnn changing the subject every five minutes during the dem debates to focus on hillary's foreign policy experience. we have to keep us safe! terrorists are gonna KILL US!!!11

helpful hint: most patients with severe chronic lyme wish a terrorist would come and fucken kill them.

but at least maybe they can get a loan and some IV doxy. severe ME patients are laughed out of the practice and then despite being unable to care for themselves, denied social services, because "fuck you".

i can't comment on your DEET hypothesis, but history tells us that there's always some unethical asshole in some shite big company willing to jump on an opportunity like this.

For myself, I appreciate being informed about its effects and distribution.

but they're not informing you

My wife, Kimberly, and I have been on our sailboat here in the Caribbean since Dec 3, 2015 and have traveled through the BVI, the USVI and parts of Puerto Rico. I know personal experience does not equal true sample size and all that and know all about probability and positive and negative correlation. However, I can say that we have been, and are right now as I type this being, bitten by numerous mosquitoes in this area as have the hundreds of people we have come into contact along with the hundreds of people each of them have come into contact making that circle thousands and if not tens of thousands of people. And, Zika along with other mosquito problems are always a discussion too. No one has known or heard of anyone in their circle of people they've talked with getting thsee diseases.

Okay, okay. So, only 300 or so people in the north Americas have it if I read the article correctly. There are millions upon millions of mosquito bites (if not billions) just in this little part of the world. And, 300 of them led to a possible epidemic? Please. Gun violence is more of an epidemic. Police violence is more of an epidemic. Child porn is more of an epidemic (especially amongst the other party). And, speaking of which, Republican hypocrisy is more of an epidemic.

This takes me back to the days when we were frightened into allowing DOW to use DDT on us, civilians throughout the US, and the world, because the big bad mosquito was going to bring about an apocalyptic epidemic. I am sure if we look behind it, someone, like Monsanto has already done in Brazil, is behind pushing this latest scary disease ridden bug image and the need to eliminate it with the latest chemical or, perhaps, some kind of genetic modification, which of course could interact with any disease and modify it further and surely bring about the apocalypse.

Sorry about the rant....

the facts about Zika are that its symptoms are extremely mild and there is a moderate correlation with microencephaly in newborns whose mothers may have been infected by the virus.

Your last paragraph is, to be frank, complete bunk, not to mention your last sentence is a biologically impossible, how would the "genetic modification" interact with the disease? No seriously, do you even comprehend the differences between RNA and DNA which make such interactions impossible? Or are you so invested in your beliefs that you are proud of this failure in basic biology?

I don't understand what is the point of your post, to deliberately misinform, or just display a lack of education? I would be more charitable except you are on the internet and apparently feel strongly enough about this to post a rant, but the problem is your rant illustrates nothing but what you don't know about. So be proud of that, I guess.

Look. First off, I didnt say Monsanto had anything to do with this virus. I simply used the name "Monsanto" as an example of any corporation out there to draw a parallel to what DOW did in the 50's so they could sell DDT and use it widely, and, by the way, make bank.

Secondly, yeah I was a bit overly dramatic in saying genetically modified mosquitoes would interact with the virus. I blame rum for that. However, it was loosely pulled from concerns such as found here. They are concerned doing away with one species will allow a species with a worse virus or worse form of the same virus to move in.

I'm not some uneducated buffoon just because you say so or because I was a bit science fictiony (nice word huh?) and over the top dramatic. Try giving someone a bit of the benefit of a doubt and ask some damn questions before you launch into a series of personal attacks next time. Geez

including on DU about Monsanto being implicated in the spread or creation of the Zika virus, something like that. Its inconsistent, and related to the GM mosquitoes. The implication being that Monsanto is making a larvacide that is causing birth defects and using the Zika virus as a scapegoat. Problem is, Monsanto isn't making the larvacide, the release of the larvacide doesn't explain the persistent birth defect issues, and the timing is wrong. Same for the GM mosquito release that's also implicated, same issues, complete fabrication. Thought your post was a continuation of that.

Examples:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10141353920

http://www.democraticunderground.com/112796934

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10027613318

As far as concerns that removing one species may lead to another species, and its resultant, possibly worse carrier, taking dominance. The fact is that we can't know for sure, but if we can eliminate species that foster the spread of diseases like malaria, its worth exploring.

esp in a country which supposedly provides legal abortions

as much as possible, and, with the evidence pointing to this being a culprit in causing birth defects, its in our best interest to make sure the threat is minimized. Not to mention that in much of the country, legal abortions aren't a reality for a lot of women, access to them is extremely limited, time consuming and expensive.

let's apply this same logic to other illnesses without scary, foreign-sounding names. ones which are in fact malignant and truly take a bite out of QoL. unfortunately, most of these are chronic afflictions, and therefore much less sexy than Zika! or Bird Flu! or Ebola! (ebola sounds pretty shitty tbh) as far as i can tell this one is largely benign, unless you're reproducing, in which case it is less so.

Carelessly making baseless accusations against Monsanto won't help us deal with real issues the corporation represents.

virtually impossible to obtain an abortion--is that those women will be forced to carry a fetus that has no chance of living a semi-normal life. What the hell is going to happen to them?

republicans are assholes, but they're not stupid

our greedy big pharma industry will ignore it.

Then I guess Kaiser Permanenete was guilty of fraud for trying to put a $ 450 charge for a hepatitis vaccine on our invoice...

Thanks to Paul Ryan.

SARS- no wait, H1N1- no wait, Ebo- no wait, ZIKA is going to kill us all!

wait, wasn't "Zika" that a Coca-Cola product?

What are the chances there's some aspiring recording artist who chose the name "Zika" as her stage name and is now totally screwed?

you sorry excuse for an ameriKUN :p

anger leads to doobies

doobies leads to munchies

munchies leads to 7-11

midnight fuel can't melt kraft cheese

Zika outbreaks in US and Europe likely to be ‘short-lived’: researchers

http://www.rawstory.com/2016/04/zika-outbreaks-in-us-and-europe-likely-to-be-short-lived-researchers/

With summer approaching, Zika may find its way into virus-carrying mosquitoes in Europe or the United States, disease experts have warned, but any outbreaks are likely to be small and short-lived.

Doctors and scientists attending a major infectious diseases conference in Amsterdam said there was no reason to panic, and the idea of screening travellers was far-fetched.

Zika is borne by the Aedes aegypti mosquito found in Latin America and the Caribbean, regions still in the grip of an outbreak of the virus which has been linked to severe brain damage in babies and rare neurological diseases in adults.

“We have to accept that someday there will be a… traveller coming back from South America with Zika virus in his or her blood and there is a potential risk of starting a transmission,” tropical medicine professor Eskild Petersen of Denmark’s Aarhus University said Monday.

more at link...

be controlled? In what capacity and the results are devastating with life long care possibly required
for the babies. The social ramifications for some women who may or may not have the option of an
abortion, especially a late term abortion since becoming infected can occur at any stage of pregnancy
and there is still a lot that is unknown. The CDC website on Zika and pregnancy is in no way comforting.
To call this scary is appropriate.


What we know

Pregnant women can be infected with Zika virus.
The primary way that pregnant women get Zika virus is through the bite of an infected mosquito.
Zika virus can be spread by a man to his sex partners.
A pregnant woman can pass Zika virus to her fetus.
Zika virus can be passed from a pregnant woman to her fetus during pregnancy or at delivery.

What we do not know

If a pregnant woman is exposed
We don’t know how likely she is to get Zika.

If a pregnant woman is infected
We don’t know how the virus will affect her or her pregnancy.
We don’t know how likely it is that Zika will pass to her fetus.
We don’t know if the fetus is infected, if the fetus will develop birth defects.
We don’t know when in pregnancy the infection might cause harm to the fetus.
We don’t know whether her baby will have birth defects.
We don’t know if sexual transmission of Zika virus poses a different risk of birth defects than mosquito-borne transmission.

http://www.cdc.gov/zika/pregnancy/question-answers.html

speculation that the pesticides used to eradicate the mosquito are contributing to the virus.