Are we on the Right Course in Combatting Insect-Borne Disease? - an editorial

-
PLT

My heart goes out to the Brandon man struggling to get his life back after contracting debilitating West Nile virus from an infected mosquito. Public comments by his sister, including the inference that we should be more diligent in spraying for the West Nile mosquito, are understandable. 

 However, they do raise some questions for me. 

 The first is, does the City of Brandon not spray for the such mosquitoes now? (There is no mention of this in the news stories I have seen.) If it does, this begs the question, is malathion as effective as it is cracked up to be for this purpose? (Malathion, by the way is an organophosphate - a member of the same family of insecticides which killed some 20 children at a school in India recently.) 

The National Round Table on Environment and Economy (a valuable think-tank now defunct thanks to the Harper wrecking crew) warned a couple of years ago about the increase in "vector-borne" diseases (ones carried by insects) due to climate change. Sadly, this warning and others similar to it have gone unheeded by government, industry and members of the public themselves. 

We do nothing to counter the ravages of climate change (like curbing our consumption of fossil fuels), yet we cling to band-aid solutions like spray programs which may be worse than questionable. They may actually be counter-productive. How do we know, for example, whether they are not actually reducing the numbers of dragon-flies, a natural enemy of the mosquitoes?  As long as we cling to "quick-fixes" like mosquito-spray programs, the further we push back effective, long-term solutions into the dim-&-distant future.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Conservative MP Absent From a Child Poverty Forum in Southwestern Manitoba.

-
Image
Are hungry kids a priority for the Harper government? by Larry Powell The forum (for the riding of Dauphin - Swan River - Neepawa) was sponsored by the Mission and Services Committee of the Neepawa United Church. It drew about 80 people to the church on Wednesday. But only four of the five candidates (see below) took part in the debate -  Ray  Piché  (Liberal),   Kate Storey (Green Party),  Inky Mark (Ind.) and  Laverne Lewycky (NDP) . The 5th candidate, the sitting Conservative MP for the area, Robert Sopuck (represented by the empty chair on the right), did not attend. His office manager in Neepawa, Christine Waddell, said he was in Inglis, a small community in the western part of the riding for the evening. She did not elaborate. But she did explain that a campaign worker was mistaken when he told forum organizers earlier that Mr. Sopuck would, in fact be there. Piché , the Liberal candidate, said the MP's absence showed “disrespect” for the rest of the candidates
Read more

A Candidate's Forum on Child Poverty Touches a Nerve in Manitoba.

-
Image
by Larry Powell Planet In Peril has sorted through some of the confusion surrounding the absence of Robert Sopuck (above), the Conservative Member of Parliament for Dauphin-Swan River-Neepawa,  from a candidates' forum on child poverty in Neepawa on Wednesday.  About a month ago, his office told forum organizers that he would be attending.  But his office manager in Neepawa, Christine Waddell, later announced he could not attend due to "scheduling conflicts." She said the night of the event, he was in Inglis, a small town in the western part of his riding.  This morning, however, Sopuck himself told PinP he had actually been in Roblin, a larger town just north of Inglis. A newspaper ad indicated it was a "meet and greet" affair. But that was in the morning in Roblin, a town within a 3-hour drive of Neepawa. So it's still not clear what the event in Inglis was which took priority over a candidate's forum. The MP bristled at my suggestion th
Read more

The Bio of Larry Powell - publisher of this blog.

-
Image
Larry Powell Powell is a veteran, award-winning journalist based in Shoal Lake, Manitoba, Canada. He specialize in stories about agriculture and the environment. For decades, he worked for broadcast outlets in all four provinces in western Canada. This included a 5 years stint as Senior Editor for CBC Radio News in Saskatchewan. He is authorized to receive embargoed news releases on important, global stories, through the Science Media Centre of Canada, the Royal Society, Nature Research and the World Weather Attribution Network. He's a member of the Science Writers and Communicators of Canada, the Canadian Association of  Journalists and a past member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In 2020, Powell joined an international team of writers providing articles for the Swiss-based online journal, Focusing on Wildlife - celebrating  the biodiversity of Planet Earth. In June, 2014, he was a panelist at a world conference in          Winnipeg entitled Holding
Read more