Disease expert hits global-warming link; Sees no rise
in mosquito-borne illnesses
By Ruth Larson
Copyright 1998 Washington Times
July 29, 1998
An infectious-disease
specialist said yesterday that
global warming, even if true, would not likely cause deadly
mosquito-borne illnesses to spread
to the United States as some environmentalists and scientists have
predicted.
Paul Reiter, chief of entomology at the Centers for
Disease Control and
Prevention (CDC), has
spent his career traveling the world investigating outbreaks of
diseases such
as malaria and yellow fever, which are spread by mosquitoes.
In a briefing to congressional staffers, Mr. Reiter
concluded,
"Global warming is unlikely to give rise to major epidemics of
mosquito-borne diseases in the
United States unless
conditions deteriorate drastically."
He said predictions of such epidemics are simply misguided
and alarmist
because, short of a total collapse of society, modern living
conditions limit
the spread of these illnesses.
Mr. Reiter pointed out that normal summer temperatures in
this country are
often hotter than those in tropical regions, where these diseases
are common.
He said the mere
presence of such mosquitoes, many of which are native to the United
States,
does not mean that the maladies will be transmitted.
Innovations such as insect screens, air conditioning, and
well-constructed
homes and office buildings now keep mosquitoes away from people.
Anti-malarial
drugs and vaccinations against yellow fever have further reduced
the
spread of these diseases.
Thus, even if the climate were to heat up, the factors
necessary for an
epidemic are no longer present, he said.
Mr. Reiter's presentation was organized by the Cooler
Heads Coalition, a
group of 23 nonprofit and pro-market organizations concerned that
global
warming policies could harm
consumers far more than global warming itself.
Mr. Reiter said he was
"quite appalled" that individuals with no qualifications
in the field of infectious diseases
are predicting that global warming will cause the mosquitoes and
the diseases
they carry to spread to the United States.
"I'm not a rocket scientist, and I'm
not a brain surgeon," Mr. Reiter said.
"But it's been quite astonishing how many rocket scientists
and brain surgeons
are involved in statements about mos-
quito-borne diseases."
For example, the Environmental Protection Agency's global
warming Web site
says,
"The
geographic range and life-cycles of pathogens and vectors (e.g.,
mosquitoes)
which transmit disease are affected by climate. Climate change
would, in
aggregate, increase the potential transmission of many vector-borne
diseases."
Mr. Reiter said he was concerned that attention was being
diverted from the
important tasks of controlling and preventing the diseases, and
instead focused on
"blaming it on the weather."
He said another fallacy is that these
"tropical" diseases never have affected northern regions.
Chaucer and Shakespeare wrote
about malaria, then known as ague, in England and Scotland.
Malaria has been
known as far north as the Soviet Union and Scandinavia.
The United States has
seen dozens of epidemics, most in the 1700s and 1800s. A yellow
fever epidemic
in Memphis, Tenn., in 1878 infected 19,000 people and almost
destroyed the
city. An estimated 20,000 people died of yellow fever nationwide
that year.
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