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ONLINE READERS COMMENT: Is Zika virus a microcephaly scapegoat?

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Dear Editor,

It can’t be a coincidence that Brazil is the only Zika-carrying mosquito country that released GMO mosquitoes and administer a vaccine (whooping cough vaccine TDAP) to pregnant women then ended up with over 4,000 babies with microcephaly.

It seems to me that no one is asking the right questions, especially the media. To date there is no evidence that Zika virus causes microcephaly, but out of an abundance of caution governments in the region are assuming this to be the case and making policy and issuing advice to pregnant and women of child-bearing age.

However, we can’t hear anything about the vaccine Brazil gave to its pregnant women in 2014 or the effects of the GMO mosquito on the Zika-carrying mosquitoes. We know that the GMO mosquito’s purpose is to infect the egg (foetus) of the female mosquito and kill it in the larvae stage.

Is it possible that a Zika- (or non Zika) carrying mosquito mating with a GMO mosquito, then infecting a pregnant mother passing on to her foetus a deadly cocktail? It can’t also be a coincidence that Zika has been around for some 50 years with no reported connection to birth defects of any sort. And it can’t be coincidence that this outbreak of microcephaly, some 1,300 times the norm is only happening in Brazil.

I believe it’s time the media step up to the plate and start asking some serious questions of our medical personnel with responsibility for protection the population from infections. The fact that Brazil is hosting the Olympics this summer might make it inconvenient and uncomfortable as the incidence of birth defects might just be a Brazil problem and would be a danger to those visiting during the Olympics.

Clearly, there are too many unknowns here but what is without debate is the lack of probity and the haste to associate Zika virus with birth defects without any evidence when there are more evidence by correlation to associate the birth defects with the TDAP, GMO mosquitoes or a combination of all three.

Michael Ennis

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