What lessons Will We Learn From Zika?

Zika virus caught the world off guard, but it shouldn’t have.

The rapid spread of the mosquito-borne virus, and its possible connection to birth defects and neurological disorders, compelled the World Health Organization on Monday to declare an international public health emergency. But by that time 1.5 million Brazilians had already caught the virus, and it had spread to 24 countries in the Western Hemisphere. The current tally from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicates 30 countries are now reporting active transmission.

“It seems like we are always behind,” says Jorge Osorio, a professor of infectious diseases at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Osorio returned to the United States on Friday after a research stint in Colombia, where the total of confirmed Zika cases is second only to Brazil. “We knew it was a matter of time before this would happen.”

The microcephaly outbreak in Brazil, which coincided with the spread of the Zika virus, continues to stun the world, even months after the incident was first reported.

Pregnant women all over the world have been advised to take caution. The Zika virus infection has been linked to newborn babies with the birth defect microcephaly. This is a congenital condition in which babies are born with unusually tiny heads.

The notion, however, has recently been challenged by a group of Argentine physicians. The group suspects that the Zika virus is not to blame for the rise in microcephaly cases, but that a toxic larvicide introduced into Brazil's water supplies may be the real culprit.

Here is the problem: All of these warnings to women about getting pregnant have managed to avoid a particular word. That word is “men.”

Rather than telling women to “avoid pregnancy” in the manner of avoiding a pothole, why are none of these assorted agencies telling men to stop having procreative sex until we know more about Zika? Why does the very suggestion of any government recommending men to practice abstinence for two years seem like a joke? The cultural reflex to hold women accountable for male lust and subsequent reproduction is so ingrained that we don’t even notice the asymmetry. Indeed, it strikes the domesticated mind as verging on unreasonable to hold men morally responsible when pregnancy is unwelcome, unwanted, or, in the case of the Zika virus, a potential public health disaster. Yet women do not “get pregnant.” Men impregnate them. Most times, and in most places, the old fashioned sex way, the kind that made Barbarella’s hair stand on end.



Source: Techtimes - Discovermagazine - Damemagazine