Obama Administration Health Director: Brazil Successfully Used DDT to End Zika Virus in Past

Carlos Becerra / Anadolu Agency/AFP
Carlos Becerra / Anadolu Agency/AFP

The director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) says that during the 1950s and 1960s, Brazil successfully eliminated the mosquito carrying the Zika virus through the use of DDT.

Dr. Anthony Fauci explained at a news conference that Brazil was able to stop the spread of Zika through “a very aggressive attempt” to eradicate the Aedes aegypti mosquito that carries the virus.

According to CNSNews, Fauci said:

Now, years ago in the fifties and the sixties, Brazil itself made a very aggressive attempt to eliminate the Aedes aegypti mosquito. They did it successfully but they did it in a way that would be almost non-feasible today—very heavy use of DDT, very aggressive use going into homes, essentially, spraying in homes, cleaning up areas, things that I think the general public would not be amenable to accepting.

So, it can be done. But historically it was done in a way that might not be acceptable now.

Fauci, however, added, “The mosquito that is the predominant mosquito that spreads Zika is called Aedes aegypti,” which “is a very difficult mosquito to control and eliminate.”

“It will require a very aggressive, concerted effort,” he warned. “Their ability to exist and stay in places that are difficult to eliminate; mosquitoes, for example, they like to stay indoors as well as outdoors, which make the spraying, the outdoor spraying, ineffective for those mosquitoes.”

Fauci further explained:

What one would have to do is raise public awareness, have cooperation at the community level to get people as best as they possibly can where they can to eliminate and diminish standing water of any type, as well as to push and to try to utilize environmentally friendly larvicides and insecticides.

“Having said all of that,” he continued, “it’s still going to be very, very difficult to do.”

Dr. Jane Orient, executive director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, told Breitbart News recently that, if Zika is such a true scare, the government should wipe the virus out completely by lifting the ban on DDT.

“DDT was the most effective public health weapon of all time,” she explained, adding:

The ban on DDT was basically the decision of one man, William Ruckelshaus [the first head of the EPA], going against a mountain of evidence on safety and enormous health benefits. It was said that, “If they can ban DDT, they can ban anything.” And that’s how the EPA power grab started. Millions of African babies have died and are still dying of malaria because if it.

“Substitute pesticides are far more toxic and expensive,” Orient adds. “People are advised to use insect repellents such as DEET — which is absorbed through the skin, and safety in pregnancy is not established.”

Pioneer Energy president, Dr. Robert Zubrin, recently echoed the same idea at National Review: “The most effective pesticide is DDT. If the Zika catastrophe is to be prevented in time, we need to use it.”

Orient further wrote at Heartland Institute about the Zika “scare”:

CDC is in high gear, with politically correct advice on Zika. Meanwhile, cases of dengue in Mexico have topped 10,000. Dengue is caused by a related but far more serious virus, carried by the same Aedes aegypti mosquito. And 78,000 people in Africa die every year of another relative, yellow fever. The vector was coming under good control decades ago, but is re-emerging now. Asking “why” should be the main response to Zika.

Instead the advice seems to be: “Don’t travel, don’t have a baby, don’t let a mosquito bite you, stop climate change” – and give the authorities billions of dollars for a crash vaccine development program.

While Orient says Zika – like German measles or rubella – can cause microcephaly, she asserts, “MOST microcephaly is NOT caused by Zika. About 7 of 10,000 babies born in the U.S. have microcephaly – no thanks to Zika. Most (more than 90 percent) of the Brazilian babies recently confirmed to have microcephaly tested negative for Zika.”

The CDC says the mosquitoes carrying the Zika virus will move into much of the United States this summer. The agency is recommending Americans “use an outdoor flying insect spray where mosquitoes rest” as a means to control the mosquitoes carrying the Zika virus. Inside the home, CDC suggests keeping doors and windows closed and using an indoor flying insect fogger or spray such as those containing Tetramethrin or Imidacloprid.

The urgency about the spread of the Zika virus among the Obama administration and its leftwing supporters has indeed been called into question, especially since abortion advocates have attached fears of the virus and its link, in some cases, to birth defects, to the need for more access to abortion in countries that have refused to legalize the procedure.

The CDC has recently stated that the Zika virus “can be passed from a pregnant woman to her fetus, and infection during pregnancy can cause a serious birth defect of the brain called microcephaly and other severe brain defects.”

Planned Parenthood – and its colleagues in the fetal tissue business – for their own agenda, have latched onto the message that Zika is an urgent crisis.

“Zika has made a long-standing public health crisis impossible to ignore and demonstrates the critical need of government support for sexual and reproductive health care,” Chloe Cooney, director of global advocacy for Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said. “The ability to decide if and when to have children is basic health care, but it’s a basic human right as well, and yet it’s not realized for so many women across the region, which this outbreak is making so crystal clear.”

A special House panel investigating the fetal tissue practices of Planned Parenthood is also scrutinizing StemExpress, the primary biomedical company that has engaged with the abortion business in the transfer of the body parts of aborted babies. The Washington Post reports that StemExpress named Zika as one of the reasons why it requires fetal tissue procurement.

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