week 8-14 Feb :
- A new report challenges the theory of Zika virus causing microcephaly among newborns in Brazil and claims pesticide-laced drinking water is to blame.
- With direct causality between Zika virus and microcephaly, a congenital brain development anomaly, yet to be established, Latin American doctors have come up with an alternative explanation: that a pesticide, Pyriproxyfen, was introduced into the drinking water supply in 2014.
- According to the PCST, Malformations detected in thousands of children from pregnant women living in areas where the Brazilian state added Pyriproxyfen to drinking water are not a coincidence, even though the Ministry of Health places a direct blame on the Zika virus for this damage. The report adds that the Brazilian Health Ministry has failed to recognise that in the area where most sick persons live, a chemical larvicide producing malformations in mosquitoes has been applied for 18 months.
- In the past two months, Brazil has become the epicentre of the Zika outbreak which has now spread to more than 30 countries.
- The alternative theory has found support from the Brazilian Association for Collective Health (ABRASCO), which named Pyriproxyfen as a likely cause of the birth defects on newborns and has condemned the strategy of chemical control of Zika-carrying mosquitoes.
- The physicians also note that Zika outbreaks in the past have traditionally been relatively benign and never associated with birth defects — even in areas where it infects 75 per cent of the population.
- Pyriproxyfen is a relatively new introduction to the Brazilian environment; the microcephaly increase is a relatively new phenomenon. So the larvicide seems a plausible causative factor in microcephaly — far more so than GM mosquitoes, which some have blamed for the Zika epidemic and thus for the birth defects. There is no sound evidence to support the notion promoted by some sources that GM mosquitoes can cause Zika, which in turn can cause microcephaly. In fact, out of 404 confirmed microcephaly cases in Brazil, only 17 (4.2%) tested positive for the Zika virus,” reads the PCST report.