Between January 1st and October 16th, 2007 there were a total of 3,022 cases of West Nile Virus in the United States according to the journal Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (published by the New England Journal of Medicine). Seventy-Six cases resulted in death of the infected individual. If you believed the media hype about it, you would think tens of thousands of people were infected and it was a major infectious threat to all Americans.

The hysteria surrounding the disease has caused us to use millions of gallon of pesticides to kill the mosquitos who carry the disease. My real concern here is how much damage to human health have we caused through the use of insecticides to stop a disease which may not be as hyped.  According to one bit of research I’ve seen, fully 80% of the people near those infected were also found to have West Nile Virus but had no symptoms at all. It could be that the aggressive spraying has held back the infection rate but my suspicion is that the government has gone way overboard and caused untold damage to the population especially children and the unborn.