Rough (West) Nile Waters

The four-year-old U.S. outbreak of West Nile virus is a significant threat to public health. Midway through the West Nile season, the mosquito-borne virus has been found in animal hosts (primarily birds and horses) in 44 states, and in humans has caused more than 4,000 serious illnesses and almost 100 deaths in 37 states...
Federal public-health officials have recognized the seriousness of the problem, but their response has been tepid and politically correct...
Conspicuously absent from its list of suggestions-and also from CDC director Julie Gerberding's remarks at her frequent public appearances-is any mention of insecticides or widespread spraying...
In the absence of a vaccine (the development of which, as discussed below, has public-policy problems of its own), elimination of the vehicle that spreads the disease in this case, the mosquito ought to be the key to preventing epidemics, but fundamental shortcomings in public policy limit the weapons that are available...

Dr. Miller is a physician and a fellow at the Hoover Institution. Click on the link above and read the whole article.