Floods, Bugs and (GM) Bugs that Eat Bugs....

[J A Ginsburg]

A little spider, the color of a terra cotta pot, dangles in the air above the begonias on the sill outside my kitchen window. "You go girl!," I cheer silently. "Have yourself a feast."

In the last day or two, just in time for decent weather, squadrons-worth of mosquito-misery have hatched. While the boys look for nectar, the girls are out for blood. Bird blood. Bunny blood. Chipmunk blood. My blood. They are remarkably unfussy about where a meal comes from as long as it nourishes the next generation, and remarkably oblivious to the microbial gifts they leave behind. St. Louis encephalitis. Japanese encephalitus. Eastern and Western Equine encephalitis. Malaria, of course. Chikungunya. And the one most likely flying around by me: West Nile virus.

It is hard to believe that less than a decade ago, if you heard the phrase, "West Nile" at all, it was probably in a travel brochure. Now it's all about DEET by the back door and the strongest cintronella candles you can find.

In those early years, I chased after scientists who chased after birds migrating up the Mississippi, trying to understand how the virus spread. I interviewed others who seemed to find evidence of infection in just about every species they looked: avian mammal, reptile. Birds alone accounted for nearly 200 species. Entomologists marveled at the variety of mosquito species that could transmit it, including the Asian Tiger mosquito, itself a relatively recent invader to these shores. They found evidence of transovarial infection, which means egg cells could be infected, which means natural born killers. I spoke to people who had gotten sick and their caregivers who doubted they would ever be quite the same again. I wrote about eerie similarities the West Nile virus and poliovirus (both attack the same kinds of nerve cells and can cause paralysis). I learned about "Post-Polio Syndrome," a sequella where neurons that took over servicing muscles for neurons killed by the virus, begin to die off at an accelerated rate years later, leading to suite of symptoms, from "foggy thinking" to Parkinson's. I wrote about the possibility of a Post-West Nile Syndrome and wondered whether these sorts of sequellae might be common from neuron-attacking viruses. I began thinking about the long shadows of disease, the dots that connect the acute with the chronic and whether a similar pathogen might have been behind one of the great Pleistocene extinction mysteries.

It took West Nile less than three years to cross the Americas, east, west, north, south. Researchers tried to figure out whether outbreaks were more severe after a dry spell or wet, and which birds played the most important roles for amplifying the disease (robins, it turn out; crows die).

Now, with viral troops embedded in every continental nook and cranny, West Nile is poised to explode. Pretty much everything bad for us is good for it: storm-driven floods (in some areas, mosquito populations are expected to grow ten-fold), high oil prices (increased costs of insecticides and spraying; but many places don't even have money to put out surveillance traps), and a even a mortgage crisis (muck-filled abandoned swimming pools at foreclosed homes in California have raised concern):



Fighting Bugs with (Genetically Modified) Bugs
So far, the CDC's best advice is "don't get bit," which, as Captain Jack Sparrow might put it, is maddeningly unhelpful. There is no preventive human vaccine, although there are some contenders in early trials. Instead, the best high-tech hope is genetically-modified bacteria designed to attack mosquitoes.

But the odds are still frighteningly stacked against us. Simply screening for the virus in donor blood is pricey, multi-day affair.

We would still be playing a game of catch-up even with better, cheaper surveillance, mapping and rapid diagnostics. It just wouldn't be quite so hopeless.

In the meantime, I will be rooting for the spiders, cheering on any frogs that may have hopped into the neighborhood, and clapping in time to the staccato efficiency of bats in the night. Dinner's served. Have at it....