On Mon, 24 Jul 2000 21:57:57 -0500 (CDT) [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: "We Have Not Found A Single Infected Mosquito". by Robert Lederman 718 743-3722 "We have not found a single infected mosquito. No one has tested positive for West Nile Virus. People should not be alarmed, they should not be concerned. These are all things that we assumed we would have to do."-Mayor Giuliani, 7/23/2000 as he announced an expansion of spraying into Brooklyn and a resumption of aerial spraying Looking at the facts as presented by the Mayor- there are no infected mosquitoes, not one person has been infected, no one is sick or dying-so, logically, he will expand the spraying and we should not be worried. Whew! I bet you feel much better now, right? Either I'm still dreaming or there is a very nasty scam being perpetrated on eight million New Yorkers. Reading the news excerpts below may suggest to you what could really be going on here. Is the Mayor hunting genetically-altered U.S. government mosquitoes [see below] or is this just garden-variety corruption with some people making a lot of money from all this spraying? The Mayor does have a proven record of corruption and cronyism involving contracts. The City spent more than 10 million dollars last year on spraying. Are friends of the Mayor getting a cut of the profits? This is also the Mayor who wanted to lock up all the mentally ill homeless people because some might prove to be a threat to public health and safety. What should we do with a lunatic who uses poison gas to indiscriminently attack innocent people the way some have used a chunk of concrete? --------------------------------------------- Press conference in Staten Island today, 7/24/2000 12 Noon. See end of message. --------------------------------------------------------------- Newsday 7/24/2000 City To Expand Spraying West Nile virus found in 2 more dead birds by Mohamad Bazzi Staff Writer The city will expand its spraying of mosquito-killing pesticides into new areas of Queens and Brooklyn tomorrow, after two more dead birds tested positive for the West Nile virus. ...Despite the additional spraying, Giuliani insisted that there's no cause for alarm and noted that no mosquitoes or people in the city have tested positive for the virus this year. "So far it's not as bad as last year," Giuliani said at a news conference in the city's emergency command center. "We haven't found an infected mosquito..." ...In this year's spraying, the city has not used malathion, an insecticide related to nerve gas, which generated intense opposition from environmental advocates. This year, the city is using sumithrin, a synthetic pesticide, or pyrethroid, that is marketed under the brand name Anvil. The city also has a contract to use resmethrin, another pyrethroid, with the brand name Scourge. But the city is still in disagreement with environmental activists about the safety of these pesticides. The city insists both sumithrin and resmethrin have very low toxicity to humans, but anti-pesticide advocates say they attack the endocrine and hormone systems...Joel Kupferman, executive director of the New York Environmental Law and Justice Project, said his group filed a federal lawsuit against the city last week and plans to seek a temporary injunction to halt the spraying. "We believe the city has not established the need for spraying," said Kupferman, whose group tried unsuccessfully last year to halt malathion spraying. "These new pesticides may be a step down from malathion, but the toxicity is way beyond any natural products." If all goes as scheduled, all of Staten Island will have been sprayed by tomorrow morning. Portions of the borough were sprayed July 19...The city recommends that people and pets try to remain indoors, with windows shut and air-conditioners off, during spraying. After accusing the National Parks Service and state regulators last week of tying the city's hands with spraying restrictions, Giuliani yesterday said the issue was resolved. He said the National Parks Service has allowed the city to spray and place larvicide in Great Kills Park and other parts of the 26,000-acre Gateway National Recreation Area on Staten Island. Helicopters may be used to deliver the larvicide to water sources on Staten Island that are not otherwise easily reached. Those target sites have not yet been selected. Newsday PubDate:07/23/2000-AP TRENTON, N.J. (AP) - The state has begun renovations at a bioterrorism lab here that will allow scientists to conduct more complicated analyses of biotoxins and agents of other deadlydisease. Work began in January to replace a ''level-2'' lab at the Department of Health and Senior Services' agricultural laboratories building at John Fitch Plaza with a ''level-3'' facility, stateofficials said Sunday. James Blumenstock, senior assistant commissioner of the state Department of Health and Senior Services, said the upgrade is part of a nationwide effort to give state laboratories the ability to conduct more extensive tests of toxic agents....Once renovations are completed in November, Blumenstock saidscientists will be able to conduct tests on bioterrorism toxins such as anthrax, plague and smallpox. Also, diseases such as theWest Nile virus will be studied there. Scientists had been conducting tests on the West Nile virus in the level-2 lab, but Blumenstock said they needed a better lab...There are four levels of laboratory safety, and Blumenstock saidonly a few facilities in the country have level-4 laboratories, which conduct research on such highly contagious diseases as theebola virus. The lab also is using part of a $1 million grant from the CDC to hire more scientists and buy equipment, Blumenstock said. From: http://abcnews.go.com/onair/CloserLook/wnt000719_CL_mosqu itoes_feature.html ABC News 7/19/2000 Malaria-Free Mosquitoes “Our ultimate aim is to develop a mosquito that does not transmit malaria and is not harmful,” says Andrea Crisanti of Imperial College in London. Researchers at Imperial College recently completed the first step in this goal by figuring out how to “genetically alter” these mosquitoes. By softening the shells of their eggs, scientists can now insert a simple gene...Now that they know how to put a gene into these mosquitoes, scientists must now identify which genes to insert, which ones will kill or “deactivate” the malaria parasite...This development would have huge public health implications. If scientists can neutralize mosquitoes in Africa, it raises the possibility of doing something similar to mosquitoes in the United States — perhaps genetically modifying those that carry encephalitis or the West Nile virus. Any modified mosquitoes would also have to be altered in such a way that, once released into the wild, they would spread their disease-blocking genes to other mosquitoes, perhaps by mating. But in the process, they would not pose any new threat. “What we need to know is that the genes we introduce into the wild do only what we expect them to do,” says Ken Vernick of New York University. “They don’t jump to other organisms for example and they don’t have unintended consequences in the mosquito.” Scientists predict that unleashing any genetically-altered mosquitoes would come with at least some risks, but in fighting a disease as devastating as malaria, some risks may be worth taking. http://abcnews.go.com/sections/living/DailyNews/westnile0505. html New Test Could Diagnose West Nile Encephalitis Faster By Emma Ross The Associated Press Only about 1 percent of people infected with the West Nile virus develop encephalitis, Lipkin said. The most vulnerable are the elderly, the very young and those with immune deficiencies. Most who develop encephalitis get a mild infection, but those with severe cases can have convulsions, slip into coma, become paralyzed or, in 3 percent to 15 percent of cases, die, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. W A S H I N G T O N —Three New York lawmakers say they will seek to triple the federal money available to battle the West Nile Virus that left seven people dead in the New York City area last summer. Sen. Charles Schumer, Reps. Nita Lowey, D-Westchester County, and Joseph Crowley, D-Queens, said Thursday they will push for $15 million over the next two years—$5 million this fiscal year and $10 million in 2001. That is up from the $5 million in federal funds that has already been appropriated. The money would go to the Centers for Disease Control to fund research about how the virus spreads and the best ways to eradicate it. “Here you have a potential for an epidemic in the New York area and we don’t have all the knowledge we should,” Schumer, a Democrat, said Thursday. Costs of combating the mosquitoes that carry the virus have been left to state and city officials. New York shelled out $10 million last year to spray the pesticide malathion from helicopters and on other efforts to kill virus-bearing mosquitoes...Last year’s outbreak in the New York City area was the first in the United States. Federal health officials worry that birds migrating over the winter could have spread the virus south. CDC officials are working with 17 states along the Atlantic Seaboard and the Gulf of Mexico to test dead birds for the virus. This is a fake epidemic-Check the part below that says, "...The majority of the people did not experience symptoms, the Health Department said. Of the infected group, 20 percent or four people in the sample, had non-specific aches, pains or fever. The other 80 percent of the infected had no symptoms at all..." This right this means they only found 20 people that were actually infected, four people being 20 percent..-RL From: http://abcnews.go.com/sections/living/DailyNews/westnile00032 1.html 3/21/99 Infected New Yorkers Sampling Finds Mosquito-borne West Nile Virus Infection The Associated Press N E W Y O R K, March 21 — As many as 1,900 Queens residents at the epicenter of last summer’s outbreak may have been infected by the mosquito-borne West Nile virus, survey results show. The survey, taken across a three-square-mile section of Queens last October, concluded that between 533 and 1,903 people had been infected. The survey, released Monday by the city’s Health Department, involved 677 people who gave blood anonymously last fall at health vans parked in the Queens neighborhoods of Whitestone, Auburndale, Linden Hill and Murray Hill. Estimate of Infection Nineteen of those tested positive for West Nile antibodies, leading health officials to estimate or project that 1.2 percent to 4.1 percent of the 46,000 residents in that three-square-mile area had been infected. The majority of the people did not experience symptoms, the Health Department said. Of the infected group, 20 percent or four people in the sample, had non-specific aches, pains or fever. The other 80 percent of the infected had no symptoms at all....Of the Queens residents infected with West Nile, only a small fraction — three of the fatal cases and six others, contracted encephalitis. NY Times 7/24/2000 Giuliani Says Aerial Spraying Will Be Added to the War Against the West Nile Virus New York City's war on the West Nile virus is intensifying, with Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani announcing yesterday that the city planned to add helicopters to its arsenal of mosquito-killing tools and would expand its ground-based pesticide campaign to include parts of Brooklyn as well as Staten Island and Queens...The virus...has not been detected in people this year. The Giuliani administration also announced yesterday that the city was seeking state permission to turn to aerial spraying for the first time this year...Mr. Giuliani said a dispute the city had on Friday with federal and state environmental officials had been resolved, with regulators allowing the city to spread pesticides on land closer to marshes in Staten Island, particularly around the Gateway National Recreation Area. Spraying had been prohibited in those areas because of concern about the effect on aquatic creatures and wildlife. Dr. Neal L. Cohen, New York City's health commissioner, who joined Mr. Giuliani yesterday morning at a news conference at the city's emergency operations center in Lower Manhattan, said the state had eased its stand "in the face of a public health threat." Yesterday, Mr. Giuliani, as health officials in other communities have done, urged residents not to overreact, saying the city was merely following its plan to intensify the battle against mosquitoes as the presence of the virus is confirmed. "People should not be alarmed, they should not be concerned," he said. "These are all things that we assumed we would have to do." There will be a press conference on Monday, July 24, at NOON, on the steps of Staten Island's Borough Hall (right across from the ferry terminal), on the "Stuyvesant Street" side of the building facing AWAY from the Ferry terminal, on the issue of pesticide spraying in the borough. For those of you who may not know, the ferry is FREE and a wonderful ride. Also, the No Spray Coalition will be leafletting the ferry terminal at 8 a.m. Monday morning. C'mon down. ("Captain, take us to a No Spray zone!") Robert Lederman, President of A.R.T.I.S.T. (Artists’ Response To Illegal State Tactics) [EMAIL PROTECTED] (718) 743-3722 http://www.openair.org/alerts/artist/nyc.html For archived Lederman articles see: http://www.levymultimedia.com [For essays and notes on pesticides scroll down to and click on Lederman archive link or go to http://www.levymultimedia.com/lederman/index.htm] Note: My articles are not to be taken as official statements by the No-Spray Coalition of which I am a member or of the No-Spray lawsuit in which I am a plaintiff-RL *** NOTICE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. Feel free to distribute widely but PLEASE acknowledge the source. *** http://www.angelfire.com/mi/smilinks/thirdeye.html <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. 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