By Ronald Bailey – Re-Blogged From Reason
Regulatory precaution, not rising temperatures, is the main driver for the increase in vector-borne disease.
“Climate change needs to be put out there as a major driver of vector-borne disease in the U.S.,” Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Texas’ Baylor College of Medicine, told Gizmodo. This was in response to a new study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that reports of vector-borne diseases have tripled since 2004. These infectious illnesses include Lyme disease that is spread by ticks, and West Nile and Zika viruses spread by mosquitoes. The CDC report is indeed alarming, but not chiefly because climate change is exacerbating certain infectious maladies. Instead, the increase in vector-borne illnesses identified by the CDC says much more about how the proliferation of regulatory barriers is slowing the development and deployment of modern technologies to prevent the spread of disease.
Prologue: This is the fifth, and last, in a series of essays discussing ongoing scientific controversies—each one a so-called “science war”. This essay attempts to illuminate the similarities that exist between the four previous topics and, of course, the Climate Wars.