Recent News and Updates
Update as of September 18th, 2006
Global
Warming -- Signed, Sealed and Delivered
Scientists
agree: The Earth is warming, and human activities are the
principal cause.
By Naomi
Oreskes, NAOMI ORESKES is a history of science professor at
UC San Diego.
AN OP-ED article in the Wall Street Journal a month ago
claimed that a published study affirming the existence of a
scientific consensus on the reality of global warming had
been refuted. This charge was repeated again last week, in a
hearing of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce.
I am the author of that study, which appeared two years ago
in the journal Science, and I'm here to tell you that the
consensus stands. The argument put forward in the Wall
Street Journal was based on an Internet posting; it has not
appeared in a peer-reviewed journal — the normal way to
challenge an academic finding. (The Wall Street Journal
didn't even get my name right!)
My study demonstrated that there is no significant
disagreement within the scientific community that the Earth
is warming and that human activities are the principal
cause.
Papers that continue to rehash arguments that have already
been addressed and questions that have already been answered
will, of course, be rejected by scientific journals, and
this explains my findings. Not a single paper in a large
sample of peer-reviewed scientific journals between 1993 and
2003 refuted the consensus position, summarized by the
National Academy of Sciences, that "most of the observed
warming of the last 50 years is likely to have been due to
the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations."
Since the 1950s, scientists have understood that greenhouse
gases produced by burning fossil fuels could have serious
effects on Earth's climate. When the 1980s proved to be the
hottest decade on record, and as predictions of climate
models started to come true, scientists increasingly saw
global warming as cause for concern.
In 1988, the World Meteorological Assn. and the United
Nations Environment Program joined forces to create the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to evaluate the
state of climate science as a basis for informed policy
action. The panel has issued three assessments (1990, 1995,
2001), representing the combined expertise of 2,000
scientists from more than 100 countries, and a fourth report
is due out shortly. Its conclusions — global warming is
occurring, humans have a major role in it — have been
ratified by scientists around the world in published
scientific papers, in statements issued by professional
scientific societies and in reports of the National Academy
of Sciences, the British Royal Society and many other
national and royal academies of science worldwide. Even the
Bush administration accepts the fundamental findings. As
President Bush's science advisor, John Marburger III, said
last year in a speech: "The climate is changing; the Earth
is warming."
To be sure, there are a handful of scientists, including MIT
professor Richard Lindzen, the author of the Wall Street
Journal editorial, who disagree with the rest of the
scientific community. To a historian of science like me,
this is not surprising. In any scientific community, there
are always some individuals who simply refuse to accept new
ideas and evidence. This is especially true when the new
evidence strikes at their core beliefs and values.
Earth scientists long believed that humans were
insignificant in comparison with the vastness of geological
time and the power of geophysical forces. For this reason,
many were reluctant to accept that humans had become a force
of nature, and it took decades for the present understanding
to be achieved. Those few who refuse to accept it are not
ignorant, but they are stubborn. They are not unintelligent,
but they are stuck on details that cloud the larger issue.
Scientific communities include tortoises and hares,
mavericks and mules.
A historical example will help to make the point. In the
1920s, the distinguished Cambridge geophysicist Harold
Jeffreys rejected the idea of continental drift on the
grounds of physical impossibility. In the 1950s, geologists
and geophysicists began to accumulate overwhelming evidence
of the reality of continental motion, even though the
physics of it was poorly understood. By the late 1960s, the
theory of plate tectonics was on the road to near-universal
acceptance.
Yet Jeffreys, by then Sir Harold, stubbornly refused to
accept the new evidence, repeating his old arguments about
the impossibility of the thing. He was a great man, but he
had become a scientific mule. For a while, journals
continued to publish Jeffreys' arguments, but after a while
he had nothing new to say. He died denying plate tectonics.
The scientific debate was over.
So it is with climate change today. As American geologist
Harry Hess said in the 1960s about plate tectonics, one can
quibble about the details, but the overall picture is clear.
Yet some climate-change deniers insist that the observed
changes might be natural, perhaps caused by variations in
solar irradiance or other forces we don't yet understand.
Perhaps there are other explanations for the receding
glaciers. But "perhaps" is not evidence.
The greatest scientist of all time, Isaac Newton, warned
against this tendency more than three centuries ago. Writing
in "Principia Mathematica" in 1687, he noted that once
scientists had successfully drawn conclusions by "general
induction from phenomena," then those conclusions had to be
held as "accurately or very nearly true notwithstanding any
contrary hypothesis that may be imagined…. "
Climate-change deniers can imagine all the hypotheses they
like, but it will not change the facts nor "the general
induction from the phenomena."
None of this is to say that there are no uncertainties left
— there are always uncertainties in any live science.
Agreeing about the reality and causes of current global
warming is not the same as agreeing about what will happen
in the future. There is continuing debate in the scientific
community over the likely rate of future change: not
"whether" but "how much" and "how soon." And this is
precisely why we need to act today: because the longer we
wait, the worse the problem will become, and the harder it
will be to solve.
Update as of September 8th, 2006
NORWICH, England
(Reuters) -- Many people have experienced the phenomenon of
receiving a telephone call from someone shortly after
thinking about them -- now a scientist says he has proof of
what he calls telephone telepathy.
Rupert Sheldrake,
whose research is funded by the respected Trinity College,
Cambridge, said on Tuesday he had conducted experiments that
proved that such precognition existed for telephone calls
and even e-mails.
Each person in the
trials was asked to give researchers names and phone numbers
of four relatives or friends. These were then called at
random and told to ring the subject who had to identify the
caller before answering the phone.
"The hit rate was 45
percent, well above the 25 percent you would have expected,"
he told the annual meeting of the British Association for
the Advancement of Science.
"The odds against
this being a chance effect are 1,000 billion to one."
He said he found the
same result with people being asked to name one of four
people sending them an e-mail before it had landed.
However, his sample
was small on both trials -- just 63 people for the
controlled telephone experiment and 50 for the email -- and
only four subjects were actually filmed in the phone study
and five in the email, prompting some skepticism.
Undeterred,
Sheldrake -- who believes in the interconnectedness of all
minds within a social grouping -- said that he was extending
his experiments to see if the phenomenon also worked for
mobile phone text messages.
Update as of September 6th, 2006
The World
Health Organization (WHO)
today expressed concern about the emergence of virulent
strains of tuberculosis (TB) that are virtually untreatable
with existing drugs and called for the strengthening of
prevention measures.
Extensive Drug
Resistant TB (XDR-TB) is resistant to not only the two main
first-line TB drugs – isoniazid and rifampicin – but also to
three or more of the six classes of second-line drugs.
Recent findings from
a survey conducted by WHO and the US Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention (CDC) found that XDR-TB has been
identified in all regions of the world but is most frequent
in the countries of the former Soviet Union and in Asia.
“XDR-TB poses a
grave public health threat, especially in populations with
high rates of HIV and where there are few health care
resources,” said WHO in a statement issued in Geneva.
Separate data on a
recent outbreak of XDR-TB in an HIV-positive population in
Kwazulu-Natal in South Africa found alarmingly high
mortality rates, said WHO. 52 out of 53 patients identified
with XDR-TB died within 25 days on average, including those
benefiting from antiretroviral drugs.
WHO noted that its
recommendations for managing drug-resistant strains of TB
include strengthening basic TB care, ensuring prompt
diagnosis and treatment of drug resistant cases, increasing
collaboration between HIV and TB control programmes, and
boosting investment in laboratory infrastructure.
On Thursday, WHO
will join other TB experts at a two-day meeting in
Johannesburg, South Africa, to assess the response required
to critically address TB drug resistance, particularly in
Africa.
Update as of September 4th, 2006
Global warming is
affecting the intensity of Atlantic hurricanes, according to
a new study by a university professor in Florida who says
his research provides the first direct link between climate
change and storm strength. Reuters
What Is
the Latest Thing to Be Discouraged About? The Rise of
Pessimism
NY Times- The early
stages of the Iraq war may have been a watershed in American
optimism. The happy talk was so extreme it is now difficult
to believe it was sincere: “we will be greeted as
liberators”; “mission accomplished”; the insurgency is “in
the last throes.” Most wildly optimistic of all was the
goal: a military action transforming the Middle East into
pro-American democracies.
The gap between
predictions and reality has left Americans deeply
discouraged. So has much of what has happened, or not
happened, at the same time. Those who believed New Orleans
would rebound quickly after Hurricane Katrina have seen
their hopes dashed. Those counting on solutions to health
care, energy dependence or global warming have seen no
progress. It is no wonder the nation is in a gloomy mood; 71
percent of respondents in a recent Associated Press-Ipsos
poll said the country is on the wrong track.
These are ideal
times for the release of “Pessimism: Philosophy, Ethic,
Spirit,” by Joshua Foa Dienstag, a U.C.L.A. political
theorist. Mr. Dienstag aims to rescue pessimism from the
philosophical sidelines, where it has been shunted by
optimists of all ideologies. The book is seductive, because
pessimists are generally more engaging and entertaining than
optimists, and because, as the author notes, “the world
keeps delivering bad news.” It is almost tempting to throw
up one’s hands and sign on with Schopenhauer.
Pessimism, however,
is the most un-American of philosophies. This nation was
built on the values of reason and progress, not to mention
the “pursuit of happiness.” Pessimism as philosophy is
skeptical of the idea of progress. Pursuing happiness is a
fool’s errand. Pessimism is not, as is commonly thought,
about being depressed or misanthropic, and it does not hold
that humanity is headed for disaster. It simply doubts the
most basic liberal principle: that applying human reasoning
to the world’s problems will have a positive effect.
The biggest
difference between optimists and pessimists, Mr. Dienstag
argues, is in how they view time. Optimists see the passing
of time as a canvas on which to paint a better world.
Pessimists see it as a burden. Time ticks off the physical
decline of one’s body toward the inevitability of death, and
it separates people from their loved ones. “All the
tragedies which we can imagine,” said Simone Weil, the
French philosopher who starved herself to death at age 34,
“return in the end to the one and only tragedy: the passage
of time.”
Optimists see
history as the story of civilization’s ascent. Pessimists
believe, Mr. Dienstag notes, in the idea that any apparent
progress has hidden costs, so that even when the world seems
to be improving, “in fact it is getting worse (or, on the
whole, no better).” Polio is cured, but AIDS arrives.
Airplanes make travel easy, but they can drop bombs or be
crashed into office towers. There is no point in seeking
happiness. When joy “actually makes its appearance, it as a
rule comes uninvited and unannounced,” insisted
Schopenhauer, the dour German who was pessimism’s leading
figure.
As politicians,
pessimists do not believe in undertaking great initiatives
to ameliorate unhappiness, since they are skeptical they
will work. They are inclined to accept the world’s evil and
misery as inevitable. Mr. Dienstag tries to argue that
pessimists can be politically engaged, and in modest ways
they can be. Camus joined the French Resistance. But
pessimism’s overall spirit, as Camus noted, “is not to be
cured, but to live with one’s ailments.”
President Clinton
was often mocked for his declarations that he still believed
“in a place called Hope.” But he understood that instilling
hope is a critical part of leadership. Other than a few
special interest programs — like cutting taxes on the
wealthy and giving various incentives to business — it is
hard to think of areas in which the Bush administration has
raised the nation’s hopes and met them. This president has,
instead, tried to focus the American people on the fear of
terrorism, for which there is no cure, only bad choices or
something worse.
Part of Mr. Bush’s
legacy may well be that he robbed America of its optimism —
a force that Franklin Delano Roosevelt and other presidents,
like Ronald Reagan, used to rally the country when it was
deeply challenged. The next generation of leaders will have
to resell discouraged Americans on the very idea of
optimism, and convince them again that their goal should not
be to live with their ailments, but to cure them.
Update as of September 3rd, 2006
- A New study on mice suggests exposure to ultrasound
to effect fetal brain development, researchers say the
findings should not discourage pregnant women from
having ultrasound scans for medical reasons-CNN
- Alzheimer’s drug galantamine protects guinea pigs
from the effects of compounds in pesticides and poisons
that attack the nervous system, researchers at the Univ
of Maryland School of Medicine report-CNN
- In just one meal high unsaturated fat can quickly
prevent “good” cholesterol from protecting the body
against clogged arteries, a small study shows-CNN
- A 6.7 earthquake reported off coast of Vanuatu US
geological survey says, pacific tsunami warning center
reports higher initial reading of a 7.0 magnitude but
said that there is no Pacific Ocean wide tsunami threat.
– CNN
- Philippines troops and officials evacuated tens of
thousands of villagers as the restive Mayan volcano
showed more signs of an imminent eruption. CNN
- UN’s Humanitarian Chief describes Gaza as a “ticking
time bomb” the head of a key foreign and donors meeting.
BBC
- Zimbabweans express outrage at proposed legislation
to monitor telephone calls and Internet use. BBC
- Nigeria’s police are planning to buy 80,000 new
firearms ahead of New Year’s Elections, a spokesman
says. BBC
- Police say that a Connecticut lawyer has been
charged with 1st degree murder for allegedly stabbing
his 59-year-old neighbor to death, after being told the
neighbor had sexually assaulted his two-year-old
daughter. CNN
- Rules to stop convicted pedophiles from committed
sex abuse abroad are being evaded, campaigners say. BBC
Update as of August 31st, 2006
Almanac
Predicts Unusually Cold Winter
Associated
Press
LEWISTON, Maine --
After one of the warmest winters on record, this coming
winter will be much colder than normal from coast to coast,
according to the latest edition of the venerable Farmers'
Almanac.
The nearly
190-year-old almanac, which says its forecasts are accurate
80 percent to 85 percent of the time, correctly predicted a
"polar coaster" of dramatic swings for last winter, editor
Peter Geiger said. For example, New York City collected 40
inches of snow even though it was one of the warmest winters
in the city's history.
This year, predicts
the almanac's reclusive forecaster, Caleb Weatherbee, it
will be frigid from the Gulf Coast all the way up the East
Coast.
But it'll be
especially nippy on the Northern Plains -- up to 20 degrees
below seasonal norms in much of Montana, the Dakotas and
part of Wyoming, he writes.
And, he says, it'll
be especially snowy across the nation's midsection, much of
the Pacific Northwest, the mountains of the Southwest and
parts of eastern New England.
Last winter was the
fifth-warmest on average in the lower 48 states. Forty-one
states had temperatures above average, according to the
National Climatic Data Center. That reduced energy demand by
an estimated 11 percent, it said.
This year's retail
edition of the Farmers' Almanac is the biggest ever, at 208
pages. It includes traditional charts on astronomy, average
frost dates, and planting and gardening calendars. It also
has the usual down-home features and cornball humor.
Update as of August 26th, 2006
EU restricts imports of US long grain rice
Brussels (dpa) - The European Commission on Wednesday
slapped stringent testing requirements on imports of
American long grain rice in a bid to restrict entry of
unauthorized genetically modified foods (GMOs) into the
25-nation bloc.
The commission, the European Union's executive body, said
all imports of US long grain rice would now have to be
certified as free of the unauthorised GMO LL Rice 601 before
being exported to the EU.
"The decision has been taken in light of the recent
announcement by the US authorities that this unauthorised
GMO had been found in samples of commercial rice on the US
market," said a commission spokesman.
The emergency measures mean that, with immediate effect,
only consignments of US long grain rice that have been
tested by an accredited laboratory using a validated testing
method and accompanied by a certificate assuring the absence
of LL Rice 601, can enter the EU, the spokesman added.
"We have strict legislation in place in the EU to ensure
that any GM product put on the European market has undergone
a thorough authorisation procedure based on scientific
assessment. There is no flexibility for unauthorised GMOs -
these cannot enter the EU food and feed chain under any
circumstances," said Markos Kyprianou, EU chief for health
and consumer protection.
Under EU rules, national authorities are responsible for
controlling imports at their borders and for preventing any
contaminated consignments from being placed on the market.
In addition, controls will be carried out on products
already on the market, to ensure that they are free from LL
Rice 601. European importers will also have to ensure that
the products they import from the US are free of the banned
GMO.
The commission decision will be reviewed by national EU
experts within ten days. Once approved, the measures will
remain in place for 6 months, after which the situation will
be reviewed again.
The US is a major supplier of rice to the EU, followed by
India, Thailand and Guyana.
US authorities informed the commission on August 18 that
trace amounts of non-authorised genetically modified rice
had been detected in samples of commercial long grain rice
on the US market.
The EU decision has been criticised by environmental group
Greenpeace International as "a minimal response to a serious
contamination problem."
Greenpeace said the EU should stop reacting to contamination
"accidents" and start preventing them instead.
Brussels and Washington have often crossed swords on GMOs in
recent years, with US officials complaining of overly-strict
EU requirements which they say act as a trade barrier.
The EU has argued that its hardline stance is only prompted
by concerns for the safety of consumers.
Update as of August 21st, 2006
Scientists measure the 'dark matter' of the universe
by John Johnson Jr., Los Angeles Times
Across the
tapestry of the night sky, hundreds or perhaps thousands of stars are doing
frantic dances of death, spinning wildly around each other and shooting off
waves of invisible gravitational energy like interstellar beacons.
In one of the
most exotic observatories in the world, Fred Raab is waiting for those waves to
wash up on the shoreline of Earth. When they do, they could change our
understanding of the universe.
"We've spent
400 years since the invention of the telescope looking at a small portion of
what exists," said Raab, head of the LIGO laboratory in the high desert of
southeastern Washington.
LIGO -- the
Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory -- could reveal the rest.
"This gives us
an observational tool to probe the dark, strong-gravity part of the universe,
which we've never really done," said Kip S. Thorne, a California Institute of
Technology physicist who is one of the world's foremost experts on relativity.
Like the first
bathysphere diving into deep-sea trenches, the $300 million LIGO project,
conceived more than 25 years ago, is expected to uncover exotic creatures, such
as dancing neutron stars and binary black holes, circling each other like
heavyweight fighters. Physicists also may uncover the mysterious "dark matter"
that is believed to be all around us but has never been measured. Some think
they might find gateways into extra dimensions.
What makes LIGO
different from other observatories is that it doesn't "see" the cosmos by
detecting electromagnetic energy in the form of light, radio waves or X-rays. It
feels it, measuring waves of gravity that wrinkle space-time like ripples on a
lake.
One advantage
to gravity-wave science over light-wave science is that whereas light bounces
off solid objects, gravity waves go through everything -- planets, stars,
people's bodies.
Raab, Thorne
and about 500 other scientists around the world caught up in the race to measure
the first gravity waves are essentially giving birth to a new science.
It has been
gestating 90 years, since Einstein theorized that large bodies moving through
space would give off waves of gravity, traveling at light speed, that would
shrink and expand space-time itself.
The problem
with gravity waves is that they are so difficult to detect that many physicists
long doubted they would ever be found. In November, however, LIGO reached a
level of sensitivity at which Thorne and other experts believe they might detect
waves.
Now excitement
has gripped the scientific community as it awaits word.
It can be felt
inside the LIGO control room, where Raab studies a series of constantly changing
graphs flashed up on the wall. Like a man translating a foreign language, Raab
points to one squiggly line that he says is traffic passing on the main road a
dozen miles away. Another is construction in the nearby cities of Richland and
Kennewick.
If you know
what to look for, Raab said, you can pick out the seismic signature of ocean
waves hitting the shoreline of western Washington -- 200 miles away.
In the
dun-colored desert-scape of southeastern Washington sits the Hanford nuclear
site. Plutonium for the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki was made here. Now, the
signs of decay and rust are everywhere. The site has become a relic of the Cold
War.
Down a twisting
side road, LIGO appears out of the Russian cheatgrass and mustard plants, a
bulky apparition with two tubes extending at right angles into the desert.
The
2.4-mile-long tentacles are the heart of LIGO. They are at right angles so that
incoming gravity waves will shrink one arm while lengthening the other. An
identical facility sits in a forest in southern Louisiana, so that the readings
made at one observatory can be cross-checked almost 2,000 miles away.
The National
Science Foundation has provided the funding.
Inside the arms
is a laser interferometer, which works by splitting a laser beam and sending one
of the two resulting beams down each arm. The beams then bounce around 100 times
on a set of mirrors before being sent back to a photodetector.
The two beams
should recombine at exactly the same time because they travel an identical
distance.
But if a
gravity wave passes by, the beams will be thrown off as the arms are alternately
stretched and squeezed.
Detecting such
a minute signal has required extraordinary steps.
Because the
site had to be as flat as possible, satellites were used to survey the land,
which was eventually graded to within three-eighths of an inch over five miles.
To get around
the problem of air molecules shaking the mirrors, workers sucked the air out of
the tubes down to a billionth of an atmosphere. But that still wasn't good
enough to make sure the speed of light would be constant throughout the tubes.
So the team had to get the tubes down to a trillionth of an atmosphere.
The surface of
the four 10-inch mirrors in the arms is so smooth it doesn't vary by more than
30-billionths of an inch. Thirty control systems keep the lasers and mirrors in
alignment. The vibration isolation system is so sophisticated, the only thing
approaching it is the mechanics used by semiconductor chip makers to etch
circuits on the chips.
Even though
ground was broken for the LIGO project more than a decade ago, it was only in
November that the facility was ready to hunt seriously for gravity waves.
"We're
operating right now where we can see changes a thousandth the size of a proton,"
Raab said.
Some vibrations
still manage to get through.
"A bulldozer 10
miles away knocks us offline," he said.
One recent
problem was caused by a stunt pilot practicing loops.
Since the
November data run began, LIGO has managed to get 10 weeks of clean data.
The hunt is on.
On the wall
outside Thorne's cluttered office at Caltech are framed letters containing the
bets he has made with other prominent scientists, including two with physicist
Stephen Hawking. Thorne won both.
In fact, Thorne
has lost only two bets, and both were over gravity waves. In 1978, he bet a
dinner that gravity waves would be found within a decade. It didn't happen.
The second
time, he bet a case of good California wine that the first gravity wave would be
detected by Jan. 1, 2000. Once again, he had to pay up.
Thorne is no
longer taking bets on when gravity waves will be found. But found they will be,
he said.
It just might
not be with this version of LIGO. Even though LIGO is operating within the range
where gravity waves are thought to exist, it's just barely there.
"We're at a
level now where we could see one every 30 years to every three years," said Jay
Marx, executive director of the LIGO program.
Those aren't
great odds. The solution is Advanced LIGO, a $200 million upgrade that will
increase the sensitivity by a factor of 10. Among the improvements are a more
powerful laser and more sophisticated vibration isolation hardware. Work is
expected to begin sometime after 2008.
After the
improvements, a gravity wave could be detected every three weeks, Marx said.
Thorne said:
"We are at a level where we could see waves now. After the upgrade we will be
operating in a domain where we are likely to see waves."
And if they
don't find waves?
"That would
show something is wrong with our understanding of the universe," he said.
Update as of August 2oth, 2006
Long
after mosquito bite, ill effects could linger
By: KRISTINA HERRNDOBLER, The Enterprise
It has been more than three years since Laura Booker was
bitten by a West Nile-infected mosquito - a bite she thinks
might have caused her declining health.
A new study suggests that Booker's ongoing health problems
could be linked to West Nile virus, an illness once thought
to rarely cause long-term effects in those who survive it.
More than a year after being diagnosed with West Nile virus,
half of the patients have continuing health complaints,
including fatigue, memory problems, extremity weakness,
depression, tremors and headaches, according to an article
in the current issue of Clinical Infectious Diseases, a
medical journal.
Booker said joint pain and tremors, among many other
problems, prompt frequent doctor visits.
"I don't know if all of it is because of West Nile," said
Booker, 47, of Nederland. "But I was perfectly healthy. I
was never sick. And now all the sudden I have all these
problems."
The new study concludes that abnormalities in motor skills
and executive functions are common long-term problems among
patients who have had the West Nile viral infection.
"Patients with milder illness are just as likely as patients
with more severe illness to experience adverse outcomes," it
states.
The majority of people infected with West Nile virus develop
no symptoms, but about 20 percent experience a flu-like
illness called West Nile fever, according to the study.
About 1 percent of patients develop more severe diseases
such as meningitis or encephalitis, it states. Patients who
develop meningitis or encephalitis often are hospitalized
and some die, but the fever generally is considered benign
and self-limiting.
That might be about to change, the study suggests.
"What we found is that there is a substantial amount of
ongoing symptoms, both among those patients diagnosed with
West Nile fever as well as those with the more severe
diseases, encephalitis and meningitis," Dr. Paul Carson,
lead author of the study, said in news release.
The study involved testing and surveying 49 patients, all
from eastern North Dakota, who had lab-confirmed West Nile
virus infections.
Beaumont physician James Holly said the problem with
long-term effects is that they are incredibly subjective.
"It is very hard to control for those subjective symptoms,"
he said, adding the study contradicts what the medical field
currently thinks about West Nile virus.
Holly himself was infected with West Nile in June. He had a
fever, became weak and had severe muscle soreness before
being tested for the virus, he said.
He said on the day he first experienced symptoms, he spent
66 minutes on a treadmill. This week, he has only been able
to stay on the treadmill for 30 minutes - and that was at a
reduced incline and a slower pace, he said.
But Holly does not believe he will have long-term health
problems because of the illness. He said it will take up to
two months to get back to his pre-West Nile strength.
"There is no doubt there is a physiological price you pay
for having this illness," he said. "But it is not a
permanent physiological price until you allow it to change
your life."
Jefferson County officials Thursday said there have been
eight confirmed West Nile cases in Beaumont this year. Five
of those were in Beaumont. One person who had West Nile
died, according to the Beaumont Public Health Department.
There have been no confirmed cases of West Nile in humans in
Jasper or Newton counties, officials there said.
There have been at least a half dozen West Nile-related
deaths in Southeast Texas since 2002, when someone died in
Jefferson County, according to the Texas Department of State
Health Services.
Statewide, there have been 47 confirmed cases of meningitis
or encephalitis caused by West Nile this year. There have
been five deaths, according to the department.
Department spokeswoman Emily Palmer said these numbers only
include cases confirmed in state labs. They do not, for
example, include the recent West Nile-related death in
Beaumont.
In 2005, there were 128 human cases in Texas, including 11
deaths, according to state statistics.
Nationwide, there have been 388 confirmed human cases in 26
states this year, according to the most recent U.S. Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention numbers, released on Aug.
15. Thirteen infected people have died.
West Nile has been confirmed in mosquitoes or animals in 40
states this year, according to the CDC.
West Nile virus first appeared in North America in 1999,
many decades after it was first reported elsewhere, the CDC
reports. It was first isolated in the West Nile District of
Uganda in 1937.
Toni Matherne, 38, of Mandeville, La., became ill with West
Nile in 2002. She spent a week and a half in the hospital,
but has generally recovered, she said.
"The only thing I noticed long-term is that my immune system
is not as good," she said. "It is a coincidence that ever
since getting West Nile, it has been like that."
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