1. Dallas County confirms sexually-transmitted Zika case
2. Local health officials to inform public about Zika virus Thursday
3. UT Health Northeast to address Zika virus concerns
4. Obama asks Congress for emergency funding to combat Zika virus
5. Your yard may be a haven for Zika-carrying mosquitoes. Here’s what to do.
6. DDT should be our most powerful weapon against Zika

The ominous outbreak of the Zika virus is really a policy failure; the demonization of DDT has left much of the world defenseless against mosquito-borne diseases that were once easily and effectively wiped out.

“The Zika virus is ‘is now spreading explosively’ in the Americas, the head of the World Health Organization said Thursday, with another official estimating between 3 million and 4 million infections in the region over a 12-month period,” CNN reported. “The lack of any immunity to Zika and the fact that mosquitoes spreading the virus can be found most ‘everywhere in the Americas’ – from Argentina to the Southern United States – explains the speed of its transmission, said Dr. Sylvain Aldighieri, an official with the WHO and Pan American Health Organization.”

The virus has been linked to neurological disorders in fetuses and newborn babies.

And as CNN pointed out, “with no vaccine, controlling mosquitoes is key.”

But our most effective tool for controlling mosquitoes is the now-banned pesticide DDT.

“Compared to modern insecticides, producing DDT is relatively easy and inexpensive because it was never patented,” James M. Roberts, of the Heritage Foundation, wrote in 2011. “It remains the most effective pesticide in killing malaria-carrying mosquitoes. DDT is one of the most studied chemical substances. It is a few times more toxic than table salt and less toxic than nicotine, and environmental exposure to DDT has caused no known human deaths or illnesses. Beginning in the 1940s, applying DDT to mosquito-breeding pools and to the walls of homes almost completely eradicated malaria in Europe and the United States by the 1960s.”

But a popular book, “Silent Spring,” by marine biologist Rachel Carson, brought that to an end, with the EPA banning DDT in 1972 over its reported effects on birds.

A worldwide ban on DDT soon followed.

Those bans are misguided.

The problem wasn’t DDT so much as the overuse of DDT.

“The DDT ban has had tragic consequences,” Roberts explained. “According to the World Health Organization, there ‘were an estimated 247 million malaria cases among 3.3 billion people at risk in 2006, causing nearly a million deaths, mostly of children under 5 years.'”

Even TheNew York Times Magazine opined in 2004, “What the world needs now is DDT.”

“As malaria surges once again in Africa, victories are few,” the magazine reported. “But South Africa is beating the disease with a simple remedy: spraying the inside walls of houses in affected regions once a year. Several insecticides can be used, but South Africa has chosen the most effective one. It lasts twice as long as the alternatives. It repels mosquitoes in addition to killing them, which delays the onset of pesticide-resistance. It costs a quarter as much as the next cheapest insecticide. It is DDT.”

The Zika virus is a real threat.

The CDC is now warning that outbreaks in the United States are “all but inevitable.”

So it’s time to reconsider that deadly DDT ban. Properly used, it remains the best weapon we have to fight preventable diseases.