West Nile spreads
throughout U.S.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported 32 West Nile virus infections so far this year, compared with none until July last year, health officials said.

As WND and Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin first reported some U.S. health officials are beginning to question why the U.S. strain of West Nile virus is deadlier to humans and birds than anywhere else on the planet – with the exception of Israel.

The mosquito-borne virus is having the biggest impact now in Arizona, with 20 cases including one fatality.

West Nile started infecting people in early May and had reached seven states as of Tuesday, according to the CDC's June 25 Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

West Nile virus, which is transmitted to people by mosquitoes who fed on infected birds, killed 246 Americans and infected 9,862 last year. This is by far the worst human toll anywhere in the world at any time since the virus' discovery in Uganda in 1937.

A 74-year-old Phoenix women died last week of encephalitis, or swelling of the brain. The virus was transmitted through a mosquito bite.

In response, the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors is considering, in an effort to kill mosquitoes, approving the spending of an additional $1 million.

The death brings to 38 the number of human West Nile virus cases identified in Maricopa County this year. Last year, a Safford man died of the virus.

"I would call this an epidemic, absolutely," said Dr. Robert Jones, clinical services director for the Maricopa County Department of Public Health.

About 20 percent of West Nile victims report flulike symptoms. About 1 percent of the time, they develop encephalitis, meningitis or permanent paralysis. The elderly and those with weakened immune systems are most susceptible.

U.S. health officials believe the West Nile virus has mutated into an illness far deadlier to human beings in the United States – but they don't know why.

Interestingly, the U.S. strain appears almost identical to only one other strain in the world – the one found in Israel.

In most parts of the world where it has surfaced, the virus typically causes illness akin to the flu, bringing fever, headache, muscle aches and fatigue – unpleasant, but rarely fatal. The virus has not even proven fatal to all birds in other parts of the world. But the U.S. strain appears nearly 100 percent fatal to birds. They usually die within five days.

Once again, this has caused some health officials and scientists, as well as intelligence sources, to wonder if West Nile Virus is not a weaponized virus – one perhaps deliberately engineered and delivered to the two biggest targets of Islamic terrorism.

Israel was the first place in the world where West Nile virus was associated with killing birds. Until that outbreak in 1997, the virus was known to sicken birds, but not fatally.

Israel also was the site of an outbreak of West Nile virus in humans that caused 450 cases of neurological disease in 2000.

The virus has spread to many other states this year, including Michigan, where a Kalamazoo County man has the first confirmed human case, state health officials said Friday.

The 43-year-old Kalamazoo County man was treated at an area hospital and released.

Michigan is the eighth state in the nation and the first in the Midwest to report a human West Nile case this summer.

Michigan health officials reported 19 human cases and two deaths from West Nile last year. Kalamazoo County reported none.

In 2002, Michigan reported 644 human cases and 51 deaths.

The first human case of West Nile virus fever was also reported in Los Angeles County, health officials said Friday.

The California Department of Health Services notified county health officials late Thursday of the laboratory results of an unidentified man from the eastern region of Los Angeles County.

Before that, all eight West Nile virus cases in the state had been reported in neighboring San Bernardino County.

The man reported a history of mosquito bites earlier this month and experienced symptoms of the disease such as fever, rash, headache and severe muscle pain and weakness.

Sentinel chickens are used to detect transmission of mosquito-borne arboviruses. Infections in sentinel chickens provide more precise information that mosquitoes in a given area are spreading the virus.

Fewer than 1 percent of the people bitten by an infected mosquito get severely ill, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In most cases, those infected never get sick or suffer mild symptoms like fever, headache, nausea, body aches and a light skin rash.

Earlier this week, it was reported that the first significant spread of West Nile virus among Californians is expected this summer in several "hot spots" in Los Angeles, San Bernardino and Riverside counties.

Workers sprayed pesticides Friday in a neighborhood where five family members contracted West Nile virus, hoping to control an outbreak that has spread to heavily populated Southern California.

California had three human cases of West Nile last year and all survived.

The disease first appeared in the United States in 1999 in New York state and has since expanded westward. It has killed more than 560 people in the last five years.

The Minnesota Health Department announced Thursday that a dead crow found in Dakota County has tested positive for the West Nile virus, marking the official start of the state's third West Nile season.

Since the disease was first detected in Minnesota in 2002, it has been found in every county in birds, horses or people. Last year, 148 human cases were reported; four people died.

The highest risk of infection for people and horses is from mid-July to mid-September.

Most people who are infected with the virus show no symptoms. About 20 percent have a fever and headache, and fewer than 1 percent become seriously ill.

At least eight Ohio counties have found mosquito pools that tested positive for West Nile virus.

Larvicides, pesticides used to kill mosquitoes before they hatch, are now the weapon of choice for local health departments. Unlike spray pesticides that can remain in the air and trigger reactions in people with weak immune systems or upper respiratory illnesses, larvicides come only in liquid and granular form and present little risk in terms of human exposure.

West Nile has shown up in North Dakota as several counties reported finding birds infected with the virus. Twelve birds tested positive in North Dakota.

There is increasing evidence of Saddam Hussein's complicity in bringing West Nile virus to the U.S.

While some American intelligence sources are still suspicious about claims that Saddam Hussein had an active chemical and biological weapons program, others believe he unleashed that program on the U.S. in the form of West Nile virus.

While it is well-known that WNV is of Middle East origin, what is less well-known is the New Yorker report dating back to 2000 in which Saddam Hussein was quoted by a defector referring to "his final weapon, developed in laboratories outside Iraq ... free of U.N. inspection, the laboratories will develop strain SV 141 of the West Nile virus." There is also a report that the Centers for Disease Control actually sent WNV samples to Iraq in 1985.

Is it possible one of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction has actually been deployed against us? Did Iraq have the ability to deliver such a biological weapon?

There is increasing suspicion that one of his labs was not in Iraq at all – but less than 50 miles from the Florida coast, reports G2 Bulletin. Cuban defectors say that Fidel Castro's Biological Front studied ways of using migratory birds to spread infectious diseases to the U.S. Saddam Hussein was also known to have close ties to Castro. And, according to Soviet defector Ken Alibek, Cuba, Iraq, Iran and other countries simultaneously received transfers of Soviet biotechnology.

Undersecretary of State John Bolton said Cuba's biological weapons capabilities underscore lingering concerns. He told an audience at the Heritage Foundation the U.S. is suspicious about Cuban biomedical laboratories and their ability to transfer biological weapons technology to Iraq, Syria and Libya – all countries that Castro visited the previous year.

In 1998, Clinton administration Defense Secretary William S. Cohen wrote a letter to Armed Service Committee Chairman Sen. Strom Thurmond, R-S.C., stating that he was "concerned about the use of Cuba as a base for intelligence activities directed against the United States" and "Cuba's potential to develop and produce biological agents, given its biotechnology infrastructure."

Cohen's letter concluded by telling Thurmond that the Department of Defense "remains vigilant to the concerns posed by Castro's Cuba." Attached to the letter was the defense secretary's classified report, "The Cuba Threat to U.S. National Security." The report's publicly released summary read: "Cuba's biotechnology industry is one of the most advanced in emerging countries and would be capable of producing biological warfare agents."

That same year, the CIA released a report that warned of the dangers of a biological terrorist attack on the U.S. The report explained that such an assault, if launched by a country with sophisticated means, could go undetected and be erroneously attributed to natural causes. The report listed a little over a dozen smaller nations as suspected of possessing biological weapons. Included high on the list was Cuba.

But it was a July 12, 1999, article in The New Yorker magazine by Richard Preston, a best-selling author, that perhaps laid the groundwork for the concerns about a Cuba-Iraq connection to West Nile.

Preston stated that the U.S. government "keeps a list of nations and groups that it suspects either have clandestine stocks of smallpox or seem to be trying to buy or steal the virus." That list is now known to include Cuba.

Preston's article also laid out suspicions that the outbreak of West Nile Virus on the East Coast may have come from a deliberate terrorist act and not from naturally occurring causes. Initially, some scientists scoffed at Preston's claim, but things have now changed.

One entomology expert who maintains an open mind on the West Nile outbreak, Dr. Jonathan F. Day of the University of Florida, said: "The sporadic appearance of WNV is disturbing, especially its appearance in the Florida Keys. It really appears that WN has been seeded throughout the eastern half of the United States. I guess the question is, by whom?"

Day continued, "The Florida and East Coast situations relative to human cases are remarkable. In some places, Atlanta, the Florida Keys, WNV appeared in humans without any other indication that the virus was present. In some cases, humans are acting as sentinels for the sentinel (animal carriers). This is unlike any other mosquito-borne virus in North America."

Dr. Manuel Cereijo, a professor at Florida International University, wrote in an October 1997 paper, titled "Castro: A Threat to the Security of the United States": "To conduct a bacteriological attack, a country or a terrorist group does not need to have any sophisticated means of delivery, such as a missile. A container the size of a five-pound sugar bag can bring bacteriological materials capable of causing over 50,000 causalities in an urban area, depending on the flow of air and atmospheric conditions."

In the same paper, Dr. Cereijo states, "Many Cuban engineers and scientists have been trained by former East Germany, the Soviet Union, North Korea, Iraq, Iran, Vietnam and China."

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Earlier stories:

Is West Nile virus Saddam's revenge?

Bio-weapons in Cuba?

Terror link to West Nile?

U.S. West Nile virus matches Israeli strain

D.C. West Nile outbreaks cluster around Army unit