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Giuliani's Pro-Spray Hysteriaby Robert Lederman
robert.lederman@worldnet.att.net
August 19, 2000(Note: the article this is in reference to is reproduced below.
If you want to let the Times know your opinion
their email address is letters@nytimes.com)Nothing in this world happens by accident-and that goes double for the timing of NY Times articles. As if in response to a mounting chorus of questions as to why no alleged victim of West Nile Virus (WNV) has been named since the 1999 "epidemic"began, and on the eve of a massive expansion of the Mayor's ill-cconsidered spray policy, the Times suddenly publishes a highly emotional portrait of two WNV "survivors"and ththeir struggle to recover from the disease.
I sincerely hope both of the people the article describes quickly and fully recover their health. Nevertheless, there are some very suspicious things about this propaganda article and its timing that need to be addressed.
The NY Times has perhaps the greatest investigative resources of any newspaper in the world. It publishes extremely detailed and lengthy science reports on a daily basis and has an entire science section each Tuesday that by itself contains more text than most full issues of the Daily News or NY Post. How is it that for almost an entire year of daily WNV coverage they could find no "survivor"to interview until today, 8/19/2000, as all of Manhattan is about to be massively sprayed with poison gas?
The article mentions that at least one of the "victims"had bypass surgery a year or so before becoming infected with WNV. Was Mr. Benson on immunosupressive drugs, as the NYC Department of Health admits on its website that three out of the four New Yorkers who died of WNV last year were? [See: New York City Department of Health, West Nile Virus: A Briefing, City Health Information Vol. 19, No. 1 (May 2000) Click Here ].
Were Mr. Benson or Ms. Trojanowska on any experimental or prescription medication at the time of their infection? Did they have any other health conditions? Note that the article does not mention the name of a single doctor involved in treating the two "victims"nor does it have a single quote from any health professional but it does quote the Mayor's Department of Health spokesperson. Isn't that unusual in a NY Times medical article?
What proof does the Times offer that either of the "victims"actually had WNV? There are hundreds of different causes of encephalitis, specifically including exposure to pesticides like Malathion, the nerve gas that was routinely sprayed on the entire City last year at the exact time these people were allegedly infected. [See Click Here ]
Previous to WNV appearing, seven cases of encephalitis in one year was actually average for NYC. Does the article note that a NY State Department of Health study published in the Journal of the American Mosquito Control Association considers pesticide exposure a condition that causes mosquitoes, birds and humans to become immune-suppressed and far more vulnerable to encephalitis infections? I've sent this info to approximately 30 different NY Times reporters and to their Metro newsroom repeatedly with a direct link to the article. Not important enough to mention? [See: Click Here SOURCE: Journal of the American Mosquito Control Assoc, Dec;13(4):315-25, 1997 Howard JJ, Oliver New York State Dept of Health, SUNY-College ESF, Syracuse 13210, USA.]
While the Times has sometimes posed as a critic of Mayor Giuliani, more often than not they support him. For them it has been his personality rather than his policies they dislike. Their publisher started the Times Sq. BID which just happens to be the area that has received more tax write-offs, police protection, special favors and real estate sweetheart deals from the Giuliani administration than all the rest of NYC combined.
The Times dedicated many times more space to cover the Mayor's prostate in excruciating detail-including schematics, detailed medical opinions, illustrations of seed implants being inserted, interviews with numerous doctors etc,-than it has used to discuss the relative aspects of the West Nile Virus issue which affects every single New Yorker directly. It has barely touched on the harmful effects of pesticide exposure.
More significantly, they support the Manhattan Institute (MI), the pro-pesticide Rockefeller-funded CIA front where Giuliani admits to getting all of his ideas. The most prominently featured books on the MI website (Click Here ) right now are by Peter Huber, an apologist for chemical, pesticide and pharmaceutical companies who argues that the publics' fears of radiated foods, pesticides, industrial pollution, genetically-altered foods and asbestos are unfounded. Huber also strongly argues against lawsuits like the one brought by the No-spray Coalition against the Mayor's spray policy. The Times is the main source of wildly positive and totally uncritical articles on the Manhattan Institute.
Now that they have turned up two alleged "victims"perhaps they can turn up some actual blood and tissue samples from infected people, birds and mosquitoes to be independently analyzed. Although the article doesn't admit it, can there be any doubt that it was not only written with the full cooperation of City Hall but at their request?
Thanks NY Times! Have you had your Malathion/Anvil/Scourge shower today as the rest of us will have in a few hours?
NY Times August 19, 2000
Lives That Were Changed Forever
by the Aftereffects of a Mosquito Bite
By David W. ChenBob Benson, who had been on a physical fitness regimen since bypass surgery a few years ago, has recovered completely from West Nile virus. Danuta Trojanowska, a victim of West Nile virus, has been hospitalized for almost a year. It took many months, but Bob Benson says that he is fully recovered now, except for the rustiness hampering his golf game. Climbing the stairs is no longer a draining chore. Gardening is now a joy, not a hazard. And traveling means more than just shuttling between his home in Bronxville, N.Y., and the hospital: he flew to Denmark this summer for a one-month exchange program. "I feel great,"said Mr. Benson, 66. "I don't think about it at all."
For Danuta Trojanowska, though, the world remains a lonely one, limited to the interior of the New York United Hospital in Port Chester. Unable to walk, she has yet, almost a year after being admitted, to venture beyond the hospital's fifth floor. Her emotional state is still fragile, and she was recently given another room because a piece of the ceiling fell to the floor after a thunderstorm.
"If this is coming again,"said Miss Trojanowska, 56, from her hospital bed yesterday, "I prefer to die."
One year ago, these Westchester residents shared a desperate and frightening plight: they were among the 62 people in the New York metropolitan region who were hospitalized after being sickened by the West Nile virus.
Their roller-coaster rides to recovery mark the extremes of what the 55 survivors have endured after months of rehabilitation and mental anguish.
Most survivors have told health officials that they have not recovered their strength, and have been forced to give up activities like tennis and ballroom dancing. Others say they are still so shell-shocked that they are afraid to venture outdoors, and they are unwilling to talk about what happened.
Either way, with the mosquitoes now entering their most active phase of the year and New York City bracing for the season's most intensive spraying campaign to combat the virus, the survivors' stories are all the more resonant and relevant, offering clues to the virus's long-term effects.
This year, there have been three confirmed cases of people sickened by the virus; no one has died. But the number of dead birds infected with West Nile and the number of mosquito pools testing positive is growing almost daily -- as is the list of places and times to spray pesticides.
Many of the people who were hospitalized last year because of the virus were treated in late summer. Some health officials have tried to keep tabs since then on how the victims have fared, interviewing them at six-month intervals. The next round is scheduled within the next few weeks.
Of the 44 people in New York City who were hospitalized, 32 were over 60 years old. Roughly half of those over 60 reported serious difficulties with fatigue and muscle weakness and have been unable to perform basic tasks like driving, riding the subway or doing household chores, said Sandra Mullin, a spokeswoman for the city's Department of Health.
"What we're finding,"Ms. Mullin said, "is that for the people who have developed encephalitis and had to be hospitalized, while they have certainly recovered from the severity of their illness, it has had some fairly devastating long-term effects."
Some survivors are now loath to talk to health officials or reporters interested in charting their progress.
Two exceptions, though, are Mr. Benson, a former salesman for I.B.M., now retired, and Miss Trojanowska, a housekeeper who emigrated from Poland.
Mr. Benson, who was hospitalized in July 1999, spent about a month at the Sound Shore Medical Center in New Rochelle. What helped him pull through, he says, was that he survived quadruple-bypass heart surgery several years ago, and had been keeping to a vigorous rehabilitation program. When he returned home, therefore, though he was extremely weak, he was ready to apply the same discipline he used for strengthening his heart muscle for the rehabilitation of his entire body.
This confirms what health experts have said: those who stay in good shape have a better chance of warding off the effects of the virus.
By early this summer, Mr. Benson felt that he was fully recovered, and has since been able to resume all of his activities, indoors and out.
"I think people should respond to this as a serious thing,"he said, "but I also think that they shouldn't overreact."
For example, he said, the 92nd Street Y's decision this summer to schedule a children's camp indoors in Manhattan rather than at a campground in Rockland County, was "a little off the wall."
For Miss Trojanowska, though, the recuperation has been much more difficult. Even now, after months of therapy, she can walk only a very short distance wearing a leg brace, and relies on friends or relatives to clip her toenails. Her troubles are also complicated by her lack of a green card, meaning she is eligible only for emergency Medicaid, which does not cover rehabilitation services.
She says she is quite lonely, but has stopped the incessant sobbing that once filled most evenings. To stay busy, she fiddles with crossword puzzles in her native Polish, flips through Polish magazines and watches too much television. Meanwhile, her sister, Barbara Glowacki, with whom she shares a house in Port Chester, has been trying to raise money to buy leg braces for her.
Miss Trojanowska misses the cherry tomatoes and tulips in her garden, she says. But she knows that whenever she leaves the hospital, life will not be the same.
For years, Miss Glowacki and Miss Trojanowska welcomed numerous Polish immigrants to their house to sit on the back porch and chat. But then came the mosquito carrying the West Nile virus.
"Now, nobody comes,"said Alicja Baldyga, a longtime friend. "If they come, they come to the house for a few minutes. All our friends, we never sit on the porch."
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, the NY Times article above is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only.
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