WNS Leads to Increased Infant Mortality
September 6, 2024
An important new study, recently published in Science and widely covered by major newspapers like The Guardian, The Washington Post, and The New York Times, has
For more than a decade, virologists have speculated that Ebola outbreaks would be traced to bats. And sensational media headlines have turned speculation into “fact.” Governments have invested billions of dollars searching for the origin1, mostly focused on bats.
Contrary to the evidence, the index case for the 2013-2014 outbreak was first attributed to fruit bats2, then to insect-eating bats3. However, early investigations implicated primates4. Ebola antibodies were discovered in the feces of 10% of wild gorillas5 and 18.7% of pygmies6, suggesting a potential primate reservoir status that was largely ignored. By 2016, Leendertz7 pointed out that the preponderance of evidence pointed to sources other than bats and urged a broader search. Again, most virologists remained inexplicably focused on bats. And prominent news media continued to blame bats8.
When the recent Guinea outbreak was traced to a human who had carried the virus for five years without detectable symptoms9, the origins of previous outbreaks had to be reexamined. On closer scrutiny, it was discovered that early assumptions of a bat origin had prevented an adequate investigation. The “index” case, a two-year-old boy, had slept and eaten with an apparently infected grandmother who likely carried Ebola with symptoms that were not yet understood10.
Outbreaks long assumed to be spillovers from wildlife (namely bats) are now better explained as reemergence’s from latency in people with asymptomatic infections. Last April, Fairhead et al.10 concluded that Ebola has been endemic in humans over long periods of time, possibly across generations. Such evidence has been ignored repeatedly in a rush to prove, instead of test, the bat origin hypothesis.
This has been costly. Enormous amounts of public health funding appear to have been misdirected. The credibility of science has been compromised. Human lives have been lost needlessly, and decades of conservation progress have been reversed. Sadly, this embarrassing, but key discovery remains seriously unreported.
References
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An important new study, recently published in Science and widely covered by major newspapers like The Guardian, The Washington Post, and The New York Times, has
On March 6, 2024, the Wall Street Journal presented findings from the University of Leeds in their opinion piece, “Why Scientists Love Chasing Bats; The
Response to Misleading Scientific American Bat Story I am responding to the article titled, “A Secret Weapon in Preventing the Next Pandemic: Fruit Bats,” which
Believe it or not, bats have one of our planet’s finest records of living safely with humans. Despite frequent claims to the contrary, they harbor
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Michael Lazari Karapetian has over twenty years of investment management experience. He has a degree in business management, is a certified NBA agent, and gained early experience as a money manager for the Bank of America where he established model portfolios for high-net-worth clients. In 2003 he founded Lazari Capital Management, Inc. and Lazari Asset Management, Inc. He is President and CIO of both and manages over a half a billion in assets. In his personal time he champions philanthropic causes. He serves on the board of Moravian College and has a strong affinity for wildlife, both funding and volunteering on behalf of endangered species.