As Zika Babies Become Toddlers, Some Can’t See, Walk or Talk -- The New York Times

They are 2 years old, but developmentally they are 6 months old. The children most severely affected by Zika face a lifetime of care, new research shows. ...
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/14/health/zika-babies-brazil.html?_r=0

Bernie Sanders To Propose New Rule Requiring Fair Prices For Taxpayer-Funded Drugs -- HuffPost

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) plans to propose a new rule Monday that would require pharmaceutical companies to charge fair prices for drugs developed with taxpayer-backed research....
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/bernie-sanders-drug-prices_us_597f4546e4b0da64e87aaebf

This Pharma Company Won't Commit To Fairly Pricing A Zika Vaccine You Helped Pay For

Last year, as worries grew that Zika ― a mosquito-borne illness that can lead to devastating birth defects ― might spread north from Latin America, scientists working for the U.S. government got to work on a vaccine. ...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/zika-vaccine-sanofi_us_59373298e4b0ce1e7408b9ca?ncid=APPLENEWS00001

And Now the Good News #217: Please Squeeze the Platinum

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEo5gzQRvas&feature=youtu.be

Could Zika change the military’s strict abortion laws?

Picture this: You’re an American service member stationed abroad. You’re pregnant. And you just found out that you contracted Zika, the rapidly spreading mosquito-born virus that has left thousands of babies with severe brain abnormalities.

That’s not a hypothetical situation — it’s already happened. According to the Pentagon, at least 41 active-duty American service members have contracted Zika abroad since January, including one pregnant woman, who we’ll call Y. All have been instructed to wear mosquito repellent, and Y has been given the option of relocating out of the Zika-affected country. But Zika has been linked to a number of complications, including microcephaly, a birth defect that can cause serious cognitive disabilities.

That raises an obvious question: What if Y wants an abortion?...
https://thinkprogress.org/military-abortion-zika-1d33c2379bd5#.z9ang82q3

NARAL Condemns Rubio’s 'Out-Of-Touch Political Beliefs' in Zika Funding Battle

Though the Florida senator has on several occasions broken from the Republican Party to support efforts to combat the virus, his push to respond to the crisis has not included extending abortion care to those who contract Zika and may want to end their pregnancy....
https://rewire.news/article/2016/09/06/naral-condemns-rubios-political-beliefs-zika-funding/

Mosquito Spraying Accidentally Takes Out Millions Of Bees In S.C. County

It wasn't meant for the bees. The pesticide raining down from the sky in Dorchester County, S.C., was meant to kill mosquitoes — for the sake of safety, the county says. Mosquitoes, after all, can carry West Nile and Zika, and four cases of Zika were recently confirmed in the county.

But on Sunday morning, from 6:30 a.m. to 8:30 a.m., as the county conducted aerial spraying, the bees fell by the millions....
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/09/02/492404411/s-c-county-sprays-for-mosquitos-but-accidentally-takes-out-millions-of-bees?ft=nprml&f=1001

No, New York Times, Democrats didn't block Zika funding—Republicans poisoned it

The Senate returned to action Tuesday night, voting on the Zika "funding" bill the House had sent over. It’s a bill that does not fund Zika prevention at the level the the agencies fighting the disease say they require, that includes preventing any of the funds from going to Planned Parenthood, that would allow the Confederate flag in veterans' cemeteries, makes cuts to Obamacare, and would gut rules protecting our water supply. And here's how The New York Times reports it, under the headline "Senate Democrats Block Zika Bill Over Planned Parenthood Provisions":...
http://www.dailykos.com/stories/1567556

The Daily Show - Congress's Standstill on Zika Funding

As Congress faces budgetary gridlock in the fight against Zika, Trevor looks to South Africa's parliament to see how his home country battles epidemics."

 

Striking Images Show How Zika Ravages A Baby's Body And Brain

A series of medical images published Tuesday offer the most complete picture, so far, of how the Zika virus can damage the brain of a fetus.

"The images show the worst brain infections that doctors will ever see," says Dr. Deborah Levine, at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, who contributed to the study. "Zika is such a severe infection [in fetuses]. Most doctors will have never seen brains like this before."

The images — published in the journal Radiology — are part of a special report put together by neurologists in Boston and doctors in northeastern Brazil who care for babies with Zika infections. "Our goal is to illustrate for heath care professionals around the world what they could expect to see with a Zika infection during pregnancy," Levine says....
http://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2016/08/23/491097361/zika-images-show-worst-brain-infections-that-doctors-will-ever-see?ft=nprml&f=1001

HHS Fires Back At McConnell For Claiming O'Care Funds Could Be Used On Zika

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services fired back at the suggestion by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) that the agency was wasting money on Obamacare outreach that could be used on Zika funding.

"The last person who should criticize HHS for not being focused on Zika is the Senate Republican leader who has refused to compromise in order to get a clean, bipartisan funding bill to the President’s desk," an HHS spokesperson said in a statement to TPM Friday evening. The statement was in response to a letter McConnell sent to HHS Secretary Sylvia Burwell Friday hounding her on reports of a new outreach campaign for Obamacare enrollment....
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/hhs-response-to-mcconnell-zika-letter

Officials: 1 in 4 people in Puerto Rico will have Zika by year's end

The U.S. territory of Puerto Rico has reported 1,914 new Zika cases over the past week....
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/zika-virus-spreads-in-puerto-rico/

Threat Of Zika Is Changing Americans' Minds About Late-Term Abortion

As the threat of homegrown Zika spreads, Americans are getting more realistic about abortion regulations.

A poll conducted by the Harvard School of Public Health and STAT last month found that while 61 percent of Americans oppose abortions after 24 weeks, a majority would actually support late-term abortions in the case of microcephaly — a condition in which a baby is born with a underdeveloped brain and skull. Microcephaly, found in infants whose mothers have been infected by Zika, is only detectable after 24 weeks of pregnancy....
http://thinkprogress.org/health/2016/08/05/3805388/zika-late-abortions-poll/

Paul Ryan blames Dems for Zika stalemate, omits key detail

The latest poster child for gridlock in Washington is congress’ inability to pass a Zika funding bill.
Florida has home-grown cases and has started aerial spraying. Meanwhile, a $1.1 billion aid package sits on ice. House Speaker Paul Ryan put the blame squarely on the shoulders of Democrats.

In an USA Today op-ed, Ryan said his side compromised plenty to move the bill forward. The Senate passed a bill that called for $1.1 billion, all in "new" money, that is, not pulled from existing funds. The House wanted much less. When the two sides got together to resolve the differences, the House came up to the $1.1 billion mark and paid for it with a mix of new and existing money. 

"Unfortunately, when this plan went to the Senate for a vote, Democrats derailed it," Ryan wrote....
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/aug/04/paul-ryan/ryan-blames-dems-zika-stalemate-omits-key-detail/

Trump campaign in Florida: Zika an 'insignificant issue'

Go on, Trump campaign. Run on imaginary fears, run on fantasy walls. Leave the real voters with real concerns to Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine...
http://www.dailykos.com/stories/1556321

Mitch McConnell shows that if you want someone truly despicable, go with a pro

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell used his Republican convention speech Tuesday night as a platform to blame the Democrats for the Senate’s failure to approve emergency funds to fight the Zika virus.

Never mind that the Republicans control the Senate, and that they failed — twice — to work out a funding bill with broad enough support to pass the chamber. In McConnell’s telling, it was the Democrats who prevented the $1.1 billion bill from passing before Congress left for a seven-week recess, so any public health consequences will be their responsibility.

McConnell didn’t just blame Democrats, he actually blamed Hillary Clinton, because as long as you’re lying, you might as well go all the way....
http://www.dailykos.com/stories/1550130

Pat McCrory Would Rather Defend Discrimination Than Protect North Carolinians From Zika

In a move straight out of House of Cards, lawmakers in North Carolina have moved to divert $500,000 from the state’s Emergency Response and Disaster Relief fund and use it instead on defense of the state’s anti-transgender bathroom law, HB2.

The controversial law, which forbids transgender people from using public restrooms matching their gender identity and limits anti-discrimination rules protecting LGBT people, was passed in March and immediately came under national attention. Businesses and events have pulled out of the state in protest, and the Department of Justice informed North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory that the law violated the civil rights act.

In response, McCrory sued the federal government — just one of a number of lawsuits involving the law, including a federal suit against the state and a challenge mounted by transgender NC residents..

North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper, a Democrat running against McCrory in the upcoming gubernatorial elections, has refused to defend the law in court, calling it a "national embarrassment" that provides for "broad-based discrimination."...
http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2016/07/01/3794947/mcrcrory-boosts-disaster-funding-for-hb2/

GOP Tries To Use Zika Bill To Undo Cemetery Confederate Flag Ban

House Republican lawmakers sought to reverse previously passed legislation restricting the display of the Confederate flag in federal cemeteries by slipping a provision stripping the legislation into a larger appropriations bill that included Zika funding. The House bill passed last week on largely partisan lines, but was blocked in the Senate Tuesday by a Democratic filibuster.

The Confederate flag language was just one of a number controversial provisions included in the bill, which also included an amendment cutting Planned Parenthood funding and other swipes at the Obama administration's public health initiatives....
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/confederate-flag-zika-funding

The GOP’s Zika Bill Could Actually Limit Access to Contraception and Abortion

In the midst of the Democratic House sit-in Wednesday night protesting inaction on gun control, the GOP rushed to divert attention by passing a proposal to combat the spread of Zika — the mosquito-borne virus that’s causing concern in the public health community because it’s most harmful to pregnant women.

In the aftermath of the sit-in, which attracted national attention, GOP leaders have characterized the Zika bill as a more important priority than bringing gun control legislation to a vote.

Speaker of the House Paul Ryan said it was a “significant step” to battling Zika, and other Republicans have expressed similar support for the bill.

“Given the urgency of the Zika threat, I hope Senate Democrats will rise above politics so we can get this done,” Ryan said. There’s just one catch: the bill doesn’t get to the heart of solving the problem for women who may be at risk for contracting Zikam which has been linked to serious birth defects....
http://thinkprogress.org/health/2016/06/24/3792272/zika-gop-bill/

Has Zika Pushed More Women Toward Illegal Abortions?

When Zika started spreading through Latin America earlier this year, a number of governments issued advisories recommending that women put off getting pregnant because the virus can cause severe birth defects. At the same time these countries kept in place strict laws that would prevent a woman from getting an abortion if she were already pregnant.

To Abigail Aiken — a health policy researcher at University of Texas at Austin — this felt like a "disconnect." On the one hand, authorities were saying Zika is such a major health threat a woman shouldn't even get pregnant. On the other hand, they were implying that if a woman does become pregnant Zika is not a serious enough health reason to consider an abortion.

That made Aiken wonder, "What are the impacts of these advisories and of Zika on what women want to do?" After all, she adds, even before the outbreak, millions of women in Latin America had been getting abortions illegally each year. Has the epidemic prompted more women to do so?...
http://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2016/06/22/483098802/has-zika-pushed-more-women-toward-illegal-abortions?ft=nprml&f=1001