U.S. responses to the Zika crisis are fundamentally flawed. Headlines like “The War on Zika in Miami Turns to the Air” and “Genetically modified mosquitoes newest weapon in war on Zika” may be intended to signal the seriousness of the response, but the world is more complicated than that.
Even if military and medical might could eliminate every single trace of Zika, the social, environmental and political conditions that made Brazil, Florida, and Puerto Rico vulnerable to the rapid spread of a new infectious disease remain in place.
These conditions include, global warming, movements of populations into overcrowded urban areas, and attitudes and policies that restrict women's sexual and reproductive rights.
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