Dear Editor,

Monroe County now has its index ZIKA case.

ZIKA in Monroe County is no longer a hypothetical. It is here. It is a real, not a theoretical, threat to our health. Especially the unborn.

Enough is enough. It is time to use all the safe, proven, and effective weapons we have at our disposal to fight ZIKA. It is time for The Florida Keys Mosquito Control Board to ignore the threats and posturing of the special interests of big real estate, and to fire the big guns of the use of genetic engineering to kill the skeeters that threaten our unborn…and us.

It is time to scrap the foolish notion of a “nonbinding” referendum, and to get to work protecting our health.

In the event that you think that the number of persons at risk is minimal…please realize that at any given moment that up to 10% of American women are pregnant. Here in Monroe, our birth rate is slightly more than 10 per thousand of population. We have about 75,000 residents in Monroe County. In case you cannot do the math, that’s about 750 infants at risk.

And those stats do not reflect the tens of thousands of tourists who visit us each year.

By failing to act, we are unnecessarily putting at risk the health, lives, and futures of potentially hundreds of unborn Monroe County children.

http://www.floridacharts.com/FLQuery/Birth/BirthRateRpt.aspx

Walter Lagraves, Big Pine Key