Mosquitos, Ticks...and Fish! (cont.)

In the humid, temperature-controlled environs of Yale’s new insectary and tickary (ticks are not insects, but related to spiders), Fish and his research staff of 12 are at work on West Nile virus, Lyme disease and other vector-borne diseases. There are five environmental chambers where they grow ticks. Another suite of rooms holds mosquitoes. The lab, the only private "Biohazard Level 3" lab in the Northeast, also contains a collection of frozen mosquito-borne viruses from all over the world.

"Vector-borne" diseases are transmitted to humans by

insects or animals, such as mosquitoes or ticks, in a complex transmission cycle. In West Nile virus, the vector or intermediary is the mosquito. A mosquito bites and infects a bird, then other mosquitoes who bite the same bird become infected, and in turn transmit the disease to their subsequent human or animal victims. In Lyme disease, the most prevalent vector-borne disease in North America with some 16,000 cases annually, ticks pass the disease from mice, who are the reservoir of infection, to deer and humans. Vector-borne diseases are quickly becoming a critical public health issue for a number of reasons: the ease of spread in a global society, the disintegration of disease-control mechanisms, environmental changes and pesticide-resistant insects – and the decay of our public health infrastructure.

Fish began his career in public health as a regional vector control coordinator for the Pennsylvania Department of Health, a job he took right after graduation from Albright in 1966 as a biology/chemistry major. Then, "there were government programs prepared to deal with vector-borne diseases. We did mosquito surveys and prevention programs, we set mosquito traps, investigated cases of encephalitis. But by 1980 the programs were totally abolished. Government put the squeeze on budgets. They believed we could do away with these programs and have minimal impact. Now we are paying for years of neglect."

Today, as his research focuses on the crisis of West Nile virus and Lyme disease, Fish advocates for a return to preventive approach to public health, as well as a new breed of scientists with comprehensive training in the medical and environmental sciences and an interdisciplinary approach to solving the problem.

For West Nile, Fish maintains that the only answer is entomological studies and pre-emptive strikes on certain mosquito species. Fish calls for "heroic efforts" to focus mosquito control efforts on containing the virus before it can spread. He is emphatic that genetic alteration of mosquitoes is not the answer. Neither is the indiscriminate spraying of insecticides. "We need to know the ecology of mosquitoes, population densities, aquatic breeding sites. For example, in New York City, where we’ve never had an entomological study of mosquitoes, we have no idea where they are coming from or what they have. We’re stuck with spraying for control. We’re working in the dark."

The prognosis for West Nile? "The prognosis is it will continue to spread, and we’re not prepared to do anything about the spread. We have to get people trained to recognize that’s a critical shortcoming. I don’t think there’s a way to predict what’s going to happen." But, he warns, a spread all the way to Central and South America is not at all unlikely.