Nov 27 2007
A book about mozzies called… Mosquito.
Like it says, it’s a book about mosquitoes, and it’s got a massive picture of one on the front, looking all creepy-buzzy otherworldly. It’s written by a mosquito-borne infection expert and a journalist (Andrew Spielman and Michael D’Antonio respectively), which makes it both readable but also strangely artificial. There are scientific bits interspersed with bits that seem forced and too-friendly, as if to compensate for actually talking about the facts briefly.
There’s a lot of detail about the life-cycle of mosquitoes and the different places they breed, which ones bite and why, their post-prandial behaviour and so on. Then there’s loads on all the horrible diseases they spread, how they move from person to person, which animals act as reservoirs but don’t develop symptoms, etc. But through all that, the disease I know least about is malaria. I actually had to ask Helen what it was (it’s some sort of parasite, apparently) because the book doesn’t explain at any point. That’s just downright weird.
It’s a pretty enjoyable read, with some very interesting background to the story on DDT. There are an awful lot of conspiracy theorists about who believe Rachel Carson (author of Silent Spring) is the Great Satan and responsible for more deaths than Hitler and Ming the Merciless combined. In reality, it was well known at the time that DDT was losing its edge because of over-use. The heavily sprayed areas were seeing resurgence in malaria from newly-resistant mosquitoes. The environmentalist movement was only one nail in the coffin.