Mysterious illness kills thousands in Central America

FoxNews ^

[Scythian]

A mysterious epidemic is devastating the Pacific coast of Central America, killing more than 24,000 people in El Salvador and Nicaragua since 2000 and striking thousands of others with chronic kidney disease at rates unseen virtually anywhere else. Scientists say they have received reports of the phenomenon as far north as southern Mexico and as far south as Panama.

Jesus Ignacio Flores started working when he was 16, laboring long hours on construction sites and in the fields of his country's biggest sugar plantation.

Three years ago his kidneys started to fail and flooded his body with toxins. He became too weak to work, wracked by cramps, headaches and vomiting.

On Jan. 19 he died on the porch of his house. He was 51. His withered body was dressed by his weeping wife, embraced a final time, then carried in the bed of a pickup truck to a grave on the edge of Chichigalpa, a town in Nicaragua's sugar-growing heartland, where studies have found more than one in four men showing symptoms of chronic kidney disease.

[achilles2000]

Let not your heart be troubled: DDT is very, very safe.

[justlurking]

If this was the case there would be dead all through Mexico and south Texas.

You really should read the article. You'll find that the researchers are attempting to figure out why it's confined to certain areas. They are also seeing the high rates of kidney disease as far north as southern Mexico.

They are finding that a key chemical that is supposed to be filtered out by healthy kidneys is higher in coastal workers than people in the same country at higher altitudes, where it is presumably cooler. Everything else is the same: work habits and exposure to pesticides.

[Hot Tabasco]

it all comes from China and has very high levels of DDT in it.

Is DDT toxic?

[justlurking]

Yes, because until the last decade no one in Central America ever worked in the fields and suffered a daily cycle of dehydration and heat stress.

I think that's a good point, and there appears to be some dispute over it. The question is whether this is something new, or if the rate of death due to kidney failure is simply rising due to better diagnosis and record keeping.

Consider the numbers: the rate has doubled from 2000 to 2010. But, the absolute numbers are 466 to 1,047 in Nicaragua and 1,282 to 2,181 in El Salvador. Those aren't large numbers among a population of about 6 million in each country.

[wiggen]

What the article proves (to me) yet never says is that the ability to have a disease diagnosed has improved. I’m sure if its literally working themselves to death then the cause has been around a long time and people have been dying from it for a long time. If they didn’t see a doctor 20 years ago then kidney disease is not something they would self diagnose.

[null and void]

Bring Out Your Dead

Post to me or FReep mail to be on/off the Bring Out Your Dead ping list.

[moehoward]

Yes, because until the last decade no one in Central America ever worked in the fields and suffered a daily cycle of dehydration and heat stress.

Exactly. This is from something fairly recently introduced. Viral or Chemical, only a fool would think this will be contained south of the border.

[jmacusa]

I have worked with people from every Spanish-speaking country on the planet. Sugar to them is what blood is to a vampire. When I saw the words ‘’kidney’’ and ‘’sugar’’ I knew the problem.

[SueRae]

I read this article. Sugarcaners are worked like dogs. I can absolutely believe they can be worked all day without appropriate water consumption, among other hard conditions and that those conditions could negatively affect them over a lifetime. I have no answers. This is the work they know, this is the only work available and that they are trained for. Makes me think twice about my own level of sugar consumption.. Better efforts need to happen to imnprove their conditions. I hope the story gets some attention. I recall reading stories about the young children working the cane fields..and their teeth rotting out as the sugar cane is the only food they have. Heartbreaking.

[Carry_Okie]

You say the disease is already here - has it been identified?

I'm saying that with the rate of travel from that region, it has to be here by now. Think of how fast SARS swept the planet.

No, I don't know what it is, but think about this for a minute: In Central America, there is comparatively poor medical care, minimal food handling technology, refrigeration, or preservation, bad pest control, and rotten waste handling and general sanitation. Meanwhile, the incidence of this disease (although probably under-diagnosed), even under those conditions in a torrid climate, is but a few thousand cases per year. That indicates the disease is not terribly virulent or we'd have heard all about it years ago. It's probably here but producing numbers so low that we don't see it.

[Ozymandias Ghost]

Instead of this being an “either/or” type of causation; I wonder if it isn't a synergistic effect involving both dehydration and some sort of pesticide/herbicide. Being dehydrated would tend to concentrate any toxins being filtered thru the kidney.

[WayneS]

This story reminds me of the ‘killer bees terror’ in the 1970s. A highly aggressive and practically indestructible breed of bees was supposedly killing large numbers of people as they blazed a path of death and destruction northward across South and Central America.

If I recall correctly, the ‘killer bees’ were going to arrive in the United States by late 1977 or thereabouts. It was projected by the alarmists that these bees would wipe out a significant portion of the our population, and render most of the southern United States uninhabitable, soon thereafter...

What ever happened to those bees, anyway?

[dfwgator]

If I recall correctly, the ‘killer bees’ were going to arrive in the United States by late 1977 or thereabouts. It was projected by the alarmists that these bees would wipe out a significant portion of the our population, and render most of the southern United States uninhabitable, soon thereafter...

I thought the problem was abated when they trapped the bees and took them to the Louisiana Superdome where they turned down the temperature inside and killed them all.

[I see my hands]

Some are fascinated by mystery diseases and see them everywhere often experiencing them personally. Like those into the paranormal who seen have ghosts, UFOs, and had near death experiences, pretending (ahem) is evidence.

[Arrowhead1952]

Killer bees are still around. They almost killed a man in east Austin about one year ago. He had over 200 stings and was in shock before they got the bees away and him headed to the ER.

[dfwgator]

Killer bees are still around.

[justlurking]

What ever happened to those bees, anyway?

They are here. They were first discovered in Texas in 1990.

Here's a map of sitings in California: http://bees.ucr.edu/ahb_CA_05.pdf

More details: http://bees.ucr.edu/ahb-facts.html

All the hype aside, beekeepers have found ways to mitigate the effects. The primary problem with the Africanized bees is that they are more easily provoked, and more hostile. An individual sting isn't any more dangerous than a "regular" bee, but they are more likely to swarm someone they perceive as a threat.

More info here: http://nationalatlas.gov/articles/biology/a_bees.html

[PeteB570]

I was going to say “drink more water”.

Thanks for the post.

[Ciexyz]

btt

[SouthTexas]

There is nothing in the article but speculation, I just noted that dehydration and heat stress are daily occurrences in places where there is no major issues.

Grasp of the obvious, different elevations dictate different water source contaminants, be it chemical, mineral, or biological.