Carlton Supporters Club

ps Mav, I'll take it as a given that your last lengthy rant was your cute way of now saying that you agree the 97% claim is unaldulterated BS.

QED

Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. Then God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

2. Autopsy found Zika virus in fetal brain tissue
While the link between Zika virus and the birth defect microcephaly is still unproven, a new study provides some clues to understanding the virus, The Associated Press reports. An autopsy a fetus aborted from a woman who contracted Zika virus in Brazil during her first trimester revealed that the fetus's brain was only a fraction of the size that would be expected at that stage of development. Scientists found Zika virus in the fetus's brain tissue, but not in any other organs. Scientists sequenced the virus's genetic material for future research that investigates the probable link between the virus and microcephaly.

New details are emerging about the infants born with microcephaly. According to a very small study, published in JAMA Ophthalmology, a third of the study subjects, all of whom had microcephaly, were also born with eye damage, including lesions or scars in the retina and optic nerve. It's unknown if the eye damage is unique to microcephaly or if it occurs in the general population. 
...

4. How Zika virus may threaten Africa
Zika virus was discovered in Uganda in 1947, but it hasn’t erupted in an epidemic with possible birth defects in African countries the way that it has in Latin America. But now, in 2016, experts are worried that the virus may return to the African mainland in mutated form, potentially triggering a new wave of infections among a population that had previously been immune to the disease, reports Reuters.

Here's the study referred to above, published in the New England Journal of Medicine:  Zika Virus Associated with Microcephaly

Which is why the NEJM study is so interesting.  Finding the virus targetting the brain and eyes of an aborted foetus with microcephaly is bracing indeed.  If the Zika virus and microcephaly were just ships passing in the night, you wouldn't expect that.

healthy babies born with Zika

It can be easy to confuse cause and effect. But if you count foetal cases of Microephaly and Zika you must also count cases of healthy babies born with Zika and no Microcephaly.

It may be that Zika is a potential cause of Microephaly, it may have always been that way. But that doesn't necessarily mean there really is a spike in Microcephaly cases, or that increased detections of the Zika virus will means an increase in Microcephaly. It may be that a foetus with Microcephaly is more susceptible to Zika, the cause and effect reversed.

What?

And why now?

Zika's been around a long time?

If the 'issue' is real, perhaps other environmental factors involved too?

With at least 80% of those infected showing no symptoms, tracking the disease is extremely difficult. The mosquito species that spreads Zika, Aedes aegypti, has been expanding its range over the past few decades. “It loves urban life and has spread across the entire tropical belt of the planet, and of course that belt is expanding as global warming takes effect,” added Farrar.