Protecting Bobby From Mosquitoes

West Nile virus is roughly as dangerous to humans as influenza. Occasionally, it kills people (particularly seniors) but most victims recover with no damage. Basically, it's a bird disease. Last year in Georgia, for example, it showed up in six humans and 326 birds.

Despite the danger of promoting West Nile virus with regular adulticiding, the mosquito-control industry is having tremendous success falsely advertising its product as disease prevention. American Mosquito Control Association columnist Peter H. Connelly, who works for Aventis (a producer of mosquito poisons), reports that, with West Nile virus on the loose, business prospects for mosquito controllers are very bright: "We are possibly entering a period of industry growth unprecedented since the midwestern U.S. St. Louis virus outbreak of the 1970s."

There's only one safe, sensible way to protect Bobby from mosquitoes: Spray him, not your town. Then deprive mosquitoes of man-made habitat such as old tires, cans, bottles, clogged rain gutters, places where stagnant water collects and mosquito larvae thrive.

After that Bobby will still get bitten. He may even get the "secondary infections" mosquito controllers harp about. But boys like Bobby wouldn't get them if they got outside more.

Huck didn't get secondary infections because he didn't scratch. He didn't scratch because he didn't itch, and he didn't itch because he'd been bitten enough to build immunity to the stings.