Health Officials Split Over Advice on Pregnancy in Zika Areas

[HuckleB]

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/15/health/zika-virus-pregnancy-delay-birth-defects-cdc.html?_r=0

"As the Zika virus bears down on the United States, federal health officials are divided over a politically and ethically charged question: Should they advise American women to delay pregnancy in areas where the virus is circulating?

Some infectious disease experts are arguing that avoiding conception is the only sure way to prevent the births of deformed babies, according to outside researchers who serve on various advisory panels.

Women’s health specialists, on the other hand, counter that the government should not tell women what to do with their bodies. Indeed, federal health officials have never advised all the women in a region of the country to stop having children. Moreover, they say, most babies conceived during Zika epidemics in Latin America have been born healthy.

Several federal experts central to the discussion declined to be interviewed for this article. Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, described the internal debate as “a very long conversation.”

..."

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OK, then.