A group of physicians is trying to turn global warming into a health problem, comparing the earth to a sick patient. Eric Chivian, director of the Harvard Medical School Center for Health and the Global Environment, organized a letter-writing campaign just before the Kyoto conference, claiming global warming will cause epidemics to rage out of control. The same group was involved in the policy debate on nuclear weapons in the 1980s and is now looking for fashionable problems to get exercised about. But the real experts from the centers for Disease Control have already concluded the spread of diseases depends mainly on poor public health care and on the human vector, based on rapidly growing worldwide travel. In the meantime, the World Health Organization has been told by its consultants to consider the banned insecticide DDT as a way to curb the 3 million deaths a year from malaria and other insect-borne diseases.
Scientists attribute the first discovery of the species in Japan to the warmer climate.
Maybe the little beasts swim faster when the ocean is warmer.