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Once again the mosquito is the victor. If ever a disease-causing mosquito might be controllable, it seemed to be Aedes aegypti, which, unlike most other species, breeds only in and around houses in humanmade containers. And if ever a government should be able to control the mosquito, it is the totalitarian government of Cuba. But the Cuban effort, like every other attempt to wipe out a mosquito species from a country, appears to have failed. According to local reports, an epidemic of dengue fever, a viral disease spread by Aedes aegypti, has reappeared in Santiago, Cuba's second-largest city, and spread to the middle and west of the island. As one Aedes aegypti expert put it, "Cubans have been able to maintain war on (the mosquito]. They may have lost it."
The epidemic is testimony to the perseverance of Aedes aegypti, which virtually every country in the Western Hemisphere has tried to eliminate over the last 50 years, without success. After a devastating epidemic of dengue fever swept through Cuba in 1981, the Cuban government went after the mosquito with what public health experts describe as paramilitary zeal and soon claimed victory. But now the toll from dengue, a severe, flulike illness that can take a potentially...