Forbes Magazine. By Arthur L. Caplan & Lee H. Igel.
It is beginning to look like the time has come to call off the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro. The reason is simple: young women cannot travel there safely. While polluted water and security issues have already made things tough for anyone who would be a visitor there, now Brazil is on the front line of the mosquito-borne Zika virus epidemic. To host the Games at a site teeming with Zika, an outbreak the World Health Organization has labelled a “public health emergency of international concern,” is, quite simply, irresponsible.
Who is going to go to Rio in the middle of a Zika outbreak? Not young women fans, who might get pregnant and risk giving birth to a child with a birth defect. Not male fans who are sexually active and risk transmitting the disease to a partner. Maybe the athletes, coaches, and other members of national Olympic teams will travel to Rio.
