RUTHFULLY YOURS

The mosquito species Aedes aegypti transmits viral diseases, including Zika, dengue, chikungunya, West Nile, and yellow fever, between human hosts. For most of these viral diseases, there are no vaccines and no effective medicines. So until recently, public-health officials have had to use old, low-tech approaches to controlling the mosquito vector and reducing the incidence of infections: pesticide sprays, public education about exposure (DEET, mosquito nets, and clothing that covers as much skin as possible), and control of breeding areas (water in flower pots, tires, drains, etc.).

Oxitec, a British subsidiary of the American company Intrexon, has created a new way to control Aedes aegypti. Male mosquitoes are bred in the laboratory with a specific genetic mutation that, in the absence of a certain chemical, causes their offspring to die before reaching maturity. Male mosquitoes do not bite, so their release presents no health risk, and, because their progeny die, the genetically engineered mosquitoes do not persist in the environment. Releasing the males over a period of several months causes a marked reduction in the mosquito population.

In field tests conducted in Brazil, the Cayman Islands, Malaysia, and Panama, Oxitec has shown that the release of these genetically engineered male mosquitoes has consistently reduced wild populations by more than 80 percent, and the most recent field trials show greater than 90 percent reduction. In 2014, on the basis of these field trials, Brazil’s regulatory authority approved the commercial release of these mosquitoes. Brazil approved Oxitec’s approach because the traditional approaches to mosquito control were failing to protect the country’s inhabitants from A. aegypti–borne viral diseases. The apparent association of Zika-virus infection with microcephaly in babies born to infected mothers has only added to the urgency.

In his final book, economist Mancur Olson wrote of the profound and crucial connection between representative government and the property and contract rights important for economic progress. Olson quoted James Madison: “Just as a man may be said to have a right to his property, so he has a property in his rights.” The rule of law is therefore essential for the preservation of constitutional government and for economic growth. In no country have the economic fruits of the rule of law been more plentiful than the United States.

Today there is no greater threat to the rule of law and the right to the peaceful enjoyment of property than the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), in the course of prosecuting its ostensible mission to clean the air and the water. Under the guise of the Clean Air Act, the agency’s Clean Power Plan will take control of America’s electrical-power infrastructure.

Yet Congress did not envisage that the 1970 legislation would be used to regulate greenhouse-gas emissions. To get around the inconveniently precise wording Congress provided in the statute, EPA resorted to rewriting the provision of the Clean Air Act that didn’t fit with its regulatory plans — a gambit that has had ups and downs in the Supreme Court, which will soon address the legality of the Clean Power Plan. Until Monday, the timetable was well advanced, with states being required to submit compliance plans this summer. Then, on Tuesday, the Supreme Court in a 5–4 decision agreed to freeze its implementation, showing that the plan’s opponents have a reasonable prospect of persuading the courts to throw out the plan.

The U.S. economy grew at an anemic rate of less than 1 percent in the last quarter of 2015.

While the unemployment rate has dipped below 5 percent, the all-important labor-force participation rate is at a historic low of just 62.7 percent. More than 90 million able-bodied adults are either not currently in the labor force or have stopped looking for work altogether.

Average household incomes have been mostly stagnant in recent years relative to the rate of inflation. The Dow Jones industrial average fell by 2.2 percent in 2015 and has continued to plummet this year. Most people’s retirement portfolios have been losing money.

Such economic sluggishness, more than seven years after the 2008 financial crisis, was not supposed to happen, given all the traditional economic stimuli.

When times are tough, politicians sometimes call for a reduction in energy taxes to help lower gas prices and bring down household heating and cooling costs. Such cutting usually puts more disposable income into the pockets of families.

Yet, largely because of Persian Gulf oil politics and private-sector fracking and horizontal drilling, U.S. gas prices have already plunged to a national average of less than $1.80. That is a huge drop from the average 2014 price of about $3.34 a gallon — and it should provide an enormous economic stimulus.