A new report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is spurring headlines that Zika-linked birth defects have reached new levels in the United States.
Experts, other research, and the CDC itself, however, say that the connection between the disease and birth defects is unproven.
Some have suggested the media’s oversimplified headlines on Zika have amounted to fearmongering.
Chief among the challenges in drawing conclusive connections between Zika and birth defects is the challenge of testing for Zika itself.
The new CDC report finds that out of 1,297 pregnant U.S. women (with 972 completed pregnancies) possibly infected by Zika, 51 women (or 5 percent) had children with birth defects in 2016.
Coraliz Dones, 34 and 9 months pregnant, who tested positive for Zika when she was 7 months pregnant, visits with midwife Michelle Perez-Chiques at the Centro MAM, an independent natural birth clinic which promotes natural births and uses midwifes in Carolina, Puerto Rico on Sept. 2, 2016. Angel Valentin/Getty Images
