IT WAS THE WORST OUTBREAK OF DENGUE FEVER IN AUSTRALIA IN 60 YEARS. More than 1,000 people were stricken by the potentially fatal, insect-born infection in a 2009 epidemic that swept through the beach towns of northern Australia with lightning speed. “Right over there is where it started,” Scott Ritchie says, pointing to a green clapboard cottage perched on stilts to avoid floods. It’s an overcast but warm April day in a quiet, palm-tree-dotted suburb of Cairns, a jumping-off point for expeditions to the Great Barrier Reef. Ritchie, a medical entomologist, explains that the Aedes ... Read More
