About a month ago, my neighbor gave me the happy news that she is pregnant with her fourth child. I figured as a veteran mom, she would go with flow, but with headlines blaring news about rising Zika cases, she's got plenty new to worry about. 

But I didn't think she would worry about insect repellent. 

“My mother keeps telling me to apply bug spray, but who knows what's in that stuff?” she said.

Given a choice between DEET and Zika, the choice seemed pretty obvious to me. But, as is the case with so many issues surrounding women, I'm wrong again.

According a recent article on MarketWatch, there's a growing debate about pregnant women using DEET-based insect repellent. MarketWatch, that bastion of scientific knowledge, maintains that while the virus’s connection to birth defects is well-established, less is known about the potential long-term risks of mosquito-repellent chemicals, particularly   N,N-Diethyl-meta-toluamide or diethyltoluamide (DEET), which doctors would normally advise pregnant women to avoid.

I don't know where MarketWatch is getting its info, but the Centers for Disease Control urges pregnant women to protect themselves with insect repellent—that seems like sound advice to me and I hope my neighbor takes it.