GEORGE Appleby ponders why Noah didn’t swat the two mosquitoes that must have been on his Ark (HAS, Jan 9). He was probably too ill to do so.

Many infectious diseases cannot survive outside a human host. So – if the flood myth were true – for those diseases to exist today they must have infected the eight people on the boat.

Noah and his extended family would have suffered from a range of illnesses, including typhus, measles, smallpox, polio, gonorrhoea and syphilis.

Chris White, Spennymoor, Co Durham.