Political Crossfire Forums

[Katsumoto]

I ran accross this piece entitled "Our Own Silent Spring" by Lew Rockwell, and it surprised me because I had never heard of this issue with DDT. Do any of the resident environmentalist have anything to say on the issue:

Quote: Let there be no doubt that the war on malaria has failed. It is estimated that 800,000 children in Africa die from the disease every year, and as many as three million people altogether every year.

We know how people contract it: from mosquitoes. We know how to control it: kill the carrier mosquitoes. And we know what kills them: DDT.

So why has the war on malaria failed? Because governments banned the cure. Now they claim to wonder why people are sick and dying.

DDT was discovered during World War II to be a great means of stopping infection from typhus and malaria. Its inventor, Paul Hermann Mueller, won the Nobel Prize in 1948.

It was used throughout the 1950s and 60s and was on the verge of wiping out mosquito-borne diseases from the planet. Then something very peculiar came along. A book called Silent Spring by Rachel Carson was published in 1962, and eventually it created a fantastic backlash against progress. The spring was silent supposedly because of the lack of birds, killed off by DDT.

The only problem is that Carson's claims were never scientifically validated. Indeed, it was a hoax. Studies pumped primates full of DDT with no effect. Human volunteers ingested the stuff with no effect. Workers with 600 times the typical exposure to DDT showed no increased side effects. (Some details here.) What's more, she never once mentioned in her book that DDT had saved hundreds of thousands of lives.

Even so, governments acted. First in Norway and Sweden in 1970. The US banned it in 1972. The UK acted in 1984. The Stockholm Convention of 2001 called for the complete elimination of DDT. Of course, the US enforced its opposition through its foreign aid programs.

Here it is 2006 and what happens? People are stunned that malaria is back with a vengeance. Every 30 seconds, someone dies of malaria, and three-quarters of the victims are under the age of 5. Survivors can be left with horrific mental and physical ailments. So far as I know, neither governments nor greens were ever held liable.

Today, the big bucks are looking to fix the problem. Nearly $1 billion was spent last year alone. Warren Buffett ($31 billion) and the Gates Foundation have gotten in the act. Where is the money going? Only a tiny portion will be spent on DDT spraying, the restrictions on which are only now being slightly loosened, provided it is sprayed in homes and not on crops.

Mostly the money is going to nets. Nets! As if this were the 19th century! It's obvious that the agencies involved in this struggle are reluctant to reach for the spray can, or even discuss it.

The hidden hand behind this horror is none other than the environmentalists. The frenzy against DDT launched their movement. It is what emboldened them, and gave their political agenda momentum. In some ways, their campaign against DDT perfectly sums up their political bent: using state power to ban products and services that help humans, and thereby cause history to roll backward.

The extent to which the green movement is wrapped up in this history is obvious from the fact that we are living through a genuine silent spring, with the press ignoring the causes of malaria. The New York Times presents the epidemic as "mystifying," and most people know nothing about the role of the environmentalists who are responsible for millions of deaths by malaria, and in Africa, of all places, the continent that the left claims to love to help.

Does no one at the New York Times read back issues? The full case is presented in the zillion-word magazine masterpiece from Tina Rosenberg, "What the World Needs Now Is DDT" (April 11, 2004).

The politics of the environmentalists are increasingly predictable and obvious. They oppose all forms of capitalistic innovation. Indeed, they represent a special kind of danger to the human race that socialism never did. At least the socialists favored human progress, or at least said they did. These greens are against all that. They claim that we should be happy to live amidst disease, filth, and death, if only the bugs and birds can be left alone to thrive and kill us.

It's as if the socialists discovered that their plan created poverty, and so decided to change their names to environmentalists and make poverty their goal.

And note how their agenda fits so well with the state agenda. The state hobbles and hinders productivity in millions of ways through its taxing, regulating, and warmongering. But that makes little difference to the state, which prefers the exercise of power to the good of society. So too do the environmentalists pursue their agenda without regard to the effects on human society.

Currently, there are many environmental issues alive in the policy world, from the debate over sprawl to the frenzy over global warming. The environmentalists have the upper hand in all of them, which is a crying shame, given that they’re responsible for millions of lost lives – in just one of their conquests. More victories for them are sure to make life worse for all of us.

[Pzatchok]

http://www.junkscience.com/ddtfaq.htm

http://www.aim.org/media_monitor/A2989_0_2_0_C/

[perdidochas]

Katsumoto wrote: I ran accross this piece entitled "Our Own Silent Spring" by Lew Rockwell, and it surprised me because I had never heard of this issue with DDT. Do any of the resident environmentalist have anything to say on the issue:

Quote: Let there be no doubt that the war on malaria has failed. It is estimated that 800,000 children in Africa die from the disease every year, and as many as three million people altogether every year.

We know how people contract it: from mosquitoes. We know how to control it: kill the carrier mosquitoes. And we know what kills them: DDT.

So why has the war on malaria failed? Because governments banned the cure. Now they claim to wonder why people are sick and dying.

DDT was discovered during World War II to be a great means of stopping infection from typhus and malaria. Its inventor, Paul Hermann Mueller, won the Nobel Prize in 1948.

It was used throughout the 1950s and 60s and was on the verge of wiping out mosquito-borne diseases from the planet. Then something very peculiar came along. A book called Silent Spring by Rachel Carson was published in 1962, and eventually it created a fantastic backlash against progress. The spring was silent supposedly because of the lack of birds, killed off by DDT.

The only problem is that Carson's claims were never scientifically validated. Indeed, it was a hoax. Studies pumped primates full of DDT with no effect. Human volunteers ingested the stuff with no effect. Workers with 600 times the typical exposure to DDT showed no increased side effects. (Some details here.) What's more, she never once mentioned in her book that DDT had saved hundreds of thousands of lives.


One factual problem with the article. The argument against DDT was not that it hurt humans or primates, but that it hurt ecosystems by destroying the food chain, primarily birds.

[John Galt]

It has been brought back in many Malaria infested areas. US and Europe used to have malaria, but thanks to DDT, we do not have that horrible disease killing millions like yesteryear. The argument about birds and egg shell thinning and whatnot would be alot more credible if the evidence presented in ddtfaq, above, said these things actually happened. And, even if it did happen, in the short term wiping out mosquitoes is far more important than potential egg shell thinning of birds. Birds, btw, are not humans and therefore morally unimportant.

[perdidochas]

John Galt wrote: It has been brought back in many Malaria infested areas. US and Europe used to have malaria, but thanks to DDT, we do not have that horrible disease killing millions like yesteryear. The argument about birds and egg shell thinning and whatnot would be alot more credible if the evidence presented in ddtfaq, above, said these things actually happened. And, even if it did happen, in the short term wiping out mosquitoes is far more important than potential egg shell thinning of birds. Birds, btw, are not humans and therefore morally unimportant.

IMHO, the main problem with DDT is that it doesn't target mosquitoes specifically. It kills a wide range of insects, some of which are helpful, others of which are food sources. I agree with the U.S. DDT ban, however, we don't (and never) have (had) much malaria.

[eynon]

perdidochas wrote: John Galt wrote: It has been brought back in many Malaria infested areas. US and Europe used to have malaria, but thanks to DDT, we do not have that horrible disease killing millions like yesteryear. The argument about birds and egg shell thinning and whatnot would be alot more credible if the evidence presented in ddtfaq, above, said these things actually happened. And, even if it did happen, in the short term wiping out mosquitoes is far more important than potential egg shell thinning of birds. Birds, btw, are not humans and therefore morally unimportant.

IMHO, the main problem with DDT is that it doesn't target mosquitoes specifically. It kills a wide range of insects, some of which are helpful, others of which are food sources. I agree with the U.S. DDT ban, however, we don't (and never) have (had) much malaria.

I'm pretty sure I've read about malaria ravaging American troops stationed in Florida during both the Civil and Spanish-American wars.

but we have alternatives to DDT, so why bother.....

[TNBiologist]

1. Your article stated the DDT was a "cure". It is not a cure. It is a preventative measure taht actually works. It kills the mosquito thus not allowing an infected mosquito to bite me. DDT does not effect the malaria virus.

2. There is scientific proof that DDT caused the thinning of egg shells in bird that feed manily of fish (eagels and ospreys). Go to your local library and ask if they have access to J-Store. It is a scienitific journal database. You shoudl be able to find study after study about DDT, some for some against. Use that to make your own opinion.

3. With humans dying in such numbers, mainly in poorer parts of the world, the birds be damned use DDT and save some human lives. We used DDT here in the US until eagles were almost extent. We no longer have a malaria problem and through sound management and discontinued use of DDT have brought back teh eagle/osprey populations.

[Publius2006]

wannabe wrote: perdidochas wrote: John Galt wrote: It has been brought back in many Malaria infested areas. US and Europe used to have malaria, but thanks to DDT, we do not have that horrible disease killing millions like yesteryear. The argument about birds and egg shell thinning and whatnot would be alot more credible if the evidence presented in ddtfaq, above, said these things actually happened. And, even if it did happen, in the short term wiping out mosquitoes is far more important than potential egg shell thinning of birds. Birds, btw, are not humans and therefore morally unimportant.

IMHO, the main problem with DDT is that it doesn't target mosquitoes specifically. It kills a wide range of insects, some of which are helpful, others of which are food sources. I agree with the U.S. DDT ban, however, we don't (and never) have (had) much malaria.

I'm pretty sure I've read about malaria ravaging American troops stationed in Florida during both the Civil and Spanish-American wars.

but we have alternatives to DDT, so why bother.....

Of course we have alternatives so why bother?

Wrong, the only alternatives that are even half as effective as DDT cost ridiculously more. Perhaps countries like the U.S. can afford it, but developing countries, who are suffering from malaria the most, can not. That's one problem with environmentalists, they say we can find alternatives and if they're a bit more expensive, we can deal with it. But they forget that not all countries are as fortunate as America and it is these countries that suffer under international environmental regulations. I am not ignorant enough to think that there are not environmental problems, however I am a fierce critic of certain movements such as global warming and the banning of DDT, which I am most upset about. I completely agree with one author who stated that, "banning DDT has killed more people than Hitler."

The ironic, and sickening, thing is that, rather than take responsibility for their actions and admit the consequences of banning DDT, the environmental movement instead blames the resurgence of malaria on, no surprise, global warming.

[MplsBison]

Lets see:

1) would I rather keep eagles AND keep mosquitos?

or

2) would I rather kill eagles AND kill mosquites?


Well, so long eagles!

[TreizeEnder]

Sadly, everything sports its pros and cons, though I must say that trading such a magnitude of short term security for the supposed benefit of the already degrading environment is something of a waste in my eyes.

[Siberian Fox]

It has mainly killed people mentally, keeps them from seeing the truth that there have been more trees planted than there are being torn down.

[Headrattle]

Far be it from me to defend Environmentalists, but have you guys actually thought about this accusation? African countries are claiming that if they had DDT they would be able to decrease the number of malaria deaths. So, intead of actually treating the desease they are claiming that they could just kill the mosquitoes. Yet, it is a known fact that within a few generations mosquitoes will become immune to DDT. And suddenly you are back where you started. Only this time you have bad health effects from the DDT.

For example, In Sri Lanka there were something like 80,000 deaths from 1934 to 1955. After they started spraying with DDT there were 17 in 63. However DDT use ceased in the late 60's and malaria cases increased. That much is true. However what is ignored is that when they resumed using DDT, the program wasn't very effective. Why? because the Mosquitoes were already immune to DDT. This is one of the main reasons that the local governments stopped using it. It stopped being effective. Yet, switching to malathon (which is a DDT alternitive, contrary to what some have claimed) reduced it to 3000 by 2004. But again, a recent study has shown that the mosquitoes are immune to it now...

"Studies in Sri Lanka over the 1990s on An. culicifacies and a range of potential secondary vectors such as An. subpictus and An. vagus have shown high level of resistance to either organochlorines, organophosphates or to both groups of insecticides [4,26-28]. DDT and Malathion are no longer recommended since An. culicifacies and An. subpictus has been found resistant. Currently, synthetic pyrethroids such as Cyfluthrin, Deltamethrin, Etofenprox, and Lambda-cyhalothrin are being used in the country."
http://www.malariajournal.com/content/4/1/8

Essentially, mosquitoes become immune to it, and there are alternatives. It is even still widely used in the world. USAID still allows it and provides it. Yet, with more use, it becomes less effective. Why? genetics. Evolution. Science.

Envronmentalists have little to do with malaria. They are just being used as a political scape goat.
http://www.ias.ac.in/currsci/dec102003/1532.pdf
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/04/AR2005060400130.html

[patrickt]

If even one percent of the 20,000,000 mostly children killed had been white Europeans, DDT would not have been banned. Apparently, DDT is returning however.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/08/060801-ddt-malaria.html

[Selfish_Meme]

Wikipedia wrote: In 1955, the World Health Organization commenced a program to eradicate malaria worldwide, relying largely on DDT. Though this program was initially highly successful worldwide (reducing mortality rates from 192 per 100,000 to a low of 7 per 100,000), resistance emerged in many insect populations over time. DDT was less effective in tropical regions due to the continuous life cycle of mosquitoes and poor infrastructure. It was not pursued at all in sub-Saharan Africa due to these perceived difficulties, with the result that mortality rates in the area were never reduced to the same dramatic extent, and now constitute the bulk of malarial deaths worldwide, especially following the resurgence of the disease as a result of microbe resistance to drug treatments and the spread of the deadly malarial variant caused by Plasmodium falciparum.

As someone said above, the mosquitoes will just develop resistance, plus this article mentions that it wasn't very effective in the places that needed it most anyway.

[patrickt]

Aren't we just really lucky that malaria was eradicated in the U.S. and Europe before the mosquito became resistant. The mosquito-resistance issue is another way to deny responsibility for the millions who have died. Hey, they might have been run over by cars, anyway.

[Free Thinkr]

Millions of braincells in its adherents brains, maybe.