DDT

DDT is a pesticide and a very good one which reduced the malaria problem by killing the mosquitoes which carry it. Banning it has been good for mozzies and deadly for people. This particular bit of interference has killed millions. It gets around 2 million per year, mainly children giving a total of some 50 million which is more than Adolf managed to do.

The damage was done by well meaning environmentalists who were ignorant. Has this message gotten out to the public? No, not even slightly. Do we all believe the soft, warm fuzzy image that greenies project? All too often.

This little essay is based on State Of Fear, a novel by Michael Crichton, an author who has a serious interest in ecology. See page 579 onward. He cites But Is It True? A Citizen's Guide to Environmental Health and Safety Issues by Aaron Wildavsky.

Another and gloomier view comes from #Rachel Carson. Another is at #Doomed Planet.  

 

Rachel Carson
was a very effective propagandist. Lyndon LaRouche was rather less so. Believe either or neither.

Bring Back Science. Bring Back DDT!
QUOTE
The 1972 U.S. ban on DDT is responsible for a genocide 10 times larger than that for which we sent Nazis to the gallows at Nuremberg. It is also responsible for a menticide which has already condemned one entire generation to a dark age of anti-science ignorance, and is now infecting a new one.

The lies and hysteria spread to defend the DDT ban are typical of the irrationalist, anti-science wave which has virtually destroyed rational forms of discourse in our society. If you want to save science—and human lives—the fight to bring back DDT, now being championed by that very electable candidate for the Democratic Presidential nomination, Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr., had better be at the top of your agenda.

Sixty million people have died needlessly of malaria, since the imposition of the 1972 ban on DDT, and hundreds of millions more have suffered from this debilitating disease. The majority of those affected are children. Of the 300 to 500 million new cases of malaria each year, 200 to 300 million are children, and malaria now kills one child every 30 seconds. Ninety percent of the reported cases of malaria are in Africa, and 40 percent of the world’s population, inhabitants of tropical countries, are threatened by the increasing incidence of malaria.

The DDT ban does not only affect tropical nations. In the wake of the DDT ban, the United States stopped its mosquito control programs, cutting the budgets for mosquito control and monitoring. Exactly as scientists had warned 25 years ago, we are now facing increases of mosquito-borne killer diseases—West Nile fever and dengue, to name the most prominent.

Christopher Sloan

What DDT Can Do
Malaria is a preventable mosquito-borne disease. It can be controlled by spraying a tiny amount of DDT on the walls of houses twice a year. DDT is cheaper than other pesticides, more effective, and not harmful to human beings or animals.

Even where mosquito populations have developed resistance to DDT, it is more effective (and less problematic) than alternative chemicals. The reason is that mosquitoes are repelled by the DDT on house walls and do not stay around to bite and infect the inhabitants. This effect is known as “excito-repellency,” and has been shown to be a dominant way that DDT controls malaria-bearing mosquitoes, in addition to killing them on contact.1 Studies have demonstrated this for all major species of malaria-bearing mosquitoes.

It costs only $1.44 per year to spray one house with DDT. The more toxic substitutes cost as much as 10 to 20 times more and require more frequent applications, making spraying programs prohibitively expensive. In addition, replacement pesticides have to be applied more frequently and are more toxic.

Banned to Kill People
DDT came into use during World War II, and in a very short time saved more lives and prevented more diseases than any other man-made chemical in history. Millions of troops and civilians, in particular war refugees, were saved from typhus because one DDT dusting killed the body lice that spread that dread disease.

Why was DDT banned, 30 years after its World War II introduction and spectacular success in saving lives? The reason was stated bluntly by Alexander King, founder of the Malthusian Club of Rome, who wrote in a biographical essay in 1990, “My chief quarrel with DDT in hindsight is that it has greatly added to the population problem.” King was particularly concerned that DDT had dramatically cut the death rates in the developing sector, and thus increased population growth.

As King correctly observed, the incidence of malaria, and its death rates, were vastly reduced by DDT spraying. To take one example: Sri Lanka (Ceylon) had 2.8 million cases of malaria and more than 12,500 deaths in 1946, before the use of DDT. In 1963, after a large-scale spraying campaign, the number of cases fell to 17, and the number of deaths fell to 1. But five years after the stop of spraying, in 1969, the number of deaths had climbed to 113, and the number of cases to 500,000. Today, malaria rates have soared in countries that stopped spraying. In South Africa, the malaria incidence increased by 1,000 percent in the late 1990s.

The Silent Spring Fraud
The campaign to ban DDT got its start with the publication of Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring in 1962. Carson’s popular book was a fraud. She played on people’s emotions, and to do so, she selected and falsified data from scientific studies, as entomologist Dr. J. Gordon Edwards has documented in his analysis of the original scientific studies that Carson cited.2

As a result of the propaganda and lies, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency convened scientific hearings and appointed a Hearing Examiner, Edmund Sweeney, to run them. Every major scientific organization in the world supported DDT use, submitted testimony, as did the environmentalist opposition. The hearings went on for seven months, and generated 9,000 pages of testimony. Hearing Examiner Sweeney then ruled that DDT should not be banned, based on the scientific evidence: “DDT is not carcinogenic, mutagenic, or teratogenic to man [and] these uses of DDT do not have a deleterious effect on fish, birds, wildlife, or estuarine organisms,” Sweeney concluded.

Two months later, without even reading the testimony or attending the hearings, EPA administrator William Ruckelshaus overruled the EPA hearing officer and banned DDT. He later admitted that he made the decision for “political” reasons. “Science, along with economics, has a role to play . .. .. [but] the ultimate decision remains political,” Ruckelshaus said.

The U.S. decision had a rapid effect in the developing sector, where the State Department made U.S. aid contingent on countries not using any pesticide that was banned in the United States. The U.S. Agency for International Development discontinued its support for DDT spraying programs, and instead increased funding for birth control programs.

Other Western nations—Sweden and Norway, for example—also pressured recipient nations to stop the use of DDT. Belize abandoned DDT in 1999, because Mexico, under pressure from the United States and NAFTA, had stopped the manufacture of DDT, which was Belize’s source. Purchases of replacement insecticides would take up nearly 90 percent of Belize’s malaria control budget. Mozambique stopped the use of DDT, “because 80 percent of the country’s health budget came from donor funds, and donors refused to allow the use of DDT,” reported the British Medical Journal (March 11, 2000).

The World Bank and the World Health Organization, meanwhile, responded to the rise in malaria incidence with a well-publicized “Roll Back Malaria” program, begun in 1989, which involves no insect control measures, only bed nets, personnel training, and drug therapiescription for failure.

POPs Convention Is Genocide
In 1995, despite the official documentation of increases in malaria cases and malaria deaths, the United Nations Environment Program began an effort to make the ban on DDT worldwide. UNEP proposed to institute “legally binding” international controls banning what are called “persistent organic pollutants” or POPs, including DDT. Ratification of the POPs Convention, finalized in 2001, is now pending in the U.S. Senate, where it has the support of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, including committee chairman James Jeffords (Ind.-Vt.) and committee member Joe Lieberman (D.-Conn.). President Bush has already endorsed the U.S. signing on to the POPs Convention.

The evidence of DDT’s effectiveness is dramatic. In South America, where malaria is endemic, malaria rates soared in countries that had stopped spraying houses with DDT after 1993: Guyana, Bolivia, Paraguay, Peru, Brazil, Colombia, and Venezuela. In Ecuador, however, which increased its use of DDT after 1993, the malaria rate was rapidly reduced by 60 percent.

But DDT spraying is not a magic bullet cure-all. Eliminating mosquito-borne diseases here and around the world requires in-depth public health infrastructure and trained personnel—as were in place in the 1950s and 1960s, when DDT began to rid the world of malaria. And mosquito-borne illness is not the only scourge now threatening us. A growing AIDS pandemic, and the return of tuberculosis and other killer diseases, now also menace growing parts of the world’s population, particularly in those areas where human immune systems are challenged by malnutrition and poorly developed (or nonexistent) water and sanitation systems.

To solve this worsening problem as a whole—a disgrace in face of the scientific achievements the world has made—we must reverse the entire course of the past 30 years’ policymaking and return to a society based on production, scientific progress, and rationality. The onrushing world depression crisis, demands a new FDR-style approach to economic reconstruction in the United States. The recognized spokesman for such a reform of our economic and monetary policies is the very electable candidate for the Democratic Presidential nomination, Lyndon H. LaRouche.

The United States should not ratify the POPs Convention with its phase-out of DDT and other valuable chemicals. On the contrary, this nation should bring back DDT now, under the provisions of existing U.S. law that allow the use of DDT in health emergencies. If the continuing mass murder of millions of people is not an emergency, what is?

Notes _____________________________________

1. A summary of this work can be found in an article by Donald R. Roberts, et al., Emerging Infectious Diseases, Vol. 3, No. 3 (1997), pp. 295-302.

2. J. Gordon Edwards, “The Lies of Rachel Carson,” 21st Century, Summer 1992.

Edwards, a professor emeritus at San Jose State University in California, drank a spoonful of DDT in front of his entomology classes at the beginning of each school year, to make the point that DDT is not harmful to human beings. Now 83, and still fighting for the truth about DDT, Edwards is an avid mountain climber.
Read The Lies of Rachel Carson by Dr. J. Gordon Edwards
Purchase Special DDT collection: 4 21st Century articles
UNQUOTE

 

 

 

Doomed Planet     
From the Left's War On Science - http://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/doomed-planet/2009/10/left-s-war-on-science

Doomed Planet

“Today’s debate about global warming is essentially a debate about freedom. The environmentalists would like to mastermind each and every possible (and impossible) aspect of our lives.”

Vaclav Klaus
Blue Planet in Green Shackles

Left's War on Science

by J.F. Beck

October 19, 2009

Religious adherents do not take criticisms of their holy scriptures lightly. Thus Leftists swiftly and viciously attacked my Quadrant Online essay exposing flaws in the most holy of holy, Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring. The response is typical of the way dissent is dealt with by true believers who do not tolerate any questioning of their faith. 

There is much truth in Silent Spring but the book is often anything but scientific. Carson, nominally a scientist – marine biology – made her living writing. To stimulate sales she added spice to her story by taking liberties with the truth: 

For the first time in the history of the world, every human being is now subjected to contact with dangerous chemicals, from the moment of conception until death. 

This outlandishly unscientific claim on its own discredits the whole book – the natural environment is awash with dangerous chemicals. 

As I noted, Carson further misled readers in suggesting that DDT was a product of chemical weapons research. Even worse, she describes DDT as a carcinogen of unsurpassed potency, able to cause leukemia in a matter of months. 

Beck is lying! Quadrant is waging a war on science! yelp the Left. Our beloved Rachel did not say that DDT causes leukemia; rather, she was talking about the highly toxic benzene in the carrier solvent in which the DDT was dissolved. This argument conveniently ignores that the book’s index references the horrific tale in question under “Leukemia, DDT and case histories of”. 

My assertion that DDT poses little threat to health is attacked by referencing research showing that “DDT and its breakdown product DDE may be associated with adverse health outcomes”. Carrying that logic further, perhaps we should all start showering out on the lawn under the hose to preclude a possibly fatal fall we may someday suffer in the bathroom – statistically, a good possibility. 

Research studies “proving” DDT causes genital defects in newborns are paraded for the edification of those who already “know” how harmful DDT is. Unfortunately, the cited studies are unscientific, having been conducted with a stringency approximately equal to that applied to high school science experiments. 

The acute toxicity of DDT is “confirmed” by citing the unfortunate death of a child “who ingested one ounce of a 5% DDT:kerosene solution”. The cause of death is not specified, however, perhaps resulting from the ingestion (or aspiration) of the poisonous kerosene. If DDT were proven to be the causative factor this would be the one and only documented DDT fatality. 

From the fringe Left comes the absurd assertion that eminent cancer researcher and developer of the Ames test for identifying possible carcinogens, Bruce Ames, was involved “in secret testing by tobacco companies” presumably aiming to prove tobacco is harmless. This supposed tobacco connection discrediting Ames’ view that the threat posed by synthetic insecticides is overstated. In reality, Ames is not linked in any way to tobacco companies and identifies smoking as a prime cause of cancer. This attempt to discredit a renowned scientist is ludicrous. 

Having restated Ames’ view that “The amount of potentially carcinogenic pesticide residues consumed in a year is less than the amount known of rodent carcinogens in a cup of coffee.” I am bogusly accused of saying “DDT is harmless” and that “a splash of ddt [sic] is safer than a morning coffee”. When unable to refute an argument just make something up – a classic Lefty tactic. 

Two Australian academics – economist John Quiggin, an Australian Research Council Federation fellow at the University of Queensland, and Tim Lambert, a computer specialist at the University of New South Wales – damn DDT and its advocates by tenuously linking them to tobacco. This is akin to the Left-promulgated smear that anyone not fully subscribing to manmade climate change theory is a denialist tool of “big oil”. Here’s how it works, in the fevered, right-wing-conspiracy-believing Lefty brain. The tobacco companies dearly wanted to shift attention away from the dangers of smoking onto some other health issue. It was decided that DDT’s use in the fight against malaria was the perfect distracter. Paid lobbyists were dispatched to blame malaria’s rising death toll on under use of DDT, simultaneously attacking the “science” underpinning Silent Spring. Everyone on the planet would be so occupied arguing about DDT and malaria that the dangers of smoking would be forgotten, and since DDT wasn’t as bad as it was made out to be, maybe the tobacco health threat was also overstated. 

To keep this issue alive the tobacco companies orchestrated a successful fear-based campaign to prevent a total worldwide DDT ban. So really, the only reason we’re having this DDT discussion is through the efforts of the big tobacco companies ­– without their financial support, DDT, a product that should have been banned, would have been banned. 

According to this bizarre conspiracy theory any person or organization supportive of even the highly restricted use of DDT in the fight against malaria is promoting smoking. Now since tobacco companies are obviously evil, as is their product, DDT advocates are evil, as is DDT. 

An elegantly simple but grotesque smear links Silent Spring critics to Lyndon LaRouche and associated organizations. It works like this. LaRouche and his various fronts operate beyond the fringes of reason (you can tick that as correct). A LaRouche front, 21st Century Science & Technology, published an anti-Silent Spring article by entomologist J. Gordon Edwards. Now since LaRouche is nutty, Edwards is also nutty, as are all Silent Spring critics. 

The thing is, Edwards’ 5,300-word dissection of Silent Spring – he wore himself out finding errors, stopping less than half way through the book – is largely valid. That’s why Carson supporters dismiss him as being as nutty as LaRouche: it’s a lot simpler to discredit the messenger than it is to refute his fact-based message. 

Finally, for having published my essay, Quadrant is accused of lacking “intellectual rigor”. This is pretty damn funny considering the source: Crikey’s less than rigorous Pure Poison blog. 

In attacking DDT, Carson’s acolytes are denying science. DDT, unique in its ability to both kill and repel mosquitoes, remains an effective tool in the fight against malaria; properly used, as in Eritrea and South Africa, for example, it saves many lives. 

DDT is not acutely toxic, having killed no one, ever, unlike Bendiocarb, which is no longer used as a surface spray in the U.S. because it is an acute poisoning threat, especially to children – no yelps of concern from the Left about this very real threat to third-world youngsters. 

DDT’s chronic toxicity is low. When used as part of a strictly controlled indoor spraying program it is not known to pose a significant threat to human health. If DDT is eventually shown to be significantly harmful, its benefits will have to be weighed against its risks; if it does more harm than good, stop using it. 

The Left should call a halt to their ongoing war on DDT and thereby on science; the collateral damage – mostly third-world children, pregnant women and the old, claimed by malaria – is unacceptable.
UNQUOTE
Disinformation has value as a way of distracting people from issues that really matter.

 

Errors & omissions, broken links, cock ups, over-emphasis, malice [ real or imaginary ] or whatever; if you find any I am open to comment.

Email me at Mike Emery. All financial contributions are cheerfully accepted. If you want to keep it private, use my PGP key.  Home

Updated  on  Tuesday, 26 March 2024 11:20:24