One of the clues that someone is financing a public relations campaign for DDT and against care for the environment is the way “news” keeps popping out about the benefits of DDT, though there is no natural process for making such news in back of the stories.
We old PR flacks recognize that without the push from an agent, these stories wouldn’t get written.
Just over a month ago there was a flurry of stories about how DDT was “effective” even after mosquitoes developed immunity to it, because it repels mosquitoes, too — even though that wasn’t what the researchers concluded, and that wasn’t the major thrust of the research article.
We also saw a Hoover Institute fellow call for DDT to be used to fight the spread of West Nile virus, though no public health official called for such action, though there is no particular need for such a drastic change in policy, and despite the fact that DDT spraying for the mosquitoes that carry West Nile is one of the least effective means of killing them (DDT is not a larvacide, and larvacides are called for to combat West Nile).
This month? No real news, but the American Enterprise Institute, which nominally is pitched at promoting business interests, issued a new report recycling all the old canards, calling for increased use of DDT in Africa to fight malaria, despite already expanded use, and despite a lack of call from health officials to spray more DDT.
Here’s how it looks on the internet:
November 5, 2007 – Wall Street Journal opinion piece by AEI’s Roger Bate, over the years one of the most ardent salesmen of DDT as the solution to nearly every problem, so long as it bashed environmentalists. WSJ notes the piece is a shorter version of the AEI report.
November 1, 2007 – TCS piece by AEI’s Roger Bate, complaining generally about environmentalists.
Random DDT stuff, some of which may turn into separate posts:
- Defeating Global Poverty
- Rambodoc
- Burrnnnnning Hot
- Dengue and malaria up in Philippines province
- International fund pays to fight malaria in Philippines, where 60% reduction was achieved in 1990s (without DDT)
- Thoughts about K4D
- Koenig’s interesting news articles
- And this thing, which shows not everything is a public relations plot: “Fear of pheromones,” at Science and Reason
- Roger Bates recycles canards for American Enterprise Institute (how far you have fallen, AEI — that alone may be worth a post)
- Center for Global Development, on the re-emergence of a drive to eradicate malaria
- British Medical Journal editorial on bednets — actually from February, but of course I wasn’t alerted to the anti-Rachel Carson crazies until about May
- TCS Daily eschews information and science for the crazies position
- AllAfrica.com on one more repetition that Uganda now uses DDT
- Abstract of an ancient article from Science; just a touchstone in the world of sanity
Posted by Ed Darrell 
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 
Sticking by the error
November 17, 2007Neil Boortz has a bottomless well of venom. Boortz appears to be the chief source of the mean-spirited, cut-from-whole-cloth fables about Hillary Clinton being next to Marx.
Checking to see whether he had run a correction of those errors* (he did not), I found this little spittle of acid in that same post from October 8: Boortz wonders about former National Security Advisor Sandy Berger advising Hillary Clinton’s campaign, citing Berger’s admission that he took documents out of the National Archives as a basis for some conspiracy about a cover-up of Bill Clinton’s actions prior to September 11, 2001.
Berger pled to misdemeanor charges. He had the right to view the documents, especially since many of the documents he was reviewing were his own. NARA staff said he took copies of documents only. He was working to prepare a report to the 9-11 Commission at the time.
Neil, here are the facts: Berger was right about Osama bin Laden, years before you ever thought about it. Berger was the guy who was left standing at the White House door, ready to brief President George W. Bush on the need to continue chasing Osama bin Laden and the threat al Quaeda posed to America when Condoleeza Rice informed him that the Bush administration would not continue the chase. Berger was the guy who first got the news that Bush was letting al Quaeda off the hook.
There is great value in getting advice from people who seem to have an ability to see the future, or at least get the present right. Boortz can’t even bring himself to admit error for a silly quiz. We shouldn’t expect him to admit the larger error: Sandy Berger was right about Osama bin Laden and al Quaeda, and it was a nasty, damaging error for the Bush group to brush him off and ignore his warnings. Now we are involved in a great, perhaps misguided war that could have been avoided had Bush listened to Sandy Berger in January 2001.
It must be painful for Boortz to even imagine such things.
It’s a great idea for Berger to advise Clinton, or anyone else, because George W. Bush didn’t allow it, would not listen. Nearly 10,000 Americans are dead, 100,000 to more than a million Iraqis and Afghanis are dead, the U.S. has a multi-trillion-dollar debt, and the entire planet is a lot less safe because of Bush’s error. Let’s not compound the error.
(Boortz’s radio show is carried on a backwater AM station here in Dallas — oddly on KSL’s old clear channel frequency. I’ve never heard it. Is he this reckless with facts on all things? If the FCC were alive today, such inaccuracies might endanger a license, back when broadcasters had to broadcast in the public interest. Nostalgia is appropriate here. Too bad such broadcasters are not required to be licensed like history teachers; worse that Boortz doesn’t work for accuracy himself.)
* No, I don’t really believe Boortz simply erred; but it’s polite to pretend so, so that he may more gracefully make corrections.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.