“3 Billion and Counting” premiered at a tiny New York venue a couple of weeks ago, the latest skirmish in the War on Science. Physician-to-the-stars Dr. Rutledge Taylor claims that malaria could be eradicated if only DDT had not been banned from Africa.
What? No, no, you’re right: DDT has never been banned from Africa, not even under the 2001 Persistent Organic Pollutants Treaty. The film comes out of Hollywood, starring a Hollywood physician. Perhaps that should clue us in that it is not a serious documentary, and not to be taken at face value.
Nor at any value.
Taylor engaged a publicist and conducted a national campaign to launch the movie. In that campaign he someone appeared on Howard Stern’s radio show. [There’s a guy in comments who claims it wasn’t Taylor, though Taylor wrote it in the first person. Odd as hell.]
The problem with DDT is that it worked too well in stomping out malaria. The science proves that it minimally impacted the environment. But this information was suppressed. Wonder why and by whom? This movies addresses and uncovers the answers to these questions..Questions that many of us had about this issue.
I tried, without success I’m sure, to set him straight:
Royce,
First, DDT was not the weapon that eradicated malaria in the U.S. We worked for 30 years to improve medical care, beef up the Public Health Service and county public health officers, educate people on how to drain mosquito breeding areas near their homes, be certain people with malari were fully treated to a cure, and to raise incomes to improve housing so that people could live in a home where mosquitoes could not enter at night (the times malaria-carrying mosquitoes bite). By 1939, malaria was essentially eliminated from the U.S. DDT was not available for use for another seven years.
Earlier we had defeated malaria and yellow fever in Panama, during the construction of the Panama Canal — long before any insecticide existed. Beating malaria is possible with discipline, accurate information, and sustained effort. No pesticide is necessary.
Second, DDT has never been out of use in Africa since 1946, nor in Asia. DDT is in use right now by the World Health Organization (WHO) and at least five nations in Africa who have malaria problems. If someone told you DDT is not being used, they erred.
Unfortunately, overuse of DDT by agricultural interests, in the early 1960s, bred mosquitoes that are resitant and immune to DDT. DDT simply is not the effective pesticide it once was, and for the WHO project to eradicate malaria, this problem was the death knell. WHO had to fall back to a malaria control position, because pro-DDT groups sprayed far too much of the stuff, in far to many places, mostly outside.
Third, all serious studies indicate that DDT greatly affects environment, with doses of the stuff multiplying from application through the top of the trophic levels in the ecosystem. A minimal dose of DDT to kill mosquito larva in an estuary, for example, multiples many times as zooplankton and the mosquito larva soak it up. The next level of consumers get about a ten-times dose from what was sprayed, and that multiplies exponentially as other creatures consume the lower-level consumers. By the time an insect or crustacean-eating bird gets the critter, the dose is millions of times stronger, often to fatal levels for the bird.
If the dose is sub-lethal, it screws up the reproduction of the bird. DDT in the egg kills the chick before it can fledge from the nest, often before it can hatch. If by some miracle the chick does not die from acute DDT poisoning, the eggshells produced by a DDT-tainted female bird are often too thin to survive the growth of the embryo — either way the chicks die. (There are a couple of studies done on plant-eating birds which showed that the chicks did not die before hatching — they died shortly after hatching.)
DDT is astoundingly effective at screwing up the reproduction of birds.
Fourth, studies show that humans exposed to DDT rarely get an acutely toxic dose, but that their children get screwed up reproductive systems, and there is a definite link from DDT exposure to the children of the mother — the cancer goes to the next generation. DDT is not harmless to people at all — it is just not acutely toxic, generally.
Fifth, as I note above, DDT is no longer highly effective in controlling mosquitoes. Where once it killed them dead, they have developed immunity, and now digest the stuff as if it were food. There are studies that show DDT is also weakly repellent, but there are better, less-toxic repellents, and there is no reason to use something so deadly to all other creatures in the ecosystem to get a weak repellent effect.
Because of the biomagnification, DDT kills the predators of mosquitoes much more effectively, and for a much longer period, than it kills mosquitoes. This sets the stage for mosquitoes to come roaring back, with all the natural checks on mosquito population out of commission.
Why use a poison that is not very effective, but very deadly, when there are better alternatives available?
Malaria death rates are the lowest they have been in human history. There is no good case to be made that more DDT could provide any benefit.
DDT is still manufactured in astonishing quantity in North Korea, for one. DDT is used in Africa and Asia, but no one with any sense uses it to eradicate malaria — DDT screwed up that chance 50 years ago.
Rutledge’s movie appears to be sinking from release (it’s played two theaters that I can find, for less than a week at each). It may be far underwater already. It would be to DDT what “Expelled” was to creationism, but it lacks the cloying, gullible religious fanatics to push it.
Thank God.
Mystery photo: If spraying pesticides to fight malaria isn't allowed in Africa as Rutledge Taylor argues, why are these pesticide sprayers pictured in this photo? Publicity still from "3 Billion and Counting" via Rotten Tomatoes website
Steve Schafersman, now president of Texas Citizens for Science, played the yeoman then:
Description of the program:
Did humans coexist with dinosaurs? The tracks tell the tale. Dr. John R. Cole, Dr. Steven Schafersman, Dr. Laurie Godfrey, Dr. Ronnie Hastings, Lee Mansfield, and other scientists examine the claims and the evidence. Air date: 1983.
Good works are oft’ interred with the bones of the good workers, according to that Brutus Mark Antony guy — and at Watts Up With That, many work to bury any good workers, too.
Among these, Affordable Medicines for Malaria (AMFM), is one of the cleverest, and may even work. The idea is that AMFM will buy ACT (artemisinin combination therapy – something else the Wattoids didn’t know about) drugs directly from the manufacturers in huge amounts at deep discount, and pass the drugs on to the distributors, public health agencies, private wholesale pharmacies, and NGOs at so far below cost that even counterfeit drugs cost more. The private wholesalers can take their profit.
One may hope someone will find the magic bullet to fight malaria. There’s the Ghost of Santayana pacing the chalkboard again, however: Our experience shows that magic is not real, no magic bullet has ever existed against malaria, and DDT is not now the magic bullet it never was in the first place. “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” Ghost of Santayana mutters.
A special place in hell is reserved for those who remember the past, but tell false tales about it instead.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
U.S. President’s Malaria Initiative (PMI) Africa Indoor Residual Spraying (AIRS) Project found this warehouse with 119 tons of leftover, surplus and expired DDT in Ethiopia. In total, PMI AIRS Progect found 930 tons of unused DDT in Ethiopia, in 1,600 tons of expired pesticides total. Other nations have other surplus DDT stocks. Africa never suffered a shortage of DDT.
Watch the video, and you can see God trying to stop her from talking, putting that frog in her throat.
I only respond to the first six minutes or so — you get the idea. McIlhinney leaves no falsehood untold, no crazy charge not leveled at Rachel Carson and “environmentalists.”
Here’s the film clip of McIlhinney misleading the masses:
Here is my quick and dirty response:
1. Environmentalists are not calling for a ban on coal, oil or gas. Fear talk. Why would anyone tell such a whopping lie? How do we know the film lies? Who is this “environmentalist” they fear to name?
2. Rachel Carson was right — DDT kills ecosystems. Carson said we needed to restrict the use of DDT in order to keep it viable as a pesticide. But few listened (not McIlhinney, that’s for sure). Consequently, DDT became ineffective against mosquitoes that carry malaria, scuttling the World Health Organization’s ambitious campaign to eradicate malaria. Had that not happened, and had we eradicated malaria by 1975 as planned, millions of lives could have been saved. McIlhinney is the one with blood on her hands.
3. DDT has never been banned worldwide, was never banned in Africa, and is still used in those places it still works, under a special treaty signed in 2001. McIlhinney hopes you won’t know about that treaty, and fails to mention it herself. What’s she trying to hide?
4. Carson did not say DDT was the sole culprit for the decline of birds — but by 1962, it was the sole culprit preventing their recovery. Bald eagles and brown pelicans have come off the endangered species list, populations recovering in almost lock-step with the decline of DDT in the birds’ flesh — proof that Carson was right.
5. Under U.S. law, no agency could ban a useful pesticide without mountains of evidence that the pesticide was dangerous. Four separate court proceedings looked at DDT, two before the EPA acted, and two appeals after EPA banned DDT use on crops. All four courts found DDT to be dangerous and uncontrollable in the wild. The two appeals of EPA’s labeling change were both decided on summary judgment — the science was so powerfully on Carson’s side. In May 1963 the President’s Science Advisory Council reported on their fact checking of Carson’s book — they said Carson was dead right in everything but one: Carson was too easy on DDT. That panel, with its significant population of Nobel winners, called for quick action against DDT. Why doesn’t McIlhinney give the facts here?
6. The claim that EPA’s ban influenced WHO is pure bullfeathers. WHO had to end its malaria eradication campaign, using DDT, in 1965 — the mosquitoes were immune to the stuff. EPA didn’t act until seven years later, and EPA’s jurisdiction extends only to the borders of the U.S. In fact, EPA’s “ban” left DDT to be manufactured in the U.S. for export to Africa. Can’t McIlhinney read a calendar? The “ban” in 1972 did not travel back through time to stop WHO from using DDT. (For that matter, WHO never completely stopped DDT — wherever it could work, they used it, and still do.)
7. DDT has always been available for any government in Africa to use. What that guy in the film is really saying is racist: He’s claiming Africans were too stupid to use DDT, though it was cheap and available, and though it would save their lives. Don’t listen to him. Africans are not stupid: They’d use DDT were it effective and safe. Shame on McIlhinney for entertaining such a claim.
8. Malaria did not skyrocket after DDT was banned in the U.S. Mosquitoes don’t migrate that far. There was an uptick in malaria 20 years later, when the pharmaceuticals that cure malaria in humans, ceased to be effective.
But today, malaria rates are the lowest they’ve been in recorded history, and malaria death rates are the lowest they’ve been in human history. When the U.S. banned DDT spraying on cotton in 1972, about 2 million people a year died from malaria. Today, the death toll is under 900,000. Don’t be frightened or stampeded by erroneous, large figures.
In the end, we can’t poison Africa to health, and if we could, it would be immoral to do that instead of building health care to fight diseases.
Children die because hard-hearted politicos like Ann McIlhinney frustrate the work of malaria fighters, and mislead policy makers away from solutions that would save children’s lives.
Shame on her.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Vivian Paige pulled together early reports and the actual court documents: A judge in Virginia quashed the subpeona issued by Virginia’s Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli to the University of Virginia, in a rather blatant attempt to silence a famous scientist working on global warming, Michael Mann.
Judge Paul M. Peatross Jr. ruled that Cuccinelli can investigate whether fraud has occurred in university grants, as the attorney general had contended, but ruled that Cuccinelli’s subpoena failed to state a “reason to believe” that Mann had committed fraud.
The ruling is a major blow for Cuccinelli, a global warming skeptic who had maintained that he was investigating whether Mann committed fraud in seeking government money for research that showed that the earth has experienced a rapid, recent warming. Mann, now at Penn State University, worked at U-Va. until 2005.
According to Peatross, the Virginia Fraud Against Taxpayers Act, under which the civil investigative demand was issued, requires that the attorney general include an “objective basis” to believe that fraud has been committed. Peatross indicates that the attorney general must state the reason so that it can be reviewed by a court, which Cuccinelli failed to do.
Peatross set the subpoena aside without prejudice, meaning Cuccinelli could give the subpoena another try by rewriting the civil demand to better explain the conduct he wishes to investigate. But the judge seemed skeptical of Cuccinelli’s underlying claim about Mann, noting that Cuccinelli’s deputy maintained in a court hearing that the nature of Mann’s fraud was described in subsequent court papers in the case.
“The Court has read with care those pages and understands the controversy regarding Dr. Mann’s work on the issue of global warming. However, it is not clear what he did was misleading, false or fraudulent in obtaining funds from the Commonwealth of Virginia,” Peatross wrote.
Also, as suggested earlier here, the judge noted that Cuccinelli’s authority did not extend to four of the five grants questioned, because they were federal grants, not state grants. (See here, too.)
Comments at Helderman’s article show the fault lines of division on global warming — purely political faultlines.
Since opponents of action against warming so frantically publicized stolen e-mails from researchers late last year, in official proceedings scientists have smacked down skeptics on almostevery issue.
One almost expects to find it has sister sites: Minnesotans Love Cancer, Minnesotans for Child Abuse, and Self-Lobotomies R Us.
Maybe it’s not the concept of climate that confuses these people, but the entire notion of “average global temperature.” People who spend their entire lives below average, probably expect that’s the way it is in temperatures, too. (Is that nasty enough for today? I’m feeling crabby about idiocy.)
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Goddard discovered that, if one ignores warming of small amounts, and counts it as not warming at all, the colors on a color-coded map change a lot, and look a lot cooler.
Shorter Goddard: Hide the increase in temperatures, and it looks like temperatures don’t increase nearly as much.
Steve Goddard's map of a warming Pacific Ocean, hiding the small increases in temperature. (This should be a .gif that changes as you watch; if you see no animation, click on the image)
Steve Goddard's map of a warming Pacific Ocean, hiding the small increases in temperature. (Another version, trying to get the .gif to display.) This should be a .gif that changes as you watch; if you see no animation, click on the image
You couldn’t make up such denialism if you tried. If you submitted this stuff as fiction, it couldn’t get published.
Here’s an object warning about turning angry monkeys loose with graphics software: Goddard’s YouTube:
Key unanswered question: If we ignore rising temperatures, do they stop rising? If we ignore rising temperatures, can glaciers, oceans, plants and animals be convinced to do the same?
How many polar bears read Steve Goddard’s posts at WUWT? Can they be persuaded?
At a blog called Frugal Café Blog Zone, “Where it’s chic to be cheap… Conservative social & political commentary, with frugality mixed in,” blogger Vicki McClure Davidson headlined the piece:
Cold in winter. They don’t expect it. These warming denialists provide the evidence those crabs need, who wonder whether there shouldn’t be some sort of “common sense test” required to pass before allowing people to vote, or drive, or have children.
Oh, it gets worse:
Another site picked up the post. No, seriously. (Has Anthony Watts seen this yet?)
Voting Female [I am convinced that is a sock puppet site designed to insult women; no woman could be that stupid, could she?]
Earth at northern solstice - Wikimedia image
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Appearing to be aware they are losing the battle of the classroom to real science, creationists have taken a sneakier way to undermine science education. P. Z. Myers explains:
A lot of people have been writing to me about this free webgame, CellCraft. In it, you control a cell and build up all these complex organelles in order to gather resources and fight off viruses; it’s cute, it does throw in a lot of useful jargon, but the few minutes I spent trying it were also a bit odd — there was something off about it all.
Where do you get these organelles? A species of intelligent platypus just poofs them into existence for you when you need them. What is the goal? The cells have a lot of room in their genomes, so the platypuses are going to put platypus DNA in there, so they can launch them off to planet E4R1H to colonize it with more platypuses. Uh-oh. These are Intelligent Design creationist superstitions: that organelles didn’t evolve, but were created for a purpose; that ancient cells were ‘front-loaded’ with the information to produced more complex species; and that there must be a purpose to all that excess DNA other than that it is junk.
Suspicions confirmed. Look in the credits.
Also thanks to Dr. Jed Macosko at Wake Forest University and Dr. David Dewitt at Liberty University for providing lots of support and biological guidance.
Those two are notorious creationists and advocates for intelligent design creationism. Yep. It’s a creationist game. It was intelligently designed, and it’s not bad as a game, but as a tool for teaching anyone about biology, it sucks. It is not an educational game, it is a miseducational game. I hope no one is planning on using it in their classroom. (Dang. Too late. I see in their forums that some teachers are enthusiastic about it — they shouldn’t be).
No such thing as a free lunch. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Free software for use in educating kids about biology, sounds too good to be true.
_____________
In comments, Lars Doucet disavows creationist intent. So the creationist/intelligent design factors were added just to make the game more playable, and not as an attempt to introduce or endorse creationism or intelligent design.
“Darwinism” is doomed, Perry Marshall says. The entire theory will crumble in 2013 (like the Berlin Wall — may as well start with an offensive comparison to totalitarianism since everyone knows it will get there eventually), if you just suffer through his lessons, send him some money, suspend all logic and reason, send him some money, forget everything you learned in science, and send him a ltittle money.
Plus, he’s figured out how to reconcile Christianity and science. (Call the Templeton Prize committee.) (No, call James Randi and the FBI fraud squad instead.) You can take his course at Coffeehouse Theology (no Mormons need apply, but hey, they teach evolution at their colleges, so they can’t be real saints, can they?).
According to Perry Marshall, "Perry Marshall's books on Google AdWords are the most popular in the world." No hyperbole, no ego here.
Yes, Spunky, that’s your Hemingway solid-gold S–t Detector™ clanging in your holster, if you’re using the handy, lithium-battery-powered version. If the rest of the story didn’t set your device off, the lack of an immediate plea for money should have.
Do you remember when people had to do a lot of dope to get these kinds of hallucinations? People like Marshall do damage to Carlos Casteneda and famous hoakum.
One of the more interesting ways claims like those of Rich Kozlovich can continue to circulate, they are not based on any scientific studies. Had Kozlovich made such claims in a scientific journal, they would have to be retracted. The claims in favor of DDT made at that site are pure hoax, junk science, bogus science, voodoo science (pick your favorite term).
Kids aren’t dying for a lack of pesticides — DDT is still available and cheap in India, China and across Africa. Malaria is a disease, and it can’t be cured in humans by poisoning the environment. Malaria’s spread can’t be stopped until we cure in humans so mosquitoes have no pool of disease to draw from, to spread to the next victim.
More:
If Kozlovich were right, he wouldn’t need to censor my posts as he usually does (is my comment visible there yet?). [Update 01-07-2011: Kozlovich finally allowed one more comment — but then repeated the out and out lie that DDT does not cause eggshell thinning. Keep this guy away from the Tenderfoot Scouts; he’s no example.]
This is Sith-strength denialism on Hinderaker’s part, don’t you think? It never was about the science at Powerline, but instead has always been about the politics.
How does the moniker “Baghdad Bob John” fit?
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Reynolds wants DDT back because dengue fever showed up at Key West. News for Reynolds: We see it in Texas all the time, but usually among poorer people with Hispanic heritage who live along the Rio Grande. (Funny how these conservative nutballs all worry about people, so long as they’re white, and rich enough to travel to tropical vacation spots; where’s Reynolds to worry about the people who supply his fruits and vegetables?)
One solution: Improve health care to cure humans with dengue, and then mosquitoes that spread it have no pool of infection to draw from — mosquito bites become just mosquito bites.
Other preventives: Drain mosquito breeding areas (tires, flower pots, potholes, etc.) within 50 yards of human habitation. Mosquitoes don’t fly far, and if they can’t breed where people are, they won’t travel to find human victims.
Stupid, destructive solutions: Spray DDT. DDT kills insects, bats and birds that prey on mosquitoes much more effectively than it kills mosquitoes, and mosquitoes evolve resistance faster, and rebreed faster. DDT is especially deadly against brown pelicans — maybe Reynolds figures we don’t need to worry about them any more, since they’re under assault from the oil slick that threatens to kill the estuaries of Louisiana. Were he concerned about the birds, surely he’d have realized his error, right?
So, why did Glenn Reynolds get stupid about DDT? Why is he promoting DDT, instead of promoting ways to fight dengue?
____________
But, then, Glenn Reynolds has been a fool for poisoning (anyone but himself) for a long time:
Why would people fail to inoculate their kids against measles, and thereby contribute to deadly epidemics?
There was this guy in Britain, Andrew Wakefield, who published a study suggesting a link between measles vaccines and autism. But it turned out his research didn’t support that claim. Then it turned out he was under contract to produce a paper that made that claim regardless the science, for a lawsuit.
A page from Darryl Cunningham's graphic account of measles vaccine hysteria, "The Facts in the Case of Dr. Andrew Wakefield." TallGuyWrites (Darryl Cunningham)
Another page from Darryl Cunningham's graphic story, "The Facts in the Case of Dr. Andrew Wakefield" about the motivations behind the hysteria.
Then send a copy to Jenny McCarthy, or anyone else who carries the torch of ignorance-based hysteria against vaccines and in favor of disease.
Dr. Wakefield’s original paper was retracted by the publisher — it’s no longer considered valid science. It’s a hoax. No subsequent research confirmed any links to autism. Serious, large-scale follow-up studies revealed no connection whatsoever between measles vaccine and autism.
Andrew Wakefield created a hoax. Those who rely on his study rely on bogus science, voodoo science. History tells us that, if we stop the fight against measles, people will die.
Would you contribute to publishing this comic for distribution in pediatrician’s waiting rooms?
Or, until that account is unsuspended by the forces supporting Donald Trump: Follow @FillmoreWhite, the account of the Millard Fillmore White House Library
We've been soaking in the Bathtub for several months, long enough that some of the links we've used have gone to the Great Internet in the Sky.
If you find a dead link, please leave a comment to that post, and tell us what link has expired.
Thanks!
Retired teacher of law, economics, history, AP government, psychology and science. Former speechwriter, press guy and legislative aide in U.S. Senate. Former Department of Education. Former airline real estate, telecom towers, Big 6 (that old!) consultant. Lab and field research in air pollution control.
My blog, Millard Fillmore's Bathtub, is a continuing experiment to test how to use blogs to improve and speed up learning processes for students, perhaps by making some of the courses actually interesting. It is a blog for teachers, to see if we can use blogs. It is for people interested in social studies and social studies education, to see if we can learn to get it right. It's a blog for science fans, to promote good science and good science policy. It's a blog for people interested in good government and how to achieve it.
BS in Mass Communication, University of Utah
Graduate study in Rhetoric and Speech Communication, University of Arizona
JD from the National Law Center, George Washington University
Posted by Ed Darrell 
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 