Explanation from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation:
See the Gates Foundation site, “Can we really eradicate malaria?”
How many times do they call for a return to DDT?
What do you think?
Eradicate malaria – here’s how
May 24, 2009
3 Comments | 
Africa, Asia, Disease, Health care, Malaria, Politics, Public health | Tagged: Africa, Gates Foundation, Health care, Malaria, Politics, Public health | 
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Posted by Ed Darrell
War on malaria: Wall Street Journal and bloggers side with malaria
May 24, 2009It’s spring. Each of the past four years, spring has been the time that the anti-Rachel Carson, anti-environmental protection, anti-environmentalist, pro-DDT groups throttle up their campaigns to impugn Carson and environmentalists, and argue that all we need to do is poison Africa to make the world safe from malaria.
Here’s where Col. Renault joins us from Casablanca to say “Round up the usual suspects.” It’s spring 2009. Henry I. Miller of the Hoover Institution could be along any moment to say we need DDT to fight West Nile Virus, though DDT is not the pesticide of choice even among pesticide professionals.
The Wall Street Journal has become a favorite venue for these poison-the-Earthers as it has left rational policy decisions behind, at least in the editorial and op-ed pages. Steven Milloy’s got a book out slandering environmentalists, Green Hell, and a new blog to promote the book. No doubt someone will trot out Gordon Edwards’ Lyndon-Larouche-tainted claims against Rachel Carson, though none of them check out.
Sure enough, Green Hell blog picks it up repeating the old canard about how a day without DDT is like a day of genocide. You can’t teach a stupid dog new tricks, you know. In a post title that drips with calumny, Milloy says “Greens re-boot African genocide.” They have no case; smears must do the work.
Let’s dissect the WSJ piece, eh?
In 2006, after 25 years and 50 million preventable deaths, the World Health Organization reversed course and endorsed widespread use of the insecticide DDT to combat malaria. So much for that. Earlier this month, the U.N. agency quietly reverted to promoting less effective methods for attacking the disease. The result is a victory for politics over public health, and millions of the world’s poor will suffer as a result.
So much error in so little space! The error-to-word ratio may be a new land speed record.
Were there 2 million deaths per year from malaria, we could say malaria killed 50 million people in the last 25 years. But for many, or most of the past 35 years, the death rate has hovered around 1 million, sometimes lower. That’s still too high for those of us who think malaria should be beaten, but it’s not 2 million a year. WSJ exaggerates the death figures — what else do they exaggerate? If they have a case, why do they need to exaggerate?
WHO never abandoned DDT for specific uses. There was no policy for WHO to reverse in 2006. WHO made it clear that they would continue to use DDT where appropriate, and where local governments would allow. WSJ, new to the business of caring about Africans afflicted by malaria, doesn’t know the history.
DDT’s effectiveness against malaria-carrying mosquitoes began to wane by 1950. By the mid-1960s, many populations of mosquitoes had developed resistance and even immunity to DDT. That was why the World Health Organization (WHO) abandoned its campaign to eradicate malaria. Overuse of DDT, especially in agriculture, led to rapid evolution of resistance among mosquitoes. Without a weapon that worked as DDT had worked before resistance, the campaign could not succeed.
The Journal is simply wrong when it says only less-effective methods are left. DDT’s greatly reduced effectiveness is part of the reason; but research over the past five years, in tests run broadly in several African nations, shows that bednets reduce malaria infections by between 50% and 85%. That is much more effective than DDT in broadcast spraying.
One of the things WSJ fails to mention — maybe they don’t know, there is much demonstration of ignorance in the editorial — is that DDT is not used in broadcast spraying to fight malaria. Such campaigns proved disastrous because they killed off the predators of mosquitoes more effectively than they killed the mosquitoes, and because they often produced harmful results in other ways. Along some African rivers, the spraying campaigns killed off a lot of fish local people used for food. The dangers of DDT have been demonstrated in Africa.
WHO had championed a campaign in the late 1950s and 1960s to eradicate malaria. The strategy was to use DDT to knock down local mosquito populations for six months or a year, and in that time treat humans infected with the malaria parasites so that, when the mosquitoes came back, there would be no pool of malaria infection among humans from which to draw malaria to spread.
Alas, the overuse of DDT caused mosquitoes to develop resistance before the malaria-fighters could get into the field in some places and get the health care components of the campaign to work.
Because of the worldwide resistance to DDT among insects, DDT cannot be counted on as a panacea against malaria in any case. While it was never the panacea, never the sole tool to beat the disease, its role has been dramatically reduced by the rise of resistance to the chemical.
The U.N. now plans to advocate for drastic reductions in the use of DDT, which kills or repels the mosquitoes that spread malaria. The aim “is to achieve a 30% cut in the application of DDT worldwide by 2014 and its total phase-out by the early 2020s, if not sooner,” said WHO and the U.N. Environment Program in a statement on May 6.
Citing a five-year pilot program that reduced malaria cases in Mexico and South America by distributing antimalaria chloroquine pills to uninfected people, U.N. officials are ready to push for a “zero DDT world.” Sounds nice, except for the facts. It’s true that chloroquine has proven effective when used therapeutically, as in Brazil. But it’s also true that scientists have questioned the safety of the drug as an oral prophylactic because it is toxic and has been shown to cause heart problems.
Where was the Wall Street Journal when these studies were proposed, when they were run, and when they were reported? WHO and health care agencies in affected countries carefully worked to find non-DDT solutions to malaria. All programs to fight malaria require good health care systems, to diagnose malaria in victims, accurately as to the form of parasite affecting the victim, and to treat the disease to restore health to the victim and remove that person from the pool of people from whom mosquitoes can draw new malaria to infect others. The results are in. The treatment works. Now comes WSJ to pose questions that have already been answered? They are too late, and wrong.
Most malarial deaths occur in sub-Saharan Africa, where chloroquine once worked but started failing in the 1970s as the parasite developed resistance.
Fascinating. In discussions with the pro-DDTers, resistance of mosquitoes to DDT is generally denied. But here the WSJ cites similar resistance by the parasite. Remember, dear reader, that the DDTers are selective in their use of evidence.
Even if the drugs were still effective in Africa, they’re expensive and thus impractical for one of the world’s poorest regions. That’s not an argument against chloroquine, bed nets or other interventions. But it is an argument for continuing to make DDT spraying a key part of any effort to eradicate malaria, which kills about a million people — mainly children — every year. Nearly all of this spraying is done indoors, by the way, to block mosquito nesting at night. It is not sprayed willy-nilly in jungle habitat.
DDT is more expensive than bednets. DDT is used now only for indoor residual spraying (IRS). Hut walls are treated with DDT to kill or repel mosquitoes after they have already bitten a victim; this prevents the spread of some parasites, at least in the bodies of the mosquitoes killed. IRS requires some expensive work, however. First, analysis of the mosquitoes must be done to be sure DDT is effective; annd second, a professional or highly-trained person must apply the stuff. DDT applications have to be repeated about every six months. They cost about $12.00 each time. IRS may decrease malaria infection by as much as 35% (I’m being liberal).
In contrast, bednets decrease malaria infection by 50% to 85%. They cost about $10.00 for the expensive ones, and they last five years. In tests and in practice in Africa over the past five years, bednets have proven to be a necessary and very effective method to fight malaria. Bednets work without DDT (there are alternative chemicals available for IRS); DDT can’t work without bednets.
There is strong opposition to use of DDT even for IRS, in Uganda, for example, where cotton and tobacco farmers have sued to stop the use. In other areas, local people still fear fish kills. DDT is controversial because of local opposition to it, not because of any environmental group’s action.
And the net result is that DDT is not the cheapest nor most effective method to fight malaria. It is an increasingly expensive, controversial, and decreasingly effective tool.
But here is the bottom line: Unless malaria is wiped out in human hosts, there will always be mosquitoes ready to spread the disease from one infected human to a dozen uninfected humans. The key to eliminating malaria is not killing every mosquito on Earth, as quixotic a goal as that may be; the key is to develop methods of curing humans quickly and well and interrupting the life cycle of the parasite. Drugs are expensive? DDT cannot substitute for drugs, regardless how cheap it is.
WHO is not saying that DDT shouldn’t be used. But by revoking its stamp of approval, it sends a clear message to donors and afflicted countries that it prefers more politically correct interventions, even if they don’t work as well. In recent years, countries like Uganda, Tanzania and Zambia have started or expanded DDT spraying, often with the help of outside aid groups. But these governments are also eager to remain in the U.N.’s good graces, and donors typically are less interested in funding interventions that WHO discourages.
These campaigns have provided little success against malaria — nothing on the scale of success of bednets.
Oddly, one of the greatest roadblocks to the use of DDT in Africa since 2000 was the Bush administration, which refused to allow any U.S. dollars for the purchase of DDT or treatment. There are foggy signs the Bush policies eased in 2008. But again, it may simply be that the opportunity to use DDT is gone. It’s time to move on to fight malaria, and quit tilting at the DDT windmill.
“Sadly, WHO’s about-face has nothing to do with science or health and everything to do with bending to the will of well-placed environmentalists,” says Roger Bate of Africa Fighting Malaria. “Bed net manufacturers and sellers of less-effective insecticides also don’t benefit when DDT is employed and therefore oppose it, often behind the scenes.”
Roger Bate acts as a shill for malaria over recent years. Despite the name of his organization, he stands opposed to any effective means of fighting malaria, and he always stands for poisoning Africa. His claims here are directly contradicted by the results of campaigns run by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, a group which has dedicated its time and an astounding amount of money to beating malaria. Bill Gates has no axe to grind on the issue — the foundation encourages bednets and medical care, and is relatively silent about DDT. The Foundation’s work has saved more lives in the past three years than Roger Bate has in more than a decade of promoting DDT. The Gates Foundation clearly is more credible.
All other serious experts tend to agree with the Gates Foundation path as well.
It’s no coincidence that WHO officials were joined by the head of the U.N. Environment Program to announce the new policy. There’s no evidence that spraying DDT in the amounts necessary to kill dangerous mosquitoes imperils crops, animals or human health. But that didn’t stop green groups like the Pesticide Action Network from urging the public to celebrate World Malaria Day last month by telling “the U.S. to protect children and families from malaria without spraying pesticides like DDT inside people’s homes.”
Pesticide Action Network is probably the only so-called green organization as crazy against DDT as Roger Bate is crazy for DDT. Ignore what they say. Pay attention to what’s really going on. (See comments on PAN.) DDT is dangerous — PAN, for any inaccuracies they may have, are more accurate than the pro-p0ison side.
The National Academy of Sciences did a serious study of DDT in the late 1970s, and in a publication on the future of such chemicals in 1980, NAS said that while DDT was at one time a near-miracle working chemical, it is more dangerous than its benefits justify, and it needs to be eliminated from use. The entire world has been working to protect people from dangerous man-made chemicals. The Persistent Organic Pesticides Treaty of 2001 (POPs) calls for an end to use of dangerous chemicals, and singles out a dozen of the most dangerous. DDT is among the dozen most dangerous. POPs includes a waiver to allow DDT use for fighting disease, so even it does not ban the stuff. History shows that DDT decreases in effectiveness, and we discover new dangers from the stuff almost every year. Since we have effective alternatives, and since DDT use has been hamstrung by litigation in Africa and ineffectiveness in the field, now is a great opportunity to end DDT use with very little harmful effect.
“We must take a position based on the science and the data,” said WHO’s malaria chief, Arata Kochi, in 2006. “One of the best tools we have against malaria is indoor residual spraying. Of the dozen or so insecticides WHO has approved as safe for house spraying, the most effective is DDT.” Mr. Kochi was right then, even if other WHO officials are now bowing to pressure to pretend otherwise.
Kochi was right to call for IRS then — and since we now have effective alternatives to DDT to use in IRS, WHO is right again to call for a reduction in DDT use in 2009. We must take a position based on the science and the data, after all.
DDT is less effective than alternatives, and more expensive. DDT is a killer once released in the wild. DDT is unnecessarily controversial where it might do the most good, and therefore even less effective than it might be. How can the Wall Street Journal come to any different conclusion, if they’re looking at the economics and science? Who would have suspected political string-pulling at WSJ?
Rachel Carson was right. 47 years after Silent Spring is not too soon to eliminate DDT use.
___________
Here’s one indicator of the silly and bizarre exaggerations pro-DDT people tend to use: This guy claims DDT had eliminated polio. In an otherwise over-the-top claim that Rachel Carson is a mass murderer — a claim that is false in all respects — the author goes even farther, claiming DDT effectiveness as a pharmaceutical against a disease like polio where there is no record for DDT’s ever having been used.
____________
Even more flight from reality: Climate Change Fraud blog, a site that appears to be a haven for anti-science, reprinted the WSJ editorial and added a bogus history introduction. And another addition to the Wall of Shame: Black and Right.
7 Comments | Africa, Biology, Cost of Green, DDT, Disease, Green Politics, Health care, History, Malaria, Politics, Science | Tagged: Africa, Cost of Green, DDT, Disease, Green Politics, Health care, Malaria, Pesticides, Politics, Rachel Carson, Science, Silent Spring | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Alma conference on DDT and human health calls for DDT phase out (Pine River statement)
May 5, 2009Wheels of science grind carefully, accurately, and consequently, slowly.
The report from last year’s Alma College conference on DDT and human health has been published in .pdf form at Environmental Health Perspectives: “The Pine River Statement: Human Health Consequences of DDT Use.”
Carefully? Check out the pages of references to contemporary studies of human health effects. Each one of the studies cited is denied by the more wild advocates of DDT use, and each of those studies refutes major parts of the case against DDT restrictions.
Warning sign near the old Velsicol plant where DDT was produced, on the Pine River, Michigan. The 1972 ban on DDT use in the U.S. was prompted by damage to wildlife and domestic animals; a 2009 conference noted that human health effects of DDT are also still of great concern, and perhaps cause alone for continuing the ban on DDT.
Warning sign near the old Velsicol plant where DDT was produced, on the Pine River, Michigan. The 1972 ban on DDT use in the U.S. was prompted by damage to wildlife and domestic animals; a 2009 conference noted that human health effects of DDT are also still of great concern, and perhaps cause alone for continuing the ban on DDT.
Accurately? Notice how the conference marks those areas where we do not have good research, such as in the long-term health effects to people who live in the houses that are sprayed with DDT for indoor residual spraying (IRS). While the conference report cites studies showing elevated DDT levels in the milk of women who live in those homes, they draw no unwarranted conclusions. Alas, that leaves the field free for Paul Driessen to rush in and claim there are no ill effects — but read the paper for yourself, and you’ll see that’s far from what the research shows. The paper exposes Steven Milloy’s claims to be almost pure, unadulterated junk science.
Slowly? Well, it’s been more than a year.
The paper makes one powerful statement that is only implicit: The claims that DDT is safe, and that use of the stuff should be increased, are wildly inflated.
The paper’s abstract:
Objectives: Dichlorodiphenyl trichloroethane (DDT) was used worldwide until the 1970s, when concerns about its toxic effects, its environmental persistence, and its concentration in the food supply led to usage restrictions and prohibitions. In 2001, more than 100 countries signed the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs), committing to eliminate the use of 12 POPs of greatest concern. DDT use was however allowed for disease vector control. In 2006, the World Health Organization and the U.S. Agency for International Development endorsed indoor DDT spraying to control malaria. To better inform current policy, we reviewed epidemiologic studies published in the last five years which investigated the human health consequences of DDT and/or DDE exposure.
Data Sources and Extraction: We conducted a PubMed search in October 2008 and retrieved 494 studies.
Data Synthesis: Use restrictions have been successful in lowering human exposure to DDT, however, blood concentration of DDT and DDE are high in countries where DDT is currently being used or was more recently restricted. The recent literature shows a growing body of evidence that exposure to DDT and its breakdown product DDE may be associated with adverse health outcomes such as breast cancer, diabetes, decreased semen quality, spontaneous abortion, and impaired neurodevelopment in children.
Conclusions: Although we provide evidence to suggest that DDT and DDE may pose a risk to human health, we also highlight the lack of knowledge about human exposure and health effects in communities where DDT is currently being sprayed for malaria control. We recommend research to address this gap and to develop safe and effective alternatives to DDT.
Rachel Carson was right.
Tell other people about this conference report. This is real science, and it deserves to be spread far and wide.
Tip of the old scrub brush to Ed Lorenz at Alma College, both for providing the news, and for his work to organize the original conference.
Other information:
6 Comments | DDT, Disease, Environmental justice, Environmental protection, Health care, Hoaxes, Junk science, Malaria, Rachel Carson, Research, Science | Tagged: Africa, Alma Conference, DDT, environment, Health care, Health Effects, Junk science, Malaria, Pine River Statement, Rachel Carson, Research, Science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Applying evolution theory to defeat malaria
May 3, 2009If the theory works, why not use it, eh?
One of the most serious problems with the use of DDT is that it tends to drive insects to evolve defenses to pesticides very quickly. Almost every mosquito on Earth today has alleles that allow it to digest DDT, rather than be poisoned by it. These alleles arose shortly after DDT was put into use against mosquitoes, and by the mid-1960s had made fruitless the malaria eradication campaign worked by the World Health Organization.
Evolution can be used to the benefit of humans and the eradication of malaria, too.
Voice of America (remember that agency?) tells the story of Andrew Read, a researcher at Penn State University, who realized that the deadliest mosquitoes are old ones — malaria has to survive for about two weeks in the mosquito in its life cycle in order to be infectious to humans. If the mosquito dies before that time, the malaria can’t be transmitted.
Read’s proposal? He has a fungus that takes a couple of weeks to work, but which kills the mosquito once it gets going.
In other words, Read doesn’t worry about getting all the mosquitoes. His method, if it works, will kill only the mosquitoes most likely to carry malaria.
Plus, since most of the breeding cycle of these mosquitoes will be completed, it won’t drive the mosquitoes to evolve around the problem.
“The good thing about just killing the old ones is that most mosquiotoes will have done most of their reproduction before you kill them, and that means the susceptible mosquitoes will indeed continue to breed, so you still have susceptible mosquitoes, and your insecticides then just work against the old guys, removing them, and they are the dangerous ones. So under those circumstances, you don’t get the evolution of insecticide-resistant mosquitoes.”
He and his colleagues have been testing a kind of fungus that makes mosquitoes sick over the course of several weeks. And it eventually kills the oldest and most infectious mosquitoes.
“The name of the game is not mosquito control. It’s actually malaria control,” Read explains. “So if you just remove the old ones, you still have lots of young, non-dangerous mosquitoes around, but you have controlled malaria.”
Read says this fungus is about 98 to 99 percent effective at killing old mosquitoes in the lab. Now he says he needs to test this fungal insecticide in villages areas where malaria is prevalent, to see whether fewer people get the disease, even if they’re still getting bitten by mosquitoes.
Read and his team propose a new concept of mosquito control, based on what we know about the life cycles of mosquitoes and how they evolve, rather than just looking for one more “new” pesticide to which the insects will soon become resistant. Read’s article appears in the open-access Public Library of Science (PLoS), published April 7, 2009: “How to Make Evolution-Proof Mosquitoes for Malaria Control.” His coauthors are Penelope A. Lynch and Matthew B. Thomas.
Summary
Insecticides are one of the cheapest, most effective, and best proven methods of controlling malaria, but mosquitoes can rapidly evolve resistance. Such evolution, first seen in the 1950s in areas of widespread DDT use, is a major challenge because attempts to comprehensively control and even eliminate malaria rely heavily on indoor house spraying and insecticide-treated bed nets. Current strategies for dealing with resistance evolution are expensive and open ended, and their sustainability has yet to be demonstrated. Here we show that if insecticides targeted old mosquitoes, and ideally old malaria-infected mosquitoes, they could provide effective malaria control while only weakly selecting for resistance. This alone would greatly enhance the useful life span of an insecticide. However, such weak selection for resistance can easily be overwhelmed if resistance is associated with fitness costs. In that case, late-life–acting insecticides would never be undermined by mosquito evolution. We discuss a number of practical ways to achieve this, including different use of existing chemical insecticides, biopesticides, and novel chemistry. Done right, a one-off investment in a single insecticide would solve the problem of mosquito resistance forever.
Among reasons you may want to bookmark that publication: In the opening paragraphs the authors discuss how Indoor Residual Spraying drives mosquito resistance to pesticides, with citations to the most recent and most powerful studies. This is the case against bringing back DDT in a big way.
1 Comment | DDT, Disease, Evolution, Health care, Libraries, Malaria, Public health, Research, Science | Tagged: Andrew Read, DDT, Disease, Malaria, Mosquito Control, Penn State, Public health, Research, Science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
World Malaria Day brings out the DDT-poisoned claims – Beware the ill-informed cynics.
April 26, 2009World Malaria Day is April 25, every year. It’s not a big deal in the U.S. (but there were several activities this year). One thing you can count on, however, is the unthinking, often irrational reaction of dozens of columnists and bloggers* who like to think all scientists and health care professionals are idiots, and that government policy makers never consider the lives of their constituents when environmental issues arise.
Here’s a good example: At a blog named Penraker, in a post cynically titled “Beware the ‘compassionate’ people,” the author suggests that churches around the world are foolish for sending bednets to Africa to combat malaria, since, the blogger claims, DDT would be quicker, more effective, cheaper, and perfectly safe.
So much error, so little time, and even less patience with people who don’t bother to get informed about an issue before popping off on it.
Penraker wrote:
Today the loopy “On Faith” pages of the Washington Post reminds us to be compassionate about malaria in Africa.
It urges the churches of the world to come together and join a campaign that would spread the use of mosquito nets in Africa so that the incidence of malaria can be gradually reduced.
Nets are a great idea. They work to reduce malaria by 50% to 85%. Nets are a simple solution, part of a series of actions that could help eliminate malaria as a major scourge of the world. The Nothing But Nets Campaign has the endorsement of several major religious sects and the National Basketball Association. It offers hope.
Churches uniting to save lives — what could be more spiritual?
Currently 750 children die EVERY DAY in Nigeria. So the great hearts on the left want to organize another conference. The conference will demonstrate their compassion for this needless death, and it will urge that mosquito nets be distributed more widely in Africa.
There is only one problem. Nowhere in the article do they mention DDT. DDT is far and away the most effective way to get rid of malaria.
Why should the article “mention” DDT? DDT is a deadly poison, an environmental wildcard that once upon a time was thought to offer hope of severely reducing malaria, if it could be applied in enough places quickly enough, before mosquitoes developed resistance to it. The campaign, coordinated by the World Health Organization, failed. Agricultural and business interests also latched onto DDT, but they over-used it in sometimes trivial applications. Mosquitoes quickly developed new genes that made them resistant and immune to DDT.
DDT can once again play a limited role in fighting malaria. It can be used in extremely limited amounts, to spray the inside walls of homes, to kill mosquitoes that still land on the walls of a hut after feeding on a human. But DDT is not appropriate for all such applications, and it is nearly useless in some applications, especially where the species involved is completely immune to DDT.
DDT was discovered to be deadly. First European nations banned its use, and then the U.S. banned it. Continued use after those bans increased the difficulties — manufacturing continued in the U.S. resulted in many nasty Superfund clean-up sites costing American taxpayers billions of dollars when manufacturers declared bankruptcy rather than clean up their plant sites. The National Academy of Sciences studied DDT, and in 1980 pronounced it one of the most beneficial chemicals ever discovered — but also one of the most dangerous. NAS said DDT had to be phased out, because the dangers more than offset its benefits.
The cessation of use of DDT, to protect wildlife and entire ecosystems, proved wise. In 2007 the bald eagle was removed from the list of endangered species, a recovery made possible only with a ban on DDT. DDT weakens chicks, especially of top predators, and damages eggs to make them unviable. Decreasing amounts of DDT in the tissues of birds meant recovery of the eagle, the brown pelican, the peregrine falcon, and osprey.
Though it was not banned for ill effects on human health, research since 1972 strengthened the case that DDT is a human carcinogen (every cancer-fighting agency on Earth lists it as a “probable human carcinogen”). DDT and its daughter products have since been discovered to act as endocrine disruptors, doing serious damage to the sexual organs of birds, fish, lizards and mammals. Oddly, it’s also been discovered to be poisonous to some plants.
After DDT use against malarial mosquitoes was reduced, malaria stayed low for a while. Unfortunately, the malaria parasites developed resistance to the pharmaceuticals used to treat humans. Malaria came roaring back — DDT, an insecticide, was of no use to fight the blood parasite. Newer, arteminisin-based pharmaceuticals offer hope of reducing the human toll
Still, with some improvements in delivery of pharmaceuticals, improvements in diagnosis, and improvements in education of affected populations about how they can reduce exposure and prevent mosquito breeding, world wide malaria deaths have been kept below 3 million annually. Recent programs, helped by munificent organizing from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and from other charities, have reduced malaria considerably. With no magic drug on the horizon, with no magic vector control, efforts have been redoubled to use the time-tested methods for beating the disease — reducing exposure to mosquitoes, improving health care, stopping mosquito breeding. These methods, which ridded the U.S. of the disease very much prior to the discovery of DDT’s insecticidal properties, appear the best bets to beat malaria.
Once South Africa started using it, the death rate went way down.
South Africa used DDT constantly from 1946 through about 1996. Other efforts to control mosquitoes worked until changing climate and political turmoil in nations adjoining South Africa produced malaria and mosquitoes that crossed borders. South Africa turned to DDT as an emergency measure; but the other, non-pesticide spraying methods, are credited with helping South Africa reduce malaria.
It turns out that DDT is much less harmful than we had been led to believe by scare reports early on. People at the Monsanto plant in California worked around the stuff for years with no discernible effects.
That’s not quite accurate. Whether DDT seriously crippled workers is still in litigation, a quarter of a century after DDT stopped being manufactured in the U.S. Residual and permanent health damage keep showing up in studies done on workers in DDT production facilities, and on their children. The Montrose plant in California is a Superfund site, as is the entire bay it contaminated. In fact, three different bays in California are listed as cleanup sites (was there a Monsanto DDT plant in California? Which one?).
To say there were “no discernible effects” simply is unsupportable from research or litigation on the matters. Such a claim is completely misleading and inaccurate.
No matter. The compassionate ones don’t dare to mention it. They are ready to let 750 kids die every day, in Nigeria alone. That’s 273,000 a year.
273,000 kids a year are dying in Nigeria alone. Think about it.
Rachel Carson warned us that would happen if we didn’t control DDT use to keep it viable to fight malaria. I’ve been thinking about it for more than 40 years. The “compassionate” ones you try to ridicule have been fighting malaria in Africa for that entire time. You just woke up — when are you going to do something to stop a kid from dying? By the way, slamming environmentalists doesn’t save any kid.
The World Health Organization estimates that each year 300-500 million cases of malaria occur and more than 1 million people die of malaria, especially in developing countries. Most deaths occur in young children. For example, in Africa, a child dies from malaria every 30 seconds. Because malaria causes so much illness and death, the disease is a great drain on many national economies. Since many countries with malaria are already among the poorer nations, the disease maintains a vicious cycle of disease and poverty.
Still the compassionate ones call for the use of bed netting to keep the kids from getting bit. There is only one obvious problem – kids aren’t in bed all day. Mosquitoes can bite them all day long, and the nets have no effect. So, they are proposing a massively stupid remedy.
First point on that section: Did you bother to read the CDC document? Nowhere do they call for DDT to be used. Quite the contrary, they note that it doesn’t work anymore:
Wasn’t malaria eradicated years ago?
No, not in all parts of the world. Malaria has been eradicated from many developed countries with temperate climates. However, the disease remains a major health problem in many developing countries, in tropical and subtropical parts of the world.
An eradication campaign was started in the 1950s, but it failed globally because of problems including the resistance of mosquitoes to insecticides used to kill them, the resistance of malaria parasites to drugs used to treat them, and administrative issues. In addition, the eradication campaign never involved most of Africa, where malaria is the most common.
So, where do you get the gall to claim CDC support for your inaccurate diatribe? CDC’s documents do not support your outrageous and inaccurate claims for DDT at all.
Second point, mosquitoes don’t bite all day long, and bednets have proven remarkably effective at stopping malaria. Mosquitoes — at least the vectors that carry malaria — bite in the evening and night, mostly. Protecting kids while they sleep is among the best ways to prevent malaria.
It appears to me that this blogger has not bothered to learn much about malaria before deciding he knows better than the experts, how to fight it.
Their outrageous and horribly unscientific “religious beliefs” are a firm block to their humanity. No, they just don’t care. No DDT can be used.
Every “ban” on DDT included a clause allowing use against malaria. In the U.S. we allowed manufacture of DDT for export after the ban on use in the U.S. (and the ban on use in the U.S. had exceptions). DDT was never banned for use in any African nation I can find. DDT is manufactured, today, in India and China. DDT can be used, even under the POPs treaty. This blogger, Penraker, just doesn’t have the facts.
You get the impression that their compassion is not about solving the problem. Their compassion seems to be about themselves – about proving they are good people by having compassion, rather than eradicating the problem. In fact, it looks like they have a desire to have the malaria epidemic continue, so they can organize little conferences and wring their hands, put together action plans, and call on somebody else to do something about the problem.
Actually, I get the idea that this blogger wants to whine and pose, and isn’t really concerned about kids with malaria. He’s getting way too many facts dead wrong.
Nick Kristof of the New York Times, God bless him, is one of the few liberals to react reasonably to reality:
Mosquitoes kill 20 times more people each year than the tsunami did, and in the long war between humans and mosquitoes it looks as if mosquitoes are winning.
One reason is that the U.S. and other rich countries are siding with the mosquitoes against the world’s poor – by opposing the use of DDT.
“It’s a colossal tragedy,” says Donald Roberts, a professor of tropical public health at Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences. “And it’s embroiled in environmental politics and incompetent bureaucracies.”
In the 1950’s, 60’s and early 70’s, DDT was used to reduce malaria around the world, even eliminating it in places like Taiwan. But then the growing recognition of the harm DDT can cause in the environment – threatening the extinction of the bald eagle, for example – led DDT to be banned in the West and stigmatized worldwide. Ever since, malaria has been on the rise.
…But most Western aid agencies will not pay for anti-malarial programs that use DDT, and that pretty much ensures that DDT won’t be used. Instead, the U.N. and Western donors encourage use of insecticide-treated bed nets and medicine to cure malaria
Yeah, go read that Kristof article. He’s a bit off about DDT — but notice especially the date. It’s the Bush administration he’s complaining about. I thought Penraker was complaining about environmentalists and silly “compassionate” types — but he’s complaining about Bush? What else isn’t he telling us, or doesn’t he know?
But isn’t it dangerous?
But overall, one of the best ways to protect people is to spray the inside of a hut, about once a year, with DDT. This uses tiny amounts of DDT – 450,000 people can be protected with the same amount that was applied in the 1960’s to a single 1,000-acre American cotton farm.
Is it safe? DDT was sprayed in America in the 1950’s as children played in the spray, and up to 80,000 tons a year were sprayed on American crops. There is some research suggesting that it could lead to premature births, but humans are far better off exposed to DDT than exposed to malaria.
Indoor Residual Spraying (IRS) is endorsed even by Environmental Defense, the group that first sued to stop broadcast DDT spraying in the U.S. It’s not environmentalists who oppose the practice, but businessmen, tobacco farmers and cotton farmers in Africa. Who is Penraker to substitute his judgment for the judgment of Africans, the people on the ground, the people who suffer from malaria?
Alas, IRS, done right, is expensive. A treatment with DDT is required twice a year, at about $12 an application when costs of the analysis of the mosquitoes and other circumstances are figured in. That’s $24/year. DDT spraying is more than 50% effective in preventing the disease.
Bednets cost $10, last five years at least, and are about 85% effective at preventing the disease.
Maybe Africans just want the cheaper, more effective methods used. Doesn’t that make sense?
The piece in the Washington Post’s On Faith section is called “Religion from the Heart”
How ironic.
All the Washington Post and the New York Times would have to do is highlight that the use of DDT could save a million lives – most of them children, and they would be saved within a year.
That’s all they would have to do. Keep the spotlight on it, and save a million lives. Instead, they expunge the very idea from their pages, (witness this from the heart stuff)
I will never understand people who are willing to let millions of people die for the sake of their ideology.
And I will never understand people who get in a dudgeon, blaming people who are blameless, or worse, blaming people who are actually trying to fix a problem, all while being blissfully misinformed about the problem they complain about.
Yes, millions of lives could be saved — but not with DDT. DDT won’t work as a magic potion, and it’s a nasty poison. Why would anyone urge Africans to waste money, and lives, instead of actually fighting malaria? Penraker fell victim to the hoaxers who want you to believe Rachel Carson was not accurate (her book was found accurate by specially-appointed panels of scientists), that DDT is a panacea against malaria (it’s not), that environmentalists are stupid and mean (while they’ve been fighting against malaria for more than 40 years), and that everything you’ve heard from science is wrong.
Malaria gets a lot of deserved attention from people serious about beating the disease, for millions of good reasons. Those who are serious about beating malaria don’t whine about DDT.
* And then he brags about his intolerance for the facts. Whom God destroys, He first makes mad.
_____________
Update: Blue Marble isn’t as offensive and obstreperous as others, but equally in error. How can people be so easily misled from the facts of the matter?
63 Comments | Accuracy, Africa, DDT, Environmental protection, Health care, History, Hoaxes, Rampant stupidity, Reason, Science | Tagged: Africa, DDT, Environmental protection, Health care, Hoaxes, Malaria, Rachel Carson, Science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Cargo cults in global warming, and Arthur Robinson
March 14, 2009Cargo cult science has deep roots among those who deny global warming or who allow that warming is occurring, but claim we can do nothing about it. So, it’s no surprise that, at the voodoo science 2nd International Conference on Climate Change, somebody would trot out the old falsehoods about DDT.
According to Traditional Catholic Reflections (you can tell its traditional Catholic because it brooks no comments — you can’t correct an error there):
Speaking at the conference hosted by the Heartland Institute in New York City,[Dr. Arthur Robinson, Director of the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine] said, “There is a current example of genocide by the removal of technology, and that is the ban on DDT, and that has resulted in the deaths of 30 to 40 million people and has left half a billion infected with malaria.”
It’s malaria that kills people, not a lack of DDT. The removal of DDT from spraying cotton crops in Texas and California did absolutely nothing to promote malaria in Africa. Dr. Robinson needs a basic geography course. Mosquitoes do not migrate from the U.S. to Africa or Asia.
Stopping the spraying of DDT in the U.S. in 1972 wasn’t a factor in the cessation of usage of DDT in Africa seven years earlier, either. Dr. Robinson could use some basic math sequencing and calendar reading remediation, too.
Dr. Robinson could use some history and public policy instruction, too. DDT was never banned in Africa, nor was it banned in India or China which together now produce almost all the DDT used in the world, which is a lot. There’s no ban on DDT in Uganda, where Dr. Robinson’s friends in the business world are suing to stop the spraying of DDT in huts in affected regions — because they are afraid it will harm their tobacco business.
It’s a heckuva lot easier to throw darts at health care workers and disease fighters than it is to talk about real solutions with these guys.
If Robinson is dead wrong on a one-liner about DDT, how wrong do you think he is in the rest of his presentation on climate change?
Is there any crackpot “scientist” who was not at the Heartland Institute’s wing-ding?
18 Comments | Accuracy, Africa, Cargo Cults, Climate change, DDT, Disease, Global warming, Health care, Malaria, Science, Voodoo science, War on Science | Tagged: Africa, Arthur Robinson, Climate change, DDT, Environmental protection, Global warming, health, Malaria, Medical Care, Science, Voodoo science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
DDT ain’t pixie dust; we can’t poison Africa to health
February 7, 2009Internet communications spreads information far and wide, but it also spreads disinformation and error far and wide — sometimes faster than good information.
Bill Gates gave a TED* Talk about the need to fight malaria, and where his billions-of-dollars campaign against the disease is going. Within minutes, the nattering nabobs science ignorance were calling Gates an idiot, and calling for the poisoning of Africa.
Gates, you may remember, is either the richest man in the world or close to it due to his brilliant marketing of Microsoft products. This would suggest to rational people that he is not an idiot, at a minimum, and perhaps should be listened to on topics which he has researched, such as malaria and mosquitoes. Africa, you may remember, has a lot of people in it who don’t want to be poisoned, thank you very much. This may suggest that DDT would be controversial even were it a panacea, which it is not.
Rational voices exist. Deltoid and Bug Girl both provided useful, and accurate information (though in this case, Tim Lambert at Deltoid refers to the DDT controversy on bed bugs, and to another Bug Girl post on research showing DDT won’t help against bed bugs).
Here’s the controversial two minutes of Gates’s talk (you can see it at Bug Girl, too):
Internet and other media now fall into a predictable rhythm: Any news faintly related to DDT prompts stiff-necked conservatives and other do-nothings who don’t like environmentalists to write stuff calling for a “return” of DDT, making erroneous claims that DDT had made the world safe against malaria, and that only the delusional claims of Rachel Carson convinced everyone to stupidly stop spraying DDT. And, of course, they then make the erroneous claim that all we need to do to fix everything is bring back DDT.
They don’t ever let the facts get in the way of a stupid, misplaced political hit.
In short, they treat DDT as pixie dust, a magic solution to every problem. This is fantasy. In reality, we cannot poison Africa to good health.
I’ve written about these issues before at length. Hard research, good research, tells us what we have to do to fight malaria
- Money must be spent to improve health care in Africa, especially to remote populations. Wiping out malaria requires that we get rid of the parasite in humans. Mosquitoes get the parasite from infected humans, after all — if mosquitoes can’t get infected from humans, we don’t need to worry so much about killing the mosquitoes. Preventing infections is good; curing those that exist is essential. Malaria parasites’ ability to grow resistance to pharmaceuticals means we need health care delivery systems that will assure a complete cycle of medical treatment occurs in every victim, and before that, that a quick and accurate diagnosis will allow targeting of the right drug to the specific parasite.
- Housing improvements will provide huge benefits. Malaria was wiped out in the U.S. and Europe partly by rising incomes. Even poor people could afford screens on windows, which keeps mosquitoes out of the house, where most infections start. Housing unsuitable to screening will put a larger burden on bednets. But better housing is a key part of the fight.
- Improving incomes help fight malaria. Families with more money can afford better housing, and better health care. Malaria, and most disease, is very much an “Are Your Lights On” sort of problem. Victims are the first to know they need to get medical care, and they are in the best position to prevent infections earlier. If potential victims have the money to buy the tools to fight malaria, malaria has a tough time.
- Good public works, from local governments, help fight malaria. Good roads work well to fight the disease. Bad roads develop potholes. In Africa, potholes fill with water and become breeding sites for mosquitoes. Well-engineered, well-maintained roads and walkways make great contributions to eliminating malaria.
- Education on how to avoid malaria pays huge dividends. People who know how to look for mosquito breeding places, and how to eliminate them, are crucial to the elimination of the disease. Abandoned tires are classic mosquito breeding dumps, but so are rain gutters and even badly-drained flower pots. When these things occur close to homes, mosquitoes breed there and bite victims close to home. Since most people spend a signficant amount of time at or near their homes, eliminating these infection opportunities pays off well. Further, certain breeds of mosquitoes are active at particular hours of the day or night. Avoiding the places these breeds exist at the hours of their activity prevents malaria infection. People must be educated to know these things, and to act on them.
- Bednets work well, and bednets do not prevent the use of other methods. Pitting a fight against bednets and DDT is a favored tactic of pro-DDT groups. Research shows bednets are very effective without DDT, but that DDT is not effective over the long term without bednets. A mild solution of DDT applied to bednets in some areas improves the efficiency of the nets. This is not an one-or-the-other issue. Bednets always work, insecticides can be used appropriately. To beat malaria, we will have to use every tool. Bednets are a great tool, and they will be required regardless the availability or propriety of DDT.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation stepped in to provide money and organization to the fight against malaria a few years ago. In the last year alone his work and his money have helped prevent millions of cases of malaria, reducing the incidence of the disease by 50 percent in some areas, and 85 percent in others. Whatever he says about malaria and mosquitoes deserves a good listen at least.
(Until I figure out how to embed TED into the new WordPress, here’s the link at TEDS: http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/451)
__________
* TED is an acronym for Technology, Entertainment, Design
2 Comments | Africa, DDT, Health care, History, Malaria, Science | Tagged: Africa, Bill Gates, Health care, Malaria, Science, TED | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
I get e-mail from DDT cranks . . .
January 3, 2009I noted the errors in a post at Reformed Musings. Then I noodled around Mr. Mattes’s site, and I dropped this note into his “about” thread, frustrated that I couldn’t just politely note the errors at his posts, where he’s disabled comments.
I said:
I wish you’d take comments on your posts. For example, you’ve got a couple of errors dealing with DDT in your post on climate change. It looks as though you’re hoping to sneak them past readers, rather than get the science right. I hope that’s not so. By: Ed Darrell on December 31, 2008 at 7:41 pm
Mattes held that comment in moderation (afraid to let his other readers see it?), but responded in sort by diving deeper into wankery, with a post defending the more crackpot ideas of Michael Crichton, and straying much farther from the science in his claims about DDT and environmenta protection. Heck, he even trotted out errors about Paul Ehrlich’s writing, apparently not content to be wrong about only DDT and global warming.
So, noting Mattes’s aggravation of his errors, I wrote again on his blog, a bit more sternly:
Shame on you. If you really think DDT is safe and that there was no science behind its “ban,” open comments, let us discuss.
But to compound your errors, and then to fail to approve comments from those who offer you correct information — well, reformation only goes so far, I guess. By: Ed Darrell on January 2, 2009 at 11:56 am
Rather than open comments to discuss, and rather than respond to the post at the Bathtub, he sent me e-mail:
Shame on me? Excuse me, but I’m a bit amazed at your arrogance. You’ll offer correct information? Why, because others have a different opinion than you they have to be wrong? What are your technical qualifications and applicable experience, besides having a blog and a keyboard? Have you been to Africa? I have. Is racial eugenics your thing? Is that why third-world inhabitants are expendable to you?
Whatever you think you know, DDT is being successfully employed in Africa and elsewhere to save lives every day. No bad effects evident. None. Their public health officials are literally begging for more. But then, their only agenda is survival. Selective and misleading reporting doesn’t interest them, only results.
Did Mattes miss many of the Tinfoil Hat Brigade’s concerns?
For the record, I don’t share Mattes’s fascination with eugenics as applied to race (and I’ll wager Mattes has no record fighting it); that tends to be a concern of the anti-science, historical revisionists (wrong about history, too). I said nothing disparaging about third world peoples, and there are a dozen or more posts here to confirm my concerns about health in the third world, in contrast to only the junk science, “Let’s poison the hell out of Africa” attitude from Mattes.
In his second paragraph, he contradicts one of the main points of his first post. He says DDT is being used successfully in Africa — while his first post complained that environmentalists had successfully stopped it from being used.
That’s rather the mark of the true DDT sycophant, someone who suffers seriously from internet DDT poisoning: The only reason they mention DDT is to find a cudgel to use against brave and smart women like Rachel Carson, or otherwise to criticize people who call for an end to pollution, or the preservation of water, air, trees or animals. Unanchored by any fact or any need or desire to be accurate, they attack environmenalists, damn the inconsistency of the attacks.
Oy.
He’s followed up today with a new post that assaults science at every turn, claiming to follow science journals, but instead citing the chemical industry supporters like Richard Tren, opposing the Centers for Disease Control and World Health Organization. While complaining about “eco-socialism,” he approvingly cites the experts of Lyndon Larouche, the late Dr. Gordon Edwards, in all of his errors and all of the political wankery of Larouche.
Mattes has gone back to the false claims that Edmund Sweeney exhonerated DDT, and that “evil” William Ruckelshaus banned DDT anyway — completely murdering Sweeney’s analysis and the law behind it, and completely avoiding the law, the court cases, and the history behind Ruckleshaus’s actions.
In his frantic, apoplectic dance to avoid discussing whether he might be in error, Mattes has dived so deeply into the depths of tinfoil hat sourcery (no, it’s spelled as I intended it) that in the end, he’s not jus twrong, he’s not even wrong.
If someone criticized any translation of the Bible as carelessly and wildly as Mattes criticizes science, he’d be out recruiting neighbors with pitchforks and torches to march.
Mattes claims he’s done with the issue. We can only hope. To continue in his current trend, he’d need to deny gravity (both Newton and Einstein), atomic theory, and Linneaus. But I also suppose it means he’ll never check here to see the facts. Just when we thought we were making progress . . .
The real story about DDT, a few of the posts at Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub:
- “Good interred with their bones dept.: Michael Crichton“
- “Beating malaria without DDT”
- “Solid research on controlling malaria”
- “Malaria/DDT carnival addendum”
- “Carnival of fighting malaria (and DDT)”
- “Business, no environmentalists, oppose DDT in Africa”
- “How to tell if someone is wrong about DDT and Rachel Carson”
The real story, elsewhere:
At Bug Girl’s Blog:
- “New research: insecticide cross-resistance”
- “Dying to Be Heard”
- “Why we failed on malaria”
- DDT and Rachel Carson posts
At Deltoid:
- “Study finds that DDT not the most effective in IRS [indoor residual spraying]”
- “WSJ spreads DDT ban myth”
- “Politically-based medicine at the WHO”
Also:
- Jim Easter at Some are Boojums: “Ruckelshaus, Sweeney, and DDT”
- FAIR: “Rachel Carson: Mass Murderer? The creation of an anti-environmental myth”
11 Comments | Accuracy, Africa, Cargo Cults, DDT, denialism, Environmental protection, Malaria, Public health, Rachel Carson, Rampant stupidity, Religion, Science, Voodoo history, Voodoo science | Tagged: DDT, Malaria, Rachel Carson, Rampang Stupidity, Religion, Science, Voodoo science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
DDT falsehoods, taken as an article of faith
December 31, 2008
Brown pelican egg rendered uncapable of protecting the (now dead) chick when DDT prevented the mother pelican from forming an adequate shell for the egg. Pelican Media image.
Just when you start thinking the world is safe for the facts — safe for the truth — some well-meaning-but-poorly-informed person comes along to remind you that it’s a constant struggle to keep the flame of truth from being snuffed out for no good reason.
Henry I. Miller didn’t publish a screed demanding DDT be misused against West Nile virus this year, which I count as a major victory. As you know, DDT is the wrong stuff to use to fight West Nile, so calling for DDT in that case merely means you’re an ideologue who wants to slam science, and it probably means you wish disease victims would hurry up and die. (“More statistics to use against libruls!”)
Henry I. Miller. How many years at the Hoover Institute before he finds the library at Stanford to check his claims on DDT?
And even Oklahoma’s reigning Senate fool Tom Coburn lifted his hold on the bill naming for Rachel Carson the post office in her hometown.
But, on the second to last day of the year, comes Bob Mattes at Reformed Musings, to claim that climate change is a hoax, and say he knows it’s so because DDT is safe and Rachel Carson was wrong. Mattes is a deacon in a Presbyterian church in Virginia; the name of his site is a reference to reformed theology, I gather.
When someone claims as a matter of faith, things that are well known to be wrong and easily debunked, that someone is unlikely to be swayed by the facts. In fact, Mattes allows no criticism of his post at his blog — he’s turned off comments on that post.
Will he drop by here to read his errors? Not likely. Would he correct the errors if he knew? It’s not good to gamble when the odds are long against you.
Reformed Musings said:
Want a concrete example of the impact of eco-socialism? Three letters – DDT.
Well, no, I don’t want an alleged example of eco-socialism from an eco-fascist, one whose mind is made up, incorrectly, and who will not let the facts sway him. Notice that the authority he cites is that well-known purveyor of junk science, Junk Science, the ethically-challenged website run by the industry campaign in favor of DDT. If one dances to the devil’s tune, one should not claim not to be doing the devil’s work.
If this be eco-socialism, it’s God-blessed, and we should revel in it and make the most of it.
In the 60’s, there was the big DDT scare, with activists claiming that the pesticide was killing off our birds and bees.
Right. And it was true, DDT was killing our birds and bees. It took more than 30 years of not using DDT to rescue our national symbol, the bald eagle, from DDT’s killer effects. Is it fair to call it a “scare” if it’s true?
Rachel Carson sold the big lie in her famous book Silent Spring, which was full of misrepresentations.
See, here’s how we know Mattes doesn’t know what he’s talking about, and probably hasn’t read the book. Carson was very careful in her book. She offered more than 50 pages of citations to science papers and hard research to support what she wrote — a “don’t take my word for it, check it out for yourself” kind of honesty.
Discover magazine carried an article about DDT and Carson’s book in November 2007. Discover said that, since 1962, more than 1,000 peer-reviewed publications support Carson’s conclusions, a record remarkable in any branch of science.
In fact, Carson may have underestimated the impact of DDT on birds, says Michael Fry, an avian toxicologist and director of the American Bird Conservancy’s pesticides and birds program. She was not aware that DDT—or rather its metabolite, DDE—causes eggshell thinning because the data were not published until the late 1960s and early 1970s. It was eggshell thinning that devastated fish-eating birds and birds of prey, says Fry, and this effect is well documented in a report (pdf) on DDT published in 2002 by the Department of Health and Human Services’ Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR). The report, which cites over 1,000 references, also describes how DDT and its breakdown products accumulate in the tissues of animals high up on terrestrial and aquatic food chains—a process that induced reproductive and neurological defects in birds and fish.
Had Mattes been paying attention (was he even alive then?), he’d have noted that President John F. Kennedy tasked the President’s Science Advisory Council to check out Carson’s book, to see whether it was accurate, and whether the government should start down the path of careful study and careful regulation of pesticides as she suggested. In May 1963 the PSAC reported back that Carson was dead right on every issue, except, maybe for one. PSAC said Carson wasn’t alarmist enough, that immediate action against pesticides was justified, rather than waiting for later studies or delaying for any other reason.
So, here I issue a challenge to Bob Mattes: Tell us where Rachel Carson was wrong. Cite for us a page in Silent Spring where she made a significant error in science, a point that has not been borne out as correct in later studies.
I’ve been making this challenge for a year and half now, and not even Stephen Milloy has been able to offer a single error Carson made. A few have said they “heard” Carson erred in one thing or another, but upon checking, we’ve always found that the claimed errors were nowhere to be found, or the errors alleged were misstated, or, more often, what was claimed as error simply was not.
It’s a very odd situation: We have a deacon of the Presbyterians assaulting the honor of a distinguished scientist, using false claims as his ammunition.
As usual, the ignorant entertainment industry frothed at the mouth for the new fad cause. Joni Mitchell sang: “Hey, farmer, farmer, put away that DDT now. Give me spots on my apples but leave me the birds and the bees.” Cute, huh?
As a result, DDT was banned world-wide. Problem was, not only were the zealots wrong, but nothing killed deadly malaria-carrying mosquitoes better than DDT.
DDT has never been banned worldwide. It’s still manufactured in several places — it’s still a deadly hazard in India. It’s been in constant use in many nations, such as Mexico and South Africa. Limitations on DDT use have always included a loophole allowing DDT to be used to protect against malaria — even the 2001 Persistant Organic Pesticides Treaty has a special clause allowing DDT to be used against malaria.
So it’s false to claim that DDT was banned worldwide, ever. We might be much better to get to that position because it would keep nuts from claiming that all we have to do is poison Africa to make Aricans healthy — but in any case, there is no ban on DDT to fight malaria.
Use of DDT began to decline in the mid 1960s when mosquitoes began to exhibit resistance and even immunity to the stuff. Genetic studies now find that almost all mosquitoes in the world have multiple copies of a gene that allows the bug to digest DDT more as a nutrient, rendering it ineffective as a pesticide. The World Health Organization had begun an ambitious campaign to knock down mosquito populations long enough that malaria would die out; but by the mid 1960s, the burgeoning resistance to DDT rendered that campaign untenable. DDT use against mosquitoes, which was never undertaken in much of Africa because some local governments were not stable enough to manage an anti-mosquito campaign, declined, and stopped in places where DDT simply did not work.
In fact it was gross overuse of DDT by agricultural interests that drove the resistance among insects. Had that overuse been controlled earlier, we might have been able to kill of malaria. It was not a ban on DDT that caused its use to decline. It was that DDT stopped working. No one in their right mind will spend money on a pesticide that doesn’t work, no matter how cheap the stuff is.
But it wasn’t popular culture that got DDT banned. In the late 1960s litigation on DDT spraying worked through the courts. By 1972, two federal courts ruled in separate cases that the federal government had failed to carry out its obligations to control the use of DDT as required by law, based on evidence presented in court that demonstrated clear harm. Both courts ordered the government to promptly hold the administrative hearings necessary to alter the registration for DDT. The hearings started in the Department of Agriculture, which moved slowly. When the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was created, it got the authority to regulate pesticides from Ag. The courts ordered EPA to get off its duff and speed the process.
In the midst of a nine-month-long hearing process that accumulated thousands of pages of scientific documentation of the harms of DDT, manufacturers of the pesticide voluntarily changed their labels to limit use of DDT essentially to emergency situations, not general broadcast applications. Judge Edmund Sweeney, the EPA administrative law judge, thought that change, which was what was pending, meant that EPA did not need to act, and he so ruled at the end of the process. EPA Administrator William Ruckleshaus, a veteran of more recent environmental litigation, understood the courts had ordered a more ironclad change, and he imposed tighter registration standards on DDT that prohibited its use on agricultural crops, except in emergencies. There was also a loophole built in to protect public health.
DDT manufacturers sued EPA to overturn the rule. The courts ruled that the scientific evidence was overwhelming, and that EPA’s rule was firmly grounded. The manufacturers did not appeal further. So, DDT use in the U.S. was severely restricted by the end of 1972, following earlier restrictiosn in Sweden.
Can Mattes read a calendar? How does a ban on DDT in Sweden in 1970, in the U.S. in 1972, make Africa stop using DDT in 1965?
Literally millions of poor have needlessly died from malaria in Third World countries as a result of the ban. Malaria is the 4th leading cause of death in the world. Drug-resistant strains are starting to dominate. Eradication is the real answer. Only recently have countries like South Africa defied the ban and started spraying DDT again to fight malaria. Ideas have consequences – eco-socialism routinely kills, just not in the comfy apartments of the self-serving eco-socialists.
What ban is he talking about? South Africa suspended DDT use only briefly at the end of the 20th century — but South Africa’s problems are not caused because South African mosquitoes roared back when they were not sprayed wholesale with DDT. Malaria in South Africa rose when the disease came over the border from other nations where the disease was less controlled. South Africa brought back DDT use, though in a more limited fashion. There was no ban to defy. Mattes is telling a whopper here.
Mattes cites the Centers for Disease Control when he says malaria is the fourth leading killer in the world. He either fails to notice or fails to say that CDC does not ask for DDT to be brought back to fight malaria. CDC calls for bednets, for draining of breeding areas, for better medical care and better diagnosis, but not for more DDT. Why? When the leading disease fighting organization in the world does not ask for DDT, we might assume it puts DDT way down on its list of priorities (as it does). Remember, CDC’s origins were in the fight against mosquito-borne diseases. CDC speaks with authority on mosquito eradication. CDC does not ask for more DDT, anywhere. His own authority — he should listen to them.
Health care professionals note that malaria made a serious resurgence when the malaria parasites themselves became resistant to the pharmaceuticals used to treat them. This has nothing to do with DDT, because DDT is not given as a drug to humans (it’s a poison, mildly carcinogenic, and there is no demonstrated effectiveness against the parasite).
Can Bob Mattes read a map? How do restrictions on spraying DDT on cotton fields in Texas, cause malaria to increase in Africa?
Mattes closes his post:
History shows that the eco-socialists have NEVER been right. EVERY scare prediction they’ve ever tried fails to materialize. Unfortunately, history starts today for most folks. We don’t teach logic or real science in public schools anymore, just the religion of political correctness. Ignorance breeds disaster, especially for those in developing countries who can’t speak for themselves and don’t have a George Soros funding their latest fad cause. Remember DDT. Remember global cooling. Remember the limitations of computer modeling. Don’t be duped.
Ignorance does indeed breed disaster, which is where Mattes’s views will take us. He should carefully consider his closing trio of words, and follow them religiously.
If Mattes is so wrong on every claim about DDT, do you think we should trust anything he says about climate change?
Updates:
5 Comments | Accuracy, Africa, Biology, Climate change, DDT, Environmental protection, Ethics, Global warming, Health care, Hoaxes, Junk science, Malaria, Public health, Rachel Carson, Science, Voodoo history, Voodoo science, WHO - World Health Organization | Tagged: Accuracy, Africa, Climate change, DDT, environment, Global warming, Hoaxes, Junk Science Rachel Carson, Malaria, Science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Good Interred With Their Bones Dept.: Michael Crichton
November 24, 2008
Author Michael Crichton railing against environmental protection and science he politically disagreed with, at the Smithsonian Institution, about the same time as his Commonwealth Club presentation.
One of my news grabbers found an article on environmentalism and religion at a Live Journal site, an answer to a speech by Michael Crichton on environmentalism as religion. Crichton’s speech was delivered in 2003 to the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, a venerable old institution for giving a soap box to doers and thinkers. [Note, April 2015: If that link doesn’t work, find Crichton’s speech here.]
Crichton’s speech started out with promise:
I have been asked to talk about what I consider the most important challenge facing mankind, and I have a fundamental answer. The greatest challenge facing mankind is the challenge of distinguishing reality from fantasy, truth from propaganda. Perceiving the truth has always been a challenge to mankind, but in the information age (or as I think of it, the disinformation age) it takes on a special urgency and importance.
We must daily decide whether the threats we face are real, whether the solutions we are offered will do any good, whether the problems we’re told exist are in fact real problems, or non-problems. Every one of us has a sense of the world, and we all know that this sense is in part given to us by what other people and society tell us; in part generated by our emotional state, which we project outward; and in part by our genuine perceptions of reality. In short, our struggle to determine what is true is the struggle to decide which of our perceptions are genuine, and which are false because they are handed down, or sold to us, or generated by our own hopes and fears.
As an example of this challenge, I want to talk today about environmentalism.
The promise was short-lived.
Crichton described his learnings from studying anthropology, including an observation that religions always arise, and cannot be stamped out. From there he makes an astounding leap, to claim that environmentalism is religion. From that failed leap, the speech rapidly deteriorates. He adopts tenets of American Christian and political fundamentalism, rapidly following up with a disavowal of fundamentalism, as if to try to hide what he’s done, or deny it, at least for himself:
So I can tell you some facts. I know you haven’t read any of what I am about to tell you in the newspaper, because newspapers literally don’t report them. I can tell you that DDT is not a carcinogen and did not cause birds to die and should never have been banned. I can tell you that the people who banned it knew that it wasn’t carcinogenic and banned it anyway. I can tell you that the DDT ban has caused the deaths of tens of millions of poor people, mostly children, whose deaths are directly attributable to a callous, technologically advanced western society that promoted the new cause of environmentalism by pushing a fantasy about a pesticide, and thus irrevocably harmed the third world. Banning DDT is one of the most disgraceful episodes in the twentieth century history of America. We knew better, and we did it anyway, and we let people around the world die and didn’t give a damn.
I can tell you that second hand smoke is not a health hazard to anyone and never was, and the EPA has always known it. I can tell you that the evidence for global warming is far weaker than its proponents would ever admit. I can tell you the percentage the US land area that is taken by urbanization, including cities and roads, is 5%. I can tell you that the Sahara desert is shrinking, and the total ice of Antarctica is increasing. I can tell you that a blue-ribbon panel in Science magazine concluded that there is no known technology that will enable us to halt the rise of carbon dioxide in the 21st century. Not wind, not solar, not even nuclear. The panel concluded a totally new technology-like nuclear fusion-was necessary, otherwise nothing could be done and in the meantime all efforts would be a waste of time. They said that when the UN IPCC reports stated alternative technologies existed that could control greenhouse gases, the UN was wrong.
I can, with a lot of time, give you the factual basis for these views, and I can cite the appropriate journal articles not in whacko magazines, but in the most prestigious science journals, such as Science and Nature. But such references probably won’t impact more than a handful of you, because the beliefs of a religion are not dependent on facts, but rather are matters of faith. Unshakeable belief.
From the promising start of claiming we must be skeptical and carefully sort out what is true from what is not true, he rapidly plunges from the stratosphere into the depths of the ocean of misinformation. Count the errors:
- Newspapers have been regular carriers of claims that restrictions on DDT are unnecessary. You won’t find such claims in science journals, in fact — they appear almost without exception in newspapers. Crichton is wrong about where you’d learn that DDT is harmless. You can’t learn it from people who know.
- DDT is a “probable human carcinogen” listed by every cancer-fighting agency on Earth. Fortunately for humans, it appears to be weakly carcinogenic. Recent studies indicate it’s devious in its carcinogenicity, too — it gives cancers not to the people who were exposed, but to their children. Research into this path is only about a decade old. Recent studies confirm carcinogenicity in humans. Carcinogenicity in almost every other animal exposed has been long known. It is highly unlikely that a compound known to cause cancer in every mammal tested, would not be carcinogenic in humans. Again, you can’t learn this stuff in science journals. You’ll have to learn it as dogma from cranks and crackpots.
- DDT’s links to the deaths of young birds is rock solid. The links were clear by 1962, and no study has been done since 1962 to question those conclusions. In fact, more than 1,000 studies have been done on the links, and published in peer-review journals. Each one supports Rachel Carson’s conclusions that DDT is deadly to young birds. The mechanisms are now known by which DDT causes eggshell-thinning, which increases the chick mortality. Recovery of the bald eagle, osprey, and brown pelican correlate exactly with the decline of DDT in the tissues of the birds. No scientist who has studied the matter doubts that DDT kills birds.
- DDT was banned because it disrupts eco-systems. In the wild, it is uncontrollable. Yes, it kills pests. But it also kills all the pest predators, too. The pests use reproduction as a survival tool, and outreproduce predators, and even DDT. An application of DDT, then, kills off the predators that protect an ecosystem from the pests, and the pests come roaring back, unchecked by nature. The poison is magnified as it rises through the food chain (trophic levels, if you want the science term). By the time an eagle or predator fish eats, it gets a crippling dose of the stuff. By the mid-1960s, insects and arachnid pests around the world had begun to show resistance and even immunity to DDT (bedbugs demonstrated resistance by 1950; some are completely immune to DDT; almost all mosquitoes now carry multiple copies of a gene which allows mosquitoes to digest DDT as a nutrient, doing no harm). The restrictions on DDT had nothing to do with human cancers, but everything to do with saving crops and forests, and the wildlife that lives there. Crichton pulls an old bait-and-switch when he claims regulators knew DDT “wasn’t carcinogenic and banned it anyway.” The regulators knew it might be a weak carcinogen, but they did not know it spreads through the environment and lasts almost forever, contaminating even human breast milk for at least six decades after application. But this was not their concern. The dangers of carcinogenicity were on top of the concerns about agriculture and forests and prairies. Regulators acted to save the world we live in, and noted that such action also produced a minor reduction in cancer risk.
- DDT use in Africa never reached the nations where most malaria victims die today, at least not by 1972. The ban on spraying DDT on cotton has nothing to do with malaria rates today, except that contrary to Crichton’s claim, it was the DDT use that aided malaria, not its cessation. So for Crichton to claim that stopping the use of DDT on U.S. cotton crops led to a rise in malaria in Africa is a stretch of evidence way, way beyond any logical link. Chaos theory only jokingly suggests the butterfly’s fluttering in Beijing last month affects weather in New York this month. Boll weevils in the U.S. don’t carry malaria anyway, let alone fly to Africa to infect children there.
- Crichton dogmatically insists smoke is not a health hazard to non-smokers. You won’t find much research to back his claim. It’s another claim he makes religiously, on belief, not on evidence. He can tell us second-hand smoke is not dangerous, but he can’t back the claim with evidence. (Dangers of second-hand smoke have been well known since the 1970s; when Orrin Hatch got the law passed to switch to four, rotating warnings on cigarette packages, the debate was whether to include a fifth warning of second-hand smoke.)
- Urbanization figures cited by Crichton are low, and do not consider the damage done by urbanization to non-urban lands. Low? In one study, planners looked at Tippecanoe County, Indiana. Recently, urban land use there rose from 8% to 12% — starting from a baseline larger than Crichton allows. Crichton might argue that counties in North Dakota lose people, but the pollution and erosion from the urbanization in West LaFayette, Indiana, cannot be offset by relatively stable rural areas 600 miles away (I’m plucking a figure out of my hat), in a completely different watershed, in a completely different airshed, in a completely different climate, in a different economy. Any soldier or farmer can tell you that concentrating activities of people in a smaller area multiplies the impacts. If you have 40 cows roaming over 6 acres, you don’t need to worry so much about where they leave their pies, or the concentration of ammonia in their urine. If you put those same 40 cows in one small pen, however, you’ve just created a runoff problem, and health problems for the cows and the people who handle them. Wholly apart from the numbers games, the facts show that urbanization increases the need for green and wild space for the people who move into the cities. Two different presidential commissions reporting 25 years apart noted the needs, and the needs are only more fierce now (the link is to an article by Charles Jordan, who was one of the commissioners on the President’s Commission on Americans Outdoors which reported in 1987, the second of the two studies referred to — see Jordan’s article for full details).
- If the Sahara is shrinking, that doesn’t help much. South of the Sahara, in Niger, an area the size of Luxembourg is lost to desertification every year. Deserts are advancing in Arizona, California, China (both the Gobi and the Taklamakan), and across the rest of Central Asia to Africa. If the Sahara is shrinking, that’s probably good. It’s not enough to suggest that desertification is not a problem, even in North Africa. Ultimately, it’s not how much land is affected, but rather it is the effects themselves, and how they affect humans. Desertification — which is defined by international agencies as the degradation of land — affects 16.5 million people in Europe alone. According to the UN, desertification threatens the lives and livlihoods of about out of every six people on Earth — 1.2 billion people total. How does the Sahara’s shrinking help them? Is Crichton just pulling another bait-and-switch?
- The total ice on Antarctica is increasing because the waters around the icy continent are warming — “lake effect” increases snowfall when increased evaporation from warmer waters is carried by the air over land. The rather dramatic increases in ice pack on parts of Antarctica are stark testimony to the ill effects of global warming.
- If Crichton is right, and no existing technology will allow us to reduce carbon emissions, then we need to hit the panic button, not the snooze button.
Those are just the factual errors in two paragraphs. Environmentalism as religion? Maybe that would be a good idea, if the religion honored accuracy and truth telling, rather than fictional accounts of what is going on on Dear Old Planet Earth.
I enjoyed Michael Crichton’s writing, and I hope his stories inspire kids to work at a life in science. But, as with Caesar, as Antony noted, the bad stuff people do lives on past them. Let’s change that for Crichton – kill the bad stuff, keep the good stuff.
The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones.William Shakespeare
Julius Caesar, Act III, Scene 2
Update, April 4, 2013: American Elephants, a blog that isn’t about elephants, isn’t about their conservation, and in my view, isn’t much about America, either, fell victim to Crichton’s errors, all these months later. Plenty of time to get the story right since 2008, but American Elephants couldn’t do it. American Elephants is too often an example of the Dunning Kruger effect, alas.
Other sites that still get it wrong, five and six years later:
- Michael Crichton: ‘Al Gore Is Wrong About Global Warming’ (dailybail.com)
- Green Luddites (possil.wordpress.com)
2 Comments | Accuracy, DDT, Environmental protection, History, Junk science, Malaria, Politics, Science, Voodoo history, Voodoo science | Tagged: bogus science, DDT, environmentalism, Junk science, Malaria, Michael Crichton, Politics, Science, Voodoo history, Voodoo science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Beating malaria without DDT
November 3, 2008I told you so.
Recent research and assessments of anti-malaria campaigns in Africa show dramatic results from the use of bed nets and other non-DDT spraying methods.
Rachel Carson was right.
I was compelled to jump into this issue when Utah’s U.S. Rep. Rob Bishop made a silly and incorrect statement against Rachel Carson, after his failed attempt to derail a bill to rename a post office in her honor on the 100th anniversary of her birth. The slam-Rachel-Carson effort turned out to include Oklahama U.S. Sen. Tom Coburn (who has since recanted), and an array of anti-science types who rail against “environmentalists” and made astoundingly false claims against Carson’s work and Carson herself.
In those cases, Carson’s critics called for a return of massive spraying of DDT. Eventually most of them backed off of calling for outdoor spraying. Eventually Sen. Coburn lifted his hold on the post office renaming legislation (and it passed).
The calumny continued on the internet, however, with an active hoax campaign for DDT and against environmental protection and Rachel Carson. Steven Milloy joined Lyndon Larouche in promoting the anti-Carson screeds of the late Dr. Gordon Edwards, a UC Davis entomologist who argued against science that DDT was harmless to humans and animals.
Enough about history. Look at the real results on the ground, today:
First, note the study published in Lancet that documents a dramatic decrease in malaria in Gambia, using “low-cost” strategies that include bed nets. Agence France Presse carried a summary of the study. [Another link to the same AFP article.]
Incidence of malaria in Gambia has plunged thanks to an array of low-cost strategies, offering the tempting vision of eliminating this disease in parts of Africa, a study published Friday by The Lancet said.
At four key monitoring sites in the small West African state, the number of malarial cases fell by between 50 percent and 82 percent between 2003 and 2007, its authors found.
The tally of deaths from malaria, recorded at two hospitals where there had been a total of 29 fatalities out of 232 admissions in 2003, fell by nine-tenths and 100 percent in 2007. A fall of 100 percent means that no deaths attributed to malaria occurred that year.
“A large proportion of the malaria burden has been alleviated in Africa,” the study concludes.
Also see:
- Reuters article on the study, which cautions that reductions mean people still die of malaria, so more needs to be done.
- Story from IntheNews.UK
- Canadian Broadcasting Company story, “Bed nets pay off with plunge in malaria rates in Gambia“
- Abstract of the study, in The Lancet
Second, note that malaria rates also fell in Kenya, with a shift in infections away from young children, a very good sign. TropIKA.net carried a summary of that study.
“We had to stay home and tend the sick – you can never leave them to go and work in the fields – and then there was no income and we were hungry. So truly, that 100 shillings was a great investment.”
The family heard about the importance of using a bed net to fend off malaria in a sermon at church, and then on the radio. Now, a year later, they would be able to get them for free, as Kenya ramps up its efforts to get every single citizen sleeping under a net.
Already, two-thirds of Kenyan children are sleeping beneath them and, as a result, child malaria deaths have fallen by 40 per cent in the past two years.
This remarkable success story has been repeated across much of Africa: Deaths of children under 5 declined 66 per cent in Rwanda from 2005 to 2007 and by 51 per cent in Ethiopia.
“This really is the one global public-health story that is simply and straightforwardly positive,” said Jon Lidén, spokesman for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, which has been behind much of the push.
“It’s not a gradual change. It’s a fundamental change in the fight against malaria.”
Yet the decidedly unglamorous innovations responsible for the change – spraying houses, treating standing water to kill larvae, mass distribution of cheap polyester nets and better drugs, and simple public education on the need to treat suspected malaria quickly – receive almost no attention.
“We never make the headlines with this stuff,” said Shanaaz Sharif, head of disease control for Kenya’s Ministry of Health, which has thus far given out 11 million nets at a cost to the government of $6 each.
From the Toronto Globe and Mail: “Sulay Momoh Jongo, 7, is seen inside a mosquito net in a mud hut is seen inside a mosquito net in a mud hut in Mallay village, southern Sierra Leone, on April 8, 2008. Although free treatment is sometimes available in Sierra Leone to fight the mosquito-borne disease — whose deadliest strain is common in the country’s mangrove swamps and tropical forests — many cannot get to health clinics in time. Worldwide, more than 500 million people become severely ill with malaria every year. One child dies of the disease every 30 seconds. Picture taken April 8, 2008. (Katrina Manson/Reuters)”
Despite pledges from the U.S. to signficantly increase funding to fight malaria, money has not flowed from the U.S., especially for bed nets. Ironically, Canada is the chief donor of the nets.
Canada has had a key role in this success: The Canadian International Development Agency is the single largest donor of bed nets to Africa – nearly 6.4 million by the end of last year. In addition to government support, Canadian individuals and charities – notably the Red Cross – have embraced the issue by making donations and fundraising.
“Canadians … haven’t got the credit they deserve,” said Prudence Smith, head of advocacy for Roll Back Malaria, a partnership between key global-health agencies and donors such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Not all news is good. In Zimbabwe, dictator Robert Mugabe misused $7.3 million in malaria-fighting money from the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. So far, he has not repaid the Global Fund. Politics continues to kill Africans, not an absence of DDT.
In India, where DDT use is untallied, manufacture massive, and use virtually uncontrolled, malaria is resurgent. According to The Telegraph in Calcutta, malaria is epidemic among people living in poorer sections of the city, often with fatal results. ExpressIndia.com’s headline tells the story: “Malaria puts city on the edge: toll rises to 8.”
See also:
- Times of India reports “Panic breeds in fever pockets”
- The Statesman reports a death of a 23-year-old breeds local panic
In the Philippines, the government’s press agency promotes malaria prevention steps.
Science Daily reports progress in the long march for a malaria vaccine.
Public health officials warn the U.S. is completely unprepared for a malaria outbreak, according to The Orlando Sentinel, via the Houston Chronicle.
More:
6 Comments | Africa, Conservation, Cost of Green, DDT, Health care, History, Hoaxes, Junk science, Malaria, Politics, Public health, Science, Voodoo science | Tagged: Africa, DDT, Foreign Aid, Health care, Hoaxes, India, Junk science, Malaria, Public health, Rachel Carson, Science, Voodoo science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Solid research on controlling malaria
October 20, 2008Looking for other things, I stumbled into two research journal articles on the fight against malaria. Neither calls for a return to broadcast spraying of DDT; neither claims the ban on agricultural use of DDT had any significant effect on the rise of malaria.
Both are loaded with serious research that exposes DDT advocates as charlatans.
SUMMARY: Malaria is among the oldest of diseases. In one form or another, it has infected and affected our ancestors since long before the origin of the human line. During our recent evolution, its influence has probably been greater than that of any other infectious agent. Here we attempt to trace the forms and impacts of malaria from a distant past through historical times to the present. In the last sections, we review the current burdens of malaria across the world and discuss present-day approaches to its management. Only by following, or attempting to follow, malaria throughout its evolution and history can we understand its character and so be better prepared for our future management of this ancient ill.
Second, from Joel G. Bremen, Martin S. Alilio, and Anne Mills, “Conquering the Intolerable Burden of Malaria: What’s New, What’s Needed: A Summary,” Am. J. Trop. Med. Hyg., 71(2 suppl), 2004, pp. 1-15 (The American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygeine).
High school kids, there are the sources you need for your papers on the fight against malaria.
Leave a Comment » | Africa, DDT, Environmental protection, Health care, History, Science | Tagged: Africa, DDT, Environmental protection, health, History, Malaria, Science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Malaria/DDT Carnival addendum
October 11, 2008It’s almost as interesting that these posts show up on the same day, as what they say.
Following on the heels of the impromptu Malaria/DDT carnival earlier in the week, take a look at these posts:
- From My Garden – A Kiwi Gardener’s Green Blog, a note that the bees have gone missing in New Zealand, too, and some conjecture on why.
- From :the flash advancer, an announcement of pending publication of a study showing links between pesticide exposure and neurological disease.
This new research shows that farmers who used agricultural insecticides experienced increased neurological symptoms, even when they were no longer using the products. Data from 18,782 North Carolina and Iowa farmers linked use of insecticides, including organophosphates and organochlorines, to reports of reoccurring headaches, fatigue, insomnia, dizziness, nausea, hand tremors, numbness and other neurological symptoms. Some of the insecticides addressed by the study are still on the market, but some, including DDT, have been banned or restricted.
These findings will be available online in April, and published in the June issue of Environmental Health Perspectives. The research is part of the ongoing Agricultural Health Study funded by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and the National Cancer Institute, two of the National Institutes of Health, and the Environmental Protection Agency.
- From Dear Thyroid, a meditation on continuing remission of thyroid cancer. The author wonders whether running through DDT sprays as a child contributed to the thyroid cancer. Interesting thought — thyroid cancers are almost common among downwind victims of the fallout from U.S. atmospheric atom bomb tests, but I am unaware of links to DDT. I’ve asked the author for more information.
- From Sociolingo’s Africa, the press release from Africa Fighting Malaria (AFM) complaining about European Union regulations of pesticides, claiming that such regulations make availability of pesticides difficult for malaria fighters in Africa. AFM is Roger Tren’s organization, Tren being one of the foremost frothers against Rachel Carson and rational restrictions on DDT use. The petition seems to make no sense, other than offering an opportunity for a press release against environmentalists. Again, I’ve asked the blogger for more details, if any.
2 Comments | Africa, DDT, Environmental justice, Environmental protection, Health care, Malaria, Politics, Science | Tagged: Africa, DDT, Environmental protection, Health care, Malaria, Politics, Science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Carnival of Fighting Malaria (and DDT)
October 8, 2008It’s been about a year since the first, completely impromptu Carnival of DDT. Last fall, in October and November, there was enough going on about DDT to merit something like a blog carnival, with a second in November.
My news searches today turned up a number of items of interest in DDT and fighting malaria — enough to merit another summary post, IMHO. Here goes.
First, Tim Lambert at Deltoid sets straight the history of the policy of the World Health Organization (WHO) with regard to DDT use, and whether WHO caved in to pressures from environmentalists to completely ban DDT, as Roger Bate had earlier, erroneously said. Tim has a number of well-researched, well-reasoned posts on DDT and health; people researching the issue should be sure to visit the archives of his blog. But for today, make sure you read “Roger Bates’ false history.”
Ornithologist Tom Cade holds a gyrfalcon, which is larger than the peregrine falcons he helped to preserve. Now working to aid the revival of the California condors, he will speak Friday (October 10) at Hawk Mountain Sanctuary. Allentown (Pennsylvania) Morning-Call
(Photo above has gone missing; see photo below)
Ornithologist Tom Cade, with a falcon; photo by Kate Davis, from Cade’s biography at Global Raptors
This Friday the Hawk Mountain Sanctuary presents an award to Tom Cade, the Boise, Idaho guy credited with doing much to save the endangered peregrine falcon. You can read about it in the Allentown, Pennsylvania, Morning Call.
Cade played a major role in reviving the nearly extinct peregrine falcon in the 1970s. As a graduate student, he studied how a pesticide contributed to their sharp population decline. He eventually founded a conservation group, The Peregrine Fund, which reintroduced captivity-bred birds to the wild.
. . . The falcon’s revival is widely considered one of the most successful recoveries of an endangered species. The species teetered on the brink of extinction in 1970, when as few as 39 known pairs of nesting falcons existed. A 2003 survey puts the number of nesting pairs at more than 3,100.
On Thursday Cade will receive the Sarkis Acopian Award for Distinguished Achievement in Raptor Conservation. According to The Morning Call, “The award is given infrequently by Hawk Mountain officials and is named after the Kempton-area bird sanctuary’s primary benefactor, a late philanthropist who studied engineering at Lafayette College.”
Also, see this story about the recovery of peregrines in Canada, from the Sudbury Star.
Bug Girl tells the story of a new documentary on the Michigan State University professor who documented the deaths of songbirds made famous in Rachel Carson’s book, Silent Spring. Dr. George J. Wallace’s work became the subject of an article in Environmental Journalism in 2005. Students and faculty at MSU’s Knight Center for Environmental Journalism produced the movie, “Dying to Be Heard.” Be sure to check out the comments at Bug Girl, for more information.
International health care expert
Early detection and treatment is critical to eliminate the parasite carriers. An important aspect of this project has been the collaboration of voluntary community health workers who are taught to make an early diagnosis in situ and to administer complete courses of treatment not only to those affected but also to the patients’ immediate contacts.
The project was carried out in specific pilot areas called “demonstration areas” which had been selected due to their high levels of malaria transmission. In those areas, the number of malaria cases fell 63% from 2004 to 2007. In several demonstration areas I visited in Honduras and Mexico as a consultant for the Pan American Health Organization malaria had practically been eliminated. Plans are underway to expand the project to other regions where malaria remains a serious threat.
One of the advantages of not using DDT (besides avoiding its toxic effects) is the enormous savings realized from discontinuing its routine use. These savings can now be put to good use with other diseases.
You might also want to view Chelala’s description of solutions for public health crises in Africa, at The Globalist.
Chelala’s cool, clear and accurate reporting sadly contrasts with the hysteric and wrong reporting at Newsbusters and other polemical outlets on the web, seemingly bent on perpetration of the hoax that DDT is harmless and Rachel Carson was wrong.
Meanwhile, from Uganda comes news that DDT spraying failed to reduce malaria in spraying done in that nation. Proponents expected a sharp and steep decline in malaria, but numbers are not greatly reduced. Even after taking account for the legal difficulties of spraying, after conservative businessmen sought an injunction to stop DDT use, the results do not speak well for DDT’s effectiveness.
Contrary to expectations, data collected by health departments in Apac and Oyam districts, which record the highest malaria incidence in the world, do not reflect significant improvements since DDT spraying ended prematurely. From May to July 2008, which is the period immediately following the spraying, between 400 and 600 clinical malaria cases per 100,000 of the population were reported per week in Oyam; and 600 to 800 such cases in Apac for the same period. These are almost exactly the same as the number of cases reported between January and April 2008.
Getting news out of Africa is not always easy. Reading reports from Ugandan papers, it becomes clear that reporting standards differ greatly from the U.S. to Uganda. Still, the saga from Uganda demonstrates that DDT is no panacea. Uganda is a nation that had not used DDT extensively prior to the mid-1960s. Resistance to use now comes from tobacco and cotton interests who speciously claim that potential DDT contamination of crops would result in the European Union banning vital Ugandan exports. The legal issues all alone assume Shakespearean tragedy dimensions. Or, perhaps more accurately, we could call the story Kafkaesque.
See also:
- “Bukenya roots for indoor spraying” (Uganda’s vice president)
- “Uganda, UK in joint anti-malaria campaign“
- “Government must focus on malaria prevention” (editorial)
- “Will DDT save northern Uganda,” from Ethiopian Review
Happily, we have evidence that younger people show concern about DDT pollution, in a story about the stuff in Teen Ink magazine.
A study in the UK finds DDT present in colostrum, the vital pre-milk substance newly-lactating mothers create for their babies, as well as in later breast milk.
Bed bugs continue their own surge on Americans, and knee-jerk writers editorialize for the return of DDT, completely unaware that bed bugs are among those critters most resistant to DDT, and unaware that there are other, more effective solutions.
James McWilliams writes in The Texas Observer that most of us are ecological illiterates, which makes control of pollution more difficult, in a review of a new book, The Gulf Stream. Canny readers will recognize McWilliams as the author of the recently-published book, American Pests: Our Losing War on Insects from Colonial Times to DDT.
Sandra Steingraber will lecture on November 11 in Philadelphia on “The Many Faces of DDT,” part of a series of lectures sponsored by the Chemical Heritage Foundation, “Molecules That Matter.” Steingraber is the author of Living Downstream: An ecologist looks at cancer and the environment.
Canada’s Leader-Post reports that Chinese food processors have been caught using DDT in food to reduce insect infestations. The cycle starts all over again.
Time for this carnival’s midway to shut down for the night. Don’t let the bed bugs bite.
3 Comments | Accuracy, Africa, Books, DDT, Environmental protection, Health care, Hoaxes, Malaria, Politics, Rachel Carson, Science, Voodoo science, War on Science | Tagged: Africa, Books, DDT, Environmental protection, health, Hoaxes, Malaria, Politics, pollution, Rachel Carson, Science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
DDT results disappointing in Uganda
October 3, 2008October 2008 — Uganda is nearing the end of the season when the national health service sprays DDT inside homes to discourage mosquitoes from biting, and spreading malaria. Results from DDT use this year show no improvement over the previous year, and in some cases malaria rates are higher.
BBC map of Uganda, showing Apac Province. Apac is victim to terrorism by the “Lord’s Resistance Army” and other armed bandits, as well as being the most malaria-ridden area of the world.
The story from The Observer in Kampala, via All-Africa.com news, provides some of the details, but little analysis to be debated. Is the failure of the program due to partial implementation, since implementation was resisted by businesses and cotton farmers? Or is DDT simply ineffective? It’s nearly impossible to tell from data available so far.
Below the fold, the story in its entirety.
2 Comments | Africa, DDT, Health care, Malaria, Politics, Science, Voodoo science | Tagged: Africa, DDT, health, Malaria, Politics, Science, Uganda, Voodoo science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 