Consider the chemical DDT. I’m sure, if you’ve heard anything at all about DDT, it’s that it’s a horrible, deadly chemical, that must be banned to preserve the public’s safety. The truth is, the only thing DDT affects are mosquitos. Not humans. In fact, I’m old enough to remember trucks pulling through our neighborhood and spraying the stuff into the air, like gigantic clouds, bringing death – to the mosquito population. These clouds of DDT harmed no one. There were no great increases in any kind of cancer or other fatal diseases – and certainly none that could be associated with DDT. Enter the book, Silent Spring.
A woman by the name of Rachel Carson wrote a book that vilified DDT, and blamed our love of chemical solutions for her own cancer. (She died of breast cancer two years after the publication of her book.) Silent Spring is almost single-handedly credited with triggering a worldwide ban on DDT. The result of this ban has been, paradoxically enough, millions of deaths in countries like Ethiopia, where malaria kills due to mosquito infestations. U.S. aid policy bans sending money to any country that chooses to spray with DDT.
How did Silent Spring cause this wave of destruction? Marketing. The book was marketed by it’s publishers. The marketing efforts attracted the attention of a mainstream media hungry for stories that scare the populace to death. The unwashed masses Demanded That Something Be Done. Politicians, eager to grandstand (and free of conciences that might give them pause to think about the Law of Unintended Consequences) passed laws, and that was that.
Here’s what I wrote in comments to the post at Grokmedia, which appears to have gone into their own hell for any post that disagrees with their views:
Stossel said that about DDT? Once again, he’s gone off the rails.
Do you seriously think that a book publisher with its meager PR budget could derail a multi-billion-dollar pesticide manufacturing industry that was led by several of America’s top 100 corporations? Do you think corporations are really that incompetent at the public relations game?
The truth is that DDT was banned because of its harm to the environment, not due to its dangers to human health (though, to be perfectly accurate we should note that every cancer-fighting agency on Earth says DDT is a probably human carcinogen, and recent research has strengthened the links between cancer in people exposed to DDT in their mother’s breast milk and in utero, and that DDT is now known to be a rather nasty endocrine disruptor in all animals). More than a thousand studies confirmed the dangers of DDT to birds and other predators higher up in food chains, especially in estuarine waters.
No one passed a law banning DDT. If the action was popular, that was beside the point. In 1962, in response to the half-million-dollar slander campaign against Carson by the pesticide manufacturers (don’t take my word for it — look it up), President Kennedy asked his Science Advisory Council to scrutinize the book. In May 1963 they reported back that Carson was correct on all counts but one — they said Carson went too easy on the dangers of DDT, and that action needed to be taken right away to stop its use. Kennedy dallied, however, and did little before he died.
The “ban” on DDT came nearly a decade later, in 1972. It was not due to any “junk science” law (an interesting claim since it is based on junk science itself). Two federal courts had ordered EPA to speed up its analysis of the registration of the pesticide, in lieu of simply ordering the stuff off the market after two entirely different lawsuits. Pesticide manufacturers had been defendants in both lawsuits, and they put up a more than vigorous fight — but they lost on the science.
EPA dragged its feet, but finally acted against DDT in 1972, effectively banning the broadcast spraying of DDT on crops, but leaving it available for things like malaria control. Of course the ruling was challenged in court, since under U.S. law, had the ruling been only popular, and not based on considerable evidence, the courts would have been obligated to nullify the ruling. In two separate challenges, the courts ruled that EPA’s action was solidly based on the scientific evidence, and therefore would stand.
That’s quite a bit different from the picture Stossel paints, I gather. Is this, perhaps, his first foray into fiction?
And, did you catch the contradictions? The author claims mosquito abatement in Ethiopia is hampered by a lack of U.S. aid, as a result of Rachel Carson’s book in 1962. Do they know that George Bush is president? Do they really think Bush and Cheney are tools of Rachel Carson? Do they know that bed nets have cut malaria rates by half where they were used in Ethiopia?
Looks like another example of DDT poisoning to me.
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Pause for a moment on World Mosquito Day to reflect on the little bloodsucker that probably causes more human suffering than any other organism. Observed annually today, August 20, World Mosquito Day originated in 1897 by Dr. Ronald Ross of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, according to the American Mosquito Control Association, a nonprofit based in New Jersey.
Ross is credited with the discovery of the transmission of malaria by the mosquito, and was honored with a Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1902.
But malaria is not the only disease spread by mosquitoes. There’s also West Nile virus, various strains of encephalitis, Dengue Fever, Rift Valley Fever, Yellow Fever.
This is probably as close to we can come to know what’s going on inside Uganda, especially with regard to malaria and efforts to fight it there. Go see Mars and Aesculapius, “World Malaria Day.”
As you can see, simply pumping DDT into the countryside is unlikely to solve the problems.
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Is there any western news agency with a stringer in Kampala who could chase this story down? Beck and Reynolds still offer no evidence to back their odd claims, but the story could sure benefit from a solid chunk of reporting from BBC, or Reuters, or Agence France Presse, or someone who could talk with the EU and Uganda officials.
If so, this is one of the final barriers to use of U.S. funds for DDT use. Oddly, the news report offers no details on when or where the contract was made.
DDT use in Uganda was halted pending a suit by Uganda agricultural businesses to stop the spraying. The contract discussed would allow purchase of other insecticides to be used in place of DDT for IRS.
It’s important to note that no environmental organizations have expressed opposition to the limited use of DDT in IRS applications. It may be significant to note that the programs involving indoor spraying fall into the category of integrated pest management, which is what Rachel Carson urged in her 1962 book, Silent Spring.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Biochemistry professor Mary Schuler and postdoctoral researcher Sanjeewa Rupasinghe used molecular modeling techniques to identify a protein that can metabolize DDT.Photo by L. Brian Stauffer, University of Illinois News Bureau.
It’s good news in mosquito research, and may someday provide some insight into how to kill mosquitoes that seem to be resistant to DDT.
But, for all those DDT advocates out there, isn’t this rather embarrassing? Here these researchers have discovered the molecular level mechanisms for a process that the DDT apologists claim doesn’t happen. Oops. Rachel Carson proven right, once again.
There they are, caught red- and bumpy-handed.
Press release text from the University of Illinois below the fold.
DDT advocates continue to smear Rachel Carson and “environmental groups” with a campaign of made up calumny. To the frustration of scientists, health officials and the gods of fairness, these people continue to get credence from people who should know better, like the contributors at the Volokh Conspiracy (Quiggin and Lambert are the good guys, if you’re not following closely).
Reality is a different story. Business interests appear to have started a false rumor that someone stole a massive quantity of DDT from Uganda’s mosquito control program in an attempt to make the mosquito control guys look incompetent and dangerous. From The Monitor in Kampala, via allAfrica.com:
21 May 2008 Posted to the web 21 May 2008
Safina Nambafu
Kampala
The Ministry of Health has denied reports that some people were last week arrested in possession of stolen DDT drugs in Oyam District.
The head of the Malaria Control Programme, Dr Rwakimari, said it was the detractors of the campaign that are inciting the public to spread falsified information.
He was addressing the press at the ministry headquarters on Monday.
Dr Rwakimari said some local leaders are trying to fail the DDT campaign yet over 94% of the district had successfully been sprayed as of last Monday. Last week, civil society organisations led by the National Association of Professional Environmentalists [Nape] held a half day sensitization meeting with stakeholders in Kampala where they collectively condemned the government for carrying out the exercise.
They claimed that many of the crew members had reported strange illnesses, which they fear could have been caused by exposure to DDT. Dr Rwakimari said the government would not just look on as individuals de-campaign the exercise, adding that DDT was being sprayed in eight district in an effort to fight malaria.
Erute North MP Charles Angiro Gutomoi told Daily Monitor that he was bitter that government had had sprayed DDT, saying the exercise threatens the food market.
Effective malaria fighting uses only small quantities of DDT, in a few places, on a few occasions. The fight also requires use of screens and nets to protect people at night, when the mosquitoes are active in feeding. The New York Times featured a story on the successful Nothing But Nets program today — not a government-run program, not a program favored by the Rachel Carson critics, but a useful and necessary program.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Steve Milloy and an entire host of DDT denialists hope you never read any newspaper from Africa. Your ignorance is their best argument.
If you don’t read African newspapers, they can continue to blame environmentalists for any case of malaria that occurs in Africa. They’ll claim, though it’s not true, that environmentalists urged a complete ban on the use of DDT. They’ll argue, falsely, that African governments were bullied into not using DDT by environmentalists, ignoring the fact that some African nations have just never been able to get their kit together to conduct an anti-malaria campaign, while other nations discovered DDT was ineffective — and most of the nations have no love for environmentalists anyway (Idi Amin? Jomo Kenyatta? Who does Milloy think he’s kidding?).
If you don’t read African newspapers, you’ll miss stories like this one, from the Daily Times in Malawi, that say it’s Milloy’s old friends in the tobacco business who stand in the way of modest use of DDT.
If you don’t read African newspapers, you’ll miss stories like this one, from New Vision in Kampala, Uganda, that say it’s the cotton farmers who stand in the way of modest use of DDT.
If Steven Milloy wanted to get DDT used against malaria in Africa, in indoor residual spraying (IRS) campaigns, all he has to do is pick up the phone and ask his friends to allow it to be done.
Someone who will lie to you about their friends’ misdeeds, and try to pin it on a nice old lady like Rachel Carson, will go Charles Colson one better: They’ll walk over your grandmother to do what they want to do. In fact, they’ll go out of their way to walk over your grandmother.
World Malaria Day passed yesterday (see immediately previous post). News articles and blog articles educating people about malaria and how to fight it increased modestly.
Now it’s back to the grind. Malaria is killing hundreds of thousands. Some people are interested in using those deaths for political gain, to get economic gain, at the expense of the dead and others whose deaths could be prevented.
In order to fight malaria, the world has come around to the tactics of fighting the mosquitoes that transmit it from human to human that were advocated by naturalist and author Rachel Carson, in her book on pesticides and other hydrocarbon chemicals, Silent Spring.
Carson realized that poisoning the air, water and soil could not work to stop disease, ultimately. She sounded the alarm with her book in 1962. In the 1950s DDT became ineffective against bedbugs. By the middle 1960s, resistance and immunity to DDT by malaria-carrying mosquitoes was almost world wide. The attempt to “eradicate malaria” collapsed when mosquitoes became resistant, coupled with the failure of too many nations to get an anti-malaria program up and running — and the disease came roaring back when the malaria parasites themselves became resistant to the pharmaceuticals used to treat the disease in humans.
New strides against malaria have been made with the creation of new pharmaceutical regimens to kill the parasites in humans, and the adoption of the rigorous, Rachel Carson-advocated programs of integrated pest management to control insects that are a necessary part of the malaria parasites’ life cycle.
Unfortunately, about 6 out of every ten stories done on mosquitoes and malaria in the past year have scoriated Carson as wrong on the science (she was not), and as a “killer of children” despite the millions her work is saving. There is a big business in spreading false tales about DDT, about malaria, and about Rachel Carson.
Who would do such a thing? I call your attention to Uganda, where modest use of DDT in Indoor Residual Spraying (IRS) was started earlier this month despite lots of loud protests — from businesses. Tobacco and other big business agriculture interests opposed spraying DDT in homes. Why?
It’s silly. But tobacco interests are mad at the World Health Organization for campaigning against cigarette smoking. To frustrate WHO’s pro-health, anti-tobacco campaign, tobacco companies started attacking WHO for being “soft on malaria” about a decade ago. The idea was that, if the case could be made that WHO was lacking in credibility, no one would listen to WHO about tobacco.
In the fight against malaria, the bad guy, the villain, is malaria; malaria’s unwitting henchmen are mosquitoes. Good science and good information, coupled with consistent governmental action to improve health care, are the good guys. Rachel Carson is one of the good guys.
When you see a piece that says Rachel Carson is part of the problem, you’ve found a piece written by a tempter, or a dupe, or maybe just someone who isn’t thinkingabout the issues. Don’t give money to that person’s organization to promote junk science and political calumny. Don’t waiver in your resolve against malaria — find another, good charity, to give your money, time and effort to. The Global Fund is a good group for contributing. Africa Fighting Malaria spends a lot of time asking bloggers and reporters to write dubious stories against Rachel Carson and environmentalists, and not enough time or effort against malaria. I do not recommend Africa Fighting Malaria as a recipient of your money.
Information, science, action: Fighting malaria requires we keep our wits and reason about us, and act.
New Vision in Kampala reports that a local council has rejected DDT use, and told Uganda’s government the reasons why:
Bundibugyo district council has rejected the Government’s programme of indoor residual spraying of DDT.
During a council meeting last Wednesday, the councillors argued that the anti-malaria project would scare away organic cocoa buyers.
According to the LC5 chairman, Jackson Bambalira, Olam and Esko, the cocoa buyers, threatened to stop buying the produce if the area was sprayed with DDT.
“We know that malaria is a number one killer disease in our district but we have no option. The Government should look for another alternative of containing malaria by supplying mosquito nets but not spraying DDT.”
How many stories like this have to appear before the anti-environmentalists stop their unholy campaign against Rachel Carson? Complaining, falsely, about evils of environmentalism doesn’t save anyone from malaria, especially when it’s not environmentalists blocking the campaign against the disease.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
News comes out of Kampala that the delay in implementing the use of DDT in a Rachel Carson-approved program of integrated pest management — for indoor residual spraying only — faces strong opposition.
From environmentalists? No, you’ll recall that Environmental Defense, the group that led the fight for a ban on broadcast use of DDT in the U.S. has been pressuring the Bush administration and others to use DDT appropriately for years.
“Zero tolerance on DDT spraying is the feeling of the private sector. Even at the East African Community DDT is a condemned chemical. Government should look for other alternatives,” Mr David Lule, the managing director of Hortexa, a horticultural exporting association to the EU [European Union], said.
Don’t look for corrections or apologies from the pro-poison lobbyists yet. Junk “scientist” Steven Milloy, the “Competitive Enterprise Institute” (which claims to represent businesses) and others have yet to correct any of the many errors they’ve made in their slash-and-burn campaign for poisoning Africa. Why would they change now?
Controversy again swirls around DDT, with a large industry campaign again after the reputation of Rachel Carson just the same as in 1963 — though Ms. Carson has been dead since 1964. The disinformation campaign also impugns environmentalists, health care workers (especially if they’ve ever worked for the World Health Organization), Al Gore (there is no rationale), and when the minions think they can get away with it, it impugns bed nets and stagnant pool draining.
This public relations campaign against Rachel Carson enjoys a great deal of success. Oklahoma’s Sen. Tom Coburn, who seems never to have met an insult to a scientist he couldn’t use, successfully stopped the U.S. Senate from passing a bill naming a post office in honor of Rachel Carson, one of Coburn’s greatest legislative achievements. Several people in Congress, including Utah’s Rep. Rob Bishop, were similarly hornswoggled.
This conference could put real, accurate information in front of the public.
Are my expectations way too high? I hope reporting from this conference might inject sanity, comity, humility and courtesy back into the discussions of how to treat malaria, and whether DDT should ever be used.
DDT can interfere with the feedback loop in the pituitary gland, which releases the milk-producing hormone prolactin. Studies show that exposure to DDT at critical points in pregnancy or just after childbirth can reduce the output of breast milk, or even dry it up. In such instances the mother will turn to formula, which is expensive. And in Africa formula feeding often leads to another death sentence for babies: diarrhea (infants have no immunity to the microbes that abound in contaminated drinking water throughout much of the continent). Here, then, exposure to DDT may cause as swift and bleak an outcome as exposure to a mosquito.
On Earth is a publication of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).
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Or, until that account is unsuspended by the forces supporting Donald Trump: Follow @FillmoreWhite, the account of the Millard Fillmore White House Library
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Retired teacher of law, economics, history, AP government, psychology and science. Former speechwriter, press guy and legislative aide in U.S. Senate. Former Department of Education. Former airline real estate, telecom towers, Big 6 (that old!) consultant. Lab and field research in air pollution control.
My blog, Millard Fillmore's Bathtub, is a continuing experiment to test how to use blogs to improve and speed up learning processes for students, perhaps by making some of the courses actually interesting. It is a blog for teachers, to see if we can use blogs. It is for people interested in social studies and social studies education, to see if we can learn to get it right. It's a blog for science fans, to promote good science and good science policy. It's a blog for people interested in good government and how to achieve it.
BS in Mass Communication, University of Utah
Graduate study in Rhetoric and Speech Communication, University of Arizona
JD from the National Law Center, George Washington University
Posted by Ed Darrell 
Biochemistry professor Mary Schuler and postdoctoral researcher Sanjeewa Rupasinghe used molecular modeling techniques to identify a protein that can metabolize DDT. Photo by L. Brian Stauffer, University of Illinois News Bureau.
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 