Bated breath, bated brains, bated sense and DDT

July 11, 2009

At the root of all the false tales about Rachel Carson and DDT there are a handful of sources, all of them with an axe to grind.  In any discussion where someone tries to make a claim that DDT is good but misunderstood, or that Rachel Carson was evil tantamount to Pol Pot, Mao ze Dong and Lex Luther combined, the sources will turn out to be Gordon Edwards, Steven Milloy parroting Gordon Edwards, Elizabeth Whelan, Roger Bate, or Richard Tren.

Oh, there’s that Driessen guy, but he just quotes these other guys, appearing not to bother to check the accuracy of their statements.

Roger Bate in his high-salaried position as a propagandist for AEI.

Roger Bate in his well-paid position as a propagandist for AEI.

Not one of these sources is an expert on DDT or its class of chemicals.  None of them is an entomologist, other than Gordon Edwards, whose productive work in entomology ended well before he fell in with Lyndon LaRouche and other America-hating groups.

It’s a tight-knit bunch, largely out of the sight of reporters and fact-checkers — and definitely out of the sight of scientists who work in either malaria reduction, wildlife management, or toxics control

If you care about science, about the War on Science (you out there, Mooney?), if you care about health care in Africa, Africa, Asia or generally about fighting malaria and saving kids’ lives; if you have any dog in the wise management of natural resources and especially wildlife; if you care about environmental protection, and wise government policies that will protect your children’s and grandchildren’s health and heritage, you need to read this article on Roger Bate. [Article archived here, now; or here.]

Now operating out of the conservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI), Bate’s signature coup to date has been to spread the myth that environmentalists, by preventing the use of the pesticide DDT (Dichloro-Diphenyl-Trichloroethane) to kill mosquitoes in developing countries, have heartlessly caused millions of malaria deaths worldwide. It needs to be said at the outset that this argument is untrue. While some groups have pressed hard to find alternatives, there is little evidence that a concerted effort to abolish anti-malaria DDT spraying ever occurred. Of the few environmental organizations that even pay attention to pesticide use overseas, the ones with any clout all support a clause in the Stockholm Convention that allows DDT use for public health reasons.

The fact that this knowledge has not stopped Roger Bate is not surprising. The wider the untrue story spreads, the worse environmentalists look, and that’s always been his bottom line. For all his personal likeability, he is a man on a mission, and because he doesn’t let anything slow down the pace and scope of his argument, he is very good at what he does.

The story is titled “Bate and Switch: How a free-market magician manipulated two decades of environmental science.”

Adam Sarvana wrote the story for the Public Education Center (PEC), a non-profit center with an investigative journalism experiment based in Washington, D.C.  (Note to newspapers:  You can probably get rights to print this story.)

Quick!  Warn the others:

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5 Comments | Accuracy, Africa, DDT, Health care, Hoaxes, Malaria, Public health, Science, War on Science | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Godwin’s Law overload: Warming denialist calls water conservation “Nazi”

June 30, 2009

You couldn’t sell a fictional story where people are this nutty.

Go see. The abominable Steve Milloy — a guy so wacky he cannot be parodied (take that, Poe!) — calls water conservation “Nazi.” He complains about a provision in the Waxman-Markey Clean Energy Act that encourages innovation in water conservation devices.

Milloy flouts Godwin’s Law right off the bat.  You can’t make this stuff up.

And — may God save us from these people — Milloy has followers.  Check out the graphic here, with Obama portrayed as a marching Brownshirt.  It’s almost too stupid to be racist, but it’s certainly incendiary.  He even admits he thinks saving water is a good idea, and he’d like to have one of the devices complained about. (This guy knows he’s in error — he censors posts that question any part of his rant.) See the ugly meme expand, here.

Girl Scout/EPA water conservation badge -EPA image

Girl Scout/EPA water conservation badge -EPA image

Water conservation equals flag-waving in America, and has done so for a at least a hundred years. Those of us who grew up in the Intermountain West may be a little more attuned to the drive — Hoover Dam, Glen Canyon Dam, Flaming Gorge Dam, the Central Arizona Project, the Central Utah Project, the Colorado River aqueduct that carries water to Los Angeles, it’s impossible to live in the West and not be conscious of water’s value, its precious qualities.

Today, the many benefits of controlling water in this way are evident in the extensive development that has taken place throughout the West over the past 100 years.  Huge cities have been created and millions of people live, work, and recreate in this desert region.  But, as the West continues to grow, we must face the problem of continually increasing demands on a finite supply of water.  This includes human population needs and the needs of the environment.

But one doesn’t need to be from the cold northern desert of southern Idaho to figure out that saving water is a good idea.

Most homeowners would like to save money.  Americans spend between $600 and $1600 for washing machines that cut water usage by up to 75% (we just replaced our two-decades-old Maytag with a water conserving front-loader).  Go to the appliance stores and listen to the conversations.  People who could better afford the $200 models discuss how they will cut costs elsewhere to get the water saving versions — because their water bills are so high.

Much of of the rest of America works to conserve water out of necessity. Texas cities have mandatory water conservation laws, like Temple, Richwood, Austin and Dallas.  Texas rural areas fight to save water, too.  California cities demonstrate that water conservation works, saving investments in ever-grander and more environmentally-damaging water importation schemes, and allowing for population growth where water shortages would otherwise prohibit new homes.  Water conservation is a big deal across the nation:  In Raleigh, North Carolina; in Seminole County, Florida;  in Nebraska; in the State of Maryland.  An April drive across Wisconsin a few years ago convinced me it is the most waterlogged state in the nation, Louisiana notwithstanding — but even in Wisconsin, wise people work to conserve water for agriculture, one of the state’s leading industries and employers.

What’s the next step up from Godwin’s Law?  These guys like Milloy and his camp followers can only get crazier, benignly, if they head to the meadow and graze with the cattle.  Crazier non-benignly?  Let’s not go there.

But let us address the odious comparison to Nazis directly.  In World War II, when freedom was on the line, there was a drive to conserve resources in America.  Americans grew their own vegetables in Victory Gardens.

Poster encouraging patriotic conservation, for the war effort in World War II

Poster encouraging patriotic conservation, for the war effort in World War II

Americans collected scrap metal, iron, copper and aluminum, to be made into war machines to save the world.  Americans conserved rubber and gasoline by restricting automobile use.  There was the famous poster, “When you ride alone, you ride with Hitler.”  Conservation was understood to be a patriotic response to the challenges the nation faced.

Bill Maher updated the poster with his 2005 book, When You Ride Alone You Ride With Bin Laden. Maher urged civic actions like those that helped the U.S. during World War II, including conservation of gasoline and other resources.   Maher understands that wise use of resources is something a people should strive for, especially when in competition with other nations, either in a hot war or in trade or influence.  Conservation remains a patriotic behavior, and opposing conservation remains a call to support the enemies of America, in war, in trade, in policies.

Update of the World War II poster, for our times. Image from Barnes and Noble

Update of the World War II poster, for our times. Image from Barnes and Noble

It’s not just a coincidence that Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts (in conjunction with the U.S. EPA for the past several years) learn water conservation as integral parts of their programs, chartered by Congress, to promote civic leadership in America’s youth.  Those groups charged with teaching actual patriotism understand conservation to be a high duty, a high calling, something that all patriots do.

So, let’s face it.  If you crap on a 6-gallon flushing toilet, you crap with Bin Laden.  When you shower with a non-flow restricting shower head, you shower with Bin Laden.

Yes, it sounds creepy.  It is.

You hope Milloy and the other Neobrownshirts* have parents or other family to pull them back from the brink, but then you see Congress.

*  Yeah, the Nazis were the Brownshirts, in Germany.  In Italy the fascists wore black shirts.  Brown is generally the opposite of green, in political and business parlance — for example, development of a previously undeveloped piece of property is “greenfield development,” while redevelopment of a previously-developed parcel is “brownfield development.”  Since Milloy is opposed to anything “green,” I think it only fair that his shirt color match his politics.  It’s his choice, after all.

Well, what about you, Climate Change Skeptics?

"Well, what about you, Climate Change 'Skeptics?'"

9 Comments | Boy Scouts of America, Conservation, Cost of Green, Environmental protection, Girl Scouts, Government, Natural history, Natural resources, Patriotism, Public health, Voodoo history, Voodoo science | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Wool ripped from this blogger’s eyes

June 23, 2009

One of my DDT blog post alerts turned up this one at Butter Side Down, which is as close to perfect in accuracy and conciseness as I have seen lately.

Here’s a question that I was asked this weekend, one which I’ve been asked more than once: how anyone can justify the ban on DDT when millions of people are dying of malaria?

It’s a good question.

Unfortunately, it’s the wrong question. It’s wrong because it’s based on three premises:

  1. DDT has been banned;
  2. In areas where mosquitoes are endemic millions are needlessly suffering and dying from malaria deaths that are preventable if spraying DDT is allowed; and
  3. DDT is a panacea that strikes down mosquitoes without fail.

All three premises are wrong.

If this guy woman can be so wise, why cannot others at least follow him her?

2 Comments | Africa, Cost of Green, DDT, Environmental protection, Malaria, Public health, Rachel Carson, Science | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Bed nets save lives, fighting malaria without DDT

May 25, 2009

Infant in Nigeria sleeps beneath an insecticide-treated bednet that prevents the transmission of malaria, a disease that kills thousands of children in Africa annually. Nothing But Nets press release

Infant in Nigeria sleeps beneath an insecticide-treated bednet that prevents the transmission of malaria, a disease that kills thousands of children in Africa annually. Nothing But Nets press release

According to Nothing But Nets:

Studies show that use of insecticide-treated bed nets can reduce transmission as much as 90% in areas with high coverage rates. Bed nets prevent malaria transmission by creating a protective barrier against mosquitoes at night, when the vast majority of transmissions occur. The African malaria mosquitoes generally bite late at night or early morning, between 10:00 p.m. and 4:00 a.m. A bed net is usually hung above the center of a bed or sleeping space so that it completely covers the sleeping person. A net treated with insecticide offers about twice the protection of an untreated net and can reduce the number of mosquitoes that enter the house and the overall number of mosquitoes in the area.

1 Comment | Africa, Cost of Green, DDT, Disease, Health care, History, Malaria, Public health, Science | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Eradicate malaria – here’s how

May 24, 2009

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?

3 Comments | Africa, Asia, Disease, Health care, Malaria, Politics, Public health | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Applying evolution theory to defeat malaria

May 3, 2009

If 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: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Found it! Hoax Museum is right: Zinsser got it wrong

January 4, 2009

Found it!  [See previous post.]

I had done a search for Zinsser’s book, Rats, Lice and History, many weeks ago, and come up dry (how many weeks?).

But a more careful search in Google Books turned up a copy of most of the text, from Read Books — and in that edition, appearing to have been published in London*, there is a page 285!

On that page 285, there is the quote cited, claiming that the bathtub did not come to America until about 1840.

The quote is found in chapter XVI, in the first section, a couple of paragraphs prior to the second section — page 217 in the editions of the book I have.

So, the Hoax Museum is right in saying Zinsser was hoaxed, too.  Zinsser’s book appeared first in 1935, with plenty of time for Mencken’s 1917 hoax to have spread into sources Zinsser trusted.

Even the best can be taken in by a hoax crafted well enough, or on a subject obscure enough.

_____________

* RATS, LICE, AND HISTORY, Being a Study in Biography, which, after Twelve Preliminary Chapters Indispensable for the Preparation of the Lay Reader, Deals with the Life History of TYPHUS FEVER.   Also known, at various stages of its Adventurous Career, as Morbus pulicaris (Cardanus, 1545); Tabardiglio y puntos (DeToro, 1574); Pin fas Febris pur purea epidemica (Coyttarus, 1578); Febris quam lenticulas vel puncticulas vocant (Fracastorius, 1546); Morbus hungaricus; La Pourpre; Pipercorn; Febris petechialis vera; Febris maligna pestilens; Febris putrida et maligna; Typhus carcerorum; Jayl Fever; Fiévre des hôspitaux; Pestis bellica; Morbus castrensis; Famine Fever; Irish Ague; Typhus exanthematicus; Faulfieber Hauptkrankheit; Pcstartigc Bräune; Exanthematisches Nervenfieber, and so forth, and so forth. By HANS ZINSSER; LONDON, GEORGE ROUTLEDGE, BROADWAY HOUSE, 68-74 CARTER

4 Comments | Accuracy, Disease, Health care, History, Hoaxes, Public health | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Hoaxes on hoaxes: Bathtub hoax debunkers start a new hoax?

January 4, 2009

[If you’re interested in the hoax aspect, see this update post.]

Is this just an error, or a new hoax on the way to debunking an old one?  This is a story of an insider’s hoax, or an interesting error.

It’s from the Museum of Hoaxes.  Surely they would be careful about such matters, no?

The Museum of Hoaxes’ History of the Bathtub is largely a history of H. L. Mencken’s famous 1917 hoax history of the bathtub, in which he claimed Millard Fillmore had bravely led America to indoor bathing by installing a bathtub in the White House in 1853.

Readers of this blog well know this story.  Fillmore wasn’t the first to put a bathtub in the White House.  He wasn’t the first to put plumbing in the White House.  He wasn’t the first to put a plumbed bathtub in the White House, nor the first to run hot water to it. Anything in Mencken’s column that squares with history did so accidentally.  Mencken was making a big joke.

And one of the little delights of reading history is finding people who should know better, who have been suckered in by Mencken’s hoax.

So of course I read the piece at the Hoax Museum.

What ho!  Here is a section that discusses how the hoax refuses to die:

Curtis MacDougall, writing in 1958, reported finding fifty-five different instances since 1926 of Mencken’s bathtub history being presented to audiences as fact. Some of the examples that MacDougall collected follow:

October, 1926: Scribner’s included an article, “Bathtubs, Early Americans,“ by Fairfax Downey, based almost entirely on Mencken’s story.

March 16, 1929: In “Baltimore Day by Day,“ by Carroll Dulaney, in Mencken’s own newspaper, the Baltimore Evening Sun, the story is told under the heading, “Painting the Lily.“

September 26, 1929: The Paris, France, edition of the New York Herald rewrites an article by Ruth Wakeman in the New York Sun entitled, “Americans Once Frowned on Bathtubs, Condemning Them for Fancied Hazards.“

December 1, 1931: The Tucson, Arizona, Daily Star interviews C.R. King, manager of the Standard Sanitary Manufacturing Company branch in Tucson, on the imminent birthday of the bathtub. Mr. King, who according to the Star “had apparently studied the matter considerably,“ hands out the same old facts, which are printed under a two-column head, “Bathtub Will Have Birthday in America During December.“

April 27, 1933: A United Features Syndicate feature, “How It Began,“ by Russ Murphy and Ray Nenuskay includes an illustration of Adam Thompson in his first bathtub.

1935: Dr. Hans Zinsser, professor in the Medical School of Harvard University, says on page 285 of his best-selling Rats, Lice and History: “The first bathtub didn’t reach America, we believe, until about 1840.”

November 15, 1935: R.J. Scott’s “Scott’s Scrapbook,“ syndicated by the Central Press Asociation, includes a sketch of a policeman chasing a bather away from his bath, together with the caption: As late as 1842 some American cities prohibited the use of bathtubs.”

May 27, 1936: Dr. Shirley W. Wynne, former commissioner of health for New York City, uses the “facts” in a radio address, “What Is Public Health?“ over WEAF.

February, 1937: The United Press Red Letter includes a story from Cambridge, Massachusetts, that Dr. Cecil K. Drinker, dean and professor of physiology at the Harvard School of Public Health, has discovered that his great-great-grandmother, Elizabeth Drinker of Philadelphia, had a bathtub in her home as early as 1803, thus disputing Cincinnati’s claim to fame for having the first American bathtub. (The Chicago Daily News used the story March 27, 1937.)

September 28, 1938: Hearst’s American Weekly includes an article, “There’s a Lot of History Behind Your Bathtub,“ by Virginia S. Eiffert, research expert and contributor to Natural History, official magazine of the American Museum of Natural History, New York City, and other publications. Miss Eiffert’s research has uncovered the old stand-by.

Sept. 20, 1942: Julia Spiegelman retold the entire Adam Thompson tale as fact in an article, “Bathtub’s United States Centennial” in the Baltimore Sun, Mencken’s own newspaper.

April 28, 1951: In this day’s issue of The New Yorker John Hersey revealed, in a profile on Harry S. Truman, that “the president seemed reluctant to let go of his belief” in the fact that Millard Fillmore introduced the first bathtub into the White House in 1850. President Truman was known to include the spurious facts in the “lecture” he gave visitors to the renovated executive mansion.

Sept. 16, 1952: In a speech in Philadelphia, President Truman told the story to illustrate what great progress has occurred in public health.

I noted the Tucson Daily Star mention — I spent a year in Tucson at the University of Arizona, and on a couple of projects spent hours poring through old copies of the Star and it’s competitor, The Tucson Daily Citizen, but never getting close to any story on Fillmore, bathtubs, or Mencken.  Interesting.

And did you see?  There’s a reference to Zinsser’s great book, Rats, Lice and History.   One of my favorite books of all time. Other suggested it should be included in the small, essential library of any historian or teacher of history, when I was working on assembling a list of necessary books (a project I really should get back to one day).

Zinsser was the guy who isolated the pathogen that causes typhus, and developed a vaccine against the disease.  More importantly, he was a bit of a rake and an excellent, and funny, writer.  The book is a breezy read,  packed with enlightening discussions of history, wars, economic booms and busts, sieges of great cities, and how disease stalks the pages of history much more than merely during the outbreaks of the plague in the middle of the second millennium.

I read the book the year I graduated from high school, though now I don’t remember whether it was during the school year or after.  It was recommended to me by a college English professor, Kirk Rasmussen (the Utah guy), whose wife was my last high school debate coach.  Kirk laughed all the way through the book.  I borrowed his paperback copy and finished it off in a week or two.

You can learn a lot about ecology studying how a disease is spread.  A disease like typhus, which involves insect, louse, rodent and human carriers, exposes the links that, however improbable or preposterous, are necessary to keep a pathogen going.  Zinsser gives a great rundown of the history of rats, the history of fleas, the history of lice (which are not insects, if you wish to be carefully accurate, which you do, of course).

So his book is useful in literature classes.  It’s a good source of history.  Plus, it’s a good meta source for biologists and medical researchers.

In fact I have a copy here on this desk — I was trying to find a short excerpt that I could use in my world history classes, something to intrigue students and give them fodder for an exercise or project.

So, I looked at that listing, and thought I should check it out:

1935: Dr. Hans Zinsser, professor in the Medical School of Harvard University, says on page 285 of his best-selling Rats, Lice and History: “The first bathtub didn’t reach America, we believe, until about 1840.”

You can see this one coming, can’t you?

Rats, Lice and History has only 228 pages, in all three editions I have here at the house.

So of course I checked pages 185, 85, and 28.  Nothing.

Then I looked at the table of contents (there is no index), to see in what chapter such a comment might find a home.  Zinsser wrote in the U.S., was born in the U.S., so it wouldn’t be wholly out of his character to note some little item of public health at the White House.  But I’ll be doggoned if I can figure out where such a comment would fit in the book.

Is this just a miscitation by Museum of Hoaxes?  Or is it a new hoax altogether?  Is it a hoax the Museum of Hoaxes has fallen victim to, or is it of their invention?

Now I wonder about all the other mentions there.  Are they accurate?  Are they whole cloth fiction, voodoo history?  Did the Tucson Daily Star even exist in 1931?

We never solve one mystery that we don’t open up a dozen more.

Readers, can you shed light?

I’m sure there is a reasonable explanation.

2 Comments | Biology, Books, History, Hoaxes, Public health, Voodoo history | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Beating malaria without DDT

November 3, 2008

I 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:

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.

Toronto’s Globe and Mail carried a longer story on Kenya’s experience, “Malaria a rare public-health success story in Africa.”

“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.

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 countrys 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)

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.”

Public health officials in India will step up information and education campaigns, and urge residents “not to panic.”

See also:

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: , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Back again: Measles

May 2, 2008

Copy a couple of these articles and give them to your school nurse to pass out to people who say they don’t want to inoculate their kids.

In 1991, we could have inoculated every unvaccinated child under the age of 10, in Dallas County, for much less than $20,000. Then the epidemic hit. One of the early hospitalizations for the company I worked with was $100,000. One kid went in, and after $1 million of care, spent the rest of his life in a local hospital (another decade).

The economic arguments for measles vaccination should be clear.

Update: Bug Girl is right (see her comment below):  Go check out Orac’s post on the issue, “Antivaccinationsim versus measles in the U.S.:  Are the chickens coming home to roost.”  I was posting in a hurry; Orac is posting after visiting the issue several times.  Contrast Orac’s views as a physician with those of people who tend to get herded into panics without the facts, only through the fault of not having the facts about the dangers of the diseases they let off the hook (make no mistake: most of these people are well-meaning).

My more complete measles story, below the fold.

Read the rest of this entry »

2 Comments | History, Public education, Public health, Science, Voodoo science | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

World malaria politics, every day

April 26, 2008

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.

Tim Lambert and Deltoid have the story summarized, “Taking Aim at Rachel Carson.” Go read it.

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 thinking about 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.

A Few Resources:

1 Comment | DDT, Education, Environmental protection, Junk science, Malaria, Politics, Rachel Carson, Rampant stupidity, Science | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Why Rats, Lice and History is a great book

April 7, 2008

Gerald Weissman wrote a solid review of Hans Zinsser’s Rats, Lice and History in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases. The review appeared two years ago, but I just found it.

It’s hard nowadays to reread the work of de Kruif or Sinclair Lewis without a chuckle or two over their quaint locution, but Zinsser’s raffiné account of lice and men remains a delight. Written in 1935 as a latter-day variation on Laurence Sterne’s The Life and Opinions of Tristam Shandy, Zinsser’s book gives a picaresque account of how the history of the world has been shaped by epidemics of louseborne typhus. He sounded a tocsin against microbes in the days before antibiotics, and his challenge remains meaningful today: “Infectious disease is one of the few genuine adventures left in the world. The dragons are all dead and the lance grows rusty in the chimney corner. . . . About the only sporting proposition that remains unimpaired by the relentless domestication of a once free-living human species is the war against those ferocious little fellow creatures, which lurk in dark corners and stalk us in the bodies of rats, mice and all kinds of domestic animals; which fly and crawl with the insects, and waylay us in our food and drink and even in our love”

If you’ve not read Zinsser’s book, this review will give you lots of reasons why you should.  They don’t write history like this for high schools, though they should:

Despite the unwieldy subtitle “Being a study in biography, which, after twelve preliminary chapters indispensable for the preparation of the lay reader, deals with the life history of TYPHUS FEVER,” Rats, Lice and History became an international critical and commercial success. Zinsser’s romp through the ancient and modern worlds describes how epidemics devastated the Byzantines under Justinian, put Charles V atop the Holy Roman Empire, stopped the Turks at the Carpathians, and turned Napoleon’s Grand Armée back from Moscow. He explains how the louse, the ubiquitous vector of typhus, was for most of human history an inevitable part of existence, “like baptism, or smallpox”; its habitat extended from hovel to throne. And after that Murder in the Cathedral, the vectors deserted Thomas à Becket: “The archbishop was murdered in Canterbury Cathedral on the evening of the twenty-ninth of December [1170]. The body lay in the Cathedral all night, and was prepared for burial on the following day…. He had on a large brown mantle; under it, a white surplice; below that, a lamb’s-wool coat; then another woolen coat; and a third woolen coat below this; under this, there was the black, cowled robe of the Benedictine Order; under this, a shirt; and next to the body a curious hair-cloth, covered with linen. As the body grew cold, the vermin that were living in this multiple covering started to crawl out, and, as … the chronicler quoted, ‘The vermin boiled over like water in a simmering cauldron, and the onlookers burst into alternate weeping and laughter …'”

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6 Comments | Biography, Biology, Books, DBQ sources, History, Public health, Science | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

DDT and other poisons in the Great Lakes: Alma Conference update

March 30, 2008

Earlier this month, just before the conference at Alma College, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) released a draft report on toxic wastes found in the Great Lakes and other surrounding waters. Was it the pending conference that kicked the thing loose?

See the report at CDC’s site, here.

The Center for Public Integrity snagged a copy of the study earlier, and published it at their website. Some of us infer the hurdles for the report to be more the administration’s War on Science. But supression of a report is a lot easier if there are no copies circulating on the internet.

CDC had sat on the report for most of a year. After this interview of Chris Derosa, the report’s author appeared on CNN, and before the Alma Conference on DDT, CDC got a sudden change of heart and released the report.

Too few news reports came out of the conference. Let’s hope the proceedings will be available soon.

Logo from the CPI project on Great Lakes health

Logo from the Center for Public Interest project on Great Lakes area health, used at the release of the suppressed health report.

1 Comment | DDT, Environmental protection, Public health, War on Science | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

DDE-shortened lactation link

March 30, 2008

DDT does break down once released into the wild, and can do so rather quickly, DDT advocates love to point out. It’s part of the sleight-of-hand necessary to argue for DDT. Yes, DDT breaks down, but the first step is a breakdown to the more resilient and consequently more damaging substance known as DDE.

DDE mimics endocrine hormones in the wild and has been implicated in gender ambiguity in alligators, fish and amphibians. These animals feature underdeveloped male sex organs, are often hermaphroditic, and sometimes unable to breed. Endocrine mimics — not always DDE — are implicated in swelling the breasts of male mammals (humans are mammals, by the way), and shrinking testes in animals of all kinds.

Some studies suggest that something causes women’s ability to produce milk to nurse infants is significantly curtailed. A few studies suggest DDE is the culprit.

From a lawyer’s blog, I learned of a study in Mexico that showed no significant discernible link between DDE and the length of lactation (milk production). Something else appears to be injuring these women and their babies.

They conclude that the data from this relatively large study in a highly exposed area of Mexico did not support the hypothesis that exposure to DDE shortens length of lactation, and thus the association seen in women who previously breast-fed was likely attributed to a noncausal mechanism. Nonetheless, the authors note that DDT may have other potential adverse effects which are in need of study.

The blog post is written by Thomas H. Clarke, Jr., J.D., M.S., Chair of the Ropers Majeski Kohn & Bentley Environmental Practice Group.  The blog, Ear to the Ground, is new this month so far as I can tell — in this case it’s useful because it has a workable link to the full text of the article in Environmental Health Perspectives (in case you are, as I am, too lazy to get your own free subscription).

How will the DDT advocates spin this one? Look for pronouncements that DDT “absolutely has no effect on human lactation.” And look out for them — that’s not what this study says at all.

Leave a Comment » | DDT, Environmental protection, Public health | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

DDT and health effects on children

February 25, 2008

Current issue of On Earth (Winter 2008), an article by Kim Larsen about fighting malaria in Africa, “Bad Blood”:

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).

2 Comments | Africa, DDT, Environmental protection, Malaria, Public health, Rachel Carson | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

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