25 April is a day of unified commemoration of the global effort to provide effective control of malaria around the world. This year's World Malaria Day marks a critical moment in time. The international malaria community has less than a year to meet the 2010 targets of delivering effective and affordable protection and treatment to all people at risk of malaria, as called for by the UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-Moon.
"Malaria, simply put, is something we can end. And today I am here to say that malaria is a scourge we can end,"
In 1972, the US banned the use of DDT, mostly because of an environmental crusade triggered by the book “Silent Spring”, written by Rachel Carson, published in 1962. Her book claimed that DDT caused, among other things, cancer, which was unsubstantiated. DDT was used effectively throughout the world to eliminate mosquitoes that spread deadly malaria. In Sri Lanka, malaria victims fell from 2.8 million to only 17 between 1948 and 1963. Yet after the US ban, most of the rest of the world followed suit and DDT has not been used since. The founder of the environmental group Earth First declares “Ours is an ecological perspective that views Earth as a community and recognizes such apparent enemies as disease and pests not as manifestations of evil to be overcome but rather as vital and necessary components of a complex and vibrant biosphere”. Estimates for today’s occurrences of malaria are approximately 300 million cases and one million deaths annually.
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I hope you're more careful with information when you practice engineering.
ReplyDelete1. WHO stopped using DDT in great profusion in about 1965. Mosquitoes in Africa and Asia had become resistant to the stuff, because agricultural groups overused it, breeding the resistance into mosquitoes and other insects.
Why would you impose an ineffective solution on Africans?
2. The U.S. ban on spraying DDT on cotton came in 1972, seven years later. Banning the use of DDT on cotton in 1972 had zero effect on Africa's reduction in use of DDT seven years earlier. EPA is good, but they don't time travel.
3. The U.S. ban on DDT covered only domestic use. U.S. manufacturers continued to make the stuff for export to Africa, where DDT has never been banned.
4. Mosquitoes don't migrate from Texas to Africa. The ban on DDT use in the U.S. affected no bug in Africa at any time.
5. Death rates from malaria for the last decade have hovered around and below 1 million annually -- half the rate of deaths when DDT use was at its peak. Infection rates are also dropping.
6. DDT is readily available across Africa and Asia, with grotesque amounts of the stuff manufactured in India and China each year. No nation using DDT has successfully eradicated the disease. The U.S. eliminated malaria in 1939 (according to the CDC), seven years before DDT became available for use. Were DDT a panacea, African nations would use it (Africans are not stupid).
7. Controlled studies done over the last decade indicate that bed nets reduce malaria infections and death by 50% to 85%, part of an "integrated vector management" program WHO now advocates. This is what Rachel Carson urged in 1962 in Silent Spring. DDT at its most effective eliminates 25% to 50% of malaria deaths. Had we adopted Carson's scheme in 1962, how many million kids would have been saved?
More documentation, and more information, at Millard Fillmore's Bathtub.
Mr. Darrell,
ReplyDeleteI take great insult at your personal attack. Regardless, here is my rebuttal:
1. The resistance argument is misleading. Mosquitoes were killed where DDT was used and survived where it wasn’t. They simply left areas where they couldn’t survive. And I wouldn’t “impose” anything on anyone; that is the MO of environmentalists. Also, you later admit that DDT wasn’t ineffective.
2. African countries that used DDT were on the verge of wiping out malaria before the ban. If they stopped it’s use prior to the ban, that was a grave mistake. By the way, the EPA is evil, putting the “rights” of nature above those of man.
3. Although the ban was not official worldwide, it greatly affected third-world counties since US-funded aid agencies could not use the pesticide.
4. Who made the argument that DDT use in the US affected mosquitoes in Africa?
5. But that one million should be virtually zero!
6. As one example, in Sri Lanka malaria victims fell from 2.8 million to only 17 between 1948 and 1963 from DDT use.
7. Great, go buy a net. You admit that DDT could have prevented half a million deaths per year (your numbers). Not to mention half of the 500 million who become sick from malaria but survive. Is that not considered successful?
My point is that the environmental movement holds a mystical reverence for nature, and puts the lives of disease carrying pests above those of human beings. For more information see:
http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=3901
http://www.junkscience.com/ddtfaq.html
http://www.larouchepub.com/other/2004/sci_techs/3124ddt_africa.html
In at least four parts:
ReplyDeleteI regret that you took offense, instead of taking corrective action. You post material that is absolutely, 180 degrees at odds with the facts, I point it out, and you take offense.
Ignore that train behind you, then, and don't blame me for not suggesting you move from between those two iron rails.
You said2. African countries that used DDT were on the verge of wiping out malaria before the ban.
Complete balderdash. Not so. In the first place, there has never been a ban in Africa. IF you wish to claim there was, please offer evidence.
In the second place, many African nations were incapable of mounting a campaign against malaria, and it was not used in Subsaharan Africa prior to the rise of DDT immunity in mosquitoes for that reason alone.
And in the third place, the overuse of DDT on crops had bred resistant and immune mosquitoes. You can't wipe out mosquitoes that are immune to DDT, with DDT.
You said: If they stopped it’s use prior to the ban, that was a grave mistake.
Sure, it may have damaged the profits of the chemical companies. How dare Africans fight malaria instead of contributing to chemical company profits! /satire mode off
You said: By the way, the EPA is evil, putting the “rights” of nature above those of man.
So, you don't think we have a right to clean air and water. You have odd, very odd, views about human rights.
I think every child should have as much a right to clean drinking water as a corporation has a right to poison it. Frankly, I never thought I'd see the day that people sided with poisoning children for profits, over the children.
Surely you don't mean that.
[More, next post]
[Part 2, continued from previous post]
ReplyDeleteYou said: 3. Although the ban was not official worldwide, it greatly affected third-world counties since US-funded aid agencies could not use the pesticide.
So, your claim is that Africans are too stupid and poor to get their own DDT, despite DDT being cheap and readily available. Not only don't you like mankind generally, you specifically think African mankind not capable of looking out for itself.
The moral morass you've stepped in, you don't know. Your position is not one people get to by reason.
DDT was never banned in Africa. Some nations have used it straight through, like South Africa - until the damage was too great. South Africa stopped DDT use and nearly beat malaria, until immigrant mosquitoes from next-door nations proved a problem. Temporarily falling off the beat-malaria-instead-of-poisoning-Africa wagon, South Africa briefly returned to DDT use at the end of the 20th century. But beating malaria can't be done with poison. We have to cure malaria in humans to make any anti-malaria campaign work (as a practical matter, if there is no malaria in humans, there is no way mosquitoes can get it to spread it).
DDT also poisoned food stocks for many Africans, especially in lakes and rivers. Ineffective against mosquitoes, very effective at poisoning food -- DDT doesn't look like much of a miracle substance to very many Africans. Contrary to your implicit assumptions, Africans are not stupid and many have decided to live, instead of using DDT. It's a rational choice.
Fighting malaria requires a concerted campaign against the disease. The disease must be cured in humans to stop its spread. DDT is no panacea. There are lots of reasons malaria fights failed in the past -- but shortage of DDT is not among those reasons.
The U.S. change in DDT label registration specifically left U.S. manufacturers in business to make the stuff for export. Manufacturing continues today in China and India. DDT is there for anyone who wants to use it.
DDT is not a choice any serious malaria fighter turns to first, second, or third. It can be useful if used in an environmentally-friendly program such as Rachel Carson urged back in 1962, but it's rarely the first choice, since applications must be repeated every six months or so, since so many populations of mosquitoes are completely immune, and since there are so many better alternatives.
Bed nets run about $10.00 each, and last for five years. $2.00 a year. They reduce malaria infections and death by 50% to 85% in recent tests in Africa. DDT costs about $12.00 per application in Indoor Residual Spraying (part of an integrated pest management program), which must be cone twice a year. $24.00 per year, with 25% to 50% reduction in malaria infection and death.
Nets are cheaper ($10.00 for five years opposed to $120.00 for five years of DDT), plus they are more effective.
I don't think it is as you implicitly assumed that Africans are not smart. I think they know how to choose wisely. Their rejection of DDT is not a problem. They should have a right to choose whether to poison their lands.
You said: 4. Who made the argument that DDT use in the US affected mosquitoes in Africa?
You did. You said the U.S. ban on DDT hurt Africans and spread malaria. I thought it was bizarre, and apparently you realize it now, too.
[Part 3, continued from previous post]
ReplyDeleteYou said: 5. But that one million should be virtually zero!
Sure, but there are hundreds of thousands of people in the U.S. who think we should just use DDT to poison Africa to health, instead of taking the serious steps necessary to fight malaria. Malaria fighters have reduced malaria deaths from 3 million a year at the height of DDT use circa 1959-1962, to less than 1 million a year today, almost exclusively without DDT.
You advocate a return to DDT. What we need to beat malaria is better medical care, to quickly and accurately diagnose malaria and the species of the parasite, and treat the human victims to a complete cure; education on how to avoid exposure to mosquitoes, with the same tricks we used to get rid of malaria in the U.S., like draining rain gutters and other mosquito breeding places around and near human housing; money to improve housing so that windows and doors can be screened; and political will to stick with the more effective but attention-required malaria fighting methods.
DDT doesn't treat malaria in humans; DDT doesn't stop the breeding of mosquitoes; DDT doesn't reduce exposure much after an initial application and two- or three-week reduction (in fact, mosquitoes generally roar back with greater populations because DDT kills off their predators more effectively than it kills mosquitoes); DDT saps political will.
We have a choice: We can fight malaria, or we can advocate DDT. If we don't fight malaria, children will die.
You said: 6. As one example, in Sri Lanka malaria victims fell from 2.8 million to only 17 between 1948 and 1963 from DDT use.
Not so fast. Ceylon (as it was then known) conducted a vigorous anti-malaria campaign, in which DDT played a part. Why, do you think, the nation stopped using DDT? Hint: Look at the year. There was no ban on DDT anywhere, and malaria fighters in Ceylon had never heard of Rachel Carson.
For various reasons -- incipient revolution that led to civil war, economic development of jungle areas by mines that created ideal mosquito breeding conditions, previous failure to adequately monitor malaria in humans -- malaria surged in Sri Lanka in the 1970s. You forgot the follow-through: DDT proved largely ineffective at fighting the new surge, because mosquitoes were resistant to it. It wasn't DDT use alone that got the rates so low, and it wasn't an absence of DDT which triggered the surge in malaria. When malaria surged when the pharmaceuticals used to fight malaria parasites in humans stopped working, DDT couldn't help much.
So we have a choice again: Fight malaria, or promote DDT. Save humans, or make snark against environmentalists. Which should we choose?
(More, next post)
[Part 4, continued from previous post]
ReplyDeleteYou said: 7. Great, go buy a net. You admit that DDT could have prevented half a million deaths per year (your numbers). Not to mention half of the 500 million who become sick from malaria but survive. Is that not considered successful?
Did I say DDT could have been effective where it's proven not to be effective? I don't recall saying that anywhere.
I pointed out that DDT at it's peak effectiveness is less effective than bednets. Don't twist my words though.
Had we used DDT alone, without careful controls to prevent mosquito resistance and immunity, we may have been able to save a half million deaths over 40 years. But, because of the damage DDT does in the wild, and because it breeds tougher mosquitoes, it would likely have resulted in a greater surge of malaria, killing two or three for every life saved.
DDT is nasty stuff. As a malaria fighter, it can be useful in tiny amounts in carefully controlled situations.
Malaria is tougher than DDT. To fight malaria we need to wage what Grant called "total war," fighting it on all fronts. Expanded DDT use damages the war against malaria by hampering environmental methods of fighting the mosquitoes -- natural predators, mostly. DDT sucks money and manpower from effective breeding-pool draining programs. DDT does nothing to help fight malaria in humans.
Fight malaria, or promote DDT. It should be a clear choice.
You said: My point is that the environmental movement holds a mystical reverence for nature, and puts the lives of disease carrying pests above those of human beings.
Balderdash. Rachel Carson's methods to fight malaria now give us hope to beat the disease where DDT failed. You appear to know nothing about the history of environmentalism, nor about current environmental efforts. What is the source of such a bizarre claim?
DDT wasn't banned in the U.S. to preserve disease -- in fact, fighting disease remains a reason to use DDT (interesting that in 38 years, no one has ever found a need to use DDT in the U.S. to fight disease).
DDT was banned because it destroys health ecosystems and makes disease more prevalent. You should read the hearings at EPA, or at least some of the record. DDT was found to kill bats -- which eat mosquitoes -- birds, fish, amphibians and reptiles -- all of which eat mosquitoes or mosquito larvae -- and mammals as large as cows. DDT was determined to be a wildcard, uncontrollable in the wild. While human effects could not be determined, there was no case to be made that DDT provided any benefit other than temporary knockdown of pests.
The National Academy of Sciences wrote a report, noting that DDT is one of the most beneficial chemicals ever discovered. That report called for a ban on DDT because its harms outweigh its benefits.
When the greatest research groups in the world say it's time to ban DDT from use because it hurts more than it helps, we should listen.
[Part 5 - I underestimated - continued from previous post]
ReplyDeleteYou said: For more information see:
http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=3901
What a load of garbage there. If you allow people to lie to you with impunity, they will tell whoppers taller than the Eiffel Tower. Call your local public health agency, or mosquito eradication agency, and ask about West Nile. DDT is not a pesticide of choice to be used against West Nile vectors, where that article starts. Sheesh! They think poison is good for everything! It would be throwing money away, except that it would be terribly damaging to the local environment.
By the way, Carson never claimed that DDT is carcinogenic, nor did that play any role in its ban in agricultural use. Like I said, give a liar an inch, he'll steal a mile. That author claims there is no science behind Carson's book, but she provided more than 50 pages of citations to scientific studies. Not one of those studies, nor Carson's claims from them, has ever been contradicted by research.
There is no falsehood in Carson's book. Think I'm wrong? Please cite one (and tell us the chapter at least, if not the page number, so we can verify your claim).
You said: http://www.junkscience.com/ddtfaq.html
When I first met Stephen Milloy he was working with tobacco companies claiming that cigarettes don't cause cancer or emphysema. He said, then, there was great doubt in the medical community about the dangers of nicotine and smoke, and that research was "uncertain."
He's moved to other venues, but his accuracy has not improved.
I've dissected several of his false claims at Millard Fillmore's Bathtub. Milloy has never contradicted any of the dissections of his work. He can't.
You said: http://www.larouchepub.com/other/2004/sci_techs/3124ddt_africa.html
Joseph Stalin wasn't fond of environmentalists either, but you don't cite him. You thought we wouldn't recognize the bizarre cult of Lyndon Larouche? Do you feed garbage to your children, and lie to them about everything? Why do you insult yourself with citations to an inherently inaccurate and nasty group like the Larouche cult?
And so, against the vast array of scientific reports against DDT by the National Academy of Sciences, the World Health Organization, the National Institutes of Health, EPA and countless independent university-sponsored studies, you offer Lyndon Larouche?
I should have read to the bottom first. I didn't realize you were writing parody.