[Dean's World] Aziz P: the facts on DDT

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Posted by Aziz P:
the facts on DDT
http://www.deanesmay.com/posts/1183727194.shtml


   Vic Stein, in comments to the earlier excellent thread, restates the
   facts in a marvelously succinct way, despite the best efforts of the
   FUD squad to label as "strawmen" the accurate description of the
   actual arguments by actual conservatives that Rachel Carson is
   directly responsible for the deaths of millions in Africa and that DDT
   is the magic bullet by which the West rid itself of malaria and which
   would eradicate the disease in Africa today if not for the evil
   enviroloons who hold a continent hostage with their liberal lunacy.
   [1]Says Vic,

     The claim that Carson killed millions is based on a bunch of
     falsehoods and deliberate misrepresentations of both Carson and the
     fight against malaria.

     Carson did not, in fact, advocate stopping the use of DDT to fight
     malaria (and indeed, the "ban" in the US had an explicit exception
     for exactly this purpose). She thought that it was criminal that
     were using it so widely in industrial agricultural uses when we
     didn't know the full effects of having so much of this chemical in
     the environment and because she believed there was lots of good
     evidence that it was harmful (note that while a lot of her original
     claims are overhyped, the book is still out on whether DDT really
     is "safe" at all)

     She also SPECIFICALY noted that widespread agricultural use (the
     main thing she opposed) could potentially HARM the potency of DDT
     against malaria. In fact, she was correct, because in the many
     countries that did NOT stop using it so widely, resistence DID
     develop and deaths DID increase. Who is to blame for those deaths?
     The "Carson worse than Hitler" crowd basically include them in
     their math for all the people she supposedly killed, and yet they
     were a direct result of people NOT listening to the warnings about
     resistence.

     The reality is that widespread indescriminate DDT use is NOT a good
     longtime strategy against malaria IF there is no infastructure in
     place to wipe malaria out compeltely, (as there was in the US).
     THIS is the primary reason the WHO and others abandoned widespread
     spraying: they only had so many resources, and simply spraying DDT
     over the whole country wasn't going to solve the problem when there
     wasn't a way to make the fix permanent and the inevitable outcome
     (which DID come in several places) of this strategy was the
     immunity of mosquitoes to DDT entirely (taking that weapon out of
     the arsenal). Did hysteria over DDT play a part in this? Yes. But
     again, DDT simply was not a magic bullet in the first place (which
     is exactly what the Carson/Hitler crowd implies with their
     attributing ever single malaria death to her). The idea that this
     move stabbed the "only real cure" for malaria in the back is just
     silly.

     Furthermore, the switch from DDT to treatment in many places
     reduced deaths, so it's very hard to argue that it was a bad move
     period. And, more importantly, it ended up preserving the potency
     of DDT, so that when much more effective methods of using it were
     eventually discovered (the indoor regimen) it was still effective.
     However, the indoor regimen is still today considered just one tool
     out of many necessary to keep malaria at bay. Used alone, or even
     used at all, mosquitos STILL develop and have developed resistence
     to it. It has to be used as part of a comprehensive strategy to get
     rid of the problem in such a way that it can't easily come back.
     The main problem in Africa is finding the money to pay for ANY sort
     of anti-malaria regimen in the first place, not overcoming hordes
     of environmentalists to be able to use the one and only thing that
     works.

     Ironically, the most effective proven single tool against stopping
     the spread of malaria right now is treated bed nets. Why ironic?
     Because when people try to deploy these things, now they get hordes
     of people who have no experience at all in malaria are screaming
     about why they aren't spraying the country with DDT.

   'nuff said.

References

   1. http://www.deanesmay.com/posts/1183470777.shtml#120230