Contra John Quiggin and Tim Lambert, DDT is usually the most cost-effective...

While Chinese and Indian government-backed companies continue to produce DDT for their own public health programmes, and for export, no western company has produced DDT for over a decade. Major chemical companies such as Bayer, Dow Chemical, Du Pont and BASF produce alternative products, and have incentives to see DDT phased out. Bayer actually agitated against the use of DDT, abusing its position as private sector delegate to the Roll Back Malaria Partnership, as reported in the Financial Times. AFM was alone among advocacy groups to raise this as a concern.

The reality is that DDT is probably the most useful insecticide ever used for public health. Despite what Quiggin and Lambert say, the public health provisions of the 1972 US delisting of DDT have been used several times after 1972 in the US to combat plague-carrying fleas, in Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada. DDT still has a place in malaria control, one that has expanded because of sensible recent policies from WHO, the Global Fund and the US government. Quiggin and Lambert are wrong to dismiss WHO’s 2006 support as a restatement of old policy. While DDT has been a WHO-approved insecticide for decades, for many years WHO officials did not promote its use, instead tending to push for insecticide-treated nets. Following WHO statements supporting DDT, some developing-country governments, such as Uganda, have been emboldened to say they want to spray the chemical, even in the face of opposition from local business lobbies.

The environmental movement is not entirely to blame for preventing sensible uses of DDT, but it’s not surprising that it is trying to cleanse history. Its reputation has been dented because of its apparent callousness against the use of a life-saving chemical.

One more time: Civilization, not DDT, is the ticket to eradicating malaria. Malaria was almost completely eradicated in the US BEFORE the introduction of DDT. It’s use was discontinued in Africa and elsewhere, not just because of environmentalists somewhat overblown concerns, but because the malaria-carrying mosquitoes had quickly developed resistance to it rendering it largely ineffective.

Western notions of how to “save” Africans are always, always, always misguided, and the renewed enthusiasm for DDT is no exception. If we can come up with a magic spray that will cause civilization to take hold in Africa, by all means we should use it, even if it has serious environmental drawbacks and is wildly expensive. But DDT is no magic spray, and the push to resume widespread use of it is just another scheme to make the West fork over huge amounts of money to outfits like the WHO and UN.

http://resurgentmalaria.com/topic4

“The WHO launched its global malaria eradication campaign, based on indoor spraying of DDT, in 1955. But despite years of effort, the WHO’s DDT campaign succeeded in eradicating malaria only from a few marginal areas in southern Europe and a couple islands. Malarial mosquitoes resistant to DDT-cousin dieldrin emerged in Nigeria as early as 1955. Malarial mosquitoes in Venezuela learned to avoid DDT-sprayed walls and bite people outside instead by 1957. By 1972, when the US finally banned DDT, 19 species of malarial mosquitoes had become impervious to the toxin. By the early 1970s, the WHO abandoned its collapsed malaria eradication campaign.

[snip]

The consensus among malariologists today is that DDT, while still useful in fighting malaria in some places, is no cure-all for malaria. Nevertheless, some DDT advocates have exaggerated DDT’s limited role against malaria to tar environmentalists who have agitated for bans on DDT.

These DDT advocates often imply that DDT wiped out malaria in the United States. In fact, The CDC’s door-to-door DDT spray campaign of 1947-1951 was not about eradicating malaria in the United States, because by then, malaria had already receded. The campaign’s goal, rather, was to prevent the re-introduction of malaria from troops returning home from World War II.

The U.S. Public Health Service had noted the “diminishing menace” of malaria in the United States by 1928—17 years before DDT was launched. Malariologists generally agree that the pockets of malaria that persisted in the South up until the late 1930s were finally vanquished by the swamp-draining, electricity-giving activities of the Tennessee Valley Authority and other rural development schemes, which cut down on mosquito breeding sites and enabled locals to start living in well-screened houses.”

swamp draining, electricity-giving activities of the Tennessee Valley Authority and other rural development schemes, which cut down on mosquito breeding sites and enabled locals to start living in well-screened houses.”

These are the local efforts to control west nile virus which kills on a far lesser scale than malaria. The efforts seem to be effective in the past, but this year the month of May has produced an all time since records have been kept, wet month.In one month, more moisture than almost the average annual rainfall.

I suspect that DDT has been out of use for so long that it would be quite effective, but large scale application would be expensive, and not as effective as chemicals that treat the mosquito breeding places. Standing water is a no no.

Trouble is, if DDT is reintroduced into places like Africa, most of the mosqitos will be resistant again in just a few years, and the population will have made no measurable progress towards civilization by then. So what would be accomplished? Realistically (apart from wasting a mountain of our tax dollars on yet more UN/WHO/government programs), it would just ensure that the miserable teeming hordes in Africa would be LARGER, so that MORE people would sicken and suffer and die of malaria (and other diseases of non-civilization) when it returns with a vengeance after most mosquitos have become resistant again.

And it’s important to note that malaria is not a big killer when it strikes people who are properly nourished, practice basic hygiene, and get prompt medical attention for simple infections and other minor ailments that run down overall health if left untreated. I would know. I had malaria twice as a preschooler living in Rwanda with my family (dad was in the Foreign Service), and the only long-term effect was that I needed my gall bladder out at a much younger age (21) than everybody else in my family (would have needed it out eventually anyway, since EVERYBODY in my family seems get gall bladder trouble).

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