WSJ: Death by Environmentalist (DDT, and the silent spring of human beings dead of malaria)

Wall Street Journal ^ | December 29, 2004 | Editorial

[OESY]

Aid workers tending to the ravaged islands and coastlines of southern Asia say a big concern is an outbreak of malaria and other waterborne diseases.... Which reminds us of a just-out World Health Organization report anticipating a shortage in a key antimalarial drug....

This news about treatments wouldn't be so devastating but for the fact that the international groups in charge still can't get malaria prevention under control. And that's the real tragedy. A blight that has been all but eliminated in the West, malaria still claims between one million and two million lives every year in the underdeveloped world. Most of its victims reside in black Africa, and 90% of those are pregnant women and children under five.

Beyond the human toll are the economic consequences, which help keep these nations in poverty's tight grip. It's been estimated that malaria costs Africa 1.2% of its GDP, or some $12 billion annually. The pandemic compromises the educational development of the children it doesn't kill, and it depletes the mental and physical vigor of the adult population.

...What's missing is the political will....

But the bigger problem is the politicized international health agencies that discourage the employment of all available tools of prevention -- specifically insecticides containing DDT that is anathema to environmentalists....

This ideological opposition to synthetic chemicals has no basis in science -- there is no evidence that the pesticide harms humans or causes widespread damage to nature -- but it amounts to a death sentence for millions of African women and children. When South Africa stopped using DDT in 1996 at the urging of environmentalists, malaria cases rose from 6,000 in 1995 to 60,000 in 2000. DDT use resumed in 2000 in the country's worst-hit province, KwaZulu Natal, and malaria cases fell by nearly 80% by 2001....

[OESY]

Alternative headline you will never see: ENVIRONMENTALISTS BAN DDT: WOMEN AND MINORITIES HARDEST HIT

[goldstategop]

Of course --- beautiful scenery is more important to the beautiful people than human beings. The West treats the Third World like a private game preserve with scant regard for the people who live there.

[itsahoot]

Hedonism places the same value on a blade of grass or cockroach, as it does on a human. All the while claiming to be morally superior.

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We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge or gallantry would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution is designed only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for any other. John Adams (1735 - 1826)

[JoeGar]

Rachael Carson: murderer

[pepperdog]

My grandmother, who participated in the Oklahoma Land Run when she was 18, once told me that the most significant improvement in her lifetime was DDT. She said that before DDT people could starve because of insects ravaging the crops and people could die of disease because of mosquitoes. I bet she would think the world has gone crazy were she alive now.

[bruinbirdman]

Pelicans or people?

yitbos

[farmfriend]

Rights, farms, environment ping.
Let me know if you wish to be added or removed from this list.
I don't get offended if you want to be removed.

[B4Ranch]

>>A blight that has been all but eliminated in the West, malaria still claims between one million and two million lives every year in the underdeveloped world. Most of its victims reside in black Africa, and 90% of those are pregnant women and children under five.<<

I see this as UN approved population control.

[dervish]

"Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas noted the hypocrisy of this position"

He's becoming a foreign affairs activist -- the good kind. We need it to counter the UN.

"What's missing is the political will. HIV infections are a fraction of malaria's, but the former affects more people in the West, where advocates see to it that foreign aid budgets keep AIDS front and center. Third World victims of malaria don't have lobbyists and Hollywood A-listers calling attention to their situation."

Aint that the truth.

[E.G.C.]

BTTT!!!!!!