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Sorry, that letter is BS

"support the targeted use of DDT"

Yeah, except using 'targeted' DDT in africa is like painting the siding on one house in detroit. It's a bigger problem than being politically correct can solve.

There is little reason to use DDT in a limited (the real translation of targeted) way. It is cheap and effective. Refusing to use it because of BS 'environmental concerns' will just kill more people.

But hey, since they're just those pesky "dark people" from africa, who really gives a damn, eh?

I agree, that letter was wrong. Good old junkscience.com has some great information on DDT. Here's their DDT FAQ:

Also:

Anti-DDT activism led to hearings before an EPA administrative law judge in 1971-72. After 7 months and 9,000 pages of testimony, the judge concluded "DDT is not a carcinogenic hazard to man... DDT is not a mutagenic or teratogenic hazard to man... The use of DDT under the regulations involved here do not have a deleterious effect on freshwater fish, estuarine organisms, wild birds or other wildlife."

Despite the exculpatory ruling, then-EPA administrator William Ruckelshaus banned DDT.

And:

Donor agencies such as the U.S. Agency for International Development have pressured Belize, Bolivia and Mozambique not to use DDT — or risk losing their aid money, adds Bate.

The AID’s blackmail is eerily similar to its 1970s view that the failure of the Global Malaria Eradication Program (1956-1969) was a blessing in disguise. "Better off dead than riotously reproducing," an AID official said.

A committee of the National Academy of Sciences wrote in 1970, "To only a few chemicals does man owe as great a debt as to DDT... in a little more than two decades, DDT has prevented 500 million deaths due to malaria that otherwise would have been inevitable."

From here - DDT ban is genocidal

You can find more DDT articles on www.junkscience.com by going to their main web page and using either the Google or Yahoo search function.

More on how western donors are behind the drop-off in DDT use ... itself spwaned by the incorrect banning of DDT in the US, itself a product of evinornmental movement agitation. I think the line from environamentalism to deaths in Africa can be made.

http://www.tysknews.com/Depts/Environment/ddt_vs_death.htm

"... South Africa is beating the disease with a simple remedy: spraying the inside walls of houses in affected regions once a year. ... [S]prayed in tiny quantities inside houses - the only way anyone proposes to use it today - DDT is most likely not harmful to people or the environment. Certainly, the possible harm from DDT is vastly outweighed by its ability to save children's lives."

So, why is DDT not being used in this benign manner, let alone more aggressively against malarial mosquito breeding areas? The answer: Wealthy Western funders won't allow it. And they won't allow it because of a combination of outdated science and pseudo-science, coupled with a truly breathtaking faux morality.

Ms. Rosenberg notes "wealthy countries' fear of a double standard" and quotes E. Anne Peterson, assistant administrator for global health at the U.S. Agency for International Development:

"For us to be buying and using in another country something we don't allow in our own country raises the specter of preferential treatment. We certainly have to think about 'What would the American people think and want?' and 'What would Africans think if we're going to do to them what we wouldn't do to our own people?'"

What would Americans want? If millions of Americans were dying from malaria, we'd be spraying DDT furiously.