DDT Is Only Real Weapon to Combat Malaria

FOX News ^ | 10.27.05 | Steven Milloy

[Coleus]

During the few minutes you spend reading this column, malaria will kill six Africans and sicken about 3,000 more, mostly children and pregnant women -- a rate of more than one million deaths and 500 million illnesses annually among the 2.2 billion people who live in malarial regions like Africa.

There’s legislation moving through the Senate right now intended to reduce this tragic toll.

U.S. taxpayers spend about $200 million annually on malaria control efforts. Ironically, almost none of this money is spent to kill or repel the mosquitoes that spread disease. The money is instead spent on anti-malarial drugs and insecticide-treated bed nets that aren’t very effective.

Bed nets are often torn. They are uncomfortable on hot African nights and may get kicked off. There may not be enough nets for every family member or people whoare still up and about at sunset when the mosquitoes arrive for their night feeding. Anti-malarial drugs are in short supply. The U.S. Agency for International Development hopes to have 55 million pediatric doses for 2006 – leaving the other 445 million people on their own to battle with malaria without any drugs.

.........

As discussed in JunkScience.com’s “100 Things You Should Know About DDT,” the Rachel Carson-Silent Spring-inspired campaign against DDT was utterly detached from reality. DDT did not cause declines in populations of great birds like the bald eagle and the peregrine falcon. These bird populations were threatened before DDT had even been invented ,thanks to over-hunting, habitat destruction, and egg collectors.

The bird populations rebounded, in fact, during the period of the greatest use of DDT.

....................

Steven Milloy publishes JunkScience.com and CSRwatch.com, is adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute, and is the author of Junk Science Judo: Self-defense Against Health Scares and Scams (Cato Institute, 2001).

[Coleus]

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[TexasTransplant]

Thanks for posting this.

TT

[upchuck]

We no longer can use DDT because of the environwackos.

We haven't built any new oil refineries in 30 years because of the environwackos.

It's time to stand up and scream "ENOUGH!!!!!"

[COEXERJ145]

Rachel Carson is responsible for more deaths than the Nazis ever were.

[A.Hun]

A true travesty. Might as well pull the treehuggers toenails out as to bring back DDT.

[ncountylee]

Rachel Carson will have killed millions in 2 centuries.

[Danae]

As I live so near TreeHugger-Central, Portland Oregon, I think I have a new Bumper sticker:

Bring Back DDT.

[GSlob]

Well, DDT is extremely easy to make, but one of the ingredients [chloral] is on DEA list.

[Petronski]

The leftist intelligentsia doesn't mind malaria. Banning DDT has saved many birds, and if there are fewer poor brown people in the world, well, for them it's a side benefit.

The left is actually franchising minority genocide here in the states (Planned Barrenhood), so why should they care about incidental deaths overseas?

[spit]

[LucyT]

The Malaria Clock

http://www.junkscience.com/malaria_clock.htm

[gd124]

It would be a useful tool but I doubt it can solve the malaria problem. Use of DDT had already declined in the US long before 'Silent Spring' because of the emergence of DDT resistant mosquitoes and widespread use in the third world would probably see a similar thing happen.

[GreenFreeper]

ECO-PING

FReepmail me to be added or removed to the ECO-PING list!

[backhoe]

West Nile Virus- Bring Back DDT?

100 things you should know about DDT

[Tarantulas]

Yeah, I've always loved #11 on the list of "100 things you should know about DDT:"

"Population control advocates blamed DDT for increasing third world population. In the 1960s, World Health Organization authorities believed there was no alternative to the overpopulation problem but to assure than up to 40 percent of the children in poor nations would die of malaria. As an official of the Agency for International Development stated, "Rather dead than alive and riotously reproducing."

[Desowitz, RS. 1992. Malaria Capers, W.W. Norton & Company]"

I would like to see a bill in Congress to resume production of DDT in THIS country, rather than some backhanded wussified authorization to let people use it somewhere else. Let's take that bull by the horns.

Thanks for postiong the article. The more often this issue is brought before the public, the more likely it is to be talked about in the MSM. DDT is an equal opportunity humanitarian chemical. It's for the children!

[Montfort]

The banning and near-banning of DDT may be more about keeping down populations of HUMANS than it is about protecting birds, frogs, and the like.

Someone who helped develop DDT won a Nobel Prize several decades ago, and at that time it was estimated that DDT had saved 600 million lives.

Imagine that you are an elitist population control type. Now Think about the impact of saving 600 million lives, mainly Third World lives on population. Think of one of those wonderful family portraits of grandma, grandpa, and their descendants. I think the population controllers became scared of DDT BECAUSE it saved so many human lives. They had to stop it.

The biggest flaw in my theory is that the elitist Nobel committee gave an award to a developer of DDT. It confuses matters a bit. Perhaps it's like a boss who acts like he thinks the world of you the day before he announces a layoff.

[tubebender]

Excellent Post and the replies are right on...

[rutledge]

The day we went to see our first clinic around the area of Mozambique is etched in my brain. The clinic itself was a one story , very rustic 3 room structure made of wood. The staff was very kind and very dedicated, but the building was not only missing screens on the windows, but some of the panes of glass where missing all together. We embarrassed the staff unduly when we asked them why there where no bed nets over the 4 or so hospital beds. It had not occurred to them to buy them because bed nets are very expensive relative to their other expenses and they simply could not afford them. And yet, malaria was one of the primary maladies they dealt with. The reality is this, when we went out into the village , we were able to visit several homes. These homes, where quaint and well kept wood structures with dirt floors, impeccably cleaned and ordered. And all the beds we saw were neatly made with bed nets dutifully pulled over a large number of those that belonged to the children. But the nets for the most part where full of holes. Some of which had been sewn, most of which had not been. For me it raised many serious questions about bed nets. They are expensive to buy, even for a medical clinic, and they are hard to maintain, I imagine especially around the very children they are meant to protect. It is so very hot in Mozambique and it can get dark as early as 6pm. When darkness falls the mosquitoes come out. How feasible is it really for children to stay in their beds under very hot bed nets? How long before those bed nets get holes? Would an American child be able to sit on their bed from 6pm until dawn the next day? Every day? Would there not be holes in the bed nets before long? How much time does a parent have to sew and re-sew those holes to the extent that a tiny mosquito cannot make its way through? What happens when a child needs to go to the bathroom?
Would an American child be able to stand this set up on a hot night with no air conditioning? This is what we are asking of an African child. This what some NGOs and other organizations are insisting is at least part (if not all) of the solution in fighting malaria. To be honest , it boggles my mind. I have to question this. Is this reasonable? What have I missed in the equation? I am doing a documentary on Malaria presently and though I consider myself a die-hard environmentalist in many ways, (see 3billionandcounting.com) I cannot help question how it is, that these countries do not feel comfortable using DDT for fear of repercussions from having their exports banned in countries like the US? How can we feel good about encouraging them to spray their walls with DDT while on the other hand we threaten their economy with boycotts?What motivates this kind of strategy towards developing countries on the part of civilized countries? These are the questions that frequently come to mind.

Helene Udy

[oldbutspry]

Here's the method for making DDT:

[URL=http://img88.imageshack.us/my.php?image=book1fu.jpg][IMG]http://img88.imageshack.us/img88/8387/book1fu.th.jpg[/IMG][/URL]

Problem is, you need chloral or chloral hydrate which requires a prescription. I'm not a chemist by any means, but I believe chloral hydrate is really just chlorinated alcohol. Is it illegal to post the method used to make chloral? If not, can someone post it?

Here's the prescribed method for using DDT:

[URL=http://img154.imageshack.us/my.php?image=ddtphotos9sq.jpg][IMG]http://img154.imageshack.us/img154/197/ddtphotos9sq.th.jpg[/IMG][/URL]

[URL=http://img93.imageshack.us/my.php?image=ddtphotos0012nc.jpg][IMG]http://img93.imageshack.us/img93/4530/ddtphotos0012nc.th.jpg[/IMG][/URL]