Posted on 09/18/2006 2:04:10 PM PDT by bruinbirdman
The World Health Organization announced Friday that it will begin actively promoting use of the pesticide DDT to combat malaria in developing nations. After tens of millions of preventable malarial deaths in these poor countries, it's nice to see WHO finally come to its senses, says the Wall Street Journal.
The agency's malaria chief, Arata Kochi, told reporters that "one of the best tools we have against malaria is indoor residual spraying. Of the dozen or so insecticides WHO has approved as safe for house spraying, the most effective is DDT." He also said, "We must take a position based on the science and the data."
** Malaria is the number one killer of pregnant women and children in Africa and among the top killers in Asia and South America.
** It's long been known that DDT is the cheapest and most effective way to contain the disease, which is spread by infected mosquitoes.
** But United Nations health agencies and others have for decades resisted employing DDT under pressure from anti-pesticide environmentalists.
For decades, the science and empirical data about DDT's effectiveness have been distorted or suppressed. Nevertheless, there is no evidence that DDT use in the amounts necessary to ward off malarial mosquitoes is harmful to humans, wildlife or the environment.
One insecticide won't end malaria, and DDT's proponents don't claim it will. But by keeping more people alive and healthy, DDT can help create the conditions for the only lasting solution, which is economic growth and development, says the Journal.
Source: Editorial, "DDT's New Friend," Wall Street Journal, September 18, 2006.
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How about sending them to one of these places where malaria is bad and not let them have access to any preventative or cure, as they've insisted on for others?
I know you were probably being facetious, but in the early 1970s a prominent enviro used that argument to support the DDT ban.
About f***ing time.
There was no better sound than those diazinon foggers passing my appartment in Louisiana every week at 3 in the morning.
yitbos
YIKES...........yup you have my place in line.
West Nile Virus is what we worry about around here, but not that much........though we do refer to skeeters as the regional bird.
I was well aware of the argument against DDT that was put forth in "Paul Ehrlich and the Population Bomb", which was once prominently featured on the PBS website. And I WAS being facetious.
Paul Ehrlich was blowing smoke then, and for all I know, he still is. If he is still alive, that is.
Scams, Scalawags, and an all-too-gullible Public...famous frauds sold to America
Radon
Yep, and alar and saccarine and Red Dye #7(?) and other assorted boogeymen (hattip: H.L. Menken ).
West Nile is dangerous, too. I'll send you what I don't use.
Ya gotta deal :)
Theater popcorn oil
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.
BTTT
Whaddya know! Science wins one.
Yeah, that would just mean more starving people and more people that could get HIV/AIDS for the US to send more money for.
It's about flippin' time.
Now, the USA can get on with un-banning it and we can thwack West Nile virus too, right? *sigh*
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