Posted on 08/06/2016 4:29:09 AM PDT by VitacoreVision
Jane Orient, M.D., serves as the Executive Director of the American Association of Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS). This Arizona-based organization attracts conservative-thinking doctors and frequently finds itself in disagreement with the well-known American Medical Association.
Dr. Orient has issued a call to start using DDT in the fight against the Zika virus. Her stand places her in marked contrast to an assortment of leftist environmentalists and their political allies. To them, DDT is harmful. But examination of the claims that DDT adversely affects people, plant life, and fish shows the worries to be unreasonable if not completely false.
Created in 1874 by a German chemist, dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane wasn’t found to be an effective insecticide until 1939 when Swiss chemist Paul Müller started publicizing its usefulness as an eradicator of mosquitoes and various vermin. Müller justifiably won the 1948 Nobel Prize “for his discovery of the high efficiency of DDT as a contact poison against several anthropods.”
Soon after the acknowledgement of Müller’s work, use of DDT became widespread. Typhus that had ravaged U.S. forces during World War II was largely eliminated. In the United States, sickness and death caused by malaria shrank from 15,000 cases in 1947 to compete eradication by 1951. The use of DDT in Africa and elsewhere proved sensationally effective against malaria and other mosquito borne diseases. The use of DDT, says Dr. Orient, probably saved 500,000,000 lives without killing anyone.”
In 1962, however, Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring gave birth to a campaign against DDT that has led to the substance being banned for use in the United States and much of the world. Carson predicted that vegetation would disappear, fish would no longer be found in rivers and streams, birds would no longer be found, and people would face grave dangers. DDT became Enemy Number One and its use became illegal in 1972 via an EPA mandate. Soon, the United Nations joined the U.S. in condemning DDT and using it ceased in many parts of the world.
In Florida today, frantic efforts to eradicate the Zika virus have dominated our nation’s print and electronic media. Numerous athletes have declined to participate in the Olympic Games over fear of mosquito bites transmitting the Zika virus and more. To combat the threat, medical authorities are turning to everything but DDT.
“If we do nothing,” says Dr. Orient, “a lot of people will get Zika [and] some will get Guillain Barre Syndrome which causes a potentially fatal paralysis.” Labeling as a “step above nothing” the current strategy of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) — don’t get pregnant, wear long sleeve clothing, and apply a mosquito repellent — she laments the refusal to employ DDT to deal with the problem. Everything offered by the CDC and others isn’t working very well according to the AAPS leader. What would work? With a willingness to stick her neck out, Dr. Orient says it may be “the height of political incorrectness to suggest trying DDT.” But that’s what she believes would be effective.
Why did the ban on DDT develop and become virtually mandatory? Population control seems to be the hidden goal of some. In the 1960s, Environmental Defense Fund leader Dr. Charles Wurster claimed there were already too many people on earth. He proposed banning DDT “as a way to get rid of them.” In his syndicated column, Walter Williams noted that Malthusian Club founder Alexander King had written in 1990: “So my chief quarrel with DDT, in hindsight, is that it has greatly added to the population problem.” In November 1991, the Paris-based UNESCO Courier published the proposal of famed oceanographer Jacques Cousteau, who called for action to “eliminate 350,000 people per day” as the way to counter population growth. Others claiming to be environmentalists have issued similarly outrageous statements.
The existing ban on DDT should be terminated. Perhaps the current scare presented by the Zika virus will lead again to the use of this remarkable and safe substance.
Related Articles:
Documentary Exposes the Horrific Human Cost of the DDT Ban
An opinion backed by facts should not draw flames. But the facts have to be fact checked and verified, because so many facts today just ain't so. (AGW, prime example)
Alex, what is 100%?
Warrant? DDT should never have been banned in the first place.
DDT as an insecticide wasn't discovered until 1939. And the question isn't whether DDT is effective. It's is it more effective than what they are using now?
Simple answer.....yes. It is more effective because it is persistent (doesn't degrade in the environment as fast). Why was it banned....because it is persistent. But there are places where you actually want persistence...like termite-proofing your house. The total ban should be repealed, and limited usage allowed.
DDT was invented in the 1860’s. It was use for insecticide much earlier than 1940.
As to what is being used now we are being blasted with neurotoxins and genetically enhanced mosquitoes. What could be worse?
Predatory birds had made a substantial comeback long before DDT was outlawed. Controlling predation by hunters was the cure.
Statistical coincidence is not scientific proof.
There is little money to be made in the production of DDT. It is cheap and easy to make. It has little economic value as a brokered commodity. Its chief value is exterminating pests.
DDT reduces the incidence of cancer.http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/articles/Fall02/Mosquitoes.html
To control Anopheles mosquitoes, DDT was sprayed on inside walls once or twice a year. In 1959, spraymen applied 60,000 tons of DDT to the inside walls of 100 million houses. There was never any need to wear masks or protective clothing while doing DDT spraying. No adverse effects were ever experienced by the 130,000 spraymen or the 535 million people living in the sprayed houses.8
In house spraying, the amount applied was 2 grams of DDT per square meter of wall, every 6 months.9 Also, no wildlife was injured by DDT in those areas. The World Health Organization Director concluded, “The discontinuation of the use of DDT would be a disaster to world health.”
Montrose Chemical Company workers in California, who wore no masks or goggles, were never harmed by their constant exposure to DDT. When their fatty tissues were analyzed, they were found to contain up to 647 parts per million (ppm) of DDT residues. The fatty tissues of the general population at that time contained only 5 or 6 ppm of DDT.10 There were no cancer cases in those workers, even after 1,300 man-years of heavy daily exposure to DDT. Dr. Edward R. Laws, of the U.S. Public Health Service, found that those Montrose workers still were healthy after 10 to 20 years of that exposure.
In addition to its effectiveness, DDT is inexpensive. The cost of spraying in 1959 was $205,000, but if substitutes had to be used, malathion would have cost $637,000, and propoxur would have cost $1,762,000 for the same control. A 1.5 oz. whisky jigger full of 70 percent wettable DDT covers 144 square feet of wall surface, killing all mosquitoes that land there during the next six months.
In the 1960s, the World Health Organization tested more than 1,300 pesticides, seeking effective substitutes for DDT in mosquito control. Only four approached DDT’s effectiveness: Malathion, Aprocarb (Baygon), fenthion, and fenitrothion, but all were more hazardous to humans than DDT and were 4 to 20 times more expensive than DDT.11
Because, over the years, I kept hearing propagandist claims that DDT is toxic to people, I studied all of the relevant scientific and medical literature. Here I mention only some details on DDT’s safety:
Evidence That DDT Fights Cancer
• Drs. Charles Salinskas and Allan E. Okey reported that DDT in rodent diets inhibited development of induced mammary cancers and leukemia.13
• A.E. and E.K. McLean determined that after animals had ingested DDT, the highly toxic aflatoxins they had been fed were not fatal, perhaps because they were converted to non-toxic metabolites by the liver.14 DDT was also known to induce the formation of hepatic microsomal enzymes which, in turn, inhibited the growth of tumors and cancers.
Oh I feel for you. As a woman who has camped rough...never mind. Just hate those blood suckers.
thank you. I will give it a try.
thank you. I will try this and the trap idea.
DDT was first synthesized in 1874. It's insecticide properties were not discovered until 1939.
Wonder Warthog: As a boy in Orlando, Florida in the 1960s, I recall with fondness that the fire ant eradication effort used old B-17 bombers that buzzed the area in formation. They were spraying sweetened corn meal with Mirex though, not DDT. Contrary to belief at the time, Mirex was later recognized as widely toxic. The fire ant eradication effort not only failed, but it seems to have promoted fire ants by eliminating competing native ant species.
For that reason, in Africa, DDT is approved for limited domestic uses, and India manufactures several thousand tons a year for its purposes. Notably, outside of the lab setting, the ill effects of DDT tend to be compounded by and obscured by other persistent organic pollutants that are commonly attributable to pesticides, plastics, fire retardants, and personal care products.
Unlike the immediate impact of say, drinking a dose of cyanide, the effects of trace amounts of DDT are variable and hard to connect to a specific case of illness. There is credible evidence though for DDT as having a role in thyroid problems, breast and liver cancer, hypertension, diabetes, and weight gain. Follow the PubMed link I already provided for details and additional information.
Swallow and then swallow some more - FUD.
PubMed is the essential digest and electronic finding aid for medical journal articles. It is the antidote to FUD.
Who? I think you are mistaken in your belief - as most of us older types bathed in DDT and suffered no ill effects. Meanwhile as part of the Human Extinction Movement millions have died as a direct result of banning DDT - I’m sure if there is a medical consequence from the use of DDT, those dead millions would rather have had the consequence than be dead.
Like I said Fear Uncertainty Distortion.
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