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
None of which is sufficient to support a total ban. Far more lives have been lost to malaria than ever were to DDT or any of its metabolites. DDT was banned because of its supposed ecological effects, not its medical effects on humans.
Correction, the insecticide properties of DDT began to be promoted in 1939. They were widely known well before that time.
Unless you are presently, have always been, and always will be in utterly perfect health and beat the actuarial tables, you cannot exclude the possibility of harm from DDT -- including harm to any offspring. And the larger point is that no matter your health, due to biological variability, what matters is not isolated individual cases but the cumulative scientific evidence, with much of it based on population based studies.
If DDT were demonstrably descended as rain from God there would be an outcry against rain. In fact a popular tune in Appalachia in the early 60’s was, “Ain’t no flies on Jesus ‘Cause He’s sprayed with DDT.”
There is no preponderance of scientific evidence demonstrating ill affects of DDT. There is substantial anecdotal statistical documentation that could as easily be attributed to God’s rain.
See post #55 above.
Yes! You are right! It is better to allow (or force) millions to die to prove a minor point which sets a “scientific standard” for mega deaths.
All those dead Africans just love being dead - rather than suffer from a cumulative harm proved by a population statistical study which, as everyone knows, cannot be manipulated to prove a point!
FUD - Long live DDT!
So, resting your case on deaths prevented, do you accept that DDT has adverse health and environmental consequences?
No and I do not care about the so-called environment you claim to protect by advocating death for some. Go away.
Take a look at the more than 12,000 abstracts and articles in PubMed that reference DDT. They are strongly negative and cumulatively make a potent scientific case against DDT, one that I researched originally because I was dissatisfied with the stale anecdotes and fact deficient reasoning of DDT advocates. As for post #55, a personal account and a guess of no harm does not trump the vast body of scientific evidence against the safety of DDT.
You sure seem to love DDT.
Yep DDT best thing since sliced bread ...
Simple question...Out of 10,000 children born to Zika infected moms, how many will be born with small brains?
I found the answer! In the USA, 2-12 per 10,000 BEFORE ZIKA!.
But wait! There is more!
https://www.statnews.com/2016/05/25/zika-microcephaly-what-is-risk/
***Microcephaly can be caused by a number of factors, including a variety of viral infections and ALCOHOL consumption during pregnancy. In the US, between two and 12 babies per 10,000 are born with the condition.***
http://www.pestproducts.com/permethrin-sfr.htm
Permethrin
But toxic to cats.
Fleas, ticks, chiggers, mosquitoes, flies etc.
cats lives don’t matter
does not work on resistant critters.
The fogger trucks still run periodically in the evenings, at least here in Jax. Since there are no notices or warnings I assume it won’t kill us. I see no evidence it harms anything but the mosquitos. No shortage of other bugs or frogs etc.
I’m originally from Jax.
won’t know until its tried.
“presumably, also in humans”
Well, there you go. . .hard fact and evidence.
“They would rather see their own grandchildren or children deformed and die before saying they were wrong about DDT”
Well they are going to abort them anyway, especially if they are infected.
“Strongly negative” is precisely the attitude that precludes unbiased scientific investigation. Truth be told much of the scientific community is funded by government and institutional dollars and has a vested interested in sustaining the status quo. There is a vast body of biased research in any number of fields that exists solely for the purpose of controlling the flow of dollars. Certainly in the case of DDT a nearly infinite number of interests are aligned against its use.
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