DDT is proven to be HIGHLY effective in controlling and eradicating the populations of mosquitos that carry the malaria virus.
When he talks about people dying because of the ban on DDT, he's referring to malaria deaths.
http://www.acsh.org/publications/reports/ddt2002.html There are some 300 to 500 million reported cases of malaria each year, 90% occurring in Africa. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), about two and a half million people die of the disease each year, again, mostly in Africa, the majority of them poor children. Indeed, malaria is the second leading cause of death in Africa (after AIDS) and the number one killer of children there (with about one child being lost to malaria every thirty seconds). Many medical historians believe malaria has killed more people than any other disease in history, including the Black Plague, and may have contributed to the collapse of the Roman Empire. Malaria was common in places as far north as Boston and England until the twentieth century. Two thirds of the world lived in malaria-ridden areas prior to the 1940s.
That devastation all but stopped during the time that DDT use was widespread, around 1950-1970. Indeed, the discovery that DDT could kill malarial mosquitoes earned Dr. Paul MŸller the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1948. DDT, a chemical pesticide synthesized by MŸller in the late 1930s, was initially used against houseflies, beetles, various farm pests, and typhus-carrying lice on the bodies of World War II soldiers and civilians. America and England soon became the major producers of the chemical, using it to fight malaria-carrying mosquitoes, especially in tropical regions.
In all, DDT has been conservatively credited with saving some 100 million lives.
To add to that. DDT has been shown to be effective in African tribal huts by just painting the INSIDE of the hut with DDT laced paint. No DDT is released into the environment at all. It is absolutely non toxic to the humans. But Mosquitoes have evolved a strong dislike to be around DDT, and will not even enter the building where it is, thus preventing almost all malaria infections because they usually happen from bites at night time in the home.
But the Green Nazis will not even support this practice. They arm twisted the last country in Africa (can't remember which one) into stopping this a few years ago, and now malaria rates are skyrocketing there.
Greens don't care about the fact that DDT used this way cannot harm the environment whatsoever. They just want people dead. This is not hype. Its true.