DDT makes a comeback in effort to halt malaria

Baltimore Sun ^ | 8/27/06 | Scott Calvert

[mathprof]

Men in blue coveralls and white surgical masks began their annual trek into the countryside here last week. Methodically, they sprayed one home after another with a chemical most Americans probably thought disappeared from use long ago: DDT.

As villagers looked on, the workers doused inside and outside walls with a fine mist. It is a yearly effort to repel and kill mosquitoes that carry malaria - a disease that kills more than a million people a year, mostly children in sub-Saharan Africa.

Advertisement This small kingdom near South Africa is one of a handful of countries still using the pesticide, banned in the United States in 1972 because of its toxic effect on eagles and other wildlife.

But now DDT is poised for expansion in the developing world.

The influential World Health Organization plans to promote DDT as a cheap and effective tool against malaria. And the U.S. government has boosted its budget for malarial insecticide spraying in Africa twenty-fold, to $20 million next year.

The new push for household spraying reflects a growing belief in some quarters that significant progress on malaria will require a third major front, alongside insecticide-treated bed nets and novel anti-malarial drugs.

No one proposes a return to the widespread agricultural use that severely harmed ecosystems in the United States and Europe decades ago. The results of such spraying were famously depicted in Rachel Carson's landmark 1962 book Silent Spring, which launched the modern environmental movement.

Advocates of household spraying say the comparatively minute amounts used in homes pose no known dangers. Any potential risk, they say, is far outweighed by DDT's potency against malaria, as was seen in the late 1940s and '50s when it helped eradicate the disease in the United States and other industrialized nations.

But environmental groups...

[RadioAstronomer]

WOW! There is no rational argument you can use with these people.

[Pete from Shawnee Mission]

The problem with DDT is that it kills pretty much every insect with which it comes in contact, good, bad, indifferent, it just kills them. That includes insects that prey on other insects and pollinating insects. When you do something like this you may affect food chains in ways that may have worse consequences than the malaria, say, eliminating your pollinating insects and the local fruit crop.

As an alternative to DDT, there is a form of water bourn bacteria discovered by an Israeli scientist that specifically kill mosquito bacteria. The product is available in the US. It's smart to use nature against nature.

[melancholy]

This is why we have West Nile virus and bird-flu. Bring back DDT - immediately.

Ditto, how about eradicating the widespread Lyme ticks?

[calex59]

Insects don't "develop" a resistance to DDT. It kills them all and there are no survivors. That's like saying ebola will become resistance to being killed by bleach(ebola outside of the body of a carrier), it won't happen. The book silent spring was built on flawed work and has done a great disservice to the world, once again fanatical greenies have pushed an agenda that has caused more harm than good.

[StACase]

It's smart to use nature against nature.

Yes, the mongoose was introduced to Hawaii and the folks there just love them.

Naturally Speaking

[Tribune7]

good. Now let our hotels start using again to treat bed sheets.

[pepperdog]

The DDT ban has killed more people in this world than Hitler, Pol Pot, Stalin and all the Chinese dictators put together, but you'll probably not find that stated anywhere. The death of millions can be laid at the door of environmentalists. Why anyone listens to anything they say is a constant amazement to me.

[enviros_kill]

Even the New (Old) York Times supports DDT:

April 11, 2004
What the World Needs Now Is DDT
By TINA ROSENBERG
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F0DEEDA1738F932A25757C0A9629C8B63&sec=health&pagewanted=print

Tired of bedbugs? Got DDT?
Uptick in bedbugs reported in Lawrence [KS]
By Lindsay Hanson
Monday, May 31, 2004
http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2004/may/31/uptick_in_bedbugs/

And finally, The Malaria Clock over at Junk Science
http://www.junkscience.com/malaria_clock.htm

[Moonman62]

Rachel Carson was part of a corporate conspiracy?

[APFel]

She said, and I quote, "wouldn't the world be a much better place if the human race was extinct"?

Frankly, I am surprised that you're surprised. This is not an uncommon perspective for the far left enviro types, and even more common for animal rights activists.

APf

[A Strict Constructionist]

Did you politely suggest she commit suicide to prove her commitment to the cause?

[pepperdog]

She has a car and a big house? Well isn't she the committed environmentalist, using all these resources to maintain her life style? Just like a liberal, it's good for everyone else but not for them. She should be living in a natural cave and walking everywhere if she really believes what she says. And does she have children? I suppose not and I hope not as they will not live long if she really believes what she said. These people are fools of the first order.

[A Strict Constructionist]

Sorry, posting before reading the rest causes reduntant comments.

[hosepipe]

[ As an alternative to DDT, there is a form of water bourn bacteria discovered by an Israeli scientist that specifically kill mosquito bacteria. ]

What is mosquito bacteria?...

[Jim Noble]

No one proposes a return to the widespread agricultural use that severely harmed ecosystems in the United States and Europe decades ago. The results of such spraying were famously depicted in Rachel Carson's landmark 1962 book Silent Spring, which launched the modern environmental movement.

Except that the "results of such spraying" depicted in Miss Carson's book were all lies.

Two books in the twentieth century killed over a hundred million people each - Mein Kampf and Silent Spring.

[Jim Noble]

I'm no infectious disease specialist

Well, I'm board-certified,and I assure you that DDT is essential to combat malaria.

It will also eliminate West Nile, EEE, and a variety of other undesireables.

[RadioAstronomer]

And does she have children?

Nope. I never asked why. (Nor was I there long enough to find out)

[Sir Gawain]

banned in the United States in 1972 because of its toxic effect on eagles and other wildlife.

Lies our teachers told us.

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

[RadioAstronomer]

Gads I wanted to. But I am far too polite. LOL!

(Maybe too polite sometimes)

[freekitty]

Thank God for that. They should have done this a long long time ago. There has never been any actual proof of DDT harming the enviornment; most phoney junk science like that stupid Rachael whatever her name is.

But, then there are those who think zero population is great; or atleast selective population is. I say phooey. You do that and you have probably lost some creative minds of the future. I can see it now; the headlines scream "Oops, something went wrong....our carefully designed babies are no more than robots; designed and planned only to think and do as we tell them". Wouldn't Hitlery and her crowd love that?