Posted on 12/07/2015 11:17:08 AM PST by DogByte6RER
These People Took DDT Pills In the 1970s to Prove it Was Safe
In 1971 two people in North Hollywood started eating DDT pills every day. That's right, they willingly swallowed 10mg of poison every single day for three months. In front of witnesses.
From the Associated Press:
- Robert Loibl and his wife, Louise, hold 10-milligram capsules of DDT which they took in front of witnesses for 93 days at lunch time, June 10, 1971. Loibl said their total dosage was more than the average person consumes in 83 years. He said his wife's dandruff disappeared, their appetites perked up and they feel better. Loibl said they just wanted to call attention to the public that DDT was safe. The potential dangers of DDT first came to mainstream America's attention in 1962 with the publication of Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring. The book jumpstarted the modern environmental movement in the US and helped bring attention to the harmful effects that DDT was having on wildlife. Spraying DDT was not great for birds and marine life. But we now know that its danger to humans was overstated.
DDT became controversial in mainstream American culture during the late 1960s and the EPA banned the use of DDT as a pesticide in 1972. But the stigma attached to the chemical has had negative consequences around the world, especially for the fight against malaria.
In the first half of the 20th century, malaria was infecting millions of Americans a year and killing about 3,000 annually. Despite being synthesized in 1874, DDT wasn't developed as an insecticide until 1939 by Swiss scientist Paul Muller. But DDT then quickly helped wipe out malaria in the Western world. By 1951 the United States was officially rid of the mosquito-transmitted disease. But other countries weren't so lucky.
In 2006 malaria was still infecting about 300 million people worldwide and killing about 1 million people a year. The World Health Organization took another look at DDT in the mid-2000s and controversially promoted it as a way to fight the malaria epidemic in Africa and Asia. Today, roughly a decade later, the number of malaria deaths worldwide have been almost cut in half.
DDT typically doesn't cause health problems in humans after limited exposure. It's the prolonged exposure that scientists are most concerned about. The FDA has classified DDT as a B2 carcinogen, which is to say it's a probable human carcinogen based on tests on animals. That's below a B1 carcinogen, which is based on evidence found in humans, and an A carcinogen, which is a classification reserved for when something is definitively carcinogenic to humans.
Whatever happened to Robert and Louise Loibl who swallowed DDT for three months straight? I haven't been able to figure that one out. They don't show up in any newspaper accounts of the mid-1970s and I can't find death records for either of them. For all we know, they may have died of acute DDT poisoning the following year. But it's a safe bet that however they eventually died, it wasn't from malaria.
It's great to see that even some 45 years ago there were people bold enough to go against the liberal orthodoxy of that left-wing monster Rachel Carson ...
I was raised with DDT. Still kicking. I am beginning to hate environs.
Rachel Carson is like Bambi. The emotional reaction overrules what is really true.
Used to follow and play behind the fogging trucks in the 60’s, still here
I bet the eggs they lay have thin shells/s
“I bet the eggs they lay have thin shells”
You didn’t say it all. DDT’s effect on the eggs of birds was the reason it was banned, wasn’t it? Not that it was harmful to people.
Me too, from the late 40s-early 50s 'til I outgrew it.
I found Robert on Ancestry.com in 2 minutes.
Name: Robert Loibl
Last Residence: 92054 Oceanside, San Diego, California, USA
BORN: 7 Jun 1910
Last Benefit: 92054, Oceanside, San Diego, California, United States of America
Died: Sep 1980
State (Year) SSN issued: California (Before 1951) Nothing on his wife.
Too bad the author couldn't be bothered to take the time. I may, I'd guess that the records are out there for the finding.
But, I too doubt that there will be anything to find. "Robert and Louise lived long, happy, and productive lives before expiring at a ripe old age" doesn't sell newspapers.
"Right Wing Kook DDT-deniers die painful lingering deaths as a result of their misguided conservative beliefs", probably would. In fact, I'd not put in past the NYT to invent such a story.
In the wild it is pretty clear that DDT had nothing to do with thin shells but that it was mercury that was causing problems.
DDT was a pesticide that did what it was suppose to do. Killed the pest and did no harm to anyone else. So, of course, it had to be destroyed.
Anything that kept more people alive was bad you see.
It’s great to see that even some 45 years ago there were people bold enough to go against the liberal orthodoxy of that left-wing monster Rachel Carson ... We have a Rachel Carson Building in Harrisburg, PA. I’ve begged our representatives to either tear it down or rename it. Nothing.
We need to plan a reunion for DDT Survivers:-) Just to tick-off environmentalists.
The weird and wonderful thing is that DDT has no effect on eggshell thickness. That was just one of the false memes promoted about DDT.
So Loibl died at 70. Filthy genocidal monster Rachel Carson checked into the maggot motel at 56.
Yup. There’s a younger Robert Loibl, born 1930, but Our Robert was 60 in 1971. There were also articles on Ancestry.
Eating DDT pills bookmark.
Rachel Carson was somebody who got her vindictive hour in the sun - and probably killed millions of people in Africa and other tropical locations while getting her glory.
She was never a particularly nice person, from what one reads, and never a great scientist, but she had cancer and wanted to blame someone or something for it. She was both ideologically motivated, being a leftist, and personally motivated, being a non-religious liberal confronting mortality. So what better than the eeevil chemical companies?
And if DDT was the best target, ok, who cares about those millions of Africans, Indians, etc. Margaret Sanger didn’t like them either.
Used to blueberry picking in the evening at the Jersey shore when I was a kid - all the time engulfed by clouds of DDT fog from the spray trucks.
Million must die to make liberals happy with them selves, it seems.
If you don’t have to worry about laying thin-shelled eggs, you’re golden. If you’re a bird, not so much.
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