Posted on 07/03/2002 4:09:24 AM PDT by backhoe
THE World Health Organisation, Greenpeace, the World Wildlife Fund, the UN environmental programme and its development programme, USAID, and almost all the other international representatives of the great and the good now campaign against DDT.
But, perversely, the Third World still uses it. To those who believe that America under George W Bush and his gas-guzzling, permafrost-drilling accomplices is the source of all global pollution, this Third World defection is disappointing. Where are the virtuous blacks when we need them?
DDT was introduced as an insecticide during the 1940s. In Churchill's words: "The excellent DDT powder has been found to yield astonishing results against insects of all kinds, from lice to mosquitoes."
And astonishing they were. DDT was particularly effective against the anopheles mosquito, which is the carrier of malaria, and people once hoped that DDT would eradicate malaria worldwide. Consider Sri Lanka. In 1946, it had three million cases, but the introduction of DDT reduced the numbers, by 1964, to only 29. In India, the numbers of malaria cases fell from 75 million to around 50,000.
But, in 1962, Rachel Carson published Silent Spring, the book that launched the environmental movement. In that book, Carson showed how DDT was imperilling wildlife, particularly predators at the top of the food chain that accumulated the chemical in their fat and in their thinning egg shells.
Within a decade, the developed countries had banned DDT, as did some developing countries, to the detriment of their health. In Sri Lanka, cases of malaria soon rose to 500,000. Worldwide, malaria has returned with a vengeance, accounting annually for 300 million cases and, sadly, one million deaths, mainly of children.
As the Third World now knows, there is no ready substitute for DDT. The spraying of houses with DDT prevents malaria because most people are infected after dusk as they sleep indoors. DDT permeates the walls of buildings, and a single spray will provide indoor protection for months.
Other chemicals are available, but they are generally less effective, shorter-acting and - most importantly for the Third World - more expensive. And DDT is extraordinarily safe for humans. Prof Kenneth Mellanby lectured on it for more than 40 years, and during each lecture he would eat a pinch.
Nor need DDT imperil wildlife. The destruction that Carson described was caused by the agricultural use of DDT as a mass insecticide in vast quantities on crops. But the discriminating application of DDT indoors involves only a tiny, contained, environmentally tolerable, reversible fraction of the dose. That is why some international health (as opposed to environmental) agencies, including Unicef, still support the judicious use of DTT. Even the WHO is now softening its stance.
Malaria was once endemic in Britain. Cromwell died of it and both Pepys and Shakespeare described it. Until the 1930s, it was still active in Essex. But we are lucky in our frosty climate, which kills anopheles, and we have eradicated the disease. Yet Greenpeace and other environmental agencies resist the appropriate use of DDT in the tropics.
Politics has long bedevilled malaria. Its first effective cure was quinine, which was discovered by Jesuit missionaries in South America during the 1630s, but for decades Protestants preferred to die rather than swallow "Jesuit's Powder". Today, Third World health is endangered by comfortable Western environmentalists, some of whom, discreetly, view black natives as threats to the local wildlife.
Supporting those black natives, however, are two researchers, Richard Tren and Roger Bate, whose Malaria and the DDT Story, recently published by the Institute for Economic Affairs in London, shows how to foster both a healthier and an environmentally friendlier Third World. Greenpeace, in its self-assurance, embodies a contemporary cultural imperialism as offensive as any Jesuit's.
I don't disagreee... the human toll of this early, fraudulent story has been horrible.
There have been over the years a series of scams that managed-- partly by dumb luck, partly with the help of a lazy, gullible media, and partly by the public's willingness to put too much stock in what they see on the TV-- to become "the accepted wisdom."
Freon was one, asbestos another, and perhaps the alleged dangers of nuclear power yet another. The Corvair also comes to mind- by the time Nader's book was published, the "tuck-under" problem had been corrected, but perception is everything, and bad perception killed the Corvair.
All those, however, were sort of a nuisance, a bother, an expense- but didn't kill people.
The effects of banning DDT on the basis of dubious science, however, left a toll of dead people behind it.
You know, maybe we can turn this thing around, with the speed and ease of information retrieval on the web. I know I stewed in silence over Freon because I had no easy way ( the pre-1996 era, before the ban ) to show people how badly they were being conned.
Maybe enough people will see this information and realize they were swindled.
Goebels would be proud. That eggshell myth was debunked back in the 60s, there is no evidence of any kind that the eggs of exposed birds are any more fragile, but of course it gets repeated so often that nobody ever hears the truth. MOF the use of DDT actually caused the population of all species of birds (including the bald eagle) to increase because the biggest killer of birds is insect-borne disease.
Somehow I doubt they'll be able to enjoy the sight of an eagle soaring when they are wracked with cramps. But hey, it'll be worth it, right?
Besides, who cares about all those darkies dying around the world. It isn't your problem is it?
L
H.L. Mencken had a plan to end prohibition which would have worked had the feds not wised up and ended it themselves when they did. Mencken went to Germany and put himself through the standard course in brewing beer at his own expense and was in the process of teaching five of his friends, on condition that each teach five of HIS friends, on condition that...
The same idea would work with DDT. If everybody did it, the fricking feds couldn't do a damned thing about it.
That comment is out of line and has no place in this sort of discussion.
Not that there's necessarily a demonstrated cause and effect, but Bald Eagle and Peregrine Falcon populations have increased greatly since the 60s, since DDT was banned. Since their declining numbers had made these species the prime DDT poster children, on its face the ban seems to have achieved its puropse.
If the DDT banning isn't responsible, what is?
A buddy of mine studied under one of America's leading falconry artists, in fact the guy who released the perigrines in Baltimore, and claims that guy said the whole thing about DDT and birds was a bunch of BS.
Thank you.
Since the results of the first eggshell study could not be duplicated or replicated later, it was obviously something other than DDT causing the problem.
Didn't t become illegal to shoot them, about the same time? Or to build where they nest?
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