Free Republic

Most people would consider the June 1972 ban of DDT by the Environmental Protection Agency the beginning of the end for widespread use of the insecticide, the most effective anti-malaria pesticide still in existence. For his role in promulgating the ban in the face of a contrary finding by the EPA hearing, then Administrator William Ruckelshaus has become almost a hate figure amongst the anti-malaria community. Now it appears though that the hate figure should actually be then President Richard Nixon. In February 10th 1970, President Nixon announced, "we have taken action to phase out the use of DDT and...

The year 2000 was a time of plague for the South African town of Ndumo, on the border of Mozambique. That March, while the world was focused on AIDS, more than 7,000 people came to the local health clinic with malaria. The South African Defense Force was called in, and soldiers set up tents outside the clinic to treat the sick. At the district hospital 30 miles away in Mosvold, the wards filled with patients suffering with the headache, weakness and fever of malaria -- 2,303 patients that month. ''I thought we were going to get buried in malaria,'' said...

Don't believe all you read well, except maybe this Argument for DDT use has merit but needs more facts to support claim A recent letter to the editor attempts to shatter conventional wisdom on DDT and its connection to declines in bird populations years ago. The letter writer wrote "not one study has shown that the inclusion of DDT in the diet of any birds has caused eggshell thinning." This simply is not true. The statement was written in the greater context of a point that the recent shotgun killing of four brown pelicans on the National Seashore is less...

The Unnecessary Scourge By Paul Driessen "My friend's four-year-old child hasn't been able to walk for months because of malaria," Ugandan farmer and businesswoman Fiona "Fifi" Kobusingye says softly. "She crawls around on the floor. Her eyes bulge out like a chameleon, her hair is dried up, and her stomach is all swollen because the parasites have taken over her liver. Her family doesn't have the money to help her, and neither does the Ugandan government. All they can do is take care of her the best they can, and wait for her to die." Malaria is also a personal...

In life, as in cowboy movies, there are only two kinds of people: good guys in white hats; bad guys in black hats. For the last third of the 20th century, the greens wore the white hats and the rest of us wore the black ones, environmentally speaking anyway. By greens, I mean sandal-wearing, granola-eating, eco-snobs. Anti-everything from seal hunts to green lawns. The rest of us: fossil-fuel-burning, meat-eating, weed-spraying car lovers out to end life on this planet. The greens: environmentally perfect. The rest of us: not. But at last the sandal is on the other foot. They're not...

Activists in the environmentalist movement have a callous disregard for people. You say: "What do you mean, Williams? We can't think of a more caring people." First, I'm not talking about sensible people who're concerned about clean air and water. I'm talking about the movement leaders and the politicians they have under their thumbs. Let's look at it. The New York Green Party said in its opposition to pesticide spraying to halt the spread of West Nile disease, "These diseases only kill the old and people whose health is already poor." In East Meadow and Hempstead, N.Y., local officials, following...

Malaria, a disease forgotten in wealthy countries, is advancing, killing a million people or more a year, at least 700,000 of them African children. In many nations, some people spend several months a year ill from malaria, a toll that cripples African economies. One reason for malaria's resurgence is that it has evolved to resist the two standard treatments. In East Africa, chloroquine, the most widely used drug, fails two-thirds of the time, and a newer treatment is useless in nearly half of the cases. A better treatment exists, but the world is adopting it far too slowly. It is...

THE view most people have of colonialism and imperialism is largely negative. So any charge that a group, individual or government is guilty of them is bound to be resisted strongly by the recipient. Recently, in New York City, a broad charge of eco-imperialism was laid at the feet of the environmental movement. The Congress of Racial Equality (Core ) blames government officials, aid agency bureaucrats as well as sandal-wearing greens for mass disease and death in the poorest countries of the world because they export their most vile regulatory policies. According to Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore: "The environmental movement...

Eco-imperialism: Green Power; Black Death By Roger Bate Despite the best efforts of historian, Niall Ferguson, to demonstrate the better side of the British Empire (see Empire, Basic Books, 2002) the overwhelming view of the American people to colonialism and imperialism is largely negative. So any charge made against a group, individual or government that involves these words is bound to be resisted strongly by the recipient. At recent events in Washington and New York a broad charge of eco-imperialism has been laid at the feet of the environmental movement. Government officials, aid agency bureaucrats, as well as sandal-wearing greens,...

Cracking open the facts on birds and banned pesticides "A dupe of the radical Greens!" "A disingenuous corporate stooge!" What could provoke such contradictory ad hominem attacks on your humble science correspondent? My simple observation in last week's column on the 30th anniversary of the Endangered Species Act: "It is generally acknowledged that banning DDT, which thinned bird's eggshells, brought back the bald eagle, the peregrine falcon, and the brown pelican." The controversy over the pesticide DDT and bird eggshell thinning is still going strong more than 30 years after the pesticide was banned in the United States. DDT and...

The Ocean Alliance and Reuters news service have that mysterious giant of the deep, the sperm whale, figured out. Hunted relentlessly throughout the world's oceans during the 19th and 20th centuries, the enigmatic, large-brained marine mammal is carrying DDT in his massive frame, and that means he's on his way to oblivion. Or maybe not. "We have yet to find a single significant health threat from DDT use even after 40 years of exhaustive research," The Lancet, a respected British medical journal, concluded a few years ago. Meanwhile, Dr. Hal Whitehead, a prominent whale researcher who believes only 350,000 sperm...

Should your health be left to you and your doctor? Or should agents of your federal, state or local government manage it? And should those charged with public heath responsibilities give higher priority to non-health agendas than to saving human lives? Although we've often discussed these question in overall policy terms, looking at the health care systems in this country and health insurance arrangements, we're going to look at how political policies impact your health through the public health departments in federal, state and local governments. In particular, we'll look how the management and mismanagement of the outbreak of the...

A somber procession today presented the first annual "Green Power - Black Death" Awards to organizations that have done the most to bring poverty, misery, disease and premature death to billions of people in developing countries. The award ceremony was held during the World Trade Organization (WTO) ministerial meeting in Cancun. Led by a Grim Reaper, some members of the procession carried coffins, while others held placards that read "DDT Stops Malaria and Saves Lives," "Biotechnology Saves Lives and Habitats," "Save the Children," and "Sustainable Development = Sustained Poverty." The event was held to dramatize the harmful effects that misguided...

Just over three years ago American government officials arrived in Germany. Their mission: to adopt measures, in cooperation with other rich countries, that would kill hundreds of thousands of Africans annually. The killing of Africans was not the stated aim, of course, but it was the result of the disastrous consequences of these officials' plan to eliminate what they mischievously called "persistent organic pollutants" which include PCB, dioxins and DDT, the most demonised of pesticides, and so make the world safe for malaria carrying mosquitoes. That PCBs, dioxins and DDT have been scientifically cleared cuts no ice with green bureaucrats...

Weekly cases of West Nile Virus are being reported from around the country. These media reports often mention that only the very old may die from the dreaded virus. Is this meant to reassure us – only Grandma and Grandpa may die? Taken in a larger context it is apparent that the human death toll from environmental policies continues to mount while the "Fort Worth Star-Telegram" and "Dallas Morning News" lecture us on riding the train and the bus. The US is in the midst of a nationwide virus epidemic from disease-carrying mosquitoes because misinformed or timid politicians refuse to...

The Deadly Hypocrisy of Progressivism By Scott Jordan A central tenet of Marxism and all its variants is that the rich—if you must have 'em—must pay more taxes than the proletariat. It's only fair, goes the thinking, that those who have more should pay more… not just proportionally more according to their larger income, but exponentially more through application of a larger multiple: a higher tax rate.In a linguistic twist that must have given Orwell grim satisfaction, this is known as "progressive" taxation. Now, chew on that term: "progressive." Doesn't it sound nice? Per webster.com, its leading definitions are...

Bring Back DDTBy Henry I. MillerNew York Times | August 7, 2003 The outbreak of West Nile virus in the United States is rapidly becoming a significant threat to public health. With the peak season just beginning, the mosquito-borne virus has been found in animals (primarily birds and horses) in 38 states, and has caused 103 serious infections and three deaths in humans in 15 states.Last year, there were more than 4,000 cases and almost 300 deaths. We may be on the verge of an epidemic, but there is no treatment and a vaccine is at least a decade away.Public...

A pandemic is slaughtering millions, mostly children and pregnant women -- one child every 15 seconds; 3 million people annually; and over 100 million people since 1972 --but there are no protestors clogging the streets or media stories about this tragedy. These deaths can be laid at the doorstep of author Rachel's Carson. Her1962 bestselling book Silent Spring detailed the alleged "dangers" of the pesticide DDT, which had practically eliminated malaria. Within ten years, the environmentalist movement had convinced the powers that be to outlaw DDT. Denied the use of this cheap, safe and effective pesticide, millions of people --...

How the greens kill people Dr Aaron Oakley BrookesNews.Com Wednesday 8 July 2003 It is useful when trying to gauge the silliness of greens to use some kind of benchmark. I propose a benchmark based on their attitudes towards DDT. On average, a child in Africa dies every three minutes from malaria. This is a needless and tragic death. There was a time when it could be said that DDT was saving millions of lives. Not any more. Thanks to comfortably well off and malaria-free greens in the first world, DDT manufacture and use has been drastically curtailed. The science...

Countries in Africa and Asia are again being afflicted by massive malaria epidemics that infect and kill millions. DDT, an effective and cost-efficient mosquito repellent, helped reduce malaria death rates by seventy percent in the early 1950s. However, developed nations concerned about the health effects of DDT pressured Third World countries to stop using it, and most did, with disastrous effects. o More than 100,000 people died during malaria epidemics in Madagascar in the mid-1980s after DDT house spraying was suspended. o Sri Lanka stopped spraying houses with DDT in 1961 and subsequently had a major malaria epidemic. o Last...