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Senator and Mrs. John Kerry are big fans of Rachel Carson, whose disingenuous book Silent Spring launched the radical anti-pesticide movement that Terersa Heinz Kerry bankrolls rather handsomely through her family philanthropies. THK applauds "important gains" like the "banning of DDT and other harmful pesticides" as vital to ending the "devastating triple whammy" that women get from "the chemical soup" they encounter every day from birth control pills, makeup and sunblock, and "daily games of golf" on courses that are "perfectly manicured, thanks to estrogenic pesticides." "Drift is something we cannot afford when it comes to human rights," she insists....

Environmental ideology demands opposition to DDT despite the millions of malaria deaths its use could prevent. The West Nile virus deaths being reported across North America are a grim echo of a larger tragedy. Each year a million lives are taken worldwide by another mosquito-borne killer: malaria. Though nearly eradicated decades ago, malaria has resurged with a vengeance. But the real tragedy is that its horrific death toll is largely preventable. The most effective agent of mosquito control, the pesticide DDT, has been essentially discarded--discarded based not on scientific concerns about its safety, but on environmental dogma. The environmental crusade...

Health in the Balance By Paul Driessen and Niger Innis News flash! New artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACT drugs) will, and pesticides (including DDT) may, henceforth play greater roles in the global battle against malaria. Thus spoke World Health Organization and U.S. Agency for International Development officials at a September 14 hearing before the House Subcommittee on Africa. The declarations may represent significant progress, and exceptionally good news for millions in developing countries -- if the agencies really mean what they said (there are serious doubts), and Congress is willing to hold them to their commitments. Consider what's at stake: HIV/AIDS...

“The environmental movement I helped found has lost its objectivity, morality and humanity. The pain and suffering it is inflicting on families in developing countries must no longer be tolerated. This is the first book I’ve seen that tells the truth and lays it on the line. It’s a must-read for anyone who cares about people, progress and our planet.” – Patrick Moore, Greenpeace co-founder “Paul Driessen has given us an amazing tour de force. He explores one of today’s most perplexing problems: the environmentally sensitive rich demanding that the Third World’s poor forego feeding themselves, solving their health and...

Fiddling Piano Keys While Africa Burns By Roger Bate and Richard Tren On Friday the science journal Nature published a series of papers on malaria and its control. Focusing on this preventable and curable disease is crucial and timely; malaria is the biggest killer of children in Africa accounting for over 1 million deaths world wide each year. Furthermore, we are now at the halfway point through the World Health Organization's (WHO) Roll Back Malaria program which can only be described as an unmitigated failure. Unless urgent and far reaching reforms are made to Roll Back Malaria and its partner...

Millions in the third world die from malaria every year in large part because of a virtual ban on the controversial insecticide DDT. The removal of the unwarranted stigma from DDT and the saving of many future lives is now nearer at hand than it has been in the last 30 years thanks to the efforts of Dr. J. Gordon Edwards, who passed away on July 19 at the age of 85.

Junk science?     Junkman?       Trash Talk BBS       Store       Feedback       Site Search      E-mail List        Archives & Links 100 things you should know about DDT by J. Gordon Edwards and Steven Milloy I. Historical BackgroundII. Advocacy against DDTIII. EPA hearingsIV. Human exposureV. CancerVI. Egg shell thinningVII. Bald eaglesVIII. Peregrine falconsIX. Brown pelicansX. Bird populations increase during DDT yearsXI.Erroneous detection I. Historical Background Discovered by accident, DDT became one of the greatest public health tools of the 20th century.Overuse harmed its efficacy -- and made it politically unpopular. Dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane (DDT) was first synthesized, for no purpose, in 1874 by German chemist Othmar Zeidler....

Facts versus fears: DDT Extract from the American Council on Science and Health publication "Facts Versus Fears" - Edition 3, June 1998. © American Council on Science and Health - all rights reserved. DDT, 1962 Background DDT (dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane) was first synthesized in 1877,1 but it was not until 1940 that a Swiss chemist discovered that it could be sprayed on walls and would cause any insect to die within the next six months, without any apparent toxicity to humans.2 DDT’s effectiveness, persistence, and low cost (only 17 cents per pound) resulted in its being used in antimalarial efforts worldwide. It...

Ever since Rachel Carson's 1962 book "Silent Spring," environmental extremists have sought to ban all DDT use. Using phony studies from the Environmental Defense Fund and the Natural Resources Defense Council, the environmental activist-controlled Environmental Protection Agency banned DDT in 1972. The extremists convinced the nation that DDT was not only unsafe for humans but unsafe to birds and other creatures as well. Their arguments have since been scientifically refuted. While DDT saved crops, forests and livestock, it also saved humans. In 1970, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences estimated that DDT saved more than 500 million lives during the...

Ever since Rachel Carson's 1962 book "Silent Spring," environmental extremists have sought to ban all DDT use. Using phony studies from the Environmental Defense Fund and the Natural Resources Defense Council, the environmental activist-controlled Environmental Protection Agency banned DDT in 1972. The extremists convinced the nation that DDT was not only unsafe for humans but unsafe to birds and other creatures, as well. Their arguments have since been scientifically refuted. While DDT saved crops, forests and livestock, it also saved humans. In 1970, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences estimated that DDT saved more than 500 million lives during the...

Forgive and bear with me for this important confession. As a Brit (technically a nonresident alien) living in D.C., I don't get to vote in the upcoming presidential election. But if I did, given my personal interests, I'd probably vote for Ralph Nader. He's the only candidate who backs the use of DDT for malaria control. Back in 2000 Al Gore's campaign was damaged by Nader, and Democratic soon-to-be nominee John Kerry is worried that his campaign may suffer a similar fate. As Robert Kennedy Jr. put it four years ago: "Nader's candidacy could siphon votes from Al Gore...

More on Environmentalism Science, Politics and Deathby Arthur B. Robinson & Jane M. OrientEnvironmental extremism kills. Millions die annually because of restrictions on DDT, and imposing the "Kyoto" regulations would kill many more.Dr. Arthur B. Robinson, a professor of chemistry, is the founder of the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, and editor of the newsletter Access to Energy. Dr. Jane Orient, a specialist in internal medicine, has a private practice and is the executive director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons. Easily usable energy is the currency of human progress. Without it, stagnation, regression and untold...

Kampala THE use of DDT will not be banned for the next 20 years. A global campaign to eliminate the 12 most dangerous chemicals has okayed the use of dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT), which is listed among the eight most hazardous drugs, to eliminate mosquitoes in developing countries until 2025. The 2001 Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants which is due to come into effect today, is spearheading a campaign to control the use of toxic organic compounds. The 12 chemicals dubbed the 'dirty dozen' include two industrial chemicals; polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and hexachlorobenzene. PCBs have been widely used in the manufacture...

Baghdad Boil to Return? By Roger Bate It's heating up in the Southern Iraqi desert and sand flies are returning. They bring with them "Baghdad Boil," a nasty disease, more properly known as cutaneous leishmaniasis. They go about their ghastly business of extracting a blood meal and laying its eggs in human skin. In the previous 12 months there have been over 650 cases of the disease. Poor planning, imprudent regulations and military incompetence mean the Boil will be worse this summer than it otherwise should. It is unfortunate that young men, fighting for their country and being shot at...

DDT vs. Death by Malaria - Drs. Michael A. Glueck & Robert J. Cihak http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com | The pervasive superstition that DDT is utterly noxious remains immune to scientific evidence to the contrary. These myths are much more persistent in some minds than DDT is in the environment. That DDT prevented 500 million deaths by 1970 and that the banning of its use in poor countries has resulted in millions of unnecessary deaths holds no sway with true believers in this doctrine. Where did this myth originate? In 1962, Rachel Carson published Silent Spring, arguably the most important American book since...

Who could possibly object to Earth Day, that benign occasion on which we are encouraged to throw away our pesticides, clean up our environment, and contemplate the damage we have done to Mother Earth? Niger Innis, for one. Mr. Innis is neither a shill for industry nor a raging neo-con. He is the spokesman for the Congress of Racial Equality, a leading African-American advocacy group, and last week he and other black activists got together to explain exactly what is wrong with Earth Day. "We must stop trying to protect our planet from every imaginable, exaggerated or imaginary risk. And...

This past Sunday marked "Africa Malaria Day," a day to remember that malaria continues to rage on that continent, killing at least one million people each year. We should remember these deaths — after all, we helped cause them, even though not so long ago malaria killed us too. For three centuries, malaria plagued the United States, from the deep south up to Michigan. When falciparum malaria entered the colony of South Carolina in the 1680s, the area developed an international reputation for "unwholesomeness." "Those who want to die quickly, go to Carolina," ran an English saying. "Carolina in the...

God bless The New York Times. Unlike the rest of the East Coast left-liberal-environmental-wacko media complex, it is not afraid to speak well of dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane -- DDT to you English lit majors. Two Sundays ago, in fact, The Times devoted six pages of its esteemed Sunday magazine to explaining why DDT is a wonder pesticide, not the killer you and your children have been misled into thinking it is for four decades. It's truly shocking to see The Times' important assault on enviro-political correctness. The headline -- "What the World Needs Now is DDT" -- is brave. And the subhead...

THIS EARTH DAY springs from an environmental movement that is a patent success by at least two measures: It has endured--it is no mere fad--and it has spread. Consider the local scene. Politicians of all parties were pleased to celebrate the breaching of the Embrey Dam; the buttoned-down and the blue-jeaned alike struggle to preserve Crow's Nest natural area in Stafford County; only registered Misanthropes are indifferent to the fate of the Chesapeake Bay ecosystem. "Tree hugger" caricatures aside, Americans care about the physical world as they care about liberty, heritage, justice, and other high goods. Movements that spread, fortunately,...

Thirty-four years ago, the first Earth Day heralded a new era of ecological awareness -- when, as Earth Day founder Sen. Gaylord Nelson, D- Wis., put it, "the environmental issue came of age in American political life" by showing "the political leadership of the nation that there was broad and deep support for the environmental movement." Enough time has passed to take stock of the impact that the movement has had on nature and mankind. The record is decidedly mixed. There is no doubt that the environments of wealthy, developed countries are considerably healthier today than on the first Earth...