The DDT Debate
Last October I linked to a column by Roger Kerr on how many green crusades have been responsible for human misery and environmental damage.
Specifc reference was made to the campaign against DDT with the ideological ban on its use leading to a resurgence in malaria and an estimated 50 million deaths.
Of course many many people attacked such a notion.
Last week the New York Times reported WHO was supporting wider use of DDT across Africa:
The World Health Organization on Friday forcefully endorsed wider use of the insecticide DDT across Africa to exterminate and repel the mosquitoes that cause malaria.
Dr. Arata Kochi, who leads the group’s global malaria program, unequivocally declared at a news conference on Friday that DDT was the most effective insecticide against malaria and that it posed no health risk when sprayed in small amounts on the inner walls of people’s homes. Expanding its use is essential to reviving the flagging international campaign to control the disease, he said.
Too many countries in Africa have shied away from DDT, Dr. Kochi said, because of the nasty environmental reputation it earned in an earlier era when it was widely sprayed on crops — dangers that do not apply when spraying small amounts indoors.
This again highlights what Kerr was saying. Even today some environmental groups are oppossing the use of DDT in Africa, despite the many lives it may save. Their policy remains all pesticides are bad.
September 20th, 2006 at 10:59 pm
Introduce the DPB and the number of single mothers increases.
Make setbelts compulsory and the number of car crashes increases as people feel safer and drive faster.
Reduce 1080 use and TB in farm animals increases.
It’s all about proportionality. If the benefits outweighs the risks, the risks are acceptable.
September 20th, 2006 at 11:50 pm
…feed people statistics and causality goes out the window.
It’s all about proportionality.
September 21st, 2006 at 12:47 am
Well if noted non-ideologue Roger Kerr says it…
DDT wasn’t banned and the restrictions were in place partially to prevent mosquitos from developing resistence to DDT. From the NY Times:
Until now, the agency [WHO] had recommended indoor spraying of insecticides in areas of seasonal or episodic transmission of malaria, but it now also advocates it where continuous, intense transmission of the disease causes the most deaths.
Since 1994 it hadn’t be used in those areas not because of green pressure, but because a cost-health tradoff occurred. DDT made people worse off through sickness from exposure because resistence to it had emerged from prior overuse.
DDT is a red herring that green-haters like Kerr and the Wall Street Journal editorial page use to bash environmentalism. It’s not the solution to the malaria problem and never will be. Any knowledgable health scientist and environmentalist knows that it’s part of the solution too. Many green groups (including the Sierra Club and Endangered Wildlife Trust) endorse indoor spraying.
Finally, the cost-benefit of reintroducing DDT versus increased use of artemisinin-based combination therapy isn’t at all clear either. (http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2006/0607.kurlantzick.html)
September 21st, 2006 at 6:13 am
And if ‘some environmental groups’ had any influence over public health policy in Africa – where DDT is still widely used as an insecticide – then that would be a really big deal.
September 21st, 2006 at 6:21 am
“Since 1994 it hadn’t be used in those areas not because of green pressure, but because a cost-health tradoff occurred. DDT made people worse off through sickness from exposure because resistence to it had emerged from prior overuse.”
Nonsense.
This statement alone is rubbish on so many counts it’s be hard to know where to start debunking it.
September 21st, 2006 at 7:14 am
It is about balancing risks, something the left has no concept of doing whereas the right manage to deal in risk all the tme as a routine when they manage their business and their jobs to pay their taxes. In the DDT case the risk of maleria far outweighs the hypotheticial risk from DDT. Afterall the Greens tolerate cannabis residue THC in their bodies, so why have a problem with microscopic bit of DDT if it eliminates maleria.
September 21st, 2006 at 7:36 am
DPF, you’ve raised this before and it continues to be a non-issue. Bill Gates is spending lots of money fighting Malaria and you don’t hear him making this argument.
September 21st, 2006 at 7:42 am
I have had malaria. I caught it on the island of Nias, which is 100 km off the west coast of Sumatra in Indonesia.
Malaria is the most painful illness. My muscles felt I was running a marathon that didn’t stop.
My temperature went to the end of my thermometer.
It took several months to recover properly.
DDT is nearly 100% effective in preventing this illness.
Greenies don’t give a rats backside about people – but hey, lets save the snails and frogs and bad luck to the millions of children who die each year from the disease. It also cuts productivity as the afflicted are unable to work – but hey, lets blame capitalism,
The green movement is an evil and stupid cult.
September 21st, 2006 at 7:45 am
I have had malaria. I caught it on the island of Nias, which is 100 km off the west coast of Sumatra in Indonesia.
Malaria is the most painful illness. My muscles felt I was running a marathon that didn’t stop.
My temperature went to the end of my thermometer.
It took several months to recover properly.
DDT is nearly 100% effective in preventing this illness.
Greenies don’t give a rats backside about people – but hey, lets save the snails and frogs and bad luck to the millions of children who die each year from the disease. It also cuts productivity as the afflicted are unable to work – but hey, lets blame capitalism,
The green movement is an evil and stupid cult.
September 21st, 2006 at 7:52 am
“The green movement is an evil and stupid cult”
Well it is spelt environMENTALism. If a million people died from DDT it would still be better than the tens of millions who die from malaria. Ask a parent if they would rather risk a theoretical illness from DDT or have child after child die in front of them and see what they have to say. I imagine it would be “get spraying!”. But those people who die from malaria are not hanging out with the comrades at New Zealand Unis and coffee shops so don’t matter to the lefties. Millions sacraficed to ideology has been their hallmark for a hundred years now.
September 21st, 2006 at 7:56 am
Brian is absolutely right. I have 2 degrees from Auckland. I went back a couple of years ago to the bookshop. The quad was a fucking pig stye. Those brats just threw their rubbish anywhere and food scraps were attracting seagulls. They had no regard for the bins at all. It was DISGUSTING. Never seen this in a commercial area.
September 21st, 2006 at 7:59 am
And the comrades hanging out in Uni coffee shops in New Zealand influence African public health policy . . . how?
September 21st, 2006 at 9:12 am
Developed resistance to DDT in insects (especially the mosquito) is one of the major, major reasons why it has to be used judicially.
Mosquito populations worldwide have been in turns decimated and seemingly immune to the DDT treatment. Mosquitos becoming immune to DDT can and has created terrible epidemics. When you combine this with the added implications of adverse health affects, you have a topic that cannot be fruitfully discussed on a mainly polictical blog.
You are really out of your depth.
For a laymans guide, refer to
‘Mosquito, The Story of Mans Deadliest Foe’
by Andrew Spielman and Michael D’Antonio
September 21st, 2006 at 10:25 am
Congratulations to those who think bashing greens saves people from malaria. Not that I’d expect something like knowledge and facts to get in your way.
DDT is not 100% effective in stopping malaria.
Overuse of DDT undermines its effectiveness.
Artemisinin-based combination therapy has great potential and is underutilized.
Proceed.
September 21st, 2006 at 11:06 am
I don’t know what Roger Kerr and David Farrar are doing wasting their time mucking round in New Zealand politics. They’re clearly far more enlightened than those “ideological” greenies, and should be advisors to the WHO.
September 21st, 2006 at 11:19 am
Why don’t western governments provide western governments subsidise malaria treatments in stead? As I understand it only takes a few pills, can’t be that expensive? Better yet, let governments manufacture their own pills without the enforcement of patent laws and unfair trade agreements. This would save millions of lives and billions of work hours every year.
For example, in Bangladesh during the mid 1990s there was a huge outbreak of cholera. The government started manufacturing its own cholera treatment, which was successful until a US pharmaceutical company complained to the WTO that the Bangladesh government was breaking a trade agreement they had with the US. SO the government was fined and ordered to stop manufacturing the treatment – a simple electrolyte (blend of salt, sugar, and water). The epidemic continued and many thousands of people died.
This is the global neo-liberal order at work people, there is no such thing as altruistic humanitarian assistance, all so called “aid programmes” have strings attached, i.e. IMF structural adjustment programmes which ensure that the trans-national corporates have their greedy, nihilistic hands at every level of the process.
September 21st, 2006 at 11:43 am
phillipjohn, it might be better for the debate to leave the leftist rhetoric at the door. Actual peoples’ lives are at stake.
DDT spraying is aimed at preventing malaria occuring, treatment is another matter.
The issues around subsidies are not straight forward as outlined in the Brtish Medical Journal -
http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/331/7519/706
September 21st, 2006 at 12:06 pm
100 things you should know about DDT…
http://www.junkscience.com/ddtfaq.htm
Blows the antis out of the water.
September 21st, 2006 at 12:09 pm
From the above link I posted…
“Some mosquitoes became “resistant” to DDT. “There is persuasive evidence that antimalarial operations did not produce mosquito resistance to DDT. That crime, and in a very real sense it was a crime, can be laid to the intemperate and inappropriate use of DDT by farmers, espeially cotton growers. They used the insecticide at levels that would accelerate, if not actually induce, the selection of a resistant population of mosquitoes.”
[Desowitz, RS. 1992. Malaria Capers, W.W. Norton & Company]
#
“Resistance” may be a misleading term when discussing DDT and mosquitoes. While some mosquitoes develop biochemical/physiological mechanisms of resistance to the chemical, DDT also can provoke strong avoidance behavior in some mosquitoes so they spend less time in areas where DDT has been applied — this still reduces mosquito-human contact. “This avoidance behavior, exhibited when malaria vectors avoid insecticides by not entering or by rapidly exiting sprayed houses, should raise serious questions about the overall value of current physiological and biochemical resistance tests. The continued efficacy of DDT in Africa, India, Brazil, and Mexico, where 69% of all reported cases of malaria occur and where vectors are physiologically resistant to DDT (excluding Brazil), serves as one indicator that repellency is very important in preventing indoor transmission of malaria.”
[See, e.g., J Am Mosq Control Assoc 1998 Dec;14(4):410-20; and Am J Trop Med Hyg 1994;50(6 Suppl):21-34]”
Hmmmm!
September 21st, 2006 at 12:10 pm
Good article, and thanks for posting it Neil. Seems to suggest that subsidies on ACTs could be a major part of the solution.
Still no one on the right has addressed the problem of mosquitoes becoming resistant to DDT.
September 21st, 2006 at 12:35 pm
Seems as though spraying small amounts of DDT indoors is relitively harmless. Don’t think we should ever use it in agriculture again though –
“Overall, DDT concentrates in biological systems (particularly in body fat), it is a toxicant across a certain range of phyla, and it biomagnifies up the food chain, reaching its greatest concentrations in higher animals such as humans. DDT is a persistent organic pollutant with a reported half life of between 2-15 years, and is immobile in most soils. Its half life is 56 days in lake water and approximately 28 days in river water. Routes of loss and degradation include runoff, volatilization, photolysis and biodegradation (aerobic and anaerobic). These processes generally occur slowly.”
“the EPA classifies DDT as class B2, a probable human carcinogen, based on observed carcinogenicity in animals, i.e. tumors (generally of the liver) in seven studies in various mouse strains and three studies in rats, and on structural similarity to other carcinogens such as DDE, DDD, dicofol, and chlorobenzilate”.
September 21st, 2006 at 1:03 pm
The Malaria Foundation’s open letter to the United Nations Environment Program sums the issue up quite well –
http://www.malaria.org/DDT_open.html
It was an issue back in 1999, but the UN took on board the concern of scientists. Since then DDT has been seen as a necessary evil to be used in some circumstances.
I have’t seen any recent disagreement with this from mainstream environmental goups.
September 21st, 2006 at 1:24 pm
http://www.junkscience.com/ddtfaq.htm
Blows the antis out of the water.
That’s only true if you’re dumb enough to believe the faulty logic and mischaracterizations that pervade their DDT arguments.
for example:
#97 In congressional testimony, Charles Wurster, a biologist for the Environmental Defense Fund, noted the abundance of birds during the DDT years, referring to “increasing numbers of pheasants, quail, doves, turkeys and other game species.”
That’s lovely, but since DDT affects piscivorous waterbirds you wouldn’t expect the birds listed to have been significantly harmed by its use. Honest brokers, those junkscience.com blokes. Just enough misleading kibble to convince the ideologues.
September 21st, 2006 at 2:03 pm
You are reaching with that one MCMC…..
September 21st, 2006 at 2:48 pm
How? That’s the entirety of their claim #97. It’s in the section “Bird populations increase during DDT years.” It’s emblematic of their crap approach to presenting statements that appear to say something significant, but fall far short.
September 21st, 2006 at 3:26 pm
What you’re not grasping is that when it comes to using DDT to fight Malaria there aren’t any antis – certainly not in positions where their views can make a difference.
Maybe that’s why most of this list consists of totally uncontroversial facts like this:
3. Müller won the Nobel Prize in 1948 for his work on DDT.
I mean, good for him, but so what?
September 21st, 2006 at 6:12 pm
What you’re not grasping is that when it comes to using DDT to fight Malaria there aren’t any antis – certainly not in positions where their views can make a difference.”
Excuse me?!!!! The antis were “it” when it came to DDT for so long and the millions of deaths caused by them is an undisputed fact. But as it was mainly black people who died then its not so bad then right?
Green Power Black Death.
September 21st, 2006 at 6:14 pm
What you’re not grasping is that when it comes to using DDT to fight Malaria there aren’t any antis – certainly not in positions where their views can make a difference.”
Excuse me?!!!! The antis were “it” when it came to DDT for so long and the millions of deaths caused by them is an undisputed fact. But as it was mainly black people who died then its not so bad then right?
Green Power Black Death.
September 21st, 2006 at 6:17 pm
From “Green Power Black Death” by Dr Paul Dreissen
“In 2005, 20,600 children in New York City were stricken by malaria, a readily preventable disease that is spread by mosquitoes. More than 80 died, as environmentalists opposed the use of chemicals to control the killer insects, and healthcare officials caved in to their demands.
This didn’t really happen. If it had, American parents would have been in the streets, courtrooms, legislative chambers and health agency offices – demanding that every weapon known to man be employed to end the epidemic, immediately.
Instead, something far worse happened last year – and in 2004, 2003 and for decades before that. Nearly 250 MILLION children were infected each year by malarial mosquitoes. A million died, the vast majority of them Africans under age five, every single year. In Uganda, the annual death toll is 30,000 children; in Kenya, 20,000; in Democratic Republic of Congo, an incredible 225,000. Equal numbers of adults died.
No one took to the streets. Instead, environmentalists, the European Union and even world healthcare agencies refused to countenance the use of insecticides, and promoted completely inadequate programs to provide bednets, drugs that often didn’t work, educational brochures, conferences and condolences. Only a few people spoke out, as the death toll mounted.
Then, near the end of last year, things began to change. In response to Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Congress of Racial Equality chairman Roy Innis, and hundreds of clergy, physicians and human rights advocates in the Kill Malarial Mosquitoes NOW coalition, the U.S. Agency for International Development reversed its longstanding policies and began using DDT for indoor residual spraying.
This unfairly maligned chemical does what no other chemical in existence can do: a single spraying every six months on the inside walls of homes keeps 90% of mosquitoes from even entering homes. It irritates any that do come in, so they rarely bite; and it kills those that land. In African communities where it’s been used, malaria rates have been slashed by 50-75% in less than two years. Moreover, the health and environmental risks from using DDT this way are virtually zero.”
September 21st, 2006 at 6:32 pm
James:
A few seconds googling found a very articulate response to James’s nonsense, so I didn’t have to waste my own time typing out a response. Respect.
September 21st, 2006 at 6:45 pm
I’ll second Danyl above.
I don’t have any doubt that there are lots of strange people that get attracted to environmentalism and advocate some pretty stupid stuff. Just look at our local Green Party.
But on this issue the debate was generally amongst adults and the scientists won with an outcome I think James would agree with.
It’s true that some environmental groups supported a total ban on DDT and that would have been very wrong (and would have rightly desrved being called “environmental imperialism” – since the victims of such a policy would have been in the Third World) but the UN agency involved decided to allow continued DDT use where necessary.
September 22nd, 2006 at 6:07 pm
My counter reply is here…
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,215084,00.html
September 23rd, 2006 at 11:41 am
Really James? Steven Malloy?
Mr. Pundit Payola runs your junkscience.com website and is/was on the payroll of Philip Morris and Exxon while arguing against the potential effects of second hand smoke and climate change. If that’s the best you can do, why do you bother?
March 9th, 2007 at 2:49 pm
Well, how about that? The head Ditto head cant get some head without pharmaceutical assistance. He couldnt possibly have the stamina to engage in regular sexViagra or not. WBR LeoP