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?

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,215084,00.html

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.

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?

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.

CHRISTOPHER Pearson (Inquirer, 24-25/1) blames “the environmental lobby . . . with direct responsibility for millions of needless deaths, mostly of children in the Third World, from malaria”. The argument is that Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring falsely accused the insecticide DDT of dangers to both human health and the environment, that this accusation led to the banning of DDT in mosquito control programs in areas where malaria is endemic (mostly the tropics), and as a direct result of this ban, millions of people died.

This argument is arrant nonsense, recycled from an article in Quadrant, in turn recycled from a number of unscientific and unsubstantiated websites. As professionals and teachers in the field of parasite disease control, we are only too well aware of how such rubbish can be transmuted from cyberspace junk to popular folklore. Your readers should be aware of the facts:

The manufacture and use of DDT was banned in the US in 1972, on the advice of the US Environmental Protection Agency. The use of DDT has since been banned in most other developed nations, but it is not banned for public health use in most areas of the world where malaria is endemic. Indeed, DDT was recently exempted from a proposed worldwide ban on organophosphate chemicals.

DDT usage for malaria control involves spraying the walls and backs of furniture, so as to kill and repel adult mosquitoes that may carry the malaria parasite. Other chemicals are available for this purpose, but DDT is cheap and persistent and is often a very effective indoor insecticide which is still used in many parts of the world.

DDT is not used for outdoor mosquito control, partly because scientific studies have demonstrated toxicity to wildlife, but mainly because its persistence in the environment rapidly leads to the development of resistance to the insecticide in mosquito populations. There are now much more effective and acceptable insecticides, such as Bacillus thuringiensis, to kill larval mosquitoes outdoors.

Reductions in the use of DDT did occur in a number of developing nations after the US ban in 1972. This reflected concerns over environmental consequences of DDT, but was also a result of many other factors. One of the important factors in declining use of DDT was decreasing effectiveness and greater costs because of the development of resistance in mosquitoes. Resistance was largely caused by the indiscriminate, widespread use of DDT to control agricultural pests in the tropics. This problem, in fact, was anticipated by Carson: “No responsible person contends that insect-borne disease should be ignored . . . The question that has now urgently presented itself is whether it is wise or responsible to attack the problem by methods that are rapidly making it worse.”

Malaria is a major, ongoing disease problem in much of the developing world. Increases in the incidence of the disease have occurred for complex reasons. Reduced insecticide usage is one, but others include the resistance to treatment in both the parasite and the mosquito vectors, changes in land use that have provided new mosquito habitat, and the movement of people into new, high-risk areas.

Most nations where malaria is a problem, and most health professionals working in the field of malaria control, support the targeted use of DDT, as part of the tool kit for malaria control. Most also agree that more cost-effective, less environmentally persistent alternatives are needed. There are some effective alternative chemicals for the control of adult mosquitoes, but preventing their further development is lack of invest ment by industry, because malaria is largely a disease of the poor.

Malaria is responsible for enormous suffering and death. The facts are readily available in the scientific literature. To blame a reduction in DDT usage for the death of 10-30 million people from malaria is not just simple-minded, it is demonstrably wrong. To blame a mythical, monolithic entity called the environmental lobby for the total reduction in DDT usage is not just paranoid, it is also demonstrably wrong. Your article is not only poor journalism, it is an insult to the people who work for the control of parasitic diseases that afflict developing nations.

Dr Alan Lymbery
Professor Andrew Thompson
Parasitology Unit
Division of Health Sciences
Murdoch University

“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.”

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.

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.

http://www.junkscience.com/ddtfaq.htm

Blows the antis out of the water.

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?

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.

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.

“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”.

Still no one on the right has addressed the problem of mosquitoes becoming resistant to DDT.

“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!

http://www.junkscience.com/ddtfaq.htm

Blows the antis out of the water.

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

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.