It doesn't help matters one bit that many outspoken free marketeers spent years trying to defeat science with rhetoric, stretch incredulity and ignorance into a mock objection, and craft cute lies and half-truths instead of promoting responsible solutions.
No matter: the undercurrents in support of either cap-in-trade or a carbon tax are growing. Unfortunately, it looks as though the latter is winning out, and not for good reasons, either.
No one stopped the use of DDT in malaria control programs. That use was specifically allowed by the EPA order in the U.S. in 1972, is specifically allowed under EU rules, and is specifically granted as a use of DDT under the POPs Treaty.
Oddly, however, the Bush Administration has refused to spend money for malaria control.
DDT has never been banned for malaria. A lot of people have been lying about that for a lot of years. Now some of them are telling other tales that are not true.
Got a fact checker?
Once the EPA banned the use of DDT various environmental groups pushed to get it banned in other countries and succeeded. In addition they pressured various aid agencies to discontinue the use of DDT and they succeeded. For instance they succeeded in getting South Africa to withdraw use of DDT.
The UN Evironmental Programme listed DDT requiring signatories to agreements controlled by UNEP to seek permission before using DDT. The process was difficult and onerous to complete. And the UNEP was working with enviromentalist organizations to impose a world wide ban on the use of DDT.
So in fact they did succeed in pressuring governments to ban the use of DDT in various places. And they were pushing for a world-wide ban as well. The British Medical Journal said active in the campaign for extending bans to the entire world were Greenpeace, World Wildlife Fund and others.
So the fact is that the use of DDT was stopped under pressure by environementalists in nations around the globe and they worked damn hard, but failed, at imposing an international treat to ban it worldwide. Since then nations which caved in to the Greenies have rescended their bans and started using it again for malaria control.
One environment site "debunking" the ban actually has links to articles like "DDT and Other Chlorine-Based Chemicals were Banned for a Reason." If it was "banned for a reason" then there were bans. It also says "DDT was not banned in any developed countril UNTIL the 1970s" and "not banned in the United States... until 1972."
I lived in Africa and DDT was banned for use when I got there. It was later used by the government without seeking permission from the UNEP as required.
So the facts I got. It was banned in numerous nations and the environmental lobby worked very, very hard for a world-wide ban and failed. Since then national bans for the use of DDT for malaria control have been rescended and the use is on the upswing again. You are the one without the facts.
The US "ban", as it is casually called, always included a public health exception. That people who put up websites about myths surrounding the ban nonetheless call it a ban doesn't mean there was an absolute ban.
Tim Lambert has a humorous take on the subject: http://timlambert.org/2005/12/dd...ban-myth-bingo/
And if you want to buy some DDT, try http://www.treated-bednet.com/ag...ro-
chemical.htm
I think you're going to have to concede this one.
Come to think of it, I can't seem to remember seeing reference to any outright bans in malarial areas, and a quick search turns up nothing. The Stockholm Convention set a ban as a goal, but that's about the closest the world has come.
http://info-pollution.com/ddtban.htm provides an interesting take (with references) on malaria and DDT. It's the sort of thing you'd seem to eat up, were it not for whatever value makes you seemingly hostile to anything that looks like environmentalism. Paul Ehrlich may have been dead wrong, but that doesn't mean anything that can be creatively lumped in a category with his work is an easily exploded myth.
BSK: Why do you think the US is the entire world???? There were bans on in numerous countries around the world and many countries, which had been using DDT stopped using it under pressure from environmental groups. Second, you point to a current website for a Chinese company that sells treated nets. No surprise as a large number of nations that had banned the use of DDT for malaria control have reversed themselves. How a current Chinese website for a company that would not have existed very many years ago proves anything about the past is not clear.
I did not refer to a US ban though the US banned the use of DDT for many things. In fact since I was speaking about major malarial outbreaks the US was not one of the nations I was thinking of at all. So Ben, there is nothing to concede.
Your final post argues that since a world wide ban failed, inspite of the best efforts of WWF, Greenpeace and others, therefore there were no bans. ‘That is like saying because there is no international treaty establishing that cars drive on the right side of the road that no countries therefore drive on the right side of the road.
So there is nothing to correct. Numerous nations did ban the use of DDT for malaria control. Other countries withdrew the use under enviromentalist lobbying. The UNEP made use very difficult causing other countries to withdraw use or use it without seeking the permits the UN was requiring. So numerous bans were in place in many countries. And a world wide ban was attempted by the people I condemn for doing so. That they failed doesn’t mean they didn’t try. And that the ban was never world wide doesn’t mean it never existed anywhere.
As I said I lived in Africa and the use of DDT was halted by the government while I was there. This was done under pressure from enviromental groups mentioned along with others. In KwaZulu Natal the number of malaria cases that year was 8,000. Within 4 years it had jumpted to 42,000 and deaths went from 30 per year to 340. For the entire country there were 61,934 in hospital. The malarial regions of KwaZulu Natal, Mpumalang and the Northern province all restricted the use of DDT in their malaria prevention programs and all of them saw a dramatic rise in the disease and in deaths. Incidents and deaths peaked in 2000 and then the DDT was resumed and both rates more than halved the first year and were a small fraction of the total within two to three years.
So yes, Ben, there were multiple bans all over the place.
In 2004 the NY Times wrote about the few countries that had started using DDT again. They said “what really merits outrage about DDT today is not that South Africa still uses it, [actually still is inaccruate since they had stopped using it and had now restarted doing so], as do about five other countries for routine malaria control and about 10 more for emergiences. It is that DOZENS more do not.”
They said that DDT “has been essentially deactivated as a malaria-control tool today” and wrote that “No one concerned about the evironmental damage of DDT set out to kill African children.” But that was the result. Various wealthy donor countries won’t fund DDT usage saying that since they ban the product at home they won’t fund it abroad. The Times noted that the wealthy countries used DDT irresponsibly so they “made even its safe use impossible for far poorer and sicker nations.”
It speaks of various countries that banned the use of DDT in their malarial programs and all saw a rise in death rates. “The one country that continued to beat malaria was Ecuador, the one country that kept using DDT.” The Times notes that antimalaria programs are funded by the west and that the “ban in America and other wealthy countries” created lobbies in other nations to implement similar bans there. New chemicals, that were less effective, created a lobby of producers who pushed to ban DDT as well to increase demand for their products. Mexico stopped using DDT when trade treaties with the US required it. Belize said they stopped using it when the US threatened to withdraw aid if they didn’t. And the much vaunted Stockholm treaty, which the environmentalists claim doesn’t ban DDT, actually does do so over the long-term. It requires the phase out of DDT use. So it banned it on the installment plan. But since it didn’t get to the final phase they dishonestly say that the treaty doesn’t ban it. It does, just gradually. By the way the US is not the only wealthy nation to impose such conditions on fighting malaria. The EU does it as well. And so do various UN agencies. When Ecuador tried to use DDT in 1999 the World Bank said they wouldn’t fund the program and they did so because the environmentalists at the Bank were “fighting for the elimination of DDT and could not allow the bank to finance DDT while advocating a ban.” The Times says Colombia “banned DDT in the early 1990’s”.
Apparently the New York Times was under the impression that there were DDT bans all over the place. Once again that support my claim that the use of DDT was banned, some countries did not follow suit but most did. The ban was later repealed by some countries but many have yet to repeal the ban. And international funders, not just the Bush government but the EU and previous US administrations along with WHO and the UN and other agencies, refuse to fund DDT usage. International treaties have been used to forbid the use of DDT for other countries. And the Stockholme treaty required the gradu
CLS: Your critics are being less than totally honest when they say the US has always allowed DDT because of "public health exceptions". That is not quite the case. It was allowed for emergency public health measures only not for routine public health measures. One couldn't use it in a prevention programe such as malaria related issue.
The Crutzen, et. al. study referred to in Der Spiegel explains a phenomenon common to all fertilized annual plant food crops. The release of nitrous oxide (N2O) it describes happens any time fertilizer is used. It happens when you fertilize your lawn. It is not unique to biomass fuel crops. The study, however, does not address perennial biomass crops, which is where the future of biofuel is heading. Perennial biomass crops, unlike annual cereal grains, are low fertility crops that do not require fertilization.
Corn ethanol is a temporary stage. Originally, it was developed as a way to add value in situ to unmarketable grain surpluses. Most ethanol plants in the upper Midwest, where most ethanol is presently being produced, are farmer-owned co-operatives.
The Crutzen study does appear to have a methodology problem. It appears as if nitrogen applications have been double-counted. Nitrogen present in manure has been added to the original artificial nitrogen fertilizer application to the plant. They are not two separate applications, but the same application recycled through the animal.
There would be no difference in biofuels end-usage of feedstock. Biofuel processing removes the carbohydrates, leaving a protein-rich fraction which is then fed to animals. The nitrogen is located in the protein fraction.
A halt in a spraying program is not a ban.
Ben: It now appears you are desparately playing semantics. The advocates of a ban called these bans. The governments that passed the bans calls them bans. The opponents of the ban called them bans. The major media called them bans. Everyone called them bans until now that people on your side of the debate want to pretend it never happened. I think you are clutching at straws.
Governments passed laws or regulations which forbade the use of DDT in malaria prevention programs. Western governments and aid agencies and UN bodies forbade any funding be used for DDT prevention methods. And DDT stopped being used in most places as a result. When there are laws or regulations forbidding it then it is a ban. And there were bans. Later those same governments saw the results of the policies they implemented at the demands of the Greens and undid the regulations, laws and policies which had forbidden DDT. That wasn’t merely a temporary halt. It was intended to be a permenent restriction on the use of DDT until they saw what a disaster it led it to.
Under your logic I guess Russia was never communist since the Soviet system collapsed in 1989.
The challenge is to find a nation where malaria was a problem, AND where DDT was still effective in controlling mosquitoes, AND where a ban on DDT was imposed by some environmental-minded government.
There is no such place.
If a nation stopped using DDT, the cause was almost always something other than environmentalists. Most often, it was because DDT had failed to be effective as a controlling agent any longer.
In those cases, an environmentalist-imposed ban on use would be the saving grace that keeps DDT effective anywhere today.
Rachel Carson was absolutely, 100% correct: Overspraying of DDT was, and is, the problem.
What bothers me is the political war against environmentalists that now threatens the lives of millions of children in Africa -- and has probably already cost several millions -- which wishes to promote DDT as a public relations tool against environmentalists rather than do anything effective against malaria.
Here's the cold, hard truth: Malaria cannot be eradicated with DDT, ever. DDT will always be a part of a larger malaria control program that must include improved medical care delivery, effective bite prevention programs that include bed nets, screens in houses, and piddly things like draining water from used automobile tires, environmentally-sensitive programs that check to be sure mosquito and larva predators are not harmed by poisons (like DDT, which is much more effective at killing mosquito predators than mosquitoes) and habitat damage, and widespread, effective public education.
DDT has many substitutes. Screening and medical care have no substitute.
People who wail that DDT "bans" caused a rise in Malaria aren't with the program. They either don't understand malaria and how to control it, or they have some other agenda that does not include controlling malaria.
The challenge, remember, is to find that nation where DDT use was both effective when stopped, and stopped for no reason other than some environmental idea that took root. Nobody will name names in such a challenge -- I don't think there is such a case.
Ed: You really should read my replies. You state that there was no such nation where DDT was used, was effective, and then was pulled due to environmentalist pressure. I specifically mentioned that when I was living in South Africa this is precisely what happened. They used it effectively. They withdrew it under US, EU and international pressure including environmental groups. The death rate escalated. They rethought their restrictions and began using DDT again and death rates dropped dramatically. You say there are no such cases yet I named one and gave very specific details.
Either you are not reading the replies or you are wilfully blind.
You say no nation has successfully eradicated malaria with the use of DDT. The CDC, who I suspect are a little more clued up on the issue than you are, seems to think otherwise. They have a short essay on the “Eradication of Malaria in the United States” which was done by a program that “consisted primarily of DDT application to the interior surfaces of rural homes or entire premises in counties where malaria was reported to have been prevalent in recent years.” They say that by 1949 4,650,000 million spray applications had been made and that “Total elimination of transmission was slowly achieved. The success meant the CDC ended this operation completely by 1952. And they note that because was a problem in the American South mainly it is the actual reason that the CDC is headquartered in Atlanta.
Improved medical delivery treats symptoms and may lower the death rate but it doesn’t prevent transmission. You can stupidly talk of screens in houses all you want showing your ignorance of actual living conditions in Africa. I am surprised you would say something that silly. I remember well driving past some homes as the sun was setting behind them. There were built of sticks and the sun light came through the entire house and out the front. By they way even in the “upmarket” areas of Africa homes don’t have screens. I never saw a screened window or door anywhere that I can remember. And I would have bought them for my own house if they were available but they weren’t. Again you remark about draining tires shows you are oblivious to the realities of the third world and living in some White-American dream world. As one article on malaria I read noted putting fish in ponds that breed mosquitoes worked well in some countries but not in Africa because the mosquitoes breed in the hoof prints of cattle in the soil after it rained. Hoof prints a few inches across filled with rain and mosquitoes breed- Do you think we could drain them as well. And by the way when I lived there we quite often had daily thunderstorm, heavy in rain but brief and a welcome relief from the afternoon heat.
The reality is that NONE of the DDT substitute you harp on about work as well. And the agencies that actually deal with malaria, as opposed to Green web sites, say that. You can say the advocates of using DDT to prevent malaria don’
continued:
You can say the advocates of using DDT to prevent malaria don’t understand it but your remarks show such an abysmal ignorance of life in the third world as to be comical.
I took up your challenged and named the country knowing it well having lived there. Which is why I know your remarks about window screens and draining water from tires are hysterically funny and misinformed.
For the CDC "illusion" that they used DDT and eradicated malaria in the US go here:
http://www.cdc.gov/malaria/
histo...dication_us.htm
For an example of how DDT advocates abuse data and the evidence, take your claim that DDT broadcast spraying was the key to eradicating malaria in the U.S., read the CDC history you referred to, and note especially these sections (where I've highlighted some key points):
The program consisted primarily of DDT application to the interior surfaces of rural homes or entire premises in counties where malaria was reported to have been prevalent in recent years. By the end of 1949, over 4,650,000 house spray applications had been made. Total elimination of transmission was slowly achieved. By 1951, CDC gradually withdrew from active participation in the operational phases of the program and shifted to its interest to surveillance, and in 1952, CDC participation in operations ceased altogether.
And
Control efforts conducted by the state and local health departments, supported by the federal government, resulted in the disease being eradicated by 1949. Such measures included drainage, removal of mosquito breeding sites, and spraying (occasionally from aircrafts) of insecticides.
Malaria eradication cannot be achieved by spraying alone. Broadcast spraying, which is what Rachel Carson decried and what was banned by EPA, was NOT the key component to the campaign, especially after 1951. Note that the CDC is specific that eliminating breeding sites was important, as was indoor application of DDT (as is approved by WHO, as is advocated by Environmental Defense, and as is a key part of several successful efforts today that you dismiss as ineffective). Notice especially that DDT is not the sole insecticide used -- especially after deleterious effects on mosquito-eating creatures was established, DDT use for disease control was restricted (most of the harms came from agricultural use, which of course, had nothing whatever to do with disease control).
US malaria eradication was made possible also because access to medical care in the U.S. was then much higher than it is in underdeveloped nations today (perhaps greater than it is in the U.S. today).
So you misattribute successes to DDT that were achieved by other means, and you overstate the ban on DDT, which has always been available for disease eradication -- but rarely needed in developed nations where many other, safer and more effective alternatives are available.
As to South Africa, you're relying on bad data. DDT spraying was stopped there because it had become ineffective; in fact, the repellent reaction was part of the problem there -- mosquitoes were more repelled by DDT than killed by it; mosquitoes that had dined on malaria-infected people stopped resting on hut walls where DDT would kill them, and instead were "repelled" by DDT into leaving the hut first. DDT was spreading malaria.
The problem is that you're relying on other environmentalist-obsessed, misinformed (or prevaricating) sources -- if
The problem is that you're relying on other environmentalist-obsessed, misinformed (or prevaricating) sources -- if you read the health and disease journals, you get a different story:
http://timlambert.org/2005/09/dd...n-south-africa/
So you're still stuck unable to meet my challenge of naming a nation that stopped spraying because of environmentalist pressure while DDT was still effective. There are no such nations.
And today, there are better chemicals to use, and we know that nets and better medical care play a larger role in controlling a disease that has defied all efforts to eradicate it in certain places.
I read what you wrote. Please read what I said, and check your sources. Don't rely on the paid apologists for environmentalist hating groups, or astroturf groups whose concern is spreading disinformation.
DDT is a deadly chemical, best used in small amounts, in specific applications. Rachel Carson was right about it, and thanks to her, it is still useful in fighting disease. Why in the world anyone would try to screw it up now, I cannot imagine.
You can stupidly talk of screens in houses all you want showing your ignorance of actual living conditions in Africa. I am surprised you would say something that silly. I remember well driving past some homes as the sun was setting behind them. There were built of sticks and the sun light came through the entire house and out the front. By they way even in the “upmarket” areas of Africa homes don’t have screens. I never saw a screened window or door anywhere that I can remember.
Which says nothing much about effectiveness of DDT, but tells us why the malaria eradication program in the U.S. was much more successful, long ago. You blindly, and erroneously, attribute to DDT a success that was achieved through different architecture, higher incomes, better screening, drainage of mosquito breeding sites, and better medical care. DDT spraying cannot change the architecture in Africa, and it certainly does nothing to improve the economic situation of Africans, especially when it kills their fish and damages other animal food sources.
The problem of screening in Africa has been met with the use of mosquito netting. DDT advocates have tried to prevent spending for nets for years; the Gates Foundation and other groups provided funding to pass them out free, and the free nets have contributed to a precipitous drop in malaria cases.
Your suggestion that it's silly to use proven methods of preventing malaria -- screening -- in Africa, is quite bizarre, IMHO. I'm well aware of the difficulties of screening in Africa. Your throwing up your hands and asking that we poison the people with DDT is both bizarre and cruel, and already proven not to work.
If your goal were to slow or stop malaria, there are a lot of alternatives to DDT that work and slow and stop the disease. If your goal is to simply bash environmentalists, your bashing damages efforts to stop malaria.
CDC and WHO know how to stop malaria. It's not easy. Willy-nilly overpoisoning of the environment is not among the effective methods anyone working on the problem advocates.
Ed: Your blindness is typical of most faiths. Let us look at your distortions.
You highly that the CDC withdrew from active participation -- true. They did because if you look at the charts by 1951 they had pretty much eradicated malaria. And they put the emphasis on spraying as the major means of stopping the spread of malaria to people followed by mosquito control. Remember it was malaria that was eradicated not mosquitoes which are still very common in the US.
Second, the sort of drainage you are talking about won’t work in Africa. You clearly know nothing of the terrain of the continent. In KwaZulu Natal or Mpumalanga it isn’t stagnant ponds that need draining. It is small indentations in the land that fill from the afternoon rains and remain full because it rains almost daily in short, hard bursts -- the summer not the winter. There is nothing to drain. Further north you are talking about Limpopo or the Zambezi and the various streams that run into those rivers. All along the banks there are thousands and thousands of tiny inlets that breed mosquitoes. Draining mosquito breeding areas in Africa is just not possible. But leave it to people who spent zero time there to advise them to drop what worked and take up dumb ideas that don’t have a chance in hell.
Again medical care treats the symptoms it doesn’t prevent the spread of malaria. And to emphasize treating people after they have been infected is not a preventative measure.
Third Environmental Defense only came out in support of indoor spraying very late the game, shortly after the NY Times ran that big article on the topic. And even then, and I read their web site, they said they still want it gradually eliminated. Once they got a lot of bad publicity about their position they sent a letter announcing support for indoor spraying.
You are just lying when you say SA stopped spraying because it was ineffective. The govts there do not say that at all. In fact they say they stopped because of Western ecoimperialists pushing them and cutting aid if they didn’t stop. They stopped and the death rate went up. If spraying was ineffective why was so effective when resumed within about four years of stopping?
I named South Africa. I was there. I heard what the local authorities said publicly. I watched the pressure being put on them with aid withdrawal to comply with the Green campaigns and saw the results of people dying as a result. So did they and they quickly resumed spaying. DDT is not a deadly chemical that is just nonsense.
The CDC clearly put the emphasis on spraying millions of homes as the major component of stopping malaria. Other factors were important but not the major aspect of the program. You emphasize minor aspects because you are ideologically deaf to any other position.
I sent a link of regarding this discussion to several African friends of mine and acquitances asking them to read them and comment. This includes individuals who were involved in the spraying campaigns in South Africa. They replied via emails which I will post here on their behalf.
South Africa maintained its IRS programme using DDT from 1946 to 1996. In 1996 the Department of Health replaced DDT with synthetic pyrethroid insecticides due to international pressure to try an alternative insecticide, they chose to use a synthetic pyrethroid. However, because agriculture largely uses synthetic pyrethroids, insecticide resistance soon became a problem. A highly efficient malaria vector, Anopheles funestus, believed to have been eradicated in the 1970s, soon reappeared in South Africa. What followed was one of the worst malaria epidemics in the country's history. Malaria cases rose from around 6,000 in 1995 to over 60,000 in 2000. But in early 2000, South Africa reintroduced DDT to control malaria in KwaZulu-Natal Province, as it was worst hit by the epidemic. In 2001, South Africa further introduced new artemesinin-based combination therapies (ACT's) to treat malaria patients. The combination of effective insecticides and drugs ensured that malaria cases fell by almost 80% by the end of 2001.
Insecticide treated nets (ITN's) are one of the preventative measures available and should primarily be viewed as a individual form of protection. The data surrounding net usage is pretty sketchy all it takes is one night for an individual not to sleep under a net or one tiny hole in the net for the transmission cycle to continue. Larvaciding pools of stagnant water as well as the introduction of tilapia to feed on the larvae has a number of problems the chief one being that it is impossible to cover every single source. IRS however covers all individuals in the household and is a form of community protection - its like putting a giant net over the entire household. Finally of all the insecticides available for IRS DDT is still the cheapest and most effective preventative measure available.
The comment "The challenge is to find a nation where malaria was a problem, AND where DDT was still effective in controlling mosquitoes, AND where a ban on DDT was imposed by some environmental-minded government" caught my eye because Sri-Lanka is another good example of such a country. Will try and find the exact stats for you but malaria was almost eradicated in Sri-Lanka before they stopped using DDT and within a year or two malaria came back tenfold. The IRS spraying with DDT in Uganda from between 1959 and 1963 basically eradicated funestus and gambiae but when they stopped spraying in the early 1960's malaria came back and today they lose between 70,000 and 110,000 people a year.
Ed Darrell clearly has not seen a typical African hut because if he has he would no that screening is impossible. The typical rood is made from thatch with many possible places for mosquitoes to enter and the walls are made from reed so that air can come through and cool the house. The only way you can "screen" a hut is to make a bed net big enough to cover the entire
hut...
Hope this helps.
Part 1 - Ed Darrel's name comes up every now and again and he seems to get very exercised about DDT.
He says:
"People who wail that DDT "bans" caused a rise in Malaria aren't with the program. They either don't understand malaria and how to control it, or they have some other agenda that does not include controlling malaria."
Well that is just not true. In 1999, the Malaria Foundation International under the leadership of Prof. Mary Galinski, Prof. Don Roberts and Dr Amir Attaran led an international campaign to stop DDT from being banned by the Stockholm Convention. In all the negotiating meetings, it seemed clear that DDT would be banned outright and that there would be no exemption for use in malaria control. The MFI had a letter sent to all the delegates to the Convention (basially the government negotiators from all the countries) that was signed by over 400 of the world's leading malaria scientists, including several Nobel laureates. These signatories argued that banning DDT would harm malaria control and lead to a rise in malaria cases and deaths. They were not basing this on fantasy or speculation, but on real world evidence that malaria had been rising in areas where DDT and other insecticide spraying had been discontinued or scaled back.
When WHO's head of malaria contorl, Dr Arata Kochi announced last year that he wanted to see an increase in indoor residual spraying and a return of the use of DDT, he did so because in his words:
" I asked my staff; I asked malaria experts around the world: "Are we using every possible weapon to fight this disease?" It became apparent that we were not. One powerful weapon against malaria was not being deployed. In a battle to save the lives of nearly one million children every year – most of them in Africa – the world was reluctant to spray the insecticide of houses and huts with insecticides; especially with a highly effective insecticide known as dichlorodiphenyltricloroethane or "DDT."
People like Ed Darrell and Tim Lambert like to point out that DDT was never banned and that one could still legally use it to control for insect borne diseases in the US. Well that is true. But while there was not a de jure ban on DDT, there certainly was a de facto ban. I have an email from USAID going back several years where they specifically say that the agency will only support the use of DDT as a last resort and only when all other interventions have been tried. Well, you could try different interventions to death (literarlly, when it comes to the deaths of children) and continue to argue that you haven't arrived at the last resort. When the major donors who pay for malaria control refuse to pay for DDT spraying, what use is it that one can legally use DDT. Furthermore in the early 1990s the US government put pressure on Bolivia to reduce to stop using DDT and they threatened to pull funding on other programs. Bolivia complied, malaria cases and deaths incre
Part 2 - You could refer Ed Darrell to Don Roberts et a.. "DDT, Global Strategies and a Malaria Control Crisis in South America" Emerging Infectious Diseases, Vol 3, No. 3, 295-302, July - Sept 1997 - for evidence that where DDT has been scaled back, malaria increases. And there certainly was pressure from donor agencies, Green groups etc. All Darrell need do is look through the proceedings of the World Health Assembly and other WHO executive board meetings to see evidence of this streteching back from the 1980s.
Darrell says:
"The challenge, remember, is to find that nation where DDT use was both effective when stopped, and stopped for no reason other than some environmental idea that took root. Nobody will name names in such a challenge -- I don't think there is such a case. "
WRONG - for above reasons.
Also, we need to get to grips with this business of repellency. The argument has gone that DDT is not needed and no longer effective because of toxic resistance - after a while, DDT stops killing mosquitoes. Well, ressitance did develop in various parts of the world and mostly because of its use in agriculture, not due to use in malaria control (but there may be one or two exceptions).
It turns out that this resistance doesn't matter because the primary function of DDT is as a spatial repellent, as explained by Roberts et al. recent paper in PLoS One - http://www.plosone.org/article/
f...al.pone.0000716
This spatial repellency is not a new development and hasn't slowly developed in mosquitoes making it less effective. Spatial repelency has ALWAYS been a feature of DDT. The earliest uses of DDT in malaria control resulted in mosquitoes being driven away from houses. DDT creates a chemical screen, rather like the physical screen that Darrell wants to erect. To imply that the repellency makes DDT less effective is to ignore the decades of actual evidence from the field that indicates that it is HUGELY effective in protecting people from mosquitoes and in the case of An. funestus, can actually eradicate the mosquito. You don't need to kill all the individual mosquitoes to eradicate them, you can do so by taking away their food source and as An funestus feed exclusively on humans, this is what DDT did in South Africa.
Lastly, but business about DDT being dangerous to humans ... well, show us the actual cases of human harm from DDT. Every year there are 3 or 4 studies that purport to find some association or linkage between DDT and cancer or DDT and endocrine disruption. Usually these are statistically very weak and tenuous associations. But the disturbing thing about these studies and conclusions that their authors come to is a complete inability to balance risks. We have very real and present risks from malaria, and often hypothetical and tenuous links in the future from DDT. If you were to apply teh precautionary principle (with all its attendant p
I asked one of my African experts if he had information on the use of trade treaties to forbid the use of DDT. Specifically I asked about trade agreements with Mexico that required them to withdraw DDT from use in combating malaria. Here is the response:
It seems so, as confirmed by the Commission for Environmental Cooperation - http://www.cec.org/ and in this document - http://www.cec.org/files/PDF/POL...DDT-ed-
e_EN.PDF
We need to be careful about Mexico. They pretend that that they had reductions in malaria through alternative strategies. In fact they launched a massive chemo-prophylaxis campaign against malaria by treating millions of people with cholorquine to rid them of parasites. This has been expensive and in some cases dangerous -chloroquine is way more toxic to humans than DDT. The problem is the development of drug resistance and there are malaria scientists that are deeply concerned about this being presented as some sort of success.
Trade issues affect the use of DDT. This has been seen in Uganda where the EU representatives caused havoc by saying that were DDT to be used in malaria control, agric exports could be affected. THis set the farmers and agro industries against the public health people and to date DDT has not been used in Uganda even though there is good evidence that it would work well. Meanwhile the EU officials sit back and look on happily at the mess they created.
You highly that the CDC withdrew from active participation -- true. They did because if you look at the charts by 1951 they had pretty much eradicated malaria. And they put the emphasis on spraying as the major means of stopping the spread of malaria to people followed by mosquito control. Remember it was malaria that was eradicated not mosquitoes which are still very common in the US.
Nothing you post suggests in any way that DDT was responsible for all the gains made by spraying. Nor does anything you provide suggest in any way that better health care, favorable climate, good screens, and the fact that the chief vector mosquitoes didn't do well in the climate through most of the U.S., did not combine to eradicate malaria. DDT use was a problem in several ways by the mid-1950s, not the least of which was that mosquitoes had developed resistance and immunity to the chemical. The early lawsuits to stop DDT spraying were decided largely on the scientific data, which indicated clearly that there was no significant advantage to DDT spraying outdoors that offset the significant disadvantages of bird kills, fish kills, and the destruction of predators of mosquitoes and other insect pests.
Second, the sort of drainage you are talking about won’t work in Africa. You clearly know nothing of the terrain of the continent.
The kind of drainage we're talking about involves draining water traps where people frequent when mosquitoes would rise. Generally it involves water traps around the house. The point is to stop mosquitoes from biting people when they sleep, or at other times in their homes. This is a significant way that malaria is passed.
Now, if you wish to argue that people live in rivers, you may. It may even be true in some parts of Africa. But it is not true in 100% of the cases, and eradicating mosquito breeding areas near homes of people is an effective method to stop the spread of malaria, even in Africa when it rains.
In KwaZulu Natal or Mpumalanga it isn’t stagnant ponds that need draining. It is small indentations in the land that fill from the afternoon rains and remain full because it rains almost daily in short, hard bursts -- the summer not the winter. There is nothing to drain.
DDT is ineffective in controlling mosquitoes in such ponds, too. I suppose your solution is to throw up one's hands and wail about environmentalists?
There are treatments available for such ponds -- not DDT. To the extent such holes exist around homes, they should be drained or filled. It's a proven method to reduce mosquito populations where people are.
Further north you are talking about Limpopo or the Zambezi and the various streams that run into those rivers. All along the banks there are thousands and thousands of tiny inlets that breed mosquitoes. Draining mosquito breeding areas in Africa is just not possible.
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Further north you are talking about Limpopo or the Zambezi and the various streams that run into those rivers. All along the banks there are thousands and thousands of tiny inlets that breed mosquitoes. Draining mosquito breeding areas in Africa is just not possible. But leave it to people who spent zero time there to advise them to drop what worked and take up dumb ideas that don’t have a chance in hell.
In no case is DDT recommended for spraying for larva in rivers or streams, so your suggestion that DDT could be effective demonstrates nothing so much as you don't know much about mosquito control in an effective program fighting malaria.
Leave it to people who haven't read the WHO papers, who haven't studied DDT, and who know little about public health efforts and have an unholy bias against scientists who have been there and who know what they're talking about to suggest DDT as the panacea where DDT would be particularly ineffective.
You have no clue what my background is on this, and your insults can be dished back in kind. Want to stick to the topic?
Along streams like these were where Africa learned first-hand that DDT kills fish -- the fish the people needed to eat. No mosquitoes, but no fish, either. Given the choice between occasional malaria that kills some and no food which kills all, is it any wonder that Africans themselves chose not to use DDT?
Again medical care treats the symptoms it doesn’t prevent the spread of malaria. And to emphasize treating people after they have been infected is not a preventative measure.
It's astounding that you lecture me on not knowing Africa, then lay an egg lick that.
Curing malaria victims starves the malaria cycle of parasites for mosquitoes to pick up to transmit. Medical care is an essential part of any malaria fighting campaign. When people are cured of malaria, it cannot be passed on from them by mosquitoes. The parasites cannot live in mosquitoes for their life cycle -- malaria depends on human hosts. Cure the hosts, end the disease.
Treating people who are infected is a necessary means of prevention.
Third Environmental Defense only came out in support of indoor spraying very late the game, shortly after the NY Times ran that big article on the topic. And even then, and I read their web site, they said they still want it gradually eliminated. Once they got a lot of bad publicity about their position they sent a letter announcing support for indoor spraying.
My longer response on this got cut by something in your system, I regret.
ED's position, that DDT should not be used abusively, has not materially changed in 40 years. It was the Bush administration which refused to spend the money. Don't blame "environmentalists" when the Bush administration was the one that had the funds authorized and appropriated by Congress, and failed to spend them.
If you claim Bush was unduly influenced by environmentalists, we will have completed the descent into total absurdity.
You are just lying when you say SA stopped spraying because it was ineffective. The govts there do not say that at all. In fact they say they stopped because of Western ecoimperialists pushing them and cutting aid if they didn’t stop. They stopped and the death rate went up. If spraying was ineffective why was so effective when resumed within about four years of stopping?
I pointed you to the medical journals reporting the facts as I stated them. If you have a citation showing something else, can you produce it?
Among other things, "ecoimperialism" is a phrase promoted by tobacco company public relations people -- it's a sign of junk science, of undue bias against science and the facts. So, now that you've cited the tobacco guys, and resorted to their unfair, inaccurate smear term, is there any way you can convince us that you have any foundation in the actual events in Africa? I'd like to see an unbiased history to support your point, if you can find one.
I named South Africa. I was there. I heard what the local authorities said publicly. I watched the pressure being put on them with aid withdrawal to comply with the Green campaigns and saw the results of people dying as a result. So did they and they quickly resumed spaying. DDT is not a deadly chemical that is just nonsense.
South Africa's campaign after 1996 included the full spectrum of solutions, including nets and drainage. If the government was caving to environmental pressure, which I consider highly unlikely due to their failure to give on HIV/AIDS when scientists urge them to, surely you can document that with official references? I can't find anything to support that claim outside the anti-science public relations mill of CEI and AFM.
Got facts? Got citations? Let's see 'em.
DDT is not a deadly chemical that is just nonsense.
It's deadly to all living things, proportionately. Are you paying attention to what you're saying? If DDT were not deadly, why would anyone urge using it to kill mosquitoes? Deadly chemicals are exactly what one uses, to kill.
The CDC clearly put the emphasis on spraying millions of homes as the major component of stopping malaria. Other factors were important but not the major aspect of the program. You emphasize minor aspects because you are ideologically deaf to any other position.
I emphasize the other methods because that is what the CDC said worked.
There is no reason that screening cannot work in Africa. Kenya just completed an experiment with individual bed nets, passed out free, that showed a dramatic decline in malaria.
(see here: http://timpanogos.wordpress.com/...enyas-example/)
Here's what we know for sure: DDT can't do the work alone, and when we spray huts with DDT we speed the evolution of mosquitoes to stop landing on the hut walls after feeding, thereby spreading malaria farther, faster, after each campaign -- if DDT is the chief thing relied upon. It cannot work that way.
CDC specifically points to indoor spraying of homes, the sort of stuff that has been legal and practiced all along, rather than broadcast spraying of DDT, as the working component of their campaign. The campaign also included draining mosquito breeding areas around homes, which can be done in Africa, and screening -- which can be done in Africa.
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