I often blog about malaria because it is a fascinating disease which has to be studied in a highly integrative manner, is a great teaching topic and I could tie it in with my own field.
If you share my fascination, than your Obligatory Reading Of The Day is this post by Bug Girl (via) about the truth about DDT, Rachael Carson, malaria and the wingnut lies about it. Follow the links within it as well for more information.
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DDT beats the alternatives. Read the comments on a DDT post of ours: http://www.haloscan.com/comments/raldanash/114601487451491842?url=http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2006/04/ddt-myths.php
The comments by "gcochran" provide plenty of documentation & views of specialists in tropical disease / medicine -- a set that is mostly disjoint with the set of environmentalist activists.
Thanks for the link! :)
Agnostic,the paper gcochran linked to is discussing South America, not Africa. That is a different vector/parasite/ ecosystem than Africa--and they actually *had* DDT spraying in the 60's, unlike the majority of Africa.
Ultimately, it's an incredibly complex system, and reducing it to a bunch of sound bites in which people who question using DDT are accused of being "a lot more concerned about infinitesimal risks to raptors than heaps of dead babies"(gcochran comment from your link above) is just dishonest.
DDT is just one tool available--it may not be the best tool for ALL situations. You can't just spray the crap out everything that moves and fix the problem. I *wish* it was this simple, but it isn't.
BTW, latest post on insecticide resistance and DDT is up :)
http://membracid.wordpress.com/2007/06/13/ddt-malaria-insecticide-resis…