Tim Lambert (deltoidblog AT gmail.com) is a computer scientist at the University of New South Wales.
Tina Rosenberg, who wrote the hopelessly inaccurate article What the World Needs Now Is DDT, is back with more falsehoods about DDT:
The truth is that many malaria victims would be better off if America still had the disease. If malaria still existed in America, we would be attacking it with DDT . In fact, we did exactly that.
Yes, obviously if there were mosquito-borne diseases in America like, oh, West Nile virus, it would be attacked with DDT. Except that they use synthetic pyrethroids which seem to be a better choice than DDT.
But now we know that DDT can beat malaria without environmental damage, if it is ... sprayed in tiny amounts inside houses. DDT, however, is banned in the United States and Europe. That means that Washington has not, until the last few months, financed its use anywhere else and it has blocked the World Health Organization from issuing recommendations to use DDT. American officials maintained it was hypocritical to push an insecticide overseas that is banned at home.
This is not true. The World Health Organization does and has recommended the use of DDT. From the WHO's FAQ on DDT:
WHO recommends indoor residual spraying of DDT for malaria vector control.
And USAID stated quite clearly
Contrary to popular belief, USAID does not "ban" the use of DDT in its malaria control programs.
Rosenberg continues:
Americans are beginning to realize, however, that it is more hypocritical to deny Africa the ability to use responsibly the tools we used irresponsibly to beat malaria. Last year, President Bush announced a new program to ... provide an additional $1.2 billion over the next five years. ... It will give away bed nets, buy malaria drugs that work and finance indoor spraying. Eight countries in Africa are due to start spraying this year, and three will use DDT as their primary insecticide. ...
So in the majority of countries where they are spraying, DDT is not the primary insecticide. And the reason is obviously not because the US won't pay for it. This would seem to prove that DDT is not the magic bullet that Rosenberg has been touting it as, but she missed it. And her focus on DDT has made her completely miss what is important about the new program -- it's not the use of DDT in a few places, it's the $1.2 billion which will make a welcome difference in the fight against malaria.
Comments
Actually, if malaria was still present in the United States, drug companies would be working on anti-malaria drugs, rather than cures for baldness and "erectile disfunction." Anti-malaria medicines hold out much more promise than insecticides, but there is just no profit in it when it is found in third world coutries.
Posted by: Jim | March 31, 2006 12:52 PM
Amen. I can tell you from personal experience, that if it is not going to be sold in quantities in the US/Canada, Europe, or Japan, then any drug is a total non-starter in the pharmaceutical companies.
Posted by: z | March 31, 2006 3:02 PM
Funny you should mention erectile dysfunction and malaria in the same thought. As a matter of fact, a Plasmodium protein homologous to our limp-penis protein is being investigated as a potential drug target (with a little bit of help from drug companies).
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&listuids=16038615&queryhl=3&itool=pubmed_docsum
Posted by: argy stokes | March 31, 2006 4:37 PM
argy - that's a nice link, but the moral intuition that something is wrong runs too deep for it to counter. Malaria treatments shouldn't have to be gravy for ED cures - if anything, it should be the other way around.
A world that spent more more on malaria than on ED is objectively a better one than we have today. How to work that objective into the market is the question
Posted by: D | April 1, 2006 7:34 PM
D- I agree completely. I just wanted to point out something interesting.
Posted by: argy stokes | April 2, 2006 3:22 PM