Seed Magazine has interviewed epidemiologist Barbara Eskanazi about her survey article on the effects of DDT on human health:
SEED: What kinds of long-term health problems can we expect?
BE: I don't really know. I can't predict, but I can say that if the studies that I read hold true we may see higher rates of diabetes; we may see higher rates of breast cancer; we may see higher rates of male infertility. We may see poor neurodevelopment in children. We may also see more spontaneous abortions. ...
SEED: How do we balance the malaria-fighting benefits of DDT with this information about long-term health?
BE: It's a very complicated. There are people who are responsible scientists and policy makers who believe that DDT is the only way in certain areas to control malaria. I'm not an entomologist; I can't make decisions like that. Entomologists could make the decision if there's mosquito resistance, or given the ecological framework that mosquitoes are living in, what would be the best [way] to control it. As an epidemiologist I can address what the literature says around health consequences. I just want to emphasize that [all the authors of the report] care deeply about the health of children and future generations, and we wouldn't want children dying of malaria, but we need to weigh the costs and benefits of all of it. It's not a simple, easy decision. My purpose as a professor of maternal and child health is to not only protect the health of children living right now, but the children of the future. We need to be concerned about the fact that the half-life of DDT and DDT-related compounds are something like four to 10 years, so what we use today is going to be exposing populations for years to come.
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They could agree to eliminate breeding grounds, provide kerb and guttering and so on. No trade-offs to be considered then.
Eskanazi was fudging her language! This proves that she's a DDT alarmist!
Of course, if Eskanazi had said in no uncertain terms that DDT Is Harmful And We Should All Stop Using DDT, then it also proves that she's a DDT alarmist!
Is she really serious about stopping malaria? Or is she using "malaria" merely as a cover for Obama's covert Operation Wealth Redistribution To People Who Do Not Pay Taxes? If she's serious about stopping malaria, she'll be in full support of nukes.
May be of interest to those who read this thread:
http://www.rothamsted.bbsrc.ac.uk/corporate/PressReleases/PressReleases…
Scientists turn deadly mosquitoes against their own offspring.
"A new field demonstration from Peru suggests that we might be able to co-opt adult mosquitoes into applying insecticides for us, and that they are far more efficient at doing this than humans are...
Scientists were able to achieve almost total coverage of the aquatic larval habitat by treating a small proportion of the area where adult mosquitoes rest with a safe, potent and persistent insecticide. This insecticide can be carried by adult mosquitoes but only kills juvenile stages. Amplification of the effect occurs because every adult mosquito completes several resting and egg-laying cycles during its lifetime. This results in multiple opportunities for contamination of the aquatic habitat.
The use of the adult mosquito as the transfer vehicle ensures that the larvicides are very accurately targeted: the more popular the breeding site, the greater the transfer of insecticide and the more effective the control. "
eskaNAZI?
coincidence? i think not.