DDT
tlambert | May 22, 2006Philip Musgrove, one of the authors of the paper that Amir Attaran misunderstood writes:
The one--and only--point on which Attaran and his co-authors are right
is that in the Appendix to the Booster Program document, someone at the
World Bank who had not participated in the analysis of the Brazilian
program failed to notice that the data for 1996 referred to only half a
year. This is because the paper by Akhavan et al., of which I am a
co-author, developed a cost-effectiveness analysis and the cost data for
the Bank project ran only through half of that year. It was a mistake
to interpret…
tlambert | May 17, 2006The New York Times reported:
The World Bank failed to follow through on its pledges to spend up to $500 million to combat malaria, let its staff working on the disease shrink to zero, used false statistical data to claim success and wasted money on ineffective medicines, according to a group of public health experts writing in the British medical journal The Lancet.
The experts, in an article to be published online today, argue that the bank should relinquish the money it has to fight malaria, which kills an African child every 30 seconds, and instead let the Global Fund to Fight AIDS,…
tlambert | May 10, 2006Daniel Son writes
While an inordinate amount of attention is given to distant, theoretical threats of global warming, a tragically minimal amount of attention is given to the life and death problems of today, some of which directly result from policies enacted to stave off the "disastrous" conditions of global climate change.
A clear example of what can result from bad policies can be found in environmentalists blocking DDT use in African nations; DDT has reduced malaria-related deaths by 75% in countries who used DDT programs. An African dies from malaria every 40 seconds--the equivalent of…
tlambert | May 3, 2006Lisa Payola is OK! de Pasqaule writes:
In the spirit of Conservative Shopping Day and celebrating conservative ingenuity, JunkScience.com has just released "the world's first pro-DDT, anti-malaria t-shirt." The t-shirt launch is part of an educational program to help debunk the myths surrounding the pesticide DDT. Environmental groups have blocked DDT use for more than 30 years despite the fact that more than one million people, mostly children under 5, die every year from malaria. Part of the proceeds from t-shirt sales will go to FightingMalaria.org.
Outsourced to Sadly, No!.
tlambert | April 26, 2006
Here is Colby Cosh's response to the UN foundation's appeal to buy insecticide-treated nets to fight malaria:
Africans aren't helpless animals--they know what works against malaria. Unfortunately, what works against malaria is DDT. But any country that proposes a program of household DDT application faces starvation at the hands of European bureaucrats and consumers. The nets are an unnecessarily expensive and epidemiologically phony sauve-qui-peut measure, a work-around for what could be described as the greatest ongoing mass murder ever perpetrated. Reilly's appeal (or Ted Turner's…
tlambert | April 23, 2006Alicia Colon has written the usual rubbish about how Rachel Carson killed millions of people (see DDT ban myth bingo for corrections to the stuff she gets wrong). After claiming that DDT is banned she writes:
Within two years of starting DDT programs, South Africa, Mozambique, Zambia, Madagascar, and Swaziland slashed their malaria rates by 75% or more.
Apart from contradicting her claim that DDT is banned, this passage contains an interesting mistake. Mozambique has indeed slashed its malaria rate, but it hasn't used DDT. It seems that what is killing people in Africa is not restrictions…
tlambert | April 17, 2006
About a hundred Internet years ago in 1988 I posted this comment on Usenet:
Waste heat does not contribute significantly to global warming. It is all
(if it's really happening - we probably won't be sure until it's too late)
caused by the greenhouse effect. I agree with Brad - burning fossil fuels
could well be more harmful to the environment than nuclear power.
An op-ed by Patrick co-founder of Greenpeace (his middle name is "Moore") has ignited more discussion on global warming and nuclear power. Kevin Drum and Mark Kleiman agree with Mr co-founder of Greenpeace, while David Roberts…
tlambert | April 2, 2006
In 1972 the US banned the agricultural use of DDT, but did not ban its use against malaria. Other countries followed suit. The ban on the agricultural use of DDT has probably saved many lives by slowing the development of resistance. However, Michael Crichton blames the ban for 50 million deaths:
"Since the ban, two million people a year have died unnecessarily from malaria, mostly children. The ban has caused more than fifty million needless deaths. Banning DDT killed more people than Hitler."
Junkscience has a death clock that blames the ban for an impossible 90 million deaths.…
tlambert | March 31, 2006
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…
tlambert | March 19, 2006Today is Malaria Action Day. Dunk Malaria are holding a Dunk Malariathon. coturnix is running a linkfest for malaria related posts.
My thanks to John Quiggin and Tara Smith for linking to my earlier post and extra thanks to everyone who donated money and doubled my $300 to help fight malaria.
tlambert | March 15, 2006Dunk Malaria is organizing a Malaria Action Day on March 19th, to raise awareness of malaria. The idea is that people net a basketball to symbolize the insecticide treated netting that is the best weapon against malaria. Good. Except that number 2 on their list of charities is the execrable Africa Fighting Malaria, who are trying to prevent bednets from being used to fight malaria.
I think that we here at Deltoid can, right now, do more to fight malaria than Africa Fighting Malaria has ever done. I will match, up to a total of $300, donations to The Global Fund to Fight AIDS,…
tlambert | March 9, 2006The way the "Rachel Carson was worse than Hitler" folks tell the story, the all-powerful environmentalists were poised to ban DDT at the end of the 90s. For example, here's Tren and Bate's
version of the negotiations leading to the Stockholm Treaty:
Five Inter-governmental Negotiating Committee (INC) meetings
were held between June 1998 and December 2000 in order to
agree on the final text of the POPs treaty. The fate of DDT under
the POPs treaty changed dramatically during the five negotiating
meetings. Initially it appeared that DDT would probably be
banned for all uses.
Delegates of…
tlambert | February 21, 2006Tim Worstall reports that James Lovelock (who I criticised earlier for his global warming alarmism) has fallen for the myth that the use of DDT against malaria is banned. In his new book Lovelock writes:
"insecticides badly needed controlling, but the indiscriminate banning of DDT and other chlorinated insecticides was a selfish, ill informed act driven by affluent radicals in the first world. The inhabitants of tropical countries have paid a high price in death and illness as a result of their inability to use DDT as an effective controller of malaria"
DDT is not banned.
tlambert | February 20, 2006Steve Forbes writes:
There is a simple, time-proven way to virtually eradicate malaria: the judicious use of DDT. Extremist environmentalists have cowed health officials into never even considering the use of DDT. We are not talking about the large-scale, indiscriminate spraying of the stuff that was all too common in the years immediately following World War II. What we are talking about is spraying this insecticide in small amounts--harmless to humans--on the interior walls of houses.
And most important, this procedure works. Several years ago South Africa suffered a devastating…
tlambert | January 19, 2006Last year I posted about The Great DDT Hoax, the fake story of how DDT had all but eliminated malaria in Sri Lanka until evil enviros banned its use. Most of the people repeating this hoax were just part of the disinformation cycle and were merely guilty of lazy and sloppy research. But some of them had certainly read accurate accounts of what happened and were deliberately deceiving their readers.
I can add Julian Simon to the list of dishonest ones. In the Ultimate Resource 2 Page 261 he writes about "environmental scares":
DDT, sensationalized by Rachel Carson in 1962. Said to cause…
tlambert | January 7, 2006
One of the features of the endless stream of articles about the nonexistent DDT ban is the way they all cite each other instead of cracking open a textbook or checking with an actual scientist. I call this the disinformation cycle. As far as I can tell, it is nearly 100% efficient and there is little danger of actual facts about the world contaminating the pure flow of disinformation.
tlambert | December 21, 2005 After seeing yet another
href="http://www.townhall.com/opinion/columns/JohnStossel/2005/12/14/178999.html">ignorant column about how banning DDT killed millions and millions and millions of people. I've been inspired
to create DDT Ban Myth Bingo to make reading these stupid articles more interesting. Just tick the box when they use the bogus argument next to it. Get four in a row and win! If you get to the end and you haven't got four in row, you still have a chance to win---there's one box you can tick if they don't mention DDT resistance by mosquitoes.
Sri Lanka banned DDT in…
tlambert | December 16, 2005It is frequently claimed that the World Health Organization opposes the use of DDT against malaria. Even if we just confine ourselves to articles at Tech Central Station, the claim has been made by
Paul Driessen,
Nick Schulz,
Roger Bate,
Tim Worstall,
Duane Freese,
James Glassman,
Richard Tren and
John Luik.
Of course, given TCS's track record, you'd be well advised to check to see what the World Health Organization actually says about DDT. Here is the full text of the RBM Partnership Consensus Statement on Insecticide Treated Netting:
The RBM Partnership has received questions enquiring…
tlambert | November 25, 2005In Tech Central Station (where else?) global warming skeptic Roy Spencer spreads the DDT hoax:
The whole DDT issue is a good example of stupid environmental policy. Insiders say the de facto ban on DDT was the result of politics, not of overriding human health and environmental concerns. Threats of trade bans on countries that dare to use DDT, one of the safest and most effective insecticides available, have contributed to over one million malaria-related deaths each year in Africa. Literally hundreds of millions of people contract the disease each year. While the knee-jerk hostility to DDT…
tlambert | November 22, 2005The latest stunt from Africa Fighting Malaria is a petition advocating policies that would cripple the United States efforts against malaria. The petition asks that Congress and the President
Ensure that at least 2/3 (two-thirds) of annual Congressional appropriations for malaria control are earmarked for insecticidal and medicinal commodities - with up to half of such monies targeted to the treatment and cure of infected patients.
Specifically direct such funds to the actual purchase and deployment of: (1) DDT, or any other proven, more cost-effective insecticide/repellent, for Indoor…