Inaccurate claims about DDT are killing African children.
Malaria continues to be the biggest single killer of African children. However, years of effort to improve malaria control programs are finally bearing fruit.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore, and hundreds of physicians, clergy and human rights advocates signed the Kill Malarial Mosquitoes NOW declaration, demanding that substantial funds be spent on indoor spraying with DDT, Artemisia-based combination therapies (ACT drugs), bed nets and other commodities – not just on conferences, reports, education and “capacity building,” as important as those things also are. (See www.FightingMalaria.org for details.)
In response to legislation enacted by the United States Congress, the U.S. Agency for International Development is buying commodities and assisting with spraying programs. The new director of the World Health Organization’s global malaria program has announced that indoor spraying with DDT will be an integral component of WHO’s comprehensive new strategies. And mining and other companies are conducting successful anti-malaria programs that take the same approach.
DDT is not a silver bullet. However, it is a vital component of a truly integrated program to control this devastating disease. Simply put, no other chemical – at any price – can do what DDT does.
It is the cheapest, longest lasting, most effective repellant and insecticide known to man. Just spraying a tiny amount on the eaves and walls of a home, just once or twice a year, keeps 90% of mosquitoes from even entering. (Even just hanging a couple strips of DDT-impregnated cloth near the door keeps half of them from coming in.) It also irritates any that do enter, so they don’t bite, and kills those that land.
It’s like a huge bed net over an entire household. Equally important, used this way, DDT is absolutely safe for people and the environment. In fact, it won’t even get into the environment.
This is the system that South Africa, Swaziland, Mozambique and Zambia used to slash malaria rates by 75% in less than two years. They were then able to get scarce ACT drugs to people who still got sick, and cut malaria disease and death rates by almost 95% in just three years.
Just think what a similar program could do for other countries. Kenya alone loses 34,000 children below age 5 every year to malaria, according to Health Minister Charity Ngilu. (Uganda endures 70,000 deaths annually.) People who have to stay home from work because they have malaria, or must care for family members who have malaria, cost Kenya 170 million working days and billions of shillings each year.
Imagine reducing that by 75% or more in Kenya alone. Over 25,000 children would live to become future farmers, scientists, political leaders, teachers, musicians and businessmen. Parents could work an additional 127 million days a year. Kenya would be far more healthy and productive. And this amazing success story could be repeated in communities and countries all over Africa.
No wonder my colleagues and I have been absolutely stunned by some of the letters and articles that have appeared recently in Kenyan and Ugandan papers. They contained some of the most fallacious claims we have ever seen regarding DDT. They would be hilarious – if so many lives weren’t at stake, and the claims weren’t destroying Africa’s recent progress in disease control. Here are the facts.
Millions of soldiers and civilians were sprayed right on their bodies with DDT during and after World War II, to prevent malaria and typhus. After the war, DDT was sprayed in massive quantities all over the USA and Europe, to completely eradicate malaria in those countries. Millions of people (including me) played, swam or ate picnics in clouds of DDT.
World-renowned DDT expert Dr. Gordon Edwards used to eat a spoonful of DDT whenever he gave lectures about it. He finally died, at age 85 – of a heart attack, while hiking in the mountains.
No deaths, cancers or other harm (except skin rashes) were ever demonstrated. Not one replicated scientific study ever found that DDT causes abortions, birth abnormalities, tumors or reduced fertility in humans. US Environmental Protection Agency Administrator William Ruckelshaus banned DDT, despite his own commission’s conclusion that DDT was safe for people and the environment. He never attended even one hour of the commission’s extensive hearings, never read even one page of its report, and later said his decision was “political,” not scientific.
In fact, the worst thing anti-pesticide activists like Greenpeace even say today is: “some researchers think DDT could be inhibiting lactation and may contribute to lactation failure and low birth weights in babies.” Compare those far-fetched and minor risks to the reality of countless mothers and babies DYING from malaria.
Rachel Carson did die from cancer, but there is no evidence that it was caused by DDT. Cancer is primarily a disease of middle-aged and old people in developed countries. Tragically few Africans will have to worry about it, because far too many will die from malaria and other diseases that DDT could help prevent, long before they get cancer.
As to birds, the only evidence that DDT causes thin eggshells came from faulty experiments in which birds were fed only 20% of their required calcium. When Dr. Bittman did his studies again with proper calcium levels, the eggshells were normal. Ms. Carson worried about a silent spring – but there never was one anywhere in America. Even when she wrote her book, our bird populations were increasing. One writer’s claim, that DDT causes birds to “shit” their eggs, is simply bizarre and preposterous.
Today, DDT is manufactured in one facility in India and one in China. It has not been produced in the United States for nearly 35 years, and we don’t export it anywhere.
As malaria and DDT expert Professor Donald Roberts of the Uniformed University of the Health Sciences, points out: no WHO report claims that DDT causes brain or other tumors. Remember – the WHO, USAID, Archbishop Tutu and hundreds of doctors and disease experts support the use of DDT for malaria control. They would not do so if the chemical were so toxic.
Yes, DDT can harm fish. But modern indoor spraying programs use tiny amounts of DDT, confine it to household walls, prevent its use in agriculture, and keep it from reaching lakes and rivers.
Yes, the European Union and certain European companies and activists have threatened trade sanctions against African countries that use DDT. That is unconscionable – but an easy position for them to take, since they no longer have malaria, thanks in large part to DDT.
Instead of bowing to their blackmail, though, all African nations should challenge these threats, which put paranoia about barely detectable traces of this life-saving chemical above the lives of African parents and children. Such attitudes should not be tolerated. Access to DDT is protected by the Stockholm Convention and WHO, whose guidelines will ensure that it is used properly, to save lives and safeguard wildlife and the environment.
Friends of the Earth may say its strange notions of “sustainable development” should come first, as one writer asserts. But if its policies control decisions in Africa, the only thing that will be sustained is hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths from malaria, year after year.
DDT can be a vital part of the answer to malaria. It can save millions of lives – if we let it. Sound science and real environmental ethics demand that we do so.
DDT should never have been banned. The drive to do so was fueled by emotion and junk science, and precious little fact.
Any person, nation, or union of nations that would see countless people die rather than allow the limited use of a proven deterent deserves to be sanctioned.
I was a BOD member for a small non-profit that worked with troubled kids. There often was someone new coming on the board that would argue the merits of making the problem or our solution appear larger in order to help with mass appeal fundraising. It’s a natural dynamic, and what prevented us from going down that path were ethics.
I daresay that in order to shift resources and control to many environmental groups, they will not only make the problem or their solution appear larger than reality, they will even distort science, and with that ‘science’ brainwash people in public schools before they have a chance to logically sort things out.
It really is so sad – so many millions dead for no reason.
I remember seeing pictures of people being released from the concentration camps in Germany during WWII, and they were being hosed down with DDT. To my knowledge not a one of them had died from exsposure to it.
After the United States banned its use in 1972, the wildlife population returned, particularly the bald eagle and the osprey. Columbia University Press.
Like Sam, I often used to repeat the misinformation that banning DDT led to the return of the bald eagle. History clearly indicates otherwise. To give credit where due, I found this information on Steven Milloy's junk science website. The information is all verifiable.
The journal Ecology reported in 1921 that bald eagles were threatened with extinction. This was 22 yrs before DDT was produced! The National Museum Bulletin reported the bald eagle had disappeared from New England by 1937, years before widespread use of DDT.
The eagle's comeback occurred during the peak of DDT use!! By 1960 the Audubon Society reported 25% more eagles than in its pre-1941 census. U.S. Forest Service studies reported an increase in nesting bald eagle productivity from 51 in 1964 to 107 in 1970, according to the 1970 Annual Report on Bald Eagle Status.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service attributed bald eagle population reductions to “widespread loss of … habitat,” noting “illegal shooting [is] the leading cause of direct mortality in both adult and immature bald eagles.” (1978 report, Endangered Species Tech Bulletin)
A 1984 National Wildlife Federation publication listed hunting, power line electrocution, collisions in flight and poisoning from eating ducks containing lead shot as the main reasons for eagle deaths.
Further, numerous scientific studies exonerate DDT.
DDT-weigh costs and benefits.
There MAY be safer materials for wildlife. Those of us NOT living in a subsistence economy can skip a movie or 2 a year for the extra costs of foods produced w/o DDT and for public health measures that don’t rely on DDT.
The hungry third world and the malaria-infested third world are weighing life and death, in the short run, against dubious long-term wildlife protection benefits. Even if the wildlife benefits are true, these people won’t be there to see ‘em.
Re: ‘Sam’ comment that the ‘wildlife population returned.’ If you mouse-over the ‘Columbia University Press,’ you find a link. You may think it is documentation of the wildlife return. It isn’t. It is simply a definition of (two!) meanings of DDT. The original banning of DDT was politics, pure and simple. For real facts, see: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,202447,00.html “Bald Eagle-DDT Myth Still Flying High.”
Anyone who doubts that the DDT ban was un-necessary should visit this website to dispell ny remaining doubts: http://www.junkscience.com/ddtfaq.htm
Rachael Carson is probably responsible for as many deaths as Stalin, Hitler, and Saddam Hussein combined. If there were justice in this world, she’d meet the same fate.
“After the United States banned its use in 1972, the wildlife population returned, particularly the bald eagle and the osprey. Columbia University Press.”
Much like the spotted owl no doubt. The CUP and many others manufacture facts to suit their agenda.
The Bald Eagle population decreases bottomed out in the 1930′s BEFORE DDT was invented. By the 60′s they were already well on the rebound due almost entirely to laws that made it illegal to kill them.
This article and your posts are full of lies and sour grapes. For example, the stuff from Milloy’s website is profoundly misleading. He cites studies with chickens to make points about raptors. Driessen does the same thing here when he talks about the “faulty experiments in which birds were fed only 20% of their required calcium.” Those experiments involved quail. Chickens are not raptors. Quail are not raptors. You cannot generalize across species. This kind of sloppy thinking is typical of the right. No wonder you guys have such trouble with science.
Milloy also seems to think that only one thing can threaten a species at a time. Either it has to be hunters or lead shot or DDT but it can’t be all three. That’s just plain stupid. If you alleviate one stressor, of course you’ll see a population uptick but that doesn’t remove the other threats or mitigate their damage.
Saying “Rachael Carson is probably responsible for as many deaths as Stalin, Hitler, and Saddam Hussein combined” is just plain nutty. By the time Carson’s book came out, many countries had already stopped using DDT because mosquitoes had developed resistance. That wasn’t Carson’s fault; that’s just natural selection at work. Even then, the U.S. DDT ban included an exception for public health spraying. Every public health waiver ever requested was granted.
If this is what qualifies as “Intellectual Conservatism,” you guys are in sad shape. You lost this fight over 30 years ago and for good reason. Get over it. If you really want to help people in malarial Africa, increase U.S. foreign aid to support the development of better public health infrastructure, better nutrition, access to clean water, and development of a malaria vaccine. Spreading lies about Rachel Carson doesn’t help anybody and just makes you look like idiots.
One more thing…Milloy’s list contains duplicates to make it seem longer. Numbers 44 and 95 are the same and they’re both misleading. Brown pelican eggshells are thinned by DDE, a DDT metabolite. DDE gets into the fat inside the egg when it’s being formed inside the mother’s body. Smearing DDT on the outside wouldn’t do a darned thing. Milloy wants you to believe that because DDT does nothing when smeared on the outside of a pelican egg, it and all of its metabolites are completely inert in all applications. BZZZZTTT!!!! WRONG.
I hope that by showing you how Milloy lies, you guys will think critically and really examine the facts instead of mindlessly swallowing the ideologically convenient lies the right feeds you.
Let me see, Millions of dead babies, or a few thin pelican eggs. Sorry Bill, I say the pelicans better get after their evolving and thicken up those shells.
BZZZZTTT to you too.
That’s a false choice. The issue isn’t thin pelican eggs vs. dead babies. If you spray DDT everywhere, you’ll get both because the mosquitoes will just become resistant to the pesticide. Limited spraying of DDT within households is qualitatively different than massive agricultural spraying (which is what Carson wrote about). It’s narrowly targeted and unlikely to spread DDT and its metabolites into the food chain.
If you really want to save all of those babies, support the development of better public health infrastructure, better nutrition, access to clean water, and development of a malaria vaccine. There are more options than “spray DDT everywhere” or “do nothing.” Why don’t conservatives understand this?
That’s a false choice. Killing pelicans won’t save those babies; it will just breed DDT resistant mosquitoes. That kind of wrongheaded binary thinking isn’t “intellectual” though it certainly is conservative.
I notice that someone is avoiding the elephant in the room–big time–by
not mentioning the success of the DDT programs in South Africa, Swaziland,
Zambia and Mozambique.
Let's follow the "logic" of the drug-resistence "argument." Accepting the premise would
essentially stop the use of ALL drugs that have a safety threshold. No more AIDS drugs…
too much resistence develops. As for that sinus or pneumonia problem, I suppose that he will refuse the antibiotic prescription the next time he is sick. Instead,
he will go home and use "sustainable" methods such as breathing eucalyptus, while
hoping he doesn't die.
Using the "drug-resistence" argument essentially says that the only useful alternative
that WORKS is to use something so deadly that no resistence can possibly develop.
Nuclear bombs are one such no-possible-resistence option, but DDT is much less expensive.
Africans, who are more concerned about saving their children than saving
the photo-op for vacationing elitists on summer break from Harvard have decided
to go with the option that kills mosquitoes. Perhaps one of the babies who is saved will
grow up to be scientist who finds the perfect answer to the mosquito problem. Or perhaps
all these babies will get a chance to just live the lives they choose, not the one that certain
do-gooders would have chosen for them. THAT, by the way, is a "conservative" position.
Acknowledging that bacteria and mosquitoes become resistant to chemicals would not “stop the use of ALL drugs that have a safety threshold.” That’s nonsense. Bacteria and mosquitoes grow resistant to chemicals through overuse. By limiting DDT spraying to home interiors, you are much less likely to breed DDT resistant mosquitoes. You have to use chemicals intelligently. Spraying them across the landscape will just pollute the food chain. It won’t save baby Africans.
I don’t buy for one second that conservatives really care about Africans anyway. If there weren’t some way to bash environmentalists or Harvard-educated tourists, your interest in this topic would drop to ZERO. Africans die from all kinds of diseases not just malaria. Where are “Intellectual Conservative’s” hand-wringing articles about cholera and ebola and AIDS? Where can I find “Intellectual Conservative’s” articles calling for more foreign aid for Africa?
Kenyan economist James Shikwati has exposed the
“foreign aid” scam in Africa far better than I can, but
allow me to summarize: Foreign aid props up sadistic,
illiterate dictatorships. It demoralizes and corrupts its
hapless victims. It provides salaries and ego-boosting
for self-annointed experts and NGO suckers who wouldn’t
be able to get jobs in the real world.
Thomas Sowell provides some useful material about
The Vision of the Annointed, whose personal vanity is
exceeded only by their ignorance of human psychology,
human behavior, economic reality and true morality.
Dominated by emotion, physical cowardice and a dearth
of faith in God, the annointed are essentially nihilists.
The only thing these pathetic elitists have left is their
smug self-satisfaction. It’s their rock and foundation,
as a few minutes at Daily Kos will prove.
Meanwhile, back in Africa, the U.N. is raping, hoarding,
bribing, err…I mean, “peace-keeping” and “providing
foreign aid.” I only hope that Kenyan economists will
one day outnumber the Annointed in Africa.
If the United States and western Europe have decided they don’t want DDT, who are you “anointed” elitists to demand otherwise?