Posted on 06/28/2006 7:31:13 PM PDT by neverdem
The mosquito nets arrived too late for 18-month-old Phillip Odong.
The roly-poly boy came down with his fourth bout of malaria on March 16, the same day the nets were handed out at the makeshift camp where he lived in northern Uganda. "It was because of poverty that we could not afford one," his mother, Jackeline Ato, recalled recently, seated in rags beneath a mango tree.
The morning after his fever spiked, she took him to a clinic, but it did not have the medicines that might have saved him. He died four days later, crying, "Mommy, Mommy," before losing consciousness.
It is no secret that mosquitoes carry the parasite that causes malaria. More mystifying is why 800,000 young African children still die of malaria per year — more than from any other disease — when there are medicines that cure for 55 cents a dose, mosquito nets that shield a child for $1 a year and indoor insecticide spraying that costs about $10 annually for a household.
An emerging consensus on solutions, combined with fresh scrutiny and a windfall of new financing, are prompting major donors to revamp years of failed efforts to stem malaria's mortal toll.
The growing support from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, enriched this week by a $31 billion gift from Warren E. Buffett, will provide still more impetus for change.
Paltry budgets, faulty strategies and government mismanagement have hamstrung past efforts to combat the disease. In Uganda, population 28 million, not one of the 1.8 million nets approved more than two years ago by the Global Fund to Fight...
--snip--
The World Bank, after pledging to halve malaria deaths in Africa six years ago, had let its staff working on the disease dwindle to zero.
--snip--
The Bush administration is changing that approach.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
A few cents worth of DDT would have saved him if used properly. About 3 to 5 million young boys and girls die each year because we will not spray with DDT.
Times is already spending the money Buffett gave to Gates.
That didn't take long.
Another of the tens of millions of victims of Rachel Carson.....
These hyper emotional articles do not move me at all.DDT and atropine used to do the trick ... but the environuts would rather have people die than admit that DDT was actually good for something ... at least in Africa where it is needed so desperately.
Is there an EXIT STRATEGY?
For all the billions that have/will be spent, there just HAS TO be an exit strategy....
Can we all sarcastically say "Thank You, Rachel Carson"? That's the idiot that got the ball rolling on banning DDT. I'm convinced that the resulting death toll was their real aim. At the time her idiotic book Silent Spring came out, the big concern was about "The Population Bomb"; the fear that there'd be too many humans to feed. The world couldn't sustain humanity - and other such bogs crap. Tragically, they realized their ends.
Here's a thought: let's ship every Enviro-Nazi, Al Gore, et.al., to Africa, where THEY can reap the fruits of their labors??
IIRC, the story said they would use DDT. There it is.
"Finally, the United States is also getting behind the use of DDT and other insecticides and will pay for large-scale programs to spray small amounts of them inside homes."
Atropine? That's good for pulseless electrical activity and bradycardia in advanced cardiac life support and as an antidote for nerve agents.
How does the USA pay for that?
Why does the USA pay for that?
The problem with DDT is its lack of effectiveness through over-use in agriculture.
It must be used in a very targeted manner.
Because the US, contrary to what some in the media would report actually stands by ethical principles that benefit mankind.
I don't really understand why you have a problem with helping those who cannot help themselves.
Key to future stem cell production may lie inside the testicles
Stealth radar system sees through trees, walls -- undetected
That, I would like to see. I would love to have something other than a sorry repellent (Permethrins)to use on my crops without having to pay a "certified" spray-monkey to apply.
People complain about various insect-borne diseases (West Nile Virus) coming to the US, yet we cannot use effective insecticides due to politics.
AlkaloidsMany of the earliest isolated pure compounds with biological activity were alkaloids. This was due to the ease of isolation. The nitrogen generally makes the compound basic and the compound exists in the plant as a salt.
Thus, alkaloids are often extracted with water or mild acid and then recovered as crystalline material by treatment with base.
Prior to approximately 300 years ago, malaria was the scourge of Europe, likely having been introduced through the Middle East. Malaria is caused by protozoa of the genus Plasmodium, contained as spores in the gut of the Anopheles mosquitos, which then spreads the spores to humans when it bites. As the Spanish and Portugese explorers began to colonize South America, they discovered a cure for malaria known to the native Indians. This was the bark of the Cinchona trees. The use of Cinchona bark to treat malaria was first reported in Europe in 1633, and the first bark reached Rome about 12 years later. Teas made from the bark cured people suffering from malaria, one of the major scourges in Europe at the time, and the bark became known as Jesuit's bark. Because of the philosophical differences between Protestants and Catholics, many Protestants refused to be treated with the bark. One of the most prominent Protestants of the time, Oliver Cromwell, reportedly died of malaria because of this stubbornness.
Isolated originally from Cinchona succirubra, quinine is one of 31 alkaloids with related structures, and the principal antimalarial compound, in the plant. (Alkaloids have been defined in various ways, but one definition comes fairly close to actuality. An alkaloid is a plant-derived compound that is toxic or physiologically active, contains a nitrogen in a heterocyclic ring, is basic, has a complex structure, and is of limited distribution in the plant kingdom.) Malaria is still a major problem throughout the world, and, although synthetic antimalarial drugs largely supplanted quinine as the treatment for malaria during World War II, quinine is often once again the drug of choice as strains of malaria have become resistant to the synthetic drugs. However, the search for other antimalarial drugs from natural sources has also continued. One of the most promising new drugs is qinghaosu, isolated from Artemisia annua, a sesquiterpene (see below) which contains a unique trioxane structure.
Among the most famous of the alkaloids are the Solanaceae or tropane alkaloids. Plants containing these alkaloids have been used throughout recorded history as poisons, but many of the alkaloids do have valuable pharmaceutical properties. Atropine, the racemic form of hyoscyamine, comes from Atropa belladonna (deadly nightshade) and is used to dilate the pupils of the eye. Atropine is also a CNS stimulant and is used as a treatment for nerve gas poisoning. Scopolamine, another member of this class is used as a treatment for motion sickness. Cocaine, from Erythroxylum coca, is closely related in structure, is also a CNS stimulant, and has been used as a topical anesthetic in opthamology. It is also a drug of abuse. Cocaine was found in very small amounts in the original Coca-Cola formula, but was not the main concern of the USDA at the time. Caffeine was considered to be the major problem with the drink. Datura stramonium (Jimsonweed), a plant found in Virginia contains similar compounds.
... etc.That is what I love best about FRee Republic ... all of you sharp folks who keep everyone on their toes. Only my precious husband does a better job of making me strive for accuracy ... LOL
Yeah...but we got some eagles back.
Even in cases in which it was overused it retained the ability to repel insects, particularly mosquitos. If they were to use it only to protect human habitats it would never fail.
... and some pelicans ... and ospreys ... and other good things resulted from eliminating the use of DDT. But ... limited use of it in Africa, strictly controlled, might save some of those lives people are always whinging about.It was a thrilling sight recently when I unexpectedly walked right up to a magnificanet eagle [maybe 8' away] who was so busy eating a young raccoon that he did not even notice me. I just wish I had had my camera in hand ...
In April 1972, after seven months of testimony, EPA Administrative Law Judge Edmund Sweeney stated that “DDT is not a carcinogenic hazard to man. ... The uses of DDT under the regulations involved here do not have a deleterious effect on freshwater fish, estuarine organisms, wild birds, or other wildlife. ... The evidence in this proceeding supports the conclusion that there is a present need for the essential uses of DDT.”*
Two months later, EPA head [and Environmental Defense Fund member/fundraiser] William Ruckelshaus - who had never attended a single day’s session in the seven months of EPA hearings, and who admittedly had not even read the transcript of the hearings - overturned Judge Sweeney’s decision. Ruckelshaus declared that DDT was a “potential human carcinogen” and banned it for virtually all uses.**
Since Ruckelshaus arbitrarily and capriciously banned DDT, an estimated 13 billion cases of malaria have caused immense suffering and poverty in the developing world.***
Maybe in reparation for continuously strong-arming governments all over the world to ban the manufacture, export, or use of DDT, despite the subsequent decades of preventable malaria epidemics...
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