Posted on 05/24/2009 12:47:35 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
In 2006, after 25 years and 50 million preventable deaths, the World Health Organization reversed course and endorsed widespread use of the insecticide DDT to combat malaria. So much for that. Earlier this month, the U.N. agency quietly reverted to promoting less effective methods for attacking the disease. The result is a victory for politics over public health, and millions of the world's poor will suffer as a result.
The U.N. now plans to advocate for drastic reductions in the use of DDT, which kills or repels the mosquitoes that spread malaria. The aim "is to achieve a 30% cut in the application of DDT worldwide by 2014 and its total phase-out by the early 2020s, if not sooner," said WHO and the U.N. Environment Program in a statement on May 6.
Citing a five-year pilot program that reduced malaria cases in Mexico and South America by distributing antimalaria chloroquine pills to uninfected people, U.N. officials are ready to push for a "zero DDT world." Sounds nice, except for the facts. It's true that chloroquine has proven effective when used therapeutically, as in Brazil. But it's also true that scientists have questioned the safety of the drug as an oral prophylactic because it is toxic and has been shown to cause heart problems.
Most malarial deaths occur in sub-Saharan Africa, where chloroquine once worked but started failing in the 1970s as the parasite developed resistance. Even if the drugs were still effective in Africa, they're expensive and thus impractical for one of the world's poorest regions. That's not an argument against chloroquine, bed nets or other interventions. But it is an argument for continuing to make DDT spraying a key part of any effort to eradicate malaria, which kills about a million people -- mainly children -- every year.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Overpopulation is the primary agenda of the UN. That is why they push the policies they do, because the policies kill people.
Actually, there is another side to this.
IIRC, the patent on DDT had run out, so it was banned in order to make a market for an inferior albeit patented product (organo-phosphate) held by Zeneca. Since then, the obvious liabilities of organo-phosphates have surfaced and the patent has been transferred to a shell corporation in Arizona.
The pattern fits any number of crooked misanthropic UN stunts on behalf of the world's super rich, the most memorable being the Montreal Protocol, now extending into "cap and trade" to combat fraudulent Glow-bill Warming.
So, the better subtitle would be (The U.N. bows to the corporate "anti-insecticide" lobby and people die), seeing as most of the NGOs (non-governmental organizations) that constitute UN pressure groups are financed by the tax-exempt "charitable" foundations of major corporate stockholders. The left really has been fascist all along.
Guns don’t kill people, policies kill people...
Just what I was thinking.
ping
And Dupont set the example with R-12 and the phony CFC scare. Worked for them.
Liberal fascists like the UN and Margaret Sanger and the UN have been trying to wipe out Africans for a long time. But we’re the bad guys. (sigh)
I’d argue that they were both heavily influenced by Darwin and Karl Marx.
Margaret Sanger was influenced by them as well and her organization has led to the deaths of 40 million just in the US.
Don’t forget Stalin, who was also influenced by Darwin and he killed more than Hitler.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.