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DDT is safe: just ask the professor who ate it for 40 years
Daily Telegraph ^ | originally: 07/19/2001 | Terence Kealey

Posted on 07/03/2002 4:09:24 AM PDT by backhoe


Culture/Society Editorial Editorial
Source: The Telegraph (U.K.)
Published: 07/19/2001 Author: Terence Kealey
Posted on 07/18/2001 16:55:32 PDT by Pokey78

THE World Health Organisation, Greenpeace, the World Wildlife Fund, the UN environmental programme and its development programme, USAID, and almost all the other international representatives of the great and the good now campaign against DDT.

But, perversely, the Third World still uses it. To those who believe that America under George W Bush and his gas-guzzling, permafrost-drilling accomplices is the source of all global pollution, this Third World defection is disappointing. Where are the virtuous blacks when we need them?

DDT was introduced as an insecticide during the 1940s. In Churchill's words: "The excellent DDT powder has been found to yield astonishing results against insects of all kinds, from lice to mosquitoes."

And astonishing they were. DDT was particularly effective against the anopheles mosquito, which is the carrier of malaria, and people once hoped that DDT would eradicate malaria worldwide. Consider Sri Lanka. In 1946, it had three million cases, but the introduction of DDT reduced the numbers, by 1964, to only 29. In India, the numbers of malaria cases fell from 75 million to around 50,000.

But, in 1962, Rachel Carson published Silent Spring, the book that launched the environmental movement. In that book, Carson showed how DDT was imperilling wildlife, particularly predators at the top of the food chain that accumulated the chemical in their fat and in their thinning egg shells.

Within a decade, the developed countries had banned DDT, as did some developing countries, to the detriment of their health. In Sri Lanka, cases of malaria soon rose to 500,000. Worldwide, malaria has returned with a vengeance, accounting annually for 300 million cases and, sadly, one million deaths, mainly of children.

As the Third World now knows, there is no ready substitute for DDT. The spraying of houses with DDT prevents malaria because most people are infected after dusk as they sleep indoors. DDT permeates the walls of buildings, and a single spray will provide indoor protection for months.

Other chemicals are available, but they are generally less effective, shorter-acting and - most importantly for the Third World - more expensive. And DDT is extraordinarily safe for humans. Prof Kenneth Mellanby lectured on it for more than 40 years, and during each lecture he would eat a pinch.

Nor need DDT imperil wildlife. The destruction that Carson described was caused by the agricultural use of DDT as a mass insecticide in vast quantities on crops. But the discriminating application of DDT indoors involves only a tiny, contained, environmentally tolerable, reversible fraction of the dose. That is why some international health (as opposed to environmental) agencies, including Unicef, still support the judicious use of DTT. Even the WHO is now softening its stance.

Malaria was once endemic in Britain. Cromwell died of it and both Pepys and Shakespeare described it. Until the 1930s, it was still active in Essex. But we are lucky in our frosty climate, which kills anopheles, and we have eradicated the disease. Yet Greenpeace and other environmental agencies resist the appropriate use of DDT in the tropics.

Politics has long bedevilled malaria. Its first effective cure was quinine, which was discovered by Jesuit missionaries in South America during the 1630s, but for decades Protestants preferred to die rather than swallow "Jesuit's Powder". Today, Third World health is endangered by comfortable Western environmentalists, some of whom, discreetly, view black natives as threats to the local wildlife.

Supporting those black natives, however, are two researchers, Richard Tren and Roger Bate, whose Malaria and the DDT Story, recently published by the Institute for Economic Affairs in London, shows how to foster both a healthier and an environmentally friendlier Third World. Greenpeace, in its self-assurance, embodies a contemporary cultural imperialism as offensive as any Jesuit's.


1 Posted on 07/18/2001 16:55:32 PDT by Pokey78


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Extended News
KEYWORDS: ddt; deathcultivation; malaria; pesticides; un
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Since we can't bump older articles, I'm re-posting this for all to read.

After heavy rains here in south Georgia, we are plagued by swarms of mosquetoes- and nothing currently legal to use seems to faze them.

I long for the days of DDT.
( Drop Dead Twice... )

1 posted on 07/03/2002 4:09:24 AM PDT by backhoe
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To: All
A little more on this and other frauds:

Scams, Scalawags, and an all-too-gullible Public...famous frauds sold to America

2 posted on 07/03/2002 4:10:42 AM PDT by backhoe
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To: backhoe
whadaya know...
3 posted on 07/03/2002 4:25:55 AM PDT by Aaron_A
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To: Aaron_A
Thanks for looking- growing up in the South in the 1950's, I recall DDT as a Godsend- you sprayed it, bugs died. We used to look foreward to the county truck coming around because it meant we could play outside instead of bugging our parents.
4 posted on 07/03/2002 4:40:08 AM PDT by backhoe
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To: backhoe
I remember those ddt spraying trucks as well.
5 posted on 07/03/2002 4:43:07 AM PDT by Aaron_A
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To: Aaron_A
We used to run through the spray because ( as children will do ) we thought it was "good for you..."
6 posted on 07/03/2002 4:48:00 AM PDT by backhoe
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To: backhoe
I too remember those ddt trucks. I wonder if the spray is the cause of the immune system disorders of myself and 5 siblings.
7 posted on 07/03/2002 4:49:53 AM PDT by not-an-ostrich
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To: backhoe
I remember my mom yelling at us to get inside...
8 posted on 07/03/2002 4:52:08 AM PDT by Aaron_A
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To: backhoe
My brother and I came home with head lice in the early '50's, and my Mom got a small can that she sprinkled on our heads and beds and wiped them out. Carson and her sycophants have caused more misery and harm to the earth's populous than anything else before or since.

9 posted on 07/03/2002 5:02:51 AM PDT by brityank
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To: backhoe
...DDT is Safe...

Who cares?
What's a few million lives protected from disease if we might have saved a few birds?

(/sarcasm)

10 posted on 07/03/2002 5:08:20 AM PDT by Publius6961
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To: not-an-ostrich
The short answer is no.
11 posted on 07/03/2002 5:53:44 AM PDT by B. A. Conservative
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To: Publius6961
Most of the insecticide deaths of crop dusters and farmers would not have happened if DDT had not been banned. But the bald eagle and peregrine falcons are increasing in numbers.
12 posted on 07/03/2002 5:57:22 AM PDT by B. A. Conservative
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To: backhoe
>>>To those who believe that America under George W Bush and his gas-guzzling, permafrost-drilling accomplices is the source of all global pollution, this Third World defection is disappointing. Where are the virtuous blacks when we need them? <<<

Could someone please translate the use of that term from English to American? Thanks

13 posted on 07/03/2002 5:57:35 AM PDT by Tourist Guy
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To: backhoe
In addition to the needless human deaths from malaria as a result of the ban on DDT, there is considerable economic costs to the over burdened US economy as well. What is the annual cost of termite inspections, treatments, and costs to repair termite damage in the US? A house treated once with DDT for termites, is termite-proof for the next five thousand years. Those of you who live in the south are familiar with fire ants. What are the costs to wildlife because of the fire ant invasion. My quail hunting buddies don't hunt much anymore because they claim fire ants eat the baby quail before they are large enough to defend themselves. Anybody remember something called the "law of unintended consequences"?
14 posted on 07/03/2002 6:04:44 AM PDT by B. A. Conservative
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To: backhoe
Deja vu bump. A good friend's grandfather used to sell farm chemicals, and one of his sales techniques was to drink a glass of water with DDT mixed in it. He was still functioning into his 80's.

I think mosquitoes avoided him too.

15 posted on 07/03/2002 6:23:44 AM PDT by niteowl77
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To: edskid
I think mosquitoes avoided him too.

I have noticed that effect when I used to dip my hands in solvent a lot- bugs don't seem to like the way you taste or smell.

16 posted on 07/03/2002 7:03:51 AM PDT by backhoe
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To: B. A. Conservative
I have read- I think in the DDT links in that "Scams, Scalawags..." link- that 1 to 2 million people die every year worldwide from insect-bourne diseases and that these could be prevented by using insecticides now banned.
17 posted on 07/03/2002 7:06:59 AM PDT by backhoe
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To: brityank
Oh, it used to be common practice to dump DDT all over a person who was badly infested with parasites- and as far as I can tell, it never harmed the recipient.
18 posted on 07/03/2002 7:10:37 AM PDT by backhoe
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To: nina0113
ping
19 posted on 07/03/2002 7:25:10 AM PDT by Steve0113
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To: backhoe
If you want to get full benefit from eatin' DDT, it's best to sprinkle some on the dioxin-laden Ben & Jerry's ice cream.....
20 posted on 07/03/2002 7:27:15 AM PDT by Jay W
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