Posted on 08/11/2002 7:19:03 AM PDT by Skooz
by Amir Attaran
Last year, malaria deaths in Africa reached an all-time high. Next year the disease will claim an estimated one million children. To visualize this number, imagine seven Boeing 747s, loaded with kids, crashing every day. Yet despite this crisis, political pressure, including from the Canadian government and environmental groups, is building at the United Nations Environment Program to pass a treaty that will "reduce and/or eliminate" one of the world's best anti-malarial tools.
That tool is, of course, DDT. This week, as more than 120 countries gather in Johannesburg for final talks on a toxic chemicals treaty, Environment Canada is taking the position that DDT should be eliminated. That's also the position of a campaign being waged by more than 300 environmental groups. A who's who of the environmental movement, it includes names such as Greenpeace and the World Wildlife Fund; it is "demanding action to eliminate" DDT and its sources.
Such arguments are stunningly naive. From Silent Spring author Rachel Carson to today, the view that DDT is the most irredeemable of pollutants is only half true. Yes, it is a serious pollutant which causes bird populations to suffer -- but it also saves human populations from the plague of malaria.
In the 1950s, a global campaign against malaria used DDT spraying to eradicate the disease from the United States and Europe. Elsewhere it diminished greatly: Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) went from 2.8 million cases and 7,300 deaths to 17 cases and zero deaths in just a decade. Then American funds, which underwrote the eradication campaign, dried up, and overuse of DDT in agriculture bred DDT-resistant mosquitoes. Back in malaria's grip, Sri Lanka returned to a half a million cases by 1969.
The benefits of DDT are realized at almost no environmental risk. Contrast DDT's use in malaria control -- where a few grams are sprayed, on the interior walls only, of a home -- with DDT's sanctioned abuse in Rachel Carson's day, when tonnes were sprayed directly into the environment and onto every farmer's fields. Analogizing the two situations is desperately wrong. The DDT use in the first case is small, contained, and saves lives; the second is large, indiscriminate, and grows cotton.
So, if DDT can be this successful, why ban or make it more difficult and expensive for the world's poorest, most disease-ridden countries to obtain? The World Wildlife Fund of Canada's Web site calls DDT "nefarious," and says the group is "campaigning for a global phase-out by 2007." This effort stems from the observation that DDT is an "endocrine disrupter" whose ability to cause harm (like Herman Melville's Moby Dick and all excellent monsters since) is both indiscriminate and vast. The WWF indicts DDT chillingly: as a carcinogen, a teratogen, an immuno-supressant.
Conspicuously absent from such claims are scientific studies to demonstrate these alleged health effects. In 50 years, hundreds of millions, if not billions, of people have been exposed to DDT through malaria control. Scientists can -- and have -- studied the effect of DDT exposure. Yet the scientific literature contains not one reliable example of any adverse human health effect linked to DDT. Years ago, American scientists thought they detected an increased risk of breast cancer; eight later attempts by researchers across the globe failed to replicate this observation. For all the scrutiny DDT has received, neither scientists nor the WWF can name one negative health effect which has been independently confirmed as being related to DDT exposure.
Faced with this troublesome fact, WWF's stock answer is that experiments in animals using extreme doses of DDT suggest there could be a danger to humans, and so they call for a precautionary ban. Why should speculative risks detected in animal studies justify banning a substance known to control malaria? This is analogous to stepping into speeding traffic as a "precaution" against tripping on a crack in the sidewalk.
If precaution matters, Africa should use more DDT against malaria, not less. DDT house-spraying is among the cheapest, most effective interventions against the disease. Our research at Harvard estimates that the alternatives may cost as much as $1.4-billion each year -- a far cry from the $50-million of global aid for malaria control today, and an impossible sum for poor countries with health budgets of less than $10 per person. Besides, affordable alternatives may not work, as South Africa learned when it stopped using DDT and witnessed malaria cases soar 25-fold. Its clinics (and morgues) swamped, South Africa returned to using DDT this year.
If the wealthiest, most scientifically advanced, and least malarial sub-Saharan country cannot make do without DDT, how can Congo or Mozambique? For the 400-strong scientists and doctors (including Nobel laureates) who recently signed a statement urging that DDT continue to be available, the answer is clear.
Yet not only is Environment Canada arguing in the Johannesburg treaty negotiations that DDT should be eliminated once and for all, it has also proposed that the treaty not include a financial aid mechanism to help poor countries finance the alternatives. Canada is alone among wealthy countries in advocating this parsimony. Such policies literally kill. The Chrétien government can do better. At this week's treaty discussions, there's is still time to get it right.
(Dr. Amir Attaran is the director of International Health Research at the Center for International Development, Harvard University, and is also a Canadian environmental lawyer
If you are really interested in this topics please visit www.fightingmalaria.org.
Let’s see if I understand your position.
Since the use of DDT for malaria control may lead to it’s use in agriculture, you are willing to see millions of African children die each year. You know it’s a sacrifice, but you are willing to make it.
Is that your position, Bunkie?
What the article is talking about is the propsed ban of DDT in third world countries where it is remarkably effective in preventing malaria. It is a fact that as DDT use falls, the incidence of malaria rises. That point has been made and documented many times already in this thread.
As far as your "crocodile tears" comment goes, who the hell are you to tell everyone what I'm thinking? Are you sure I don't care about third world children? Your comment is offensive and assnine, especially in the face of all the evidence presented.
Arguments that start "we must do it for the children!" are usually meant to force laws or taxes on us that we would not ordinarily want. However in this case, we have the environmental extrememist using junk science to force a ban on the third world that would result in the deaths of millions of people. All in the name of the "environment".
Conservatives put human beings above the environment, especially when there is copious evidence that DDT does no harm.
There are more reasons to kill mosquitos than just malaria...
Since we can AFFORD other pesticides, it isn't necessary.
We are, and have been the entire thread, discussing the third world.
Would you like to re-introduce DDT in the USA? Saving farmers money is just as important as bird populations, isn't it?
How many times are you going to ask the same question?
You aren't being even remotely clever.
Many experiments on caged-birds demonstrate that DDT and its metabolites (DDD and DDE) do not cause serious egg shell thinning, even at levels many hundreds of times greater than wild birds would ever accumulate.
[Cecil, HC et al. 1971. Poultry Science 50: 656-659 (No effects of DDT or DDE, if adequate calcium is in diet); Chang, ES & ELR Stokstad. 1975. Poultry Science 54: 3-10 1975. (No effects of DDT on shells); Edwards, JG. 1971. Chem Eng News p. 6 & 59 (August 16, 1971) (Summary of egg shell- thinning and refutations presented revealing all data); Hazeltine, WE. 1974. Statement and affidavit, EPA Hearings on Tussock Moth Control, Portland Oregon, p. 9 (January 14, 1974); Jeffries, DJ. 1969. J Wildlife Management 32: 441-456 (Shells 7 percent thicker after two years on DDT diet); Robson, WA et al. 1976. Poultry Science 55:2222- 2227; Scott, ML et al. 1975. Poultry Science 54: 350-368 (Egg production, hatchability and shell quality depend on calcium, and are not effected by DDT and its metabolites); Spears, G & P. Waibel. 1972. Minn. Science 28(3):4-5; Tucker, RK & HA Haegele. 1970. Bull Environ Contam. Toxicol 5:191-194 (Neither egg weight nor shell thickness affected by 300 parts per million DDT in daily diet);Edwards, JG. 1973. Statement and affidavit, U.S. Senate Committee on Agriculture, 24 pages, October 24, 1973; Poult Sci 1979 Nov;58(6):1432-49 ("There was no correlation between concentrations of pesticides and egg shell thinning].") ]
There is no wonder that we cannot control Fire Ants and Mosquitos, not to mention termites and a thousand other beasties. People are dying worldwide now, mostly in tropical and subtropical environments thanks to these bans. Coming soon to an environment near you.
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