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Ironically, Charles Darwin set great store by his study of earthworms, which effectively mix and make most of the soil on Earth, but his successors in evolutionary science have tended to neglect the creatures that live beneath their feet. Instead, Professor Blaxter said, they regard the soil as a kind of test bed - or “black box” - that there is no need to understand. He added that this project would help to redress that issue. “Until the soil collapses, and the ecosystems dies completely, we don't know what's going on. We have to start to get inside the ‘black...

Cradling a loaded shotgun, Daniel Castillo stood in the bow of the airboat when a dark form burst from a clump of reeds. As the wildlife biologist shouldered his weapon, he had only an instant to decide: does it fly like a duck, but look like a long-legged, iridescent chicken?

In a recent op-ed Robert Kagan laments that (Western) Europe is sliding into irrelevance. But that might be the best thing for the rest of the world. Don’t get me wrong, the world owes plenty to Europe. It’s given the world great art, architecture, literature, and music. It’s also given the world the ideas of universal education, the scientific method, research institutions, property rights, rule of law, democracy, religious freedom, and freedom of thought and expression, among other things. These ideas and institutions coalesced to power the engine of progress that drives the economic and technological development that have improved...

The dirty secret of the environmental movement is how indifferent it can be to the poor. Consider the widespread ban on DDT. As environmental groups celebrated the recovery of bald eagles, parents in poor countries buried 20 million children who died from the ensuing malaria outbreak. Now we see another crisis looming from the fight against global warming. Food riots are breaking out in poor countries as motorists in wealthy countries burn grains and oils in gas tanks. We are green for one simple reason: We can afford it. But what if that changes? What if the pain of going...

While Chinese and Indian government-backed companies continue to produce DDT for their own public health programmes, and for export, no western company has produced DDT for over a decade. Major chemical companies such as Bayer, Dow Chemical, Du Pont and BASF produce alternative products, and have incentives to see DDT phased out. Bayer actually agitated against the use of DDT, abusing its position as private sector delegate to the Roll Back Malaria Partnership, as reported in the Financial Times. AFM was alone among advocacy groups to raise this as a concern. The reality is that DDT is probably the most...

Washington, May 27 : A new study by scientists has suggested that the melting of the Antarctic glaciers might be leading to the release of large amounts of the banned pesticide DDT, which is contaminating the environment in Antarctica. In the study, scientist Heidi N. Geisz and colleagues estimate that up to 2.0 - 8.8 pounds of DDT are released into coastal waters annually along the Western Antarctic Ice Sheet from glacial meltwater. The researchers point out that DDT reaches Antarctica by long-range atmospheric transport in snow, and then gets concentrated in the food chain. DDT has been banned in...

Conservationists or Environmentalists? by: Melinda Zosh, May 16, 2008 Although the Endangered Species Act of 1973, signed by Republican U.S. President Richard Nixon, was intended to save thousands of plants and animal species, only a handful have been saved, but at an enormous human cost. “Five species have recovered out of 1355 species in the past 35 years,” said M. David Stirling, author of Green Gone Wild: Elevating Nature Above Human Rights. Over that same time period, 50 million people have died from malaria and 10,000 jobs have already been misplaced, as a result of the act. “I have a...

Decades after most countries stopped spraying DDT, frozen stores of the insecticide are now trickling out of melting Antarctic glaciers. The change means Adélie penguins have recently been exposed to the chemical, according to a new study. The trace levels found will not harm the birds, but the presence of the chemical could be an indication that other frozen pollutants will be released because of climate change, says Heidi Geisz, a marine biologist at Virginia Institute of Marine Science in Gloucester in the US. She led a team that sampled DDT levels in the penguins. She worries that glaciers could...

Inconvenient Truths and Global Crises by: Bethany Stotts, May 05, 2008 Many of the world’s tragedies can be traced back to radical environmentalist movements, argued Competitive Enterprise Institute Fellow Iain Murray at a recent book forum. He said, “Rather…the mainstream model, the paradigm if you will, for receiving very desirable environmental ends has an inbuilt capacity for enduring disaster.” In his new book, The Really Inconvenient Truths, Murray argues that most destructive environmentalist movements following Rachel Carson display a similar trajectory: 1. “create a populist moral fervor;” 2. “deride anyone who opposes you as evil;” 3. “get the laws passed;”...

Environmentalists have condemned a trial plan to deploy millions of genetically modified mosquitoes in Malaysia to fight dengue fever, a report said Sunday. A mosquito bloated with blood it inserts its stinger into a human's arm. Environmentalists have condemned a trial plan to deploy millions of genetically modified mosquitoes in Malaysia to fight dengue fever, a report said. Malaysia has expressed concern about the insect-borne scourge after 25 people were killed in the first three months of the year. The New Sunday Times newspaper said the genetically modified (GM) male mosquitoes will be first freed in Ketam island, a fishing...

Last year, challenging global health orthodoxy, Bill and Melinda Gates called for the eradication of malaria. That is, for exterminating the parasite everywhere and forever, except perhaps in laboratory storage, as has thus far happened to just one disease in history, smallpox. Their call, delivered at a malaria conference that they had convened in Seattle, was, in Mrs. Gates’s language, “audacious.” Her husband went further, asking, “Why would anyone want to follow a long line of failures by becoming the umpteenth person to declare the goal of eradicating malaria?” To many public health leaders, that remains a good question. While...

Ever since the World Health Organization reversed the environmentalist-promoted ban on DDT in 2006, eco-activists have scrambled to devise new ways to malign the life-saving insecticide in order to salvage their badly marred reputation. Their latest effort involves touting a new study supposedly linking DDT exposure in adolescent girls with increased breast cancer risk in later life. The study was authored by researchers from the Mount Sinai School of Medicine — an institution infamous for alarmist research on asbestos and 9-11 rescue workers — and was published in Environmental Health Perspectives, a journal that seems to operate as a refuge...

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — Dengue fever is spreading across Latin America and the Caribbean in one of the worst outbreaks in decades, causing agonizing joint pain for hundreds of thousands of people and killing nearly 200 so far this year. The mosquitoes that carry dengue are thriving in expanded urban slums scattered with water-collecting trash and old tires. Experts say dengue is approaching record levels this year as many countries enter their wettest months. "If we do not slow it down, it will intensify and take a greater social and economic toll on these countries," said Dr. Jose Luis...

DDT, the miracle insecticide turned environmental bogeyman, is once again playing an important role in public health. In the malaria-plagued regions of Africa, where mosquitoes are becoming resistant to other chemicals, DDT is now being used as an indoor repellent. Research that I and my colleagues recently conducted shows that DDT is the most effective pesticide for spraying on walls, because it can keep mosquitoes from even entering the room. The news may seem surprising, as some mosquitoes worldwide are already resistant to DDT. But we’ve learned that even mosquitoes that have developed an immunity to being directly poisoned by...

On a small island in Barnegat Bay, hundreds of birds that didn't exist in New Jersey 30 years ago bask in the summer sun. Suddenly, they all take flight, oddly elegant and vaguely prehistoric, with 6-foot wing spans and the most recognizable bills in the animal kingdom. They are brown pelicans, described by naturalist John James Audubon as one of America's "most interesting birds." They are also one of the Jersey shore's newest residents, joining other top-of -the-food-chain bird predators including the peregrine falcon, the osprey and the royal tern to form a new avian golden age on Barnegat Bay....

Last year, the World Health Organization reversed a 25-year-old policy and recommended using the pesticide DDT to fight malaria in the Third World. A new study published in the public health journal, PLoS ONE, provides more evidence that the decision was long overdue. The U.S. and Europe solved their malaria problem a half-century ago by employing DDT, but the mosquito-borne disease remains endemic to the lowland tropics of South America, Asia and Africa, where each year a half-billion people are infected and more than a million die. Despite those staggering numbers, radical environmental groups like the Pesticide Action Network continue...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Mosquitoes that carry malaria, dengue fever and yellow fever avoid homes that have been sprayed with DDT, researchers reported on Wednesday. The chemical not only repels the disease-carrying insects physically, but its irritant and toxic properties helps keep them away, the researchers reported in the Public Library of Science journal PLoS ONE. They estimate that DDT spray reduced the risk of disease transmission by nearly three-quarters. Malaria affects more 40 percent of the world's population, killing more than a million people every year, most of them young children. DDT use has been discontinued in most countries because...

August 7, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - National Geographic (NG), a leading environmentalist, de-population supporting magazine, has published a major cover story by Michael Finkel on the extraordinarily deadly and complex malaria parasite. The July 2007 NG edition article discusses possible solutions to the disease but also uncharacteristically acknowledges a leading expert's contention that the international ban on DDT was a terrible mistake which may have cost many millions of lives, especially in poor African nations. Environmental ideologues have been quick to slam Finkel's article as being flawed and damaging to the their past success in convincing the world to ban...

Disease Control:The Los Angeles Times hypes an alleged link between global warming and a rise in malaria in parts of Africa. It so happens those areas don't use a cure that the Times doesn't mention — DDT. Last time we checked, mosquitoes — not sports utility vehicles — spread malaria. But Times staff writer Edmund Sanders made that linkage last Saturday, when rising malaria rates in parts of Kenya were attributed to higher temperatures and those temperatures to the carbon emissions of the U.S., among other countries. In Kenya's western highlands, Sanders wrote, "maximum annual temperatures over the last 20...

West Nile virus surges with 27 casesOnly five had been reported by this time last year. Kern County is hit the hardest, with 22. Eighteen incidents were recorded just last week. By Marla Cone, Times Staff Writer July 22, 2007 West Nile virus, spread by mosquitoes, has taken an early hold on parts of California this summer, sickening 27 people statewide compared with only five last year at this time. Unusually high temperatures throughout the state in March triggered an earlier start to the West Nile virus season than in other years. Human illnesses have been documented in six counties,...

KAMPALA, Uganda -- Though Africa's sad experience with colonialism ended in the 1960s, a lethal vestige remains: malaria. It is the biggest killer of Ugandan and all African children. Yet it remains preventable and curable. Last week in Germany, G-8 leaders committed new resources to the fight against the mosquito-borne disease and promised to use every available tool. Now they must honor this promise by supporting African independence in the realm of disease control. We must be able to use Dichloro-Diphenyl-Trichloroethane -- DDT. The United States and Europe eradicated malaria by 1960, with the use of DDT. At the time,...

Environmentalism has quite a few followers and those followers have quite a bit of power. With that power, they are able to suggest and enact programs and legislation they feel is best for the world. So I have to wonder: How can such a large number of well meaning citizens get something so wrong, so often? Looking back, you see a list of actions and trail of tragic, unintended consequences.

Liberal Reader Calls WashPost on Liberal Bias in DDT Story Posted by Ken Shepherd on June 10, 2007 - 03:28. This was a rare treat. Seeing a self-described liberal hitting the Washington Post for liberal bias. In this case the writer, one Philip Evans of Kensington, Md., sees the bias stemming from a case of lazy reporting:Regarding the May 23 Metro article "RachelCarson Bill From Cardin on Hold":I'm a knee-jerk liberal, but sometimes I find myself sympathetic to conservatives who see bias in The Post. Does The Post lack the reportorial resources to confirm whether Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) is...

For Rachel Carson admirers, it has not been a silent spring. They’ve been celebrating the centennial of her birthday with paeans to her saintliness. A new generation is reading her book in school — and mostly learning the wrong lesson from it. If students are going to read “Silent Spring” in science classes, I wish it were paired with another work from that same year, 1962, titled “Chemicals and Pests.” It was a review of “Silent Spring” in the journal Science written by I. L. Baldwin, a professor of agricultural bacteriology at the University of Wisconsin. He didn’t have Ms....

Carson's toxic legacy Her book Silent Spring is a case study in the tragedy of good intentions Margaret Wente Toronto Globe and Mail Thursday, May 24, 2007 I was 12 when I read Rachel Carson's newly published book, Silent Spring, in 1962. Although I'd never heard the term "environmentalist," she turned me into one. I didn't understand the complicated science in it. But I was horrified by her evocation of a natural world whose creatures were being wiped out by man-made poisons - the silent spring, where no birds sang. In school, I wrote an essay praising Silent Spring,...

At times it seems that there are more sites honoring Rachel Carson than Josef Stalin at his peak. There's an environmental advocacy institute (at Chatham University, her alma mater), a state office building in Harrisburg, several research institutions, a number of schools (no less than eight, by my count), and here in Pittsburgh, we got this bridge.     The bridge in question, once known as the 9th Street Bridge, was renamed the Rachel Carson Bridge late last year at the request of Esther L. Barazzone, president of Chatham University. It's one of three downtown suspension bridges crossing the Allegheny. Together they're...

As the world gets ready to celebrate the 100th birthday of environmental icon Rachel Carson this Sunday, policymakers are proposing bills to honor her legacy. Yet Republican Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma stands largely alone in efforts to stop these measures — a position for which he deserves much credit. Coburn apparently recognizes that the conventional wisdom on Carson's legacy is wrong, as the results of following Carson's advice have been quite grim. Nonetheless, Democratic Rep. Jason Altmire and Sen. Arlen Specter, both of Pennsylvania, introduced a bill to name a post office in Pittsburgh after Carson.

Rachel Carson honor at risk in Senate May 23, 2007 WASHINGTON – Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn has effectively blocked a resolution to honor environmental author Rachel Carson on the 100th anniversary of her birth, saying that her warnings about environmental damage have put a stigma on potentially lifesaving pesticides, congressional staffers said yesterday. Sen. Benjamin Cardin, D-Md., had intended to submit a resolution celebrating Carson, author of the 1962 book “Silent Spring,” for her “legacy of scientific rigor coupled with poetic sensibility.” Carson, who died in 1964, would have turned 100 this Sunday. Cardin has delayed the legislation, a spokeswoman...

Rachel Carson wrote Silent Spring--the book that got mosquito-killer DDT banned and launched the modern environmental movement--while struggling with cancer. The disease killed Carson in 1964, two years after Silent Spring came out. Today's Washington Post has a story on Carson--whose 100th birth anniversary occurs later this month--and her noble fight against cancer. A touching piece. But maddening, too! Because in the story's 34 paragraphs, there are only a buried pair, the 26th and 27th, that note the ongoing controversy about DDT's ban. A Maryland Congressman (evil Republican, of course ... wink, wink) is quoted as saying that malaria deaths...

Adding to China’s recent problems of food safety is now seafood contamination. As the world’s largest producer and exporter of fish and fish products, China may need to more closely monitor shellfish contaminant levels, because contaminants are finding their way into seafood. A new study found samples from markets that contained concentrations of contaminants high enough to pose threats to human health. The study is published in the latest issue of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry. Organochlorine pesticides such as DDT can accumulate in top predators, including humans. Though these pesticides were officially banned in 1983, China had been using them...

Environmental movement's 'patron saint' was "attitude changer" -- Rachel Carson, whose book "Silent Spring" is credited with saving species of birds and kicking off the environmental movement, would have been 100 years old this year. Now, a two-act play celebrating the life and work of Carson is the highlight of this week's 174-program Spring Wildflower Pilgrimage in Gatlinburg and throughout Great Smoky Mountains National Park. "A Sense of Wonder," written and performed by Kaiulani Lee, has been touring for more than 10 years - proof Carson still has influence 45 years after "Silent Spring." When the book came out in...

When the Christian Science Monitor recently declared Al Gore "the Rachel Carson of global warming," the former vice president must have bubbled over with pride. There is, it seems, no higher compliment one can bestow on an environmentalist. Next month marks what would have been Carson's 100th birthday, and festivities abound. The author of "Silent Spring" -- the 1962 book that birthed modern environmentalism and made "DDT" a dirty word -- Carson is the subject of an exhibit at the National Archives and the star of its Environmental Film Festival this year. Considered a secular saint by some, she was...

DDT - Dichloro-Diphenyl-Trichloroethane – is a chemical pesticide that was banned in the United States in 1972. The movement to ban DDT can be attributed to Silent Spring¸ a book by biologist Rachel Carson. Silent Spring focused on pesticides – particularly DDT – and their effect on the environment, with special consideration to birds (hence the name of the book; a “Silent Spring” because there are no birds to sing.) Due to the banning of DDT in the United States, a movement towards a global ban was swiftly initiated. Today, the use of DDT – with certain exceptions, such as...

On April 25, 2007 we will once again celebrate Africa Malaria Day. Since Africa Malaria Day 2006, more than 400 million Africans – men, women, and children – will have been stricken with the disease. Of those, roughly one million have died. It is a terrible disease. The early symptoms include fever, chills, and vomiting, followed by diarrhea, delirium, and unconsciousness. Of those who don’t succumb during weeks of incapacitating illness, many suffer permanent brain damage. Malaria has been with us for many years. The first mention of it dates back to Chinese medical writings in 2700 B.C. It arrived...

Millions of deaths (mostly women and children) Illness (billions sickened), and poverty (over a trillion dollars in lost GDP, and counting). Who is responsible for this decades-long catastrophe, and will the perpetrators be held responsible? Last week’s announcement that the World Health Organization lifted its nearly 30-year ban on the insecticide DDT is perhaps the most promising development in global public health since… well, 1943 when DDT was first used to combat insect-borne diseases like typhus and malaria….. Rachel Carson kicked-off DDT hysteria with her pseudo-scientific 1962 book, “Silent Spring.” Carson materially misrepresented DDT science in order to advance her...

BE HERE, OR BE NOWHERE!

WASHINGTON - Malaria is fueling the spread of AIDS in Africa by boosting the HIV in people's bodies for weeks at a time, says a study that pins down the deadly interplay between the dual scourges. It's a vicious cycle as people weakened by HIV are, in turn, more vulnerable to malaria. University of Washington researchers who estimated the impact of the overlapping infections concluded that the interaction could be blamed for thousands of HIV infections and almost a million bouts of malaria over two decades in just one part of Kenya. The research, published in Friday's edition of the...

An 85-year-old vial of oil from a whaling ship has revealed that a mysterious group of organic chemicals resembling human-made compounds are naturally produced in the sea. A SHIP'S SECRET. The Charles W. Morgan, one of the last whaling ships operating during the 19th and early 20th centuries, still carried whale oil from a late voyage. Analysis of the oil showed that some mysterious compounds that resemble DDT and PCBs are naturally produced. E. Peacock A decade ago, scientists monitoring marine mammals' flesh for pollutants began finding unknown organic compounds containing the halogen atoms bromine and chlorine. More than 20...

Who says there's never any good news? After more than 30 years and tens of millions dead -- mostly children -- the World Health Organization (WHO) has ended its ban on DDT. DDT is the most effective anti-mosquito, anti-malaria pesticide known. But thanks to the worldwide environmental movement and politically correct bureaucrats in the United States and at the United Nations, the use of this benign chemical has been discouraged in Africa and elsewhere, permitting killer mosquitoes to spread death. I don't expect any apologies from the people who permitted this to happen. But I am thankful this nightmare is...

Who says there's never any good news? After more than 30 years and tens of millions dead -- mostly children -- the World Health Organization (WHO) has ended its ban on DDT. DDT is the most effective anti-mosquito, anti-malaria pesticide known. But thanks to the worldwide environmental movement and politically correct bureaucrats in the United States and at the United Nations, the use of this benign chemical has been discouraged in Africa and elsewhere, permitting killer mosquitoes to spread death.

An open-minded review of what extreme environmentalists have wrought on the USA and on the world inescapably leads to the conclusion that they have caused millions of deaths and trillions of dollars in damages and losses. If you think this is incorrect or an exaggeration, let us consider the record with respect to just three issues: the snail darter, nuclear power and DDT. The Snail Darter In 1976, with the Tellico Dam on the Tennessee River 99% complete, its construction was stopped and its destruction was ordered after a tiny fish called the snail darter was discovered in that river.

Sept. 27, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – In his August 16, 2006 LifeSiteNews.com Special Report, Green Hands Dipped In Blood: The DDT Genocide, John Jalsevac exposed what may have been the worst crime of the 20th century, exceeding perhaps even the many millions of deaths caused by the Nazi’s or the horrific mass killings of Stalin or Mao Tse Tung. The current cause celebre of AIDS has caused nowhere near the perhaps 80 million deaths that have resulted so far in large part from the 30 year ban on the use of DDT to prevent malaria.Finally, recent news is that, despite...

Last week's announcement that the World Health Organization lifted its nearly 30-year ban on the insecticide DDT is perhaps the most promising development in global public health since well, 1943 when DDT was first used to combat insect-borne disease like typhus and malaria. Overlooked in all the hoopla over the announcement is the terrible toll in human lives (tens of millions dead, mostly pregnant women and children under age 5), illness (billions sickened) and poverty (more than $1 trillion in lost GDP in sub-Saharan Africa alone) caused by the tragic, decades-long ban.

WASHINGTON - The World Health Organization on Friday called on more developing countries, particularly in Africa, to begin spraying the controversial pesticide DDT to fight malaria The difference: DDT, longed banned in the United States because of environmental damage, is no longer sprayed outdoors. Instead it's used to coat the inside walls of mud huts or other dwellings and kill mosquitoes waiting to bite families as they sleep. A small number of malaria-plagued countries already use DDT, backed by a 2001 United Nations treaty that set out strict rules to prevent environmental contamination. But the influential WHO's long-awaited announcement makes...

The World Health Organization is poised to promote broader use of the controversial pesticide DDT in the battle against malaria. Long banned in the United States because of environmental damage, DDT is used legally in a few impoverished countries to kill malaria-bearing mosquitoes. It's no longer sprayed outdoors, but indoors — to coat the inside walls of mud huts or other dwellings where mosquitoes lurk. The aim is to protect sleeping families from bites at night. There has been little progress in recent years in preventing malaria, which sickens up to half a billion people annually and kills more than...

9-Year-Old Boy Dies After Mosquito Bite John Fontaine Got Eastern Equine EncephalitisPOSTED: 7:44 am EDT September 1, 2006 UPDATED: 8:12 am EDT September 1, 2006 BOSTON -- A 9-year-old Middleboro, Mass., boy died from Eastern equine encephalitis Thursday. He is the state's first EEE fatality this year. John Fontaine developed a fever on Aug. 18 and was hospitalized two days later. His two-week battle with EEE ended at Boston Children's Hospital Thursday morning. Middleborough was among the communities in southeastern Massachusetts that have undergone two rounds of aerial spraying to kill the mosquitoes that carry the virus. The first round...

I can't cut my grass because there's about a million wasps (or something like wasps) flying around at ground level. What are they looking for and how can I get rid of them?

Men in blue coveralls and white surgical masks began their annual trek into the countryside here last week. Methodically, they sprayed one home after another with a chemical most Americans probably thought disappeared from use long ago: DDT. As villagers looked on, the workers doused inside and outside walls with a fine mist. It is a yearly effort to repel and kill mosquitoes that carry malaria - a disease that kills more than a million people a year, mostly children in sub-Saharan Africa. Advertisement This small kingdom near South Africa is one of a handful of countries still using the...

Each year, malaria afflicts a half-billion people (roughly the population of North America) and kills a million of them (roughly the population of San Jose). And the latter is a low-end estimate. The actual number of fatalities is hard to pin down, since a body initially weakened by malaria becomes predisposed to other maladies.[snip] The economist William Easterly calculates..."Preventing five million child deaths over the next ten years would cost just three dollars for each new mother," he writes in his book "The White Man's Burden." Mr. Easterly argues that the tragic incompetence of the Western foreign aid industry...stems from...

International experts are touting the widely banned pesticide as a best bet to save millions of human lives threatened by malaria. The disease, which kills mostly children and pregnant women, is largely spread by mosquitoes. The overwhelming majority—90 percent—of malaria victims live in Africa, where the disease plagues both human and economic health (Africa facts, maps, more). In May the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) endorsed the use of DDT for indoor antimalarial treatment in the developing world. The World Health Organization (WHO) is expected to do the same in short order, according to a comprehensive report published in...