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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...

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...

In a ceremony in the Oval Office this morning, President Bush officially proclaimed April 25, 2008 to be Malaria Awareness Day (Transcript) America is a compassionate country that feeds the hungry and protects the vulnerable because we believe every human life has inherent dignity and matchless value. As the people of Africa continue their struggle against malaria, we offer our support and steadfast commitment. We call on all nations to join us in a great humanitarian effort. The president made a brief statement on the economy (Transcript) before boarding Marine One with First Lady Laura Bush for a day trip...

Today, the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee will hold a hearing on the implications of climate change for human health. Malaria will top the menu, but so will ignorance and disinformation.The lead witness will be Dr. Jonathan Patz of the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He has suggested that U.S. energy policy may be "indirectly exporting diseases to other parts of the world." Dr. Patz, the World Health Organization (WHO) and others claim that global warming is now spreading disease and may be the cause of some 160,000 deaths a year.In 2007, for example, WHO pointed to rising temperatures...

SEATTLE  —  Within the next 18 months, medical researchers will be asking people in Seattle to volunteer to be exposed to the deadliest form of malaria to help them test the effectiveness of vaccine candidates.The Seattle Biomedical Research Institute is collaborating with the PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative to accelerate malaria vaccine research by opening a new vaccine testing center in Seattle's south Lake Union neighborhood.Scientists at the center will use early testing of vaccines to weed out those that don't work so they can speed up research on the ones that are effective. Malaria vaccine testing has already begun...

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...

Mr Bush handed out bed nets on his visit to Arusha President George W Bush has said the US will help provide 5.2 million mosquito nets as part of a broader campaign to tackle malaria in sub-Saharan Africa.Mr Bush announced the plan during a visit to a hospital in Arusha, Tanzania, where he is on the second leg of a tour of five African countries. He said it would provide free nets for every Tanzanian child aged one to five. Malaria is the main cause of death for children in Africa, killing a child every 30 seconds, the UN...

As high waters recede, officials rush to ward off onset of disease VILLAHERMOSA, MEXICO — Holding her pale, 18-month-old grandson in her arms in Tabasco's flooded state capital, Marisela Aceituno wondered whether the infant's vomiting and diarrhea was a sign of the dreaded C word. Cholera. "Everything I give him he throws up," Aceituno said as she stroked Christopher's curly brown hair. With animal carcasses rotting in doorways and disease-carrying mosquitoes in the air, Mexican authorities are racing to prevent Tabasco from turning into a hot zone. Cholera, malaria and dengue fever, they say, could pose an even bigger risk...

Tuesday, 30 October 2007, 11:55 GMT Blood findings bring malaria hope Researchers could be a step closer to a cure for malaria after discovering people with blood group O are naturally protected from its most severe forms. Edinburgh University has found blood type O people are significantly less likely to experience the most life-threatening effects of malaria. It is hoped the discovery will help develop drugs which mimic the properties of red cells. Red cells in O group blood prevent malaria worsening. "We may be able to reduce the number of children dying from severe malaria in sub-Saharan Africa"Dr...

Malaria isn’t history. According to the World Health Organization(WHO), malaria kills more than one million people each year. More than 40% of the world’s population is at risk, in areas such as Africa, Central America, Hispaniola, India, the Middle East, Oceania, South America, and Southeast Asia. Children and pregnant women are most at risk. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) report that malaria is the fourth leading cause of death for children under five years of age worldwide. A child dies of malaria every 30 seconds.

The world’s most promising malaria vaccine has been shown to work in infants less than a year old, the most vulnerable group, according to a study being published today. The study, being published in The Lancet, a British medical journal, was small, comprising only 214 babies in Mozambique, and intended to show only that the vaccine was safe at such young ages. But it also indicated that the risk of catching malaria was reduced by 65 percent after the full course of three shots. “We’re now a step closer to the realization of a vaccine that can protect African infants,”...

Researchers at the National Institutes of Health have developed an experimental vaccine that could, theoretically, eliminate malaria from entire geographic regions, by eradicating the malaria parasite from an area's mosquitoes. The vaccine, so far tested only in mice, would prompt the immune system of a person who receives it to eliminate the parasite from the digestive tract of a malaria-carrying mosquito, after the mosquito has fed upon the blood of the vaccinated individual. The vaccine would not prevent or limit malarial disease in the person who received it. An article describing this work was published on the Web site of...

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...

The discovery of an elaborate counterfeit ring in Kenya dealing with artemesinin-based anti-malarials has raised fears of the emergence of resistance by the malaria parasite against the only category of drugs that is fully effective against the killer fever. Two weeks ago, the Chinese drug-maker Holley-Cotec Pharmaceuticals announced that it was withdrawing at least 20,000 doses of Duo-cotecxin, an artemesinin-based anti-malarial, after it discovered that the Kenyan market had been flooded with counterfeits. Duo-cotecxin is a World Health Organisation (WHO) pre-qualified anti-malarial which contains artemesinin, an ingredient that has been used to treat fevers in China for the past 2,000...

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...

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...

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,...