[Hank Kerchief]

... Carson also noted other flaws in using DDT indiscriminately. Among them, the growing resistance of the Anopheles mosquito ...

Of course, of course. DDT won't solve every human problem forever, so ban it world-wide, even if a couple millions lives might be spared otherwise. If we used DDT and save these lives, some mosquitoes might become DDT resistant ... but, if we're not using DDT anyway, what difference does it make? Well nothing, if you don't count people's lives, which environmentalists never do.

Hank

[fogarty]

DDT is NOT banned world-wide. There are countries which use it to this day. Rachel Carson, if you will read her book, NEVER demanded a world-wide ban to DDT. Certainly the environmentalists took the issue and pushed for an outright ban. It was shortsighted of them.

But we are being shortsighted as well if we think DDT is a magic solution to the problem. It may be part of the solution, but ONLY a part. Unless health officials deal with the resistance aspects of both the vector and the microbe it will result in MORE deaths, not less.

Case in point, look at malaria in India. Since India started using DDT, malaria rates initially declines, but soon returned with a vengeance. And they used DDT as part of a program of vaccinations and pesticides. Malaria is now an endemic disease in the Indian subcontinent, with the most common vectors of the microbe now resistant to DDT and several other families of more advanced pesticides. Take a look here.

http://www.brown.edu/Research/EnvStudies_Theses/full9900/creid/malaria_in_india.htm