By Mark for the TIB Network:
Ladies and gentlemen, we have a scourge in the developing world. No, not the hollywood friendly diseases of AIDS, nope. We are talking about malaria. There are over 1.3 million deaths from malaria per year. 80% of those deaths are in Africa.
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Why bring this up? Well, one of the major worries in the wake of the tsunamis is the risk of disease from water borne creatures, or water borne illnesses. Malaria being chief among these. Malaria will more than likely kill thousands in the wake of the tsunamis, despite efforts to vaccinate and treat symptoms.
Why the inflammatory headline? Well, it is mostly due to more junk science from environmental types that keeps a viable solution from being used. That solution, dear friends, is the chemical agent known as DDT.
Wait, you say. DDT is an evil chemical agent known to kill PEOPLE! Wrong again! As usual, the evidence is different than the image portrayed by the Leftists and the Mainstream Media. Check this out from Junk Science.com
In April 1972, after seven months of testimony, EPA Administrative Law Judge Edmund Sweeney stated that “DDT is not a carcinogenic hazard to man. ... The uses of DDT under the regulations involved here do not have a deleterious effect on freshwater fish, estuarine organisms, wild birds, or other wildlife. ... The evidence in this proceeding supports the conclusion that there is a present need for the essential uses of DDT.”*
Two months later, EPA head [and Environmental Defense Fund member/fundraiser] William Ruckelshaus - who had never attended a single day’s session in the seven months of EPA hearings, and who admittedly had not even read the transcript of the hearings - overturned Judge Sweeney’s decision. Ruckelshaus declared that DDT was a “potential human carcinogen” and banned it for virtually all uses.
Let's be unequivocal, spraying DDT inside dwellings presents no discernable human or environmental hazard. "Resistance" is not an issue since this mostly takes the form of avoidance and keeping mosquitoes away from human prey is the intended object anyway. DDT presents no patent issues to upset anti-globalists/anti-capitalists and, at pennies a pound, DDT is affordable and cost-effective health care for developing nations.
In short, anti-malarial use of DDT allows more healthy populations to work, generate wealth and climb out of the poverty/subsistence hole in which "caring greens" apparently wish to keep them trapped. DDT bans are not pro-environment - they're anti-human. Worse, they attack impoverished, developing societies least able to protect themselves.
Yes, dear friends...some birds may be adversely affected by DDT, as in the book Silent Spring, but the vast majority of research cited shows DDT to be cost effective, rather than simply allowing the problem to fester and continue as the world at large does. We have a great case study here in America. The American south and West was replete with mosquitoes and cases of malaria through the 1800s. However, using such chemcials as DDT eliminated malaria from the nation as a whole and I don't see three legged babies being born or other serious effects. As usual, the enviro-weenies seek to kill humans to save animals, but of course, that is their way. Your mileage may vary.
Related Articles
Another article about Rachel Carson's Silent Spring DDT ban
Article on Pesticides and West Nile
1/5 Update
Captain Ed weighs in with more on DDT, aid, and stinginess.
