Reader James reports that the DDT ban myth is repeated in a new book:
Over the last few decades, however, the WHO has discouraged
the use of DDT in member states â encouraged by environmentalists,
who have often massively overstated the negative effects of
DDT on human and animal health (Roberts et al., 2000). Until
recently, most Western aid agencies discouraged the use of DDT and
indoor residual spraying generally, and the WHO has provided little
financial assistance to those governments that wish to go down this
route.
They also run down bednets.
While bednets may have a role in preventing transmission of
malaria (Premji et al., 1995; Philips-Howard et al., 2003), they are far
from perfect, particularly in the poorest areas where they are most
needed but can only be obtained at considerable expense. Mosquitoes
tend to be most active in the hottest parts of the year, and few
people relish the thought of covering themselves in a net during
these hot nights. In certain parts of Africa, people are reluctant to
sleep in nets because they resemble a shroud. People also often
misuse bednets, with enterprising individuals using them as fishing
nets. Even when bednets are used properly they are a far from
perfect barrier, not least because mosquitoes, being opportunistic,
will take advantage of any occasion when a person happens to get
out of bed during the night (Bean, 2001; Choi, 1995).
But bednets work.
The book is put out by the Campaign for Fighting Diseases, a project of the International Policy Network. For some reason, the CfFD believes that the best method for fighting diseases is less government intervention. Except for patents, where more government intervention to protect the intellectual property rights of drug companies is the way to go.
The IPA is launching the book in Australia at two events:
Melbourne
Speaker: Alan Oxley, Chairman of the Australian APEC Study Centre
Date: Monday 18 February, 2008 5.30 to 7.00pm
Venue: The Australian Institute of International Affairs Dyason House 124 Jolimont Road East Melbourne
RSVP: Annette Nicol P: 03 9654 7271 or Annette.nicol AT aiia.asn.au
Sydney
Speaker: Bill Bowtell, Director of HIV/AIDS Project at the Lowy Institute
Date: Thursday 21 February, 2008 5.30 to 7.00pm
Venue: The Australian Institute of International Affairs The Glover Cottages 124 Kent Street Sydney
RSVP: AIIA P: 02 9247 2709 or aiiansw AT bigpond.com
I think I might go to the Sydney one...
This Guardian article on Bill and Melinda Gate's work on malaria is interesting.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/feb/17/medicalresearch.health
DDT wasn't worthy of a single mention...
There's a Canadian charity called Spread the Net, which is trying to raise enough money for 500,000 nets. It says $10 buys one net.
http://www.spreadthenet.org/default_en.aspx
Unicef Canada has a report on malaria and children, and about how many millions of nets are in use, etc. They seem to think the nets work.
http://www.unicef.ca/portal/SmartDefault.aspx?at=2129
The chapter summaries of that book definitely suggest an agenda against public health and for Big Pharma. I suppose there's a lot of money in malaria drugs; and maybe they prefer people with recurrant malaria attacks to people with no malaria?
I am relatively new to this blog, so I am not quite sure what you mean by "DDT ban myth."
Do you mean that it is a myth that some countries banned all use of DDT following pressure from environmental groups?
Do you mean that it is a myth that organisations such as Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth have long campaigned for a total ban on DDT? They still seem to be trying to ban the use of "all toxins", but perhaps I have misunderstood them.
a campaign for a ddt ban doth not a ban make.
nor doth the decision of individual agencies to not use DDT while others freely and happily do so.
The "DDT ban" refers to either 1)the US' total ban on DDT, and the vast increase in malaria seen in the US as a result(sarcasm); 2) the actual international ban on using DDT for agricultural use, which without a doubt saved lives by preventing the further evolution of ddt resistant mosquitoes (as conversely, the wide agricultural use of ddt previously caused the deaths of uncountable numbers by weakening the efficacy of ddt. hmm.... the cotton industry is Worse Than Hitler!!); 3) or, most likely the fact that "All Those Silly Native People Really Should Use DDT More Than They Do, As Far As I And Others Who Had No Interest In Malaria Until A Couple Of Years Ago Are Concerned".
bednets are Not Perfect? My God, I've been wrong all these years. DDT, the Only Perfect Malaria Remedy.
that book sounds positively delightful:
"Chapter 9: The World Health Organisation: a time for reconstitution (pdf: 101 kb)
Richard Wagner
An examination of the WHO's budget for 2006-7 reveals less than half is allocated to communicable diseases, and the majority is spent on issues that are of little concern to the poor such as road safety and obesity. These 'politically correct' activities are seemingly intended to satisfy the political demands of the WHO's funders "
since we all know that obesity and traffic crashes are in fact, not at all dangerous, and in any event we couldn't possibly do anything about them, nor should we try. See also Kellermann, the CDC, and Epidemiological Study of Firearm Deaths Is Unconstitutional And Scientific.
Do you mean that it is a myth that some countries banned all use of DDT following pressure from environmental groups?
Well, the United States did, and the resurgence of malaria in that country has been just devastating.
Do you mean that it is a myth that organisations such as Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth have long campaigned for a total ban on DDT?
And they've succeeded, too.
Now that we've cleared that up, how about you and the rest of the douse-the-world-in-poisonous-organochlorines crowd tell us what your real agenda is.
Hm....road safety wouldn't have an effect on transportation of medicine and medical personnel?
You might want to check out a recent pro-DDT blog.
If you're checking out the 4 Simpsons blog, note that he brushes off such things as DDT bingo and this blog as having "no substance."
C'mon over to Millard Fillmore's Bathtub (see my address), where we don't ban scientists from discussing stuff that may make us rethink our religious beliefs. Science posts at 4 Simpsons don't stick around. I've got a couple of posts dealing with Steve Forbes' stuff, as quoted by Neil Simpson.
Thank you to z and Ray C for their answers to my post, but I am still unsure about what is meant by "DDT ban myth".
Has anyone counted how many countries did have a total ban on all use of DDT after the campaigns, and - while in developed countries such as the USA and EU this may not have been followed by a big increase in malaria - did this actually happen in some underdeveloped countries with lots of poor people. Or is that just a myth?
The late M. Scott Peck wrote a book called "People of the Lie," noting that one central characteristic of truly evil people was their constant, constant rewriting of the past to conform to how they want it to appear. It sure does show up in politics. The pro-DDT folks, the anti-AGW folks, all think that the more they repeat something, the more likely people will be to believe it. Doesn't matter how often you debunk it, they just wait a while and then say it again.
Goebbels lives. His "Big Lie" technique has been adopted by the right in the US and is thriving.
I am relatively new to this blog, so I am not quite sure what you mean by "DDT ban myth."
If I understand Tim correctly, he refers to false claims regarding WHO policy. Under "Categories" on the left of the page you will see "DDT", a link to his previous posts on the Rachel-Carson-bashing industry.
Patrick Hadley asks a useful question, viz.:
I'm not aware of any, and for all their barking I have never seen Bate or the Larouchies cite a country actually enacting a total ban on DDT. Even in the US, public health uses were explicitly exempt. That's not to say it couldn't have happened. Is anyone aware of such a total ban?
well, one, reasonable sounding, claim is that DDT use was stopped in some countries because European countries would have then required extensive (and expensive) tests of exported produce to ensure that the DDT hadn't been diverted to agricultural use and left residues. which does happen. but whether that constitutes a part of the "ddt ban" or something not quite, is open to interpretation, seems to me.
When I asked the original question about what "DDT ban myth" meant I assumed that it could be answered in a simple sentence.
Having spent a little time looking at earlier threads on this site and at other sites it seems that there was a strong campaign back in the 1960s and 1970s to ban totally the use of DDT in all countries. It seems that many countries where malaria was endemic did stop using DDT completely, others, including the USA, continued to use it for public health matters. After DDT was not used against malaria there was in some countries a revival of the incidence of the disease and a big increase in deaths from it.
Many people say, while that other methods are effective against malaria, DDT spraying inside buildings is cheap, easy, safe and effective. The fact that many countries stopped using DDT against malaria without replacing it with bednets or any other effective method does seem to have been responsible for much disease and death.
Am I right in saying that the "green lobby" (e.g Friends of the Earth, WWF, Greenpeace) has campaigned for over 40 years for a total ban on all use of DDT, and that this is still the green position?
Have I fallen for the "DDT ban myth" ? Please tell me if I have got things wrong.
Patrick Hadley: Sri Lanka is usually used as a poster child by the pro-DDT lobby. Study of what actually happened in Sri Lanka is very educational, both about DDT/malaria and about the honesty of the pro-DDT lobby.
1. anti-malaria measures including DDT nearly eliminated the disease; down to 17 cases in 1963.
2. The anti-malaria campaign moved from "attack" into a "consolidation" phase, DDT spraying was stopped;
3. when malaria started to increase again (due to changed conditions on the ground) there wasn't the money to buy insecticides (although they could have been bought, including DDT) or the expertise to spray them properly;
4. incidence grew to more than half a million cases by 1969;
5. from 1968 anti-malaria moved back to "attack", including DDT spraying;
6. there was some success, but mosquito resistance to DDT limited that success;
7. Because of the resistance, in 1975 they switched to Malathion.
At no point was anti-malarial use of DDT prevented or inhibited for reasons of environmental concern. It was stopped initially because it was felt to be no longer necessary (and possibly for economic reasons). Subsequently it was stopped because DDT resistance made it ineffective.
The DDT ban myth is that the concerns of some environmental activists caused some countries to cease spraying DDT for malaria control, resulting in large numbers of casualties. It seems to be entirely a calumny concocted to belabor Rachel Carson and environmentalists in general. It is regarded as a "myth" because:
1. DDT was never banned for malaria control anywhere.
2. Where DDT use for malaria control has declined, there have been other reasons (e.g. economics, resistance).
3. Rachel Carson, like many other environmentalists, never advocated a ban on the use of DDT for malaria control. In particular, Rachel Carson specifically argued that DDT should be reserved for malaria control, while opposing agricultural use in part out of concerns that agricultural use would speed the development of resistance that would impair the value of DDT for mosquito control--something that indeed did happen in many locations.
The mantra of Carson was: "DDT is killing birds". Hence the title Silent Spring
as if DDT could possibly wipe out all birds....
And Tanzania had a blanket DDT ban between and 1992 and 2006.
just the facts please.
Tim - "The IPA is launching the book in Australia at two events:"
This is probably why Jennifer Morohasy has a post describing a lecture by Monkton. In it he apparently said:
http://www.jennifermarohasy.com/blog/archives/002771.html
"Monckton then attacks what he calls the murderous 'Precautionary Principle' as an expedience used by environmentalist lobby to push policies that would otherwise be unacceptable. He looks at two previous global scares: one real, and one bogus where the policies were wrong because of the effect of pressure groups.
The first is HIV, where he says the correct policy would have been to isolate cases in order to prevent spread of the disease, but this was regarded as totally unacceptable.
The result: 25 million died, with 40 million infected worldwide. 0.7% infected in the US, 1% is the epidemic threshold. 7.5% infected south of the Sahara.
The second is Malaria, where the 3 letters 'DDT' are absent from IPCC ramblings in its latest report.
Before DDT was 'banned,' there were 50,000 deaths per year from Malaria. After the ban, there were 1,000,000 deaths per year. As a result, excess deaths are put at between 30 and 50 million.
On 15th September 2006, the DDT ban was lifted by WHO. Dr Arata Kochi or WHO said, "Quite often in this field politics comes first and science second. We must take a position based on the science and the data.""
Does the IPA really believe these lies?
And Tanzania had a blanket DDT ban between and 1992 and 2006. .... just the facts please.
in a recent post
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2008/02/revisionist_malaria_history.php
Tim linked a report, that speaks of
It was reinitiated in 1966 and was again ceased in 1987 due to lack of funds and
appearance of vector resistance to DDT which caused program failure (Ministry of Health, Zanzibar).
so you are speaking only about mainland Tanzania, i guess?
Indeed, Tanzania is the federal union (Umoja) of Tanganyika and Zanzibar. I made the maps for the final report of obsolete pesticide inventory for mainland Tanzania in 1998. Zanzibar was done earlier.
Sigh. Justy got home, it apparently rained a lot because my backyard is underwater again. If I decide not to spray it with DDT, does this mean there is a DDT ban? Because I don't want to be part of that.
Hans.
To quote you at #19, Rachel Carson said "DDT is killing birds". This was true - DDT did kill birds, and it would continue to kill bird species again if it were to accumulate in the food chain as it did last century.
As far as I can determine from her writings Carson did not claim that DDT would "wipe out all birds", as you wrote (my emphasis). This claim of yours is a straw man, and you should know this. The title of Carson's book, whilst certainly populist, nevertheless indicated a biological effect of DDT, although not perhaps properly indicating the most vulnerable avian taxa. However to impute that Carson lied, or was in any other way incorrect that birds died as a consequence of DDT use, through your attempt to twist the theme behind the title, and then to confabulate subsequent policy changes with your imputation of impropriety on Carson's part, well...
I will refrain from my vague and inappropriate ad hominem urges, and instead remind you of your own words:
"just the facts please".
I will refrain from my vague and inappropriate ad hominem urges
Sir, you flout the Internet's most sacred traditions. Take that soap and water out of your mouth at once!
Whether or not Rachel Carson, who died 44 years ago, advocated a total ban of DDT in a book she wrote in 1962, seems less important than what the "green movement" has advocated in the years since her book came out.
Influenced by people such as Carson (but perhaps going rather further than she wanted) organisations such as Friends of the Earth, GreenPeace and WWF have always lobbied for a total ban on all use of DDT including indoor use against malaria. To give Carson all the blame (or credit) for that campaign seems lazy - and if that is part of the "DDT ban myth" then it should be corrected.
"...organisations such as Friends of the Earth, GreenPeace and WWF have always lobbied for a total ban on all use of DDT including indoor use against malaria."
So if the supposed ban is in place why is there a need to lobby for it?
Actually the facts seem to be that many environmental organiSations have advocated a ban on the AGRICULTURAL use of DDT and that some of them in the late 90's and early 2000's advocated a total ban (with caveats about it being phased in over time as suitable replacements were found), NMy understanding is that most if not all of those groups have now abandoned that position.
Patrick Hadley@26: you are missing the point. The "DDT ban myth" is that anti-malarial use of DDT has been prevented globally due to pressure from environmental groups. This is simply not the case. It is a lie, made up out of whole cloth in order to smear the environmental movement.
IF it were true that environmental groups had campaigned for an end to anti-malarial use of DDT from the 1950s, and IF it were also true that anti-malarial use of DDT had been stopped globally as a result, and IF it were also true that the global resurgence of malaria since the early 60s was a result of this cessation of DDT use, THEN environmental groups would have a very serious case to answer. As it is, none of these three things is true. Together they form the "DDT ban myth".
From the NPR website:
If WHO always approved the use of DDT for malaria control, why the need to make a MAJOR policy change?
To say that WHO never banned the use of DDT for malaria control is technically correct. However that's like saying that the federal government never imposed speed limits on highways, they just threatened to withhold all federal highway support money from states that didn't cooperate.
If mosquitoes are all resistant to DDT, why is WHO now encouraging DDT's use?
If European countries threatened to ban import of agricultural products from countries using DDT for malaria control (or put obstacles in the way to make importation more difficult), then saying that "DDT was never banned" is disingenuous as that would effectively ban DDT.
The idea that DDT isn't necessary for malaria control in the U.S., so it isn't necessary for Africa is seriously misguided. The U.S. has air conditioning, fewer pools of standing water and a good public health infrastructure.
It seems to me that environmentalists are trying to avoid responsibility for a mistake and it's not going to be as easy as they'd like. People make mistakes. The correct thing to do is fess up, admit the error, apologize and work to make the situation right. The idea that anyone or any group is always correct is absurd. Admitting when you're wrong also builds credibility. Parsing language to avoid responsibility just makes people suspicious.
WHO [did not make a major policy change](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2007/01/schapira_on_ddt_and_malaria.php):
>A recent press statement from WHO about dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT) and indoor residual spraying for malaria control [1] caused a considerable stir, despite the fact that, in terms of policy, it merely re-iterated WHO's endorsement of DDT as a useful insecticide for malaria control, albeit in a highly promotional way.
"The idea that DDT isn't necessary for malaria control in the U.S., so it isn't necessary for Africa is seriously misguided. The U.S. has air conditioning, fewer pools of standing water and a good public health infrastructure."
By pointing this out, you are effectively advocating a ban on DDT.
TRRLL tells us that the argument about the "DDT ban myth" seems to come down to these three points:
1- DDT was never banned as a malaria control.
Bill Bodell has already dealt with this pretty well. The effect of WHO and EU policies were equivalent to a ban on all use of DDT in many poor countries.
2- The decline in the use of DDT was nothing to do with green concerns, but for reasons of economics and resistance.
Since DDT is certainly the cheapest method against malaria it is hard to see how economics came into it, unless it was economic pressure from the EU refusing to take imports from countries which used DDT against malaria. As for resistance the evidence is pretty clear that spraying indoors does not lead to many problems with mosquitos resistant to DDT.
3- Rachel Carson and other environmentalists never called for a ban on DDT for malaria control, indeed Carson actually argued for DDT to be reserved for disease control.
Having just bought a copy of "Silent Spring" I find that, far from suggesting that DDT be reserved for use against disease, many of Carson's examples of the misuse of DDT seem to be when it was applied specificially against disease - whether against lice in Korea, Typhus in Italy or malaria in Greece - and she was dead against it. I cannot find anywhere in the book a suggestion that DDT should be reserved for the fight against disease, but perhaps she said this elsewhere - can anyone find a quote where she actually did say this?
Since Rachel Carson died in 1964 she did not live long enough to see the effect of the restriction in use of DDT against disease on the lives of millions of poor people. It is quite possible that she would have changed her mind. The green lobby had no such excuse - although one welcomes the recent changes in policy of some of them.
z,
I would support a ban on DDT in the United States (as long as malaria is not a significant problem).
When all of Africa has has air conditioning, fewer pools of standing water and a good public health infrastructure, I'd support a ban there as well.
After reading "Silent Spring" I think that Rachel Carson was a very remarkable woman who contributed a great deal to human good. She was wrong about DDT, since she did not know that spraying indoors was not harmful to humans nor that it could be used without creating a big problem from mosquitos with resistance. I would agree that is unfair to blame her for the actions of others who were later to impose a policy that turned out to be seriously misguided, long after the evidence of this was available to them.
It is interesting to find from an epilogue in a recent edition of "Silent Spring" that she was opposed by the majority of the scientific establishment. As a scientist without a doctorate who had no peer-reviewed publications to her name she was derided by the consensus - and it was only when the public bought her book in great numbers and persuaded JFK to launch a President's Science Advisory Committee investigation that action was taken against the over-use of dangerous chemicals in the environment.
Patrick Hadley, you seem to be deliberately misunderstanding. When I write that anti-malarial use of DDT was greatly reduced in the 1960s and 1970s because of resistance, I do not mean something like "because of fears that anti-malarial use of DDT would lead to the development of resistance". I mean "because the mosquitoes had become resistant, so the DDT was ineffective". This is why, for instance, Sri Lanka switched from DDT to Malathion in the 1970s. Not because they were forced to switch by some environmental pressure group. Not because they were encouraged or forced to switch for environmental reasons by organisations such as the WHO or the EU. Not because they thought "better not use DDT in case the mosquitoes develop resistance". They stopped spraying DDT in the 1970s because it was no longer effective because the mosquitoes had developed resistance.
I'm giving up on this thread now.
From Silent Spring:
Even if Nick Barnes will not read this others might.
DDT is now widely used in many poor countries for indoor spraying. The overwhelming evidence in these countries is that it does not cause any ill effects to humans nor do the mosquitos develop resistance. It appears that resistance follows only when it is used for agricultural use. I am not sure why DDT suddenly became ineffective in Sri Lanka - was it being spread over the fields? There seems to be no logical reason why a treatment that is effective and safe when used properly in many countries should suddenly become ineffective in one country.
It seems a little odd to argue that because in Sri Lanka thirty years ago DDT became ineffective, that must prove that it was right for the green lobby to press for a ban on its use for spraying the inside of homes when that method had been shown to save millions of lives.
Incidentally Ian Gould made a logical error in his post. It is quite possible for DDT to be banned in some countries and the green lobby still to be active pressing for the ban to be extended to others. While some organisations have recently changed their position they have been pretty quiet in admitting they were wrong (how can you say sorry to the millions who have died) and Friends of the Earth, for example, still want all use of DDT to be banned.
trrll, while Rachel Carson did allow for the possibility that there could be safer insecticides which could be used in some circumstances I cannot find anywhere in "Silent Spring" that she said that DDT could ever be used.
If you read "Silent Spring" you will see in the chapters "Elixirs of Death" and "Rivers of Death" that she believed DDT to be totally unsafe in all circumstances because it caused cancer and blood disorders. Time and again in the book she stresses the danger of all use of DDT - I doubt that she could ever have supported its use in any circumstances. She states that malathion is considered less toxic to humans than DDT, (so perhaps that was the insecticide she was thinking off) but even then talks about its " alleged 'safety' " and spends a page telling us how it could actually become dangerous if combined with other chemicals.
"DDT is now widely used in many poor countries for indoor spraying."
Yes, minus the "now" because it's been going on for quite a while, which is good.
"The overwhelming evidence in these countries is that it does not cause any ill effects to humans nor do the mosquitos develop resistance."
Yes, as has been stated by most of the people you think you're fighting against.
"It appears that resistance follows only when it is used for agricultural use."
Yes. Carson's point, no? You know, it almost seems like you're starting to get the point (agricultural use bad, minimal use good) but it sounds like you had to fight your way here and still act like you're making everyone else look like fools.
"I am not sure why DDT suddenly became ineffective in Sri Lanka - was it being spread over the fields?"
Yes.
"There seems to be no logical reason why a treatment that is effective and safe when used properly in many countries should suddenly become ineffective in one country."
Used improperly.
"It seems a little odd to argue that because in Sri Lanka thirty years ago DDT became ineffective, that must prove that it was right for the green lobby to press for a ban on its use for spraying the inside of homes when that method had been shown to save millions of lives."
Who, outside of the world in your brain, has argued that?
"I am not sure why DDT suddenly became ineffective in Sri Lanka - was it being spread over the fields?"
indeedy. cotton crop. also, africa. in relatively vast quantities; a single cotton farm typically using more DDt than the entire nation uses for malaria control. that selected for ddt resistance in general in insects, and the persistence of DDT in the environment keeps selecting it.
"Thus, in the absence of other dissipation processes, the soil will continue to be a source of atmospheric contamination for a very long time." (Measurement of DDT Fluxes from a Historically Treated Agricultural Soil in Canada )
Considering her discussion of resistance being a problem with respect to fighting malaria, it is hard to see how she could be speaking of anything other than DDT. She did believe that insecticides are dangerously toxic, but malaria is also dangerous. So her advice to spray as little as possible sounds like a reasonable balancing of risk.
Since it doesn't seem to have been mentioned so far, can I point out that the DDT ban myth was invented by tobacco lobbyists (Steven Milloy and Roger Bate)
http://johnquiggin.com/index.php/archives/2007/05/30/ddt-tobacco-and-th…
with the objective, among other things, of putting pressure on WHO to stop its antismoking activities. The IPA, which is putting on the current exercise, was long active in tobacco lobbying. Those who bandy about accusations of complicity in murder ought to take a look in the mirror.
Rachel Carson thought DDT caused cancer and never supported its use in any circumstances. Nobody who has read her book could ever imagine that she would. She gives many examples of it being used for indoor spraying against disease and condemns them all. Unless someone can come up with a quote to the contrary I think that it is time to kill the myth that she recommended DDT to be used for indoor spraying against disease.
John Quiggin gives us a nice example of the logical fallacy of "poisoning the well." Thank you for that John, but it does not advance the argument by a single step.
I am grateful to Pough for confirming all my points, some of which I was not sure about.
I think I am now understand that "DDT ban myth" is an attempt to remove the blame for the millions of malaria deaths caused by the anti-DDT movement. After reading more widely I think that it is certainly wrong to lay all the blame on to the green lobby. Others are certainly implicated in stopping a practice which was saving lives - including craven politicians and chemical companies who could make more money out of other products.
I think it may be time to stop feeding the troll. Patrick Hadley is apparently just here so that he can repeat "the DDT ban killed millions" over and over again. No matter how many times that lie is refuted, he'll just keep repeating it. So it might be a good idea to stop responding to him altogether. He will respond to anything you post with "the DDT ban killed millions."
"Since DDT is certainly the cheapest method against malaria it is hard to see how economics came into it..."
There's nothing "certain" about it.
Per kilo DDT is unquestionably much cheaper - but it takes about ten times as much DDT as Malathion to treat a house. Furthermore, because the volumes required are much higher, a spraying team can typically spray more houses with Malathion than with DDT in a given period.
There's also the question of durability. I n many developing countries people live in houses of mud brick or adobe. They repair and maintain the houses by containing the walls annually with more mud. This tends to bury the DDT and make it ineffective. In these areas, bed-nets which can last 5 or more years may be preferable.
Whether DDT IRS. Malathion or bednets are cheaper in a given situation depends on transport costs, labor costs and the form of traditional housing in the area.
But, of course, discussing those issues is a lot less fun than making up figures for how many millions of people the evil greens have killed.
"Since Rachel Carson died in 1964 she did not live long enough to see the effect of the restriction in use of DDT against disease on the lives of millions of poor people. It is quite possible that she would have changed her mind."
No it isn't because in Silent Spring, Carson distinguished between use of DDT as an agricultural insecticide and a vector control. She explicitly endorsed the use of DDT against malaria and argued for a ban on agricultural use of DDT precisely because she wants to slow the development of DDT-resident insects so that DDT could continue to be used for disease control.
As I seem to have nothing better to do in the wee hours after midnight I arranged the posts in this thread with all of Patrack Hadley's offerings in sequence. An interesting chronology indeed...
He commences by stating that he is new and ignorant of the DDT issue, and in the space 18 hours he repeats the same claimed perplexity twice more. At this point in his befuddlement however he gleans an insight that there is a conspiracy by the "green lobby" (his words AND quotation marks), and he repeats this theme in several of his subsequent posts.
In less than two days he has raced out and bought Rachel Carson's book, read it, (and I assume interpreted it, cross-referenced it with many independent and peer-reviewed critiques, and spent time to contemplate and digest the whole), and is then an expert who can quote left, right and centre on the obvious evils of those who killed millions by withholding the panacea of the century.
Leave alone misreadings of Carson, and the refusal to consider the salient points presented by many on this thread who are years more informed (why would he ask in the first place otherwise?)...
OK, so maybe I didn't leave that alone!
Barton's already called Patrick Hadley on his pattern of behaviour. I will reinforce Barton's observation that the emperor has no clothes, and say...
Patrick Hadley, I too name you 'troll', and suggest that you retreat to the seventh level of hell to dwell with Ba'al Zebûb, before Buffy finds you and has a go at your carcass with her big pokey stakes.
I blame Vagueofgodalming for my last outburst - he dun tol' me to spit out the soap an' water!
;-)
Ian Gould says that Rachel Carson explicitly endorsed the use of DDT against malaria.
To prove that statement all he has to do is find one quote from Rachel Carson containing the words "DDT" and "malaria" in which she advocates the use of the former against the latter.
I can find plenty of passages from Silent Spring where Carson is totally opposed to the use of DDT against disease, but there is no point in listing them since I admit that they would not prove that I am right; just one quote to the contrary would be enough to prove me wrong. It should be relatively easy for Ian Gould to provide the evidence that Carson "explicitly" endorsed the use of DDT.
As seen in post #36, Rachel Carson explicitly endorsed the use of ALL pesticides in fighting ALL diseases (provide it could be done in a way that didn't make things worse).
But since she didn't give a paired list ( (disease, pesticide) ) that included
(malaria, DDT) the lying troll declares victory.
Hopefully he will now go home.
I declare Patrick Hadley to be Andura Smetacek's spiritual brother, if not actual e-brother emanating from a Monsanto lab.
In any case, ignorage is warranted.
In my case, the [kill] option is activated.
Best,
D
Ian Gould said that Rachel Carson's support of DDT against malaria was "explicit". To be explicit it would have to contain the words "DDT" and "malaria." It is not me who is being awkward.
Perhaps he meant "implicit". If so then the evidence of all the "anti-DDT even against disease" comments would be relevant to working out what she thought about it. While we can argue about she thought, it ought to be relatively easy to find out what she is on record of having said or written. Did she ever make a comment in an interview or magazine article in support of the use of DDT against malaria?
Ian Gould also said Carson
"argued for a ban on agricultural use of DDT precisely because she wants to slow the development of DDT-resident insects so that DDT could continue to be used for disease control"
Maybe she did, but while Carson used many arguments against DDT in agriculture in "Silent Spring", that was certainly not one of them. I wonder if he can find a source in support of that statement.
I suppose the only response to the repeated lies is to repost #36 and see how many lies are exposed just in this one quote.
"No responsible person contends that insect-borne disease should be ignored. The question that has now urgently presented itself is whether it is either wise or responsible to attack the problem by methods that are rapidly making it worse. The world has heard much of the triumphant war against disease through the control of insect vectors of infection, but it has heard little of the other side of the story--the defeats, the short-lived triumphs that now strongly support the alarming view that the insect enemy has been made actually stronger by our efforts. Even worse, we may have destroyed our very means of fighting. ... What is the measure of this setback? The list of resistant species now includes practically all of the insect groups of medical importance. ... Malaria programmes are threatened by resistance among mosquitoes. ... Practical advice should be 'Spray as little as you possibly can' rather than 'Spray to the limit of your capacity' ..., Pressure on the pest population should always be as slight as possible."
Lies
(1) "argued for a ban on agricultural use of DDT precisely because she wants to slow the development of DDT-resident insects so that DDT could continue to be used for disease control"
which part of:
"Even worse, we may have destroyed our very means of fighting. ... What is the measure of this setback? The list of resistant species now includes practically all of the insect groups of medical importance. ... Malaria programmes are threatened by resistance among mosquitoes." did you fail to comprehend?
(2) "To be explicit it would have to contain the words "DDT" and "malaria." "
No, to be explicit she would have to have said:
"No responsible person contends that insect-borne disease should be ignored. The question that has now urgently presented itself is whether it is either wise or responsible to attack the problem by methods that are rapidly making it worse. The world has heard much of the triumphant war against disease through the control of insect vectors of infection, but it has heard little of the other side of the story--the defeats, the short-lived triumphs that now strongly support the alarming view that the insect enemy has been made actually stronger by our efforts. Even worse, we may have destroyed our very means of fighting. ... What is the measure of this setback? The list of resistant species now includes practically all of the insect groups of medical importance. ... Malaria programmes are threatened by resistance among mosquitoes. ... Practical advice should be 'Spray as little as you possibly can' rather than 'Spray to the limit of your capacity' ..., Pressure on the pest population should always be as slight as possible."
To paraphrase she said that if A is an disease and B is a pesticide which helps prevent A then we should use B in the prevention of A provided we can do this without making thing worse.
If I said "all dogs are mammals", and you say that I didn't say that your golden lab was a mammal, then you're a liar.
What we have established is that Patrick Hadley is a liar. Welcome to the kill file
I assume that most people contributing on this thread have never actually read "Silent Spring" or at any rate do not have a copy to hand. That does perhaps excuse them from the charge that they are deliberately misinterpreting what Rachel Carson said in her book.
The passage quoted in the context of a book condemning totally all use of DDT because it is a carcinogen to humans, which has devastating effects on birds, fish, mammals with no "safe levels" for human exposure is neither explicit nor implicit support for its use against malaria.
Elspi may not read this, but others might recognise the fault in his logic. This is his argument:
Carson said some insecticides can be used (true)
DDT is an insecticide (true)
Therefore Carson said DDT can be used (false conclusion).
The simple truth, which anyone who has read her book will know, is that Carson thought DDT to be a terribly dangerous insecticide that should never be used in any circumstances.
"Patrick Hadley, I too name you 'troll', and suggest that you retreat to the seventh level of hell to dwell with Ba'al Zebûb, before Buffy finds you and has a go at your carcass with her big pokey stakes."
Er, the 7th circle is for the violent. He belongs in the 8th circle, which is for frauds and liars.
Hi Patrick,
I've been looking for a list of countries where DDT has been explicitly banned for malaria control as a result of the machinations of bloodthirsty, death-worshipping, enviro-weenies. The trouble is I haven't been able to find one. You seem to be an expert so help me find one please, preferably one where millions of people died as a result but any old one will do.
Peter W. Johnson-Woodcock
"I can find plenty of passages from Silent Spring where Carson is totally opposed to the use of DDT against disease, "
Feel free to quote them.
Hi PJ,
It's not easy to figure out the DDT use status; DDT need not be explicitly banned to be banned. For example, a number of countries prohibit DDT importation without prohibiting it's use.
According to the Pesticide Action Network, DDT is banned or restricted (some of these restrictions are quite severe) in 56 countries with 102 countries prohibiting importation. If you follow the link and scroll down to the US listing you'll find that DDT is shown as neither banned nor restricted, with the entry noting simply that DDT is not registered for use. This is technically correct but misleading: DDT is banned for general use and hasn't been used since the 1970s but can be used in the event of a health care emergency. So, effectively, DDT is banned but isn't explicitly banned. It's a very complicated situation.
Right, back on topic. Lambert and many others here keep raving about how tobacco-paid henchmen are responsible for propagating the DDT ban myth. Well, the DDT ban is no myth and tobacco activists weren't even close to the first to point out that the US ban would lead to a possibly disastrous global ban.
Nobel laureate Norman Borlaug pointed to the consequences of the US ban way back in the 1970s:
In the period immediately following the US ban newspaper editorials similar to the following from the April 24, 1974 Pasadena Star-News were common:
And despite Lambert's spin, anti-DDT pressures did adversely affect the anti-malaria effort in Sri Lanka. Gordon Harrison, one of Lambert's favourite sources of information on DDT use in the fight against malaria, summarizes problems within Sri Lanka's anti-malaria program:
So, everything Roger Bate says about DDT and malaria is basically correct; what difference does it make where his funding comes from?
4:51 AWDT
Peter Johnson-Woodcock is mistaken in saying that I am an expert on this subject. Before I saw this thread I had read very little on DDT and malaria and knew next to nothing about it. Since then I have got hold of "Silent Spring", and read it and other material. He asks for countries where malaria increased after DDT spraying was stopped because of environmentalist concerns, it is easy to find a long list of such countries, but my only source for those names is from what would be considered to "right wing" websites. I have no way of checking that those are correct, but the WHO on 15 September 2006 said this:
Quote: -- Nearly thirty years after phasing out the widespread use of indoor spraying with DDT and other insecticides to control malaria, the World Health Organization (WHO) today announced that this intervention will once again play a major role in its efforts to fight the disease. WHO is now recommending the use of indoor residual spraying (IRS) not only in epidemic areas but also in areas with constant and high malaria transmission, including throughout Africa.
"The scientific and programmatic evidence clearly supports this reassessment," said Dr Anarfi Asamoa-Baah, WHO Assistant Director-General for HIV/AIDS, TB and Malaria. "Indoor residual spraying is useful to quickly reduce the number of infections caused by malaria-carrying mosquitoes. IRS has proven to be just as cost effective as other malaria prevention measures, and DDT presents no health risk when used properly.
WHO actively promoted indoor residual spraying for malaria control until the early 1980s when increased health and environmental concerns surrounding DDT caused the organization to stop promoting its use and to focus instead on other means of prevention. Extensive research and testing has since demonstrated that well-managed indoor residual spraying programmes using DDT pose no harm to wildlife or to humans.
"We must take a position based on the science and the data," said Dr Arata Kochi, Director of WHO's Global Malaria Programme. "One of the best tools we have against malaria is indoor residual house spraying. Of the dozen insecticides WHO has approved as safe for house spraying, the most effective is DDT."-- End quote.
WHO says DDT spraying was "phased out" - that is not synonymous with "banned" but for many poor people the results were the same: DDT was no longer used to stop them suffering from malaria.
Estimates, even in what seem to be non-partisan websites, of the number of extra deaths caused by this "phasing out" are in the millions per annum.
Ian Gould invites me to quote passages from Silent Spring where Carson is totally opposed to the use of DDT against disease. This post is already very long, so I suggest that he does what I did and goes out and buys a copy, or borrows one from his local library, and sees what she says for himself.
How do you implement a killfile in Firefox?
JQ:
>How do you implement a killfile in Firefox?
[See here](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2007/04/plonk.php).
Patrick, the reason why pretty well everyone has concluded that you are arguing in bad faith is that you just repeat arguments that have already been refuted in this very thread.
WHO did not make a major policy change in 2006 as I explained in [comment #30](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2008/02/new_book_spreads_ddt_ban_myth.p…).
JF Beck - Gordon Harrison is not speaking of political (and economic?) pressure from environmentalists - he is talking about pressure from governments to stop DDT spraying so they can save money. The subsequent paragraphs make this abundantly clear, e.g.: "But instead of continuing the attack past the point of apparent victory, the government [of Sri Lanka] yielded to the temptation to save money and progressively stopped spraying in district after district as soon as the criteria were minimally met." Your use of this quote is contextually inappropriate.
exactly ZERO countries who BANNED DDT for all purposes have been named so far.
normally that should end the discussion. i fear it wont.
the effect of DDT on reproduction among animals seems to be well established.
the effect on human reproduction is currently researched. a simple google scholar search will provide some badly needed facts to this discussion...
To contend that environmental groups did not in any way bring about a reduction in DDT use, by direct ban or other means, is dishonest. That this reduction in DDT resulted in some amount of increase in malaria deaths is clearly a fact.
It appears that political players, on both sides, are attempting to reconstruct a chain of events to further their ideological goals.
Hopefully this continued squabbling will not hamper efforts to institute effective vector control in the many places where over a million people die from malaria each year.
To contend that environmental groups did not in any way bring about a reduction in DDT use, by direct ban or other means (1), is dishonest. That this reduction in DDT resulted in some amount of increase in malaria deaths is clearly a fact.(2) ... It appears that political players, on both sides,(3) are attempting to reconstruct a chain of events to further their ideological goals.
it is pretty obvious what you are doing here.
(1) here you are moving the goal post. to the other side of the field.
(2) here you re claiming total nonsense to be fact. (how about stopping massive use has PREVENTED millions of dead by keeping DDT effective?)
(3) after you showed in (1) the DISHONESTY of YOUR side, now you re trying to claim that BOTH sides are doing the same. standard tactic.
The "concern troll" act is starting to wear a bit thin, don't you think? You reject a quote in which Rachel Carson pointed out that "Malaria programmes are threatened by resistance among mosquitoes" based on your assumption that she must have been speaking about resistance to something other than DDT -- even though she was writing at a time when the primary problem of mosquito resistance was resistance to DDT (and indeed, resistance, rather than environmentalism, turns out to be the major reason why DDT use declined). Yet you have not posted a single quote in which Rachel Carson explicitly says that DDT should never be used for any purpose whatsoever. If this is the whole point of the book, wouldn't she have explicitly said so, somewhere?
I don't see the point of the "no safe level" argument that you are trying to make. Are you claiming that Rachel Carson thought that there is some "safe level" of Malaria? Or of other pesticides? Which pesticides, specifically, did Rachel Carson say think that there is a "safe level" of, and where did she say this?
It sounds more like she is making a reasonable "lesser evil" recommendation, given that both pesticides and malaria pose risks--to use DDT and other pesticides at the minimum level required for sustainable control of malaria without encouraging resistance.
To contend that environmental groups did not in any way bring about a reduction in DDT use, by direct ban or other means, is dishonest. That this reduction in DDT resulted in some amount of increase in malaria deaths is clearly a fact.
Yes, they certainly did bring about a reduction in DDT use - in agricultural contexts, which as sod suggests probably did a lot to save DDT's efficacy by limiting resistance. As to malaria use - can you give some examples of places where DDT was not used for vector control because of environmental issues (as opposed to DDT not being used as part of an eradication campaign strategy, etc.)? And then can you give examples of this resulting in increases in malaria deaths? Failing that it's hard to take your claim that the above is "clearly a fact" seriously.
Tim, I am not arguing in bad faith, I simply do not understand why you seem to have a bee in your bonnet about whether or not DDT was actually banned or just "phased out". What difference is it to a poor family if their children die because it was phased out or because it was banned?
Some people want to take me task on the grounds that I may be exaggerating the number of extra deaths caused by the phasing out of DDT. This seems to miss the point also. Exactly how many millions (or is it "only" thousands) of people died when DDT was not used because of misguided concerns of environmentalists seems a very strange argument to have. Stalin said that one death was a tragedy, but a million deaths is just a statistic. Would it somehow be not too bad if the actual figure of extra deaths was only in the thousands? Surely if just one extra child died then it was one too many.
As for the views of Rachel Carson, I want to repeat that I think it is ridiculous to vilify her and blame her for what happened many years after her death. She was a hero of mine when I first came across her book in 1960s and after re-reading it for this thread I think that we have a lot to be grateful to her for. However the suggestion that she thought that DDT should be used against malaria is not supported by anything in her book. If anyone has any real evidence, rather than hand-waving and bluster, to suggest that she did support DDT against malaria then I would be glad to read it.
"Tim, I am not arguing in bad faith, I simply do not understand why you seem to have a bee in your bonnet about whether or not DDT was actually banned or just "phased out". What difference is it to a poor family if their children die because it was phased out or because it was banned?
Some people want to take me task on the grounds that I may be exaggerating the number of extra deaths caused by the phasing out of DDT. This seems to miss the point also. Exactly how many millions (or is it "only" thousands) of people died when DDT was not used because of misguided concerns of environmentalists seems a very strange argument to have. Stalin said that one death was a tragedy, but a million deaths is just a statistic. Would it somehow be not too bad if the actual figure of extra deaths was only in the thousands? Surely if just one extra child died then it was one too many."
and, if the number of extra children killed was negative?
"The outcome of the treaty is arguably better than the statuÂÂÂs quo going into the negotiations over two years ago. For the firsÂÂt timeÂ, there is now an insecticide which is restricted to vector coÂÂntrol onlÂy, meaning that the selection of resistant mosquitoes wiÂÂll be slower thÂan before."
of course, if even one extra child was killed in Iraq, that's no big deal.
It's kind of sad that to deny the facts about the tobacco-generated DDT myth, JF Beck has to go to Cato, house think tank for the tobacco lobby, and (at the time) home of Steve Milloy.
The interviewer Ronald Bailey has mostly (not entirely) avoided tobacco denialism, but has otherwise been wrong on just about every environmental issue, though he recently recanted on global warming.
sod (#63),
The PAN link above (see #58) lists 36 countries as having banned DDT outright.
saurabh (#62),
Since I do not have access to Harrison's book I have to rely on the excerpts provided by our host; relying on Lambert-provided quotes is always risky, however, as he is known to quote selectively. Thus it is difficult for me to evaluate Harrison's comments in context. Nonetheless, your reading of Harrison makes no sense. He writes about those in charge of anti-malaria programmes (presumably government instrumentalities) feeling "manifold political and economic pressures to get off the DDT". Harrison makes a clear distinction between "political" and "economic" pressures as they relate specifically to DDT. Given the worldwide anti-DDT ruckus at the time it is not unreasonable to assume that these political pressures derive, at least in part, to the ongoing DDT use controversy.
16:12 AWDT
Well, JF Beck, I have Harrison's book, and I have read it, and I believe my reading is correct. Harrison makes no discussion of environmental pressure affecting malaria control. If that was his intent, I trust he would have spelled it out, as his writing is very thorough. If, as you read it, the environmentalist pressure was what he meant to suggest as the most important factor in ruining anti-malaria efforts in Sri Lanka, in the subsequent six pages of discussion of Sri Lanka, surely he would have brought it up.
one more time: if it's not against international law to use DDt against malaria, IT'S NOT BANNED, even if nobody uses it; and most especially if people do use it, even if you wish more pople would. nobody uses fly swatters against malaria, i wish more people would, but that doesn't make it banned.
John Quggin,
The Borlaug excerpts (#58) show that the DDT ban was described and discussed long before tobacco-paid activists sought to publicize it. It is irrelevant that the Borlaug quote is from Reason (Cato). Any errors or omissions by Ron Bailey in the course of the interview, or in his other writings, are also irrelevant.
Joe Conlon of the American Mosquito Control Association offers a 1969 quote, attributed to the Centers for Disease Control, showing that the disastrous flow-effects of a US ban were recognized well before the US ban was implemented:
Perhaps Conlon's position with the AMCA and his former role as a US Navy entomologist discredit him.
saurabh,
As you know, Harrison refers to the "manifold political and economic pressures to get off the DDT". It seems to me the only economic pressure to "get off the DDT" was related to cost. This leaves manifold political pressures "to get off the DDT". It would be very helpful if you were to refer to your copy of Harrison and tease out from context exactly what these many political pressures were.
"Joe Conlon of the American Mosquito Control Association offers a 1969 quote, attributed to the Centers for Disease Control, showing that the disastrous flow-effects of a US ban were recognized well before the US ban was implemented"
Jwff Beck perhaps you'd like to explain to us how DDT use continued in most of the countries where malaria was present after the supposedly disastrous DDT ban.
It was pointed out to me in a previous thread here that DDT is extremely easy to make - which is why its so cheap.
DDT prices haven't risen as production has ceased in many developed countries precisely because a single plant could probably meet the entire world demand for DDT for in-house spraying.
Cute. After he gets caught taking a quote from Harrison out of context, Beck insinuates that the extensive quotes I provided from Harrison were somehow taken out of context. The political pressures Harrison referred to were "the natural human impatience to graduate from a lower status into a higher one marking progress toward the goal of final liberation from malaria, which itself brewed a powerful impatience especially among politicians." (p 238)
sod (#63),
The PAN link above (see #58) lists 36 countries as having banned DDT outright.
lol, my own fault. getting into discussion that i know very little about, out of sheer boredom....
makes me wonder why people like Erren always bring up stupid examples like Tanzania for the ban, if there are plenty real ones.
of course, bringing up Iceland would be slightly stupid as well. but perhaps you want to ask there government, why they decided to BAN DDT, instead of restricting it to anti-malaria spraying..
removing the european countries will significantly reduce your number.
i have a theory, why people don t use any of the remaining countries as their example of the "environmentalists caused the DDT ban" story.
it would be helpful if you could choose 1 (or a few more?) of those countries, that in your opinion show your case best. thanks in advance.
Tim,
Thanks for both allowing me to comment and not calling me a troll.
Since I do not have a copy of Harrison and must rely solely on the excerpts you provide, it is impossible to determine exactly what he means. For example, you once argued that Paul Ehrlich did not advocate the forced sterilization of Indians, citing as proof an excerpt from page 82 of your copy of the Population Bomb. It was eventually revealed, however, that on page 151 Ehrlich explicitly advocates forced vasectomization of Indian males.
You now argue that the unspecified many political pressures Harrison refers to relate solely to pressure "to get off the DDT" so that progress can be made in the fight against malaria. As this was before DDT resistance emerged as problem it is irrational to argue that anyone would apply pressure to discontinue the use of DDT IRS, then by far the most effective and cheapest available method of malaria control (in developing countries, anyway), as a prerequisite to eliminating the malaria problem.
sod,
The PAN link isn't working at the moment so I can't get to the particulars but the page notes 102 countries which prohibit DDT importation. I think it safe to assume this amounts to these 102 countries banning DDT use without explicityly banning DDT use.
The book that's the subject of this post doesn't actually propose that DDT is or has been banned (at least not in the excerpt you offer). The book correctly says "Western aid agencies discouraged the use of DDT and indoor residual spraying generally".
Arata Kochi, director of the WHO's malaria department, confirms the WHO's anti-DDT position:
"One powerful weapon against malaria was not being deployed. In a battle to save the lives of nearly one million children ever year - most of them in Africa - the world was reluctant to spray the inside of houses and huts with insecticides; especially with a highly effective insecticide known as dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane, or 'DDT'.
"Even though indoor spraying with DDT and other insecticides had been remarkably effective preventing malaria sickness and death where used, this strategy seemed to have been abandoned by most countries nearly 30 years ago. By the early 1980s, WHO was no longer actively promoting it."
The WHO's anti-DDT position is further confirmed by numerous WHO documents (the WHO Expert Committee on Malaria Twentieth Report, for example) making statements such as:
"DDT is being phased out because of its previous widespread use in the environment, and the resulting political and economic pressure."
USAID was also anti-DDT as evidenced by a letter from Environmental Defense castigating USAID for refusing to fund Indoor Residual Spraying with DDT.
As proof the WHO is not anti-DDT Tim Lambert frequently cites the following from a WHO document:
"WHO recommends indoor residual spraying of DDT for malaria vector control"
This single line is from a WHO DDT FAQ brochure; an unlikely place for the organization to promulgate policy. Further, it is important to read that single line in context:
"How is DDT used for malaria vector control?"
"WHO recommends indoor residual spraying of DDT for malaria vector control.3"
Thus, the brochure does not say that the WHO advocates DDT use; it simply says that DDT should be used, if it is used at all, for Indoor Residual Spraying against mosquitoes. Further, whenever Lambert cites that single line from the DDT FAQ brochure, he always omits reference note 3 from the end of the line. Reference note three refers to the WHO Expert Committee on Malaria Twentieth Report linked above. As previously noted, the report is not pro-DDT noting that DDT is being phased out. It is absurd of Lambert to claim the WHO advocates DDT use while it is in the process of phasing it out.
14:15 AWDT
"DDT is banned for general use and hasn't been used since the 1970s but can be used in the event of a health care emergency. So, effectively, DDT is banned but isn't explicitly banned"
Umm, no. DDT can be used if needed, but hasn't been needed. The dire consequences predicted by opponents of the US ban never eventuated.
On the history of the DDT myth, it's certainly true that the claims used by the tobacco lobby in the late 1990s were largely recycled from arguments used against the 1972 US ban on agricultural use. Since most of those arguments had been falsified by events, they were largely abandoned. A few people like J Gordon Edwards, writing in the La Rouche movement journals kept up the campaign. But it was only when Milloy and Bate, working for the tobacco lobby, got together with Edwards that the myth really took off.
As proof the WHO is not anti-DDT Tim Lambert frequently cites the following from a WHO document:
"WHO recommends indoor residual spraying of DDT for malaria vector control"
This single line is from a WHO DDT FAQ brochure; an unlikely place for the organization to promulgate policy. Further, it is important to read that single line in context:
"How is DDT used for malaria vector control?"
"WHO recommends indoor residual spraying of DDT for malaria vector control.3
So, you agree that DDT is not "banned"?
Alright, I can't believe I wasted my entire morning reading about DDT. Although I still do feel confused. I accept this as the best explanation I have read on Sri Lanka:
http://timlambert.org/2005/02/malaria/
So now I just want one example, as thorough as the Sri Lanka example above that shows me that a country stopped using DDT for POLITICAL REASONS and then was overtaken by malaria because of that. Sri Lanka clearly doesn't fit that bill. Is there a country that does? Maybe I need to go over to a DDT apologists board with this question since they are all into that.
John Quiggin,
Exactly what is your quibble? In describing the US DDT ban I relied on the EPA's 1972 press release "DDT Ban Takes Effect".
Fortunately, many of the predictions of dire consequences arising from the US DDT ban did not come true. Sadly, the prediction that the US DDT ban would contribute to an increased malaria toll were proved correct, if this Lancet article is to be believed:
"Since the early 1970s, DDT has been banned in industrialised countries and the interdiction was gradually extended to malarious countries. The bans occurred in response to continuous international and national pressures to eliminate DDT because of environmental concerns. Global trends of decreasing numbers of sprayed houses started with changing strategy from the vector-control approach to malaria control. Despite objections by notable malariologists18 (also Arnoldo Gabaldon19), the move away from spraying houses was progressively strengthened by WHO's malaria control strategies of 1969, 1979, and 1992. These strategies were adopted even though published WHO documents and committee reports have consistently and accurately characterised DDT-sprayed houses as the most cost effective and safe approach to malaria control.12,20-22 Changing the emphasis on house spraying was further strengthened by a WHO plan, first introduced by the Director General of WHO in 1979,23 to decentralise malaria-control programmes. This plan was adopted in World Health Assembly Resolution 38.24 in 1985.24 From then on, for countries to qualify for foreign or international assistance, they were expected to comply with WHO guidance on house spraying and to incorporate malaria control programmes into primary health-care systems. Additionally, assistance from industrialised countries was often specifically contingent on not using DDT."
The article also observes:
"Although many factors contribute to increasing malaria, the strongest correlation is with decreasing numbers of houses sprayed with dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT).1,7,8"
Thus pro-tobacco activists provided a valuable public service in publicizing a problem largely ignored in the West.
z,
In speaking of a DDT ban I refer to a de facto ban in the developing world. The ban results from anti-DDT pressures applied by environmentalists, and from the anti-DDT stance adopted by the world's major funders of anti-malaria programs - the World Bank, the WHO and USAID.
saurabh,
Please note that both Harrison and the WHO Expert Committee on Malaria Twentieth Report refer to the "political and economic pressures" to get off the DDT. It should now be abundantly clear to you that the political pressures are anti-DDT in nature.
18:43 AWDT
JF Beck - just buy the fucking book. Obviously you're not going to be satisfied with whatever quotes people post, because you can always claim that the REAL quote proving your point is lurking on some other page. So buy it yourself, read it, and find the relevant quotes. Until then, I think you should be giving those with the material at hand the benefit of the doubt?
z,
In speaking of a DDT ban I refer to a de facto ban in the developing world. The ban results from anti-DDT pressures applied by environmentalists, and from the anti-DDT stance adopted by the world's major funders of anti-malaria programs - the World Bank, the WHO and USAID.
ah, in the same sense that rightwing organizations who complain about the ddt ban have banned ddt, i.e. by never funding any ddt spraying! except that the World Bank, the WHO and USAID have funded some ddt spraying, so that just leaves the rightwing organizations who have banned it. shame shame!
Do you even read your own links, JFB? To quote from the EPA document you cite:
"Public health, quarantine, and a few minor crop uses were excepted, as well as export of the material." (emphasis added).
DDT isn't used for public health purposes in wealthy or even middle-income countries because there are superior, though more costly alternatives. But it wasn't banned in the US in 1972 and it never has been.
John Quiggin,
I wrote: "DDT is banned for general use and hasn't been used since the 1970s but can be used in the event of a health care emergency."
The EPA press release titled "DDT Ban Takes Effect" reads:
"The general use of the pesticide DDT will no longer be legal in the United States after today, ending nearly three decades of application during which time the once-popular chemical was used to control insect pests on crop and forest lands, around homes and gardens, and for industrial and commercial purposes.
"An end to the continued domestic usage of the pesticide was decreed on June 14, 1972, when William D. Ruckelshaus, Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, issued an order finally cancelling nearly all remaining Federal registrations of DDT products. Public health, quarantine, and a few minor crop uses were excepted, as well as export of the material."
Are you arguing that I should gave written "can be used for public health measures" (or some such) rather than "can be used in the event of a health care emergency"? Now there's a gotcha moment if ever I've seen one.
Regardless, DDT is effectively banned in the US as indicated by the title of the EPA press release, "DDT Ban Takes Effect".
saurabh,
Since you own the "fucking book" why not tease out from context what Harrison was talking about when he commented on the many political pressures to get of the DDT? If he was talking about many political pressure others than anti-DDT pressures it should be contextually obvious.
OK, JFB, we're agreed. As you say, DDT isn't banned for public health use in the US and never has been.
John Quiggin,
Your US DDT ban denialism is laughable. Here are but a few reputable sources confirming the ban - any permitted uses are obviously exceptions to the ban.
Extoxnet (A Pesticide Information Project of Cooperative Extension Offices of Cornell University, Oregon State University, the University of Idaho, and the University of California at Davis and the Institute for Environmental Toxicology, Michigan State University.): "DDT was banned from use in the United States in 1972, and remains banned barring public health emergency (e.g., outbreak of malaria) (73)."
EPA: "DDT and toxaphene were banned in 1972 and 1990, respectively, so there should be no new inputs into the environment."
EPA: "On December 13, 1973, the Court ruled that there was "substantial evidence" in the record to support the EPA Administrator's ban on DDT."
EPA: "Even though DDT has been banned since 1972, it can take more than 15 years to break down in our environment."
EPA: "New DDT Report Confirms Data Supporting 1972 Ban, Finds Situation Improving"
Environmental Defense: "The DDT ban is viewed as the first major success of the modern environmental movement."
Sierra Club: "Incredibly, Tierney finds it "debatable" that restrictions on DDT protected wildlife--a position easily refuted by the remarkable return from near extinction of the brown pelican, peregrine falcon, and bald eagle after the chemical was banned in the United States."
Various scholarly articles.
Various news outlets.
Dr Alan Lymbery & Professor Andrew Thompson, Parasitology Unit, Division of Health Sciences, Murdoch University: "The manufacture and use of DDT was banned in the US in 1972, on the advice of the US Environmental Protection Agency." (They're wrong about the manufacturing ban.)
Jim Norton: "DDT was not banned in any developed country till the 1970s (Curtis). It was not banned in the United States, that hotbed of "environmental hysteria", until 1972, and even then there were exemptions for health emergencies and some agricultural uses."
John Quiggin: "Now it's turned out that one of the hardiest of parallel universe beliefs, the claim that Rachel Carson and the US ban on DDT were responsible for millions of deaths in the third world, arises from the same source."
Do you still contend the US DDT ban isn't a ban? (I contemplate you'll try to spin your way out of this but if you do you're going to look pretty silly.)
Yes, J.F., we all know DDT was banned in the US, with exceptions for outbreaks of disease. The point the Rachel Carson haters are making is that it was totally banned outside the US, which is just false.
Jeff Beck, if tomorrow it was discovered there was a malaria-bearing insect vector in the US that was resistant to the other major insecticide groups, then by the day after tomorrow DDT would be being used to bring it under control.
DDT isn't used in the US because there are superior alternatives and the cost differences between them (after allowing for differences in dosages) are minimal.
I must admit -- J F Beck's ability to hear just exactly what he wants to hear is mighty impressive.
From #87:
From #87:
Is it just me, or did Beck's very first reference destroy his point? Yes; DDT was banned in the US for agricultural use in 1972. No; public health uses were not banned, but were explicitly excluded from the ban. Ruckelshaus even went out of his way to stress that such uses in other countries would not be affected, saying:
I make it Quiggin 1, Beck 0 on the facts.
But Beck loses a style point for using "laughable" in a comment.
jre,
John Quiggin (#85):
"DDT isn't used for public health purposes in wealthy or even middle-income countries because there are superior, though more costly alternatives. But it wasn't banned in the US in 1972 and it never has been."
If DDT wasn't banned in the US in 1972, why do you say at your blog that it was?
Quiggin also says "the DDT ban myth was invented by tobacco lobbyists". He is wrong. The flow-on effects to malarious areas of a US ban were recognized even before the ban was implemented and were widely discussed immediately post-ban.
Further, the DDT ban is no myth. I prefer to refer to it as a de facto ban but it can rightly be called a ban in light of the OED offering the following definition of "ban":
"Practical denunciation, prohibition, or outlawry, not formally pronounced, as that of society or public opinion."
Anything else you want to clarified?
Why, yes. Since you ask ...
As noted above, and as you have acknowledged, the agricultural ban did not extend to public health uses of DDT, and specifically its use against malaria vectors. Since the question before us is whether regulation of DDT had an adverse effect on public health, isn't it kind of silly to consistently use the word "ban" as if such a distinction did not exist?
And isn't it more than a little misleading to pretend, as you do here, that your interlocutor used the word "ban" as just such a blunt tool?
And when you say
did you honestly consider this to be some kind of gotcha, as if a tactic of deliberate misunderstanding were some kind of brilliant rhetorical jujitsu?
And is it your impression that your audience are a gaggle of chumps, to be impressed by childish wordplay?
And finally: do you consider there to be no important difference between a ban on agricultural uses of a chemical, and a ban on that chemical's application to fighting disease? Because if a ban is a ban is a ban to you, I think we can save each other a lot of time in the future.
jre,
Not wanting to lose any more style points I will resist the urge to characterize this post's premise and supporting comments as laughable.
Tim Lambert alleges at the outset that the book Fighting the Diseases of Poverty repeats the "DDT ban myth". In fact, the excerpt provided by Lambert mentions nothing even remotely resembling a DDT use prohibition with the book observing simply that the WHO and "most Western aid agencies" had, until recently, "discouraged the use of DDT and indoor residual spraying generally". The book is factually correct.
Lambert not only denies the existence of a global DDT ban (de facto or de jure) he argues there was never a realistic threat DDT would be banned as part of the POPs treaty:
Thus we have a computer scientist rewriting history in claiming that the over 400 persons - including three Nobel laureates and many medical and malaria experts - who signed the Malaria Foundation International's letter appealing against the proposed ban were reacting to a purely imaginary threat. No doubt the letter's signatories were duped by pro-tobacco activists.
In this thread John Quiggin starts off by claiming that the global DDT ban (or mythical ban as he regards it) was invented by pro-tobacco lobbyists. On being challenged he admits that pro-tobacco lobbyists did not invent the notion of a global DDT ban. Quiggin then changes tack to challenge my terming the US DDT ban a "general use" ban, this despite referring to the US ban as a ban in the same comment (#79). In a subsequent comment (#85) Quiggin goes out on and limb and saws it off behind him by posting this little gem:
Well, since even the implementing agency (the EPA) refers to the US ban as a ban, as do numerous knowledgeable persons (including yourself and Quiggin) and organizations, I think it entirely reasonable to refer to the ban as a ban. That DDT use for public health is exempted from this ban is irrelevant because DDT has not, as far as I know, been used for public health purposes since being banned for general (not just agricultural) use in 1972. Thus during the period following the US ban and prior to DDT use rethinks by USAID and the WHO it was unreasonable to expect foreign governments to adopt DDT use, except in dire circumstances. Further, recommendations by western aid agencies that developing countries use DDT for IRS are unlikely to be persuasive when DDT has not been used in the US (and other Western nations) since being banned and is highly unlikely to ever be used there again - if you can imagine a scenario in which DDT use would be appropriate in the US I'd much appreciate you describing it.
As evidence of the flow-on effects of the US general use ban I refer you to the right-wing, pro-tobacco loonies at Wikipedia and the Guardian. And here's Apoorva Mandavilli, Nature Medicine's senior news editor, describing the de facto global ban:
Shorter version: we've never needed to use after 1972 it since malaria's not a problem here any more, therefore we haven't used it, therefore it's a ban.
ROTFLMAO!
"USAID never banned DDT outright, for instance, but nor did it fund DDT's purchase--which amounts to the same thing. "
USAID also refuses to fund abortions, does this mean there's a global ban on abortions?
Poor Jeff, he desperately wants his 50 (or is it 100? or 500?) million dead African babies, murdered by the evil environmentalists.
At this point I imagine he'd settle for as few as 10 million dead babies.
dhogaza,
There is indeed much hilarity here at Deltoid.
To make the case, in an earlier post, that anti-DDT pressures played no part in the resurgence of malaria in Ceylon Tim Lambert selectively quotes from Andrew Spielman's Mosquito: A Natural History of Our Most Persistent and Deadly Foe. In a later thread a reader points out that Lambert failed to note Spielman's description of the de facto ban following-on from the US ban:
Lambert's response is as pithy as yours:
Lambert can't be claiming there is no US DDT ban because in many contemporaneous posts he refers to the US ban, as he does here in writing "EPA's ban on DDT in 1972". So Lambert is claiming that Spielman is wrong to claim there is no global ban. He makes this spurious claim rather than admit Spielman is correct in what he actually says. The problem is, the Spielman quote does not even hint at a global ban. Rather, Spielman describes the negative consequences following-on from the US ban. Whereas he does not ascribe any human fatalities to the de facto DDT ban it is contextually obvious that he sees diminished DDT use following the US ban as counter productive - because DDT has unique anti-malaria properties.
Regardless, it is beyond doubt that the officially promulgated US DDT ban contributed to anti-DDT pressures worldwide, these pressures resulting in an informal worldwide DDT ban (a de facto ban or informal ban). Just a reminder that the OED shows the following as a definition of ban:
Such informal bans are subject only to informal enforcement, unlike the officially enforceable US ban. Such informal bans are quite common and are often very effective.
By now my position on DDT use should be clear. It should also be clear that my views on the DDT ban (formal in the US and many other nations, informal elsewhere) remain totally consistent.
If you loyal Deltoid commenters want to argue I'm wrong that's fine by me. But it would be nice if you made an actual argument.
Ian Gould,
USAID refusing to fund DDT use amounts to a USAID ban of DDT use, does it not? With USAID, the World Bank and the WHO refusing to support the anti-malaria use of DDT, a de facto ban was in effect - with these organizations not supporting DDT use, who did?
Glad you can make light of the possibility of millions of dead African babies. Would it bother you at all if one baby died due to malaria that might have been prevented by DDT?
My name isn't Jeff, by the way. But since you get nothing else right...
So, I take it, if you don't use DDT as an underarm deoderant, it's a de facto ban?
"USAID refusing to fund DDT use amounts to a USAID ban of DDT use, does it not?"
No it doesn't.
"Glad you can make light of the possibility of millions of dead African babies."
No I'm making light of the fabrication and falsification of claims of huge numbers of dead African babies for political purposes.
Tell me, do you spend 1/100th of the energy you do on this issue on actual real killers of African babies like malnutrition and armed conflict?
"Would it bother you at all if one baby died due to malaria that might have been prevented by DDT?"
To be blunt - given that millions (literally) of children die every year in the developing world of entirely preventable diseases such as gastro-enteritis - no a single preventable death from malaria would not upset me greatly.
Not compared to the several million deaths we know for a fact could be prevented every year by making oral rehydration therapy universally available (at a cost of around $1 per life saved).
Say, maybe if we can blame Rachel Carson and Greenpeace for the lack of funding for oral rehydration, micronutrient programs and public sanitation he can find a new hobby-horse.
Tell me Jeff, does the possibility that a single death might have been caused by IRS spraying with DDT in an area where the local mosquito population was resistant to DDT concern you?
Ian Gould,
In 2004 Environmental Defense's John Balbus, MD, MPH castigated USAID for refusing to fund Indoor Residual Spraying with DDT. Balbus's letter not only notes the USAID imposed de facto DDT ban, it also describes the USAID ban as a direct follow-on from the 1972 US ban:
Now I doubt Balbus wrote the letter at the behest of tobacco companies. Regardless, you will probably argue that he wouldn't have a clue what he's talking about.
You then suggest that I am involved in a "fabrication and falsification of claims of huge numbers of dead African babies for political purposes." Adding that I should perhaps put less effort into writing about the fight against malaria and more effort into the "actual real killers of African babies like malnutrition and armed conflict". Apparently you think the World Health Organization is deluded - tobacco companies again, perhaps? - when it notes that malaria is "the single biggest cause of death of young children in Africa and one of the most important threats to the health of pregnant women and their newborns". In reality, it is you who fabricates and falsifies.
Finally, I would indeed be upset if any deaths resulted from DDT use in areas where mosquitoes are resistant. All IRS programs should be supervised by experts who are qualified to determine which insecticides are situationally appropriate. There is therefore no excuse for an ineffective insecticide being used in any circumstance, ever.
"Apparently you think the World Health Organization is deluded - tobacco companies again, perhaps? - when it notes that malaria is "the single biggest cause of death of young children in Africa and one of the most important threats to the health of pregnant women and their newborns"."
Now show me the bit where the WHO says all those deaths could be avoided if not for the Green Nazis and their fiendish plot to depopulate Africa.
Ian Gould writes: "Now show me the bit where the WHO says all those deaths could be avoided if not for the Green Nazis and their fiendish plot to depopulate Africa."
All? The best I can do is lots. From a 2006 WHO news release titled "WHO gives indoor use of DDT a clean bill of health for controlling malaria":
Thankyou, you are very entertaining.
Well I did accuse you of childish wordplay, so I guess I
should have expected some variation on
the argumentum ad neener neener in
response.
Anyway, thanks for answering my question.
Yes; you really do expect us to be impressed and persuaded by your
defining the word "ban" to mean just what you want it to mean, then
pretending that everyone else in the world must intend it in just that
way. It has the virtue of simplicity, as rhetorical gimmicks go, and
you do seem rather proud of it, so I won't knock it.
In any event, it may not be needed any
longer, since you have clarified your position, viz.:
This is great! We may now move on from the meaning of the word "ban" to a more formal
argument:
Major Premise: If, so far as Beck knows, DDT was not used for
public health purposes after 1972 (when it was too banned for
general, not just agricultural purposes, so there), then any exemption
for public health uses is irrelevant.
Minor Premise: So far as Beck knows, DDT was not used for
public health purposes after 1972.
Conclusion: Any exemption for public health uses is
irrelevant. Haha! In your face, Mr. Environmentalist Smartypants!
While I do applaud any move toward discussion of how environmental
policy might have affected the incidence of disease, and away from the
discussion of when is a ban not a ban, I do have (you guessed it) two
objections to this argument:
1) Strategies for combating malaria were changing dramatically long before the ban on
agricultural use took effect, and for reasons that had nothing to do
with the actions of any environmental agency or advocacy group. Since
DDT use could and did decline for those reasons, it is not valid to
blame any decline in use on a ban, whether complete, partial, de
facto or de jure.
2) DDT was used for public health purposes after 1972.
Let's talk about your major premise first. Taking US production and
export of DDT as a proxy for domestic and world consumption, we can see
from this
report (p. 149) that US consumption peaked in 1959 at 79 million pounds, declining steadily therafter, while exports reached
an all-time peak of 114 million pounds in 1963, a minor peak of
109 million pounds in 1968, then dropped like a rock. Now, if we were
into squeezing the facts into our preferred narrative,
we might be able to blame Rachel Carson for the first decline
in exports after Silent Spring (1962), but that wouldn't
explain the decline in US consumption starting three years before, and it sure
wouldn't take care of the resurgence in exports, then the precipitous
decline after 1968. Is there a better explanation? Yes.
It is clear from accounts taken at the time that public health
agencies around the world were in no way held hostage to environmental
advocates. They wanted more than anything to use whatever weapon was
most effective against malaria, but DDT was losing its effectiveness.
Nevertheless, they continued to use it, after Silent Spring,
after the EPA decision -- indeed, after it had ceased to have much
effect at all in some places:
So, Beck, after all this what I see is that:
1) You were mistaken, and Quiggin correct, as to the public health
use exemption, though he did commit the offense of using the word
"ban" in a non-Beck-approved manner.
2) Your point regarding the origin of the DDT ban myth is well
taken. The idea that EPA's actions, or environmental advocacy, caused an increase in malaria
deaths did originate some time before tobacco lobbyists seized on it
as an ideological lever. Quiggin is still right that they were its
most effective popularizers.
3) Your many links related to discussion of DDT and malaria are very
useful. But surely it can't have escaped your notice
that in all those links there is no substantial support for the notion that DDT
was abandoned anywhere it was working as a result of a ban. When even
you, who have made a career of promoting just that notion, cannot come
up with more than this, doesn't it suggest that the whole idea is an
increasingly threadbare line of malarkey?
[1] Gordon Harrison, Mosquitoes,
Malaria and Man: A History of the Hostilities Since 1880,
E.P. Dutton, New York, 1978, p. 257
[2]
Harrison, op cit., p. 255.
By the way, this book is
easy
to get. Why don't you get it, if only to read along?
"The outcome of the treaty is arguably better than the statuÂÂs quo going into the negotiations over two years ago. For the firsÂt timeÂ, there is now an insecticide which is restricted to vector coÂntrol onlÂy, meaning that the selection of resistant mosquitoes wiÂll be slower thÂan before."
http://www.malaria.org/DDTpage.html
"CorrÂelating the use of DDT in El Salvador with renewed malaria transmission, it can be estimated that at current rates each kilo of insecticide addÂed to the environment will generate 105 new cases of malaria." -Chapin, Georgeanne & Robert Wasserstrom, "Agricultural production anÂd malaria resurgence in Central America and India", Nature, Vol. 293,  1981, p181-185
jre,
Yet more silly word-play when you accuse me of "defining the word 'ban' to mean just what you want it to mean, then pretending that everyone else in the world must intend it in just that way". My use of ban conforms with the OED (see #92 above) and with Webster's Third New International Dictionary which offers the following definition of ban the verb: "to prohibit esp. by legal means or social pressure the performance, activities, dissemination, or use of". Here are the relevant entries for ban the noun: "5: legal prohibition: official interdict" and "6: censure or condemnation esp. through public opinion, social pressure, or moral or ethical considerations: severe disapproval".
I consistently refer to the 1972 US legal prohibition of DDT use as a ban and for clarity refer to the various official and unofficial anti-DDT pressures resulting in DDT's shunning as a de facto ban. Exactly how I'm meant to have manipulated the meaning of ban has me stumped. Please elaborate.
John Quggin first takes exception to my describing the 1972 US ban as a "general ban" even though I note its exemption for use for public health measures. He then goes further in stating: "But it wasn't banned in the US in 1972 and it never has been." To prove that DDT is indeed banned in the US I provided links (see #88) to a select few sources referring to the 1972 US ban as a ban - included amongst which is a link to Quiggin referring to the 1972 US ban as a ban. Quiggin is therefore clearly mistaken in claiming that the 1972 US DDT ban is not a ban.
Now if you read my comment #94 you'll note that both USAID and the World Bank banned DDT use despite the public health exemption in the US - the USAID DDT ban is further confirmed by Environmental Defense's John Balbus (see # 102). The US DDT public health exemption also failed to sway the WHO, which moved away from DDT use (see #104). Thus the US DDT public health exemption appears to have done exactly nothing to encourage the public health use of DDT in developing countries since the WHO, USAID and the World Bank were at the time the major funders of anti-malaria programs and were anti-DDT.
That the world moved away from DDT is hardly surprising considering it is unsuited for broadcast use. From what I can gather Tim Lambert is essentially correct in describing the development of DDT resistance amongst Sri Lanka's mosquitoes and the impact this had on anti-malaria efforts there. I am of the opinion, however, that Sri Lanka's anti-malaria program was subject to anti-DDT political pressures which caused the program to use DDT in fits and starts, almost as if the program's managers were trying to breed up a resistant mosquito population. To prove my point I quoted Harrison's description of "the manifold political and economic pressures to get off the DDT wherever it seemed even marginally possible". No one has yet explained what these manifold pressures might relate to if not to anti-DDT pressures.
In regard to Sri Lanka it is worth noting that Tim Lambert claimed soon after the Boxing Day tsunami that malathion and not DDT would be used there because it "will actually be able to kill the mosquitoes there". Lambert later admitted that mosquitoes in Sri Lanka are resistant to malathion and promised to correct his error but the tsunami post is as of now uncorrected. Why?
z,
Thankyou for bringing up the peer reviewed article by Chapin and Wasserstrom here discussed by Tim Lambert:
Is Lambert correct? Well, no. For one thing, the graph referred to incorrectly shows over 30 million malaria cases in India in 1977 when malaria cases actually peaked at 6.47 million in 1976. Further, malaria cases increased not because India had been saturated with DDT but rather because the country's anti-malaria program had been temporarily discontinued. Lambert later admits the Chapin and Wasserstrom article to be seriously flawed.
So Mr Beck, now that the supposed ban has supposedly been lifted, what annual reduction in the malaria death toll can we expect. 90%? 50%? 20%?
Of course, neither [USAID](http://www.usaid.gov/our_work/global_health/id/malaria/news/afrmal_ddt…) nor the [World Bank](http://timlambert.org/2005/08/ddt11/) ever banned DDT use.
As anyone who has read Harrison could tell you, the WHO plan for malaria eradication tried to get areas off DDT as quickly as possible in order to prevent the evolution of DDT resistance. Beck gets it completely backwards as well.
India has never suspended its anti-malaria program and has been using DDT the whole time.
Ian Gould,
How about we wait and see what the results are for a properly run DDT IRS program?
Tim Lambert,
USAID's Assistant Administrator for Global Health, E. Anne Peterson, MD, MPH, admits that the organization did not fund DDT use (see #102 above). Donald R Roberts accounts for USAID's refusal to fund DDT use:
The link you provide (to one of your earlier posts) is less than persuasive that the World Bank supported DDT use. India did indeed receive World Bank funding for DDT use but the World Bank wasn't all that happy doing so:
As India manufactures DDT for domestic use it did have some leverage here.
Your Madagascar link indicates that anti-DDT pressures were felt there:
With the World Bank responding as expected:
Your Solomon Islands link is ultimately to a multi-year field trial comparing various malaria control methods. The trial was a collaborative effort by the "Development Research Group (DRG) and East Asia and Pacific Region Human Development Sector (EASHD), World Bank, as a contribution to the preparation of the Solomon's Health Sector Development Project". The report resulting from this trial concluding:
The report says nothing about the World Bank funding DDT use beyond the scope of the field trial which ended in 1998. Interestingly, the report does note, contrary to your assertions, that bednets are not a good stand-alone malaria preventative. Can you perhaps provide a link showing World Bank funding for DDT use in the Solomon Islands since 1998? (The World Bank would naturally want to fund DDT use since the field trial shows it to be an effective malaria control, right?)
Regarding India's anti-malaria program I was perhaps overstating the situation somewhat in saying it was "temporarily discontinued". Here's the Pesticide Action Network's summary of V P Sharma's view:
Here's an excerpt from the Sharma abstract:
I do not have access to the full text at the moment and expect you'll tell me if I've got it wrong.
Finally, here's the off the top of my head view of Ceylon's DDT resistance problem - again, I'm sure you'll let me know if I get it wrong. That mosquitoes would develop resistance to DDT was recognized from near the beginning (if not from the start) of eradication efforts. Thus the intention was to launch a heavy but short term (maximum ten years) DDT attack. If Ceylon did indeed use DDT in fits and starts (stopping due to anti-DDT pressures and later resuming due to outbreaks) this seems the ideal way to breed a DDT resistant mosquito population - the DDT resistant population would likely explode during periods when DDT was not used for IRS. In any event, DDT was used in Ceylon for longer than the intended 10 years. If I am correct, malaria reemerged as a problem in Ceylon due to administrative and scientific incompetence ultimately deriving from pressure to get off the DDT, with broadcast use merely acting as a complicating factor.
Regardless, your DDT posts are littered with inaccuracies. By the way, if I remember correctly, you corrected the malathion in Sri Lanka error but the correction has since disappeared. What happened?
The DDT resistance from spraying indoors for malaria is not the problem. The DDT resistance from spraying huge areas with huge amounts for growing cotton, is.
And thanks for drawing my attention to the correction to Chapin and Wasserstrom. All the more embarassing, that I commented on it at the time.....