Today's WSJ reports (link for subscribers):
The World Health Organization, in a sign that widely used methods of fighting malaria have failed to bring the catastrophic disease under control, plans to announce today that it will encourage the use of DDT, even though the pesticide is banned or tightly restricted in much of the world.
The new guidelines from the United Nations public-health agency support the spraying of small amounts of DDT, or dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane, on walls and other surfaces inside homes in areas at highest risk of malaria. The mosquito-borne disease infects as many as 500 million people a year and kills about a million. Most victims are in sub-Saharan Africa and under the age of 5. . . . .
DDT already is on a list of WHO-approved chemicals for indoor spraying. But until now, the agency hadn't strongly endorsed its use, and donors funding malaria programs were reluctant to finance purchases of it. As a result, countries hit hardest by malaria generally have been unable to afford substantial supplies. The WHO's new stance is aimed partly at encouraging even countries that ban the pesticide to help finance its use in areas ravaged by the disease. . . .
Other pesticides and malaria-fighting methods have often proved to be less-effective and more costly than DDT. Insecticide-treated mosquito nets hung in sleeping areas are successful, but cost, distribution problems and varying usage make them less effective than they could be. Malaria experts say deployment of a malaria vaccine that is now in development could still be years away.
Pressure has been growing in the past few years for the WHO to support DDT more aggressively. Jon Liden, a spokesman for the Global Fund, which pays for indoor spraying of DDT or other pesticides in 41 countries, says the organization welcomes the WHO's move. "The Global Fund....is ready to finance increased use of the strategy if affected countries request it," he says.
The U.S. government has stepped up support for indoor pesticide spraying of homes in Africa. While it spent less than $1 million on such programs in 2005, it plans to spend $20 million in fiscal 2007, according to Admiral R. Timothy Ziemer, coordinator of the President's Malaria Initiative and the U.S. Agency for International Development's malaria programs. This year, the U.S. government purchased DDT for a spraying program in Zambia.
This seems like a very positive development. While excessive DDT use in the United States was linked to reproductive problems in several bird species, respnsible indoor spraying of DDT is an important, cost-effective component to a comprehensive malaria-control strategy in developing nations.
Related Posts (on one page):
- More on WHO's New Support of DDT:
- WHO Backs DDT Use:
We do! We do!
Nope, sorry; still sounds like a bad idea to me. Yes, in theory, such responsible use might have low enough impact to be an acceptable trade-off. However, "The difference between theory and practice is that in theory there is no difference between theory and practice, but in practice there usually is." Consider as comparison the historical (ab)use of antibiotics in the developing world; over-, under-, and sheer mis-prescription led to the evolution of ultra-resistant disease strains.
While the evolution of a DDT resistant mosquito seems biochemically unlikely, I don't see how the proposal would ensure that the use of the DDT would remain as limited as proposed. What will keep this stuff from being swiped to the black market, and then abused in all the classic ways by the same grade of ignorant folk who believe that polio vaccines spread AIDS and cause sterility? And worse, DDT is obviously good for killing bugs — so why not use it to kill bugs outside the home?
Let me repeat: bad idea.
The 1948 Nobel Prize in Medicine was for the discovery of DDT. It was a big deal because it was effective and much safer than other insecticides around people.
According to this tutorial accompanying Mark Ridley's textbook on Evolution, DDT-resistant mosquitos were first identified in India in 1959, and they remain at low frequency only when DDT use is minimal.
Here's what the Washington Post says:
I'm not sure about the 1959/1949 discrepency between Ridley and the Wash Post. Perhaps a typo, or perhaps they are describing different populations.
Googling "DDT resistance" will turn up scientific papers describing the biochemical and genetic basis for DDT resistance.
Wake up -- the science is on the side of DDT use,
Simple, safe and extrodinarily effective.
thedaddy
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/ddt/
I discount them all.
BTW DDT use was banned because of the supposed effect on birds not because of its ineffectiveness on mosquitoes.
thedaddy
Articles in the WaPo are unreliable
I also gave a link to a standard textbook on evolutionary biology and suggested that you could peruse the primary scientific literature.
BTW DDT use was banned because of the supposed effect on birds not because of its ineffectiveness on mosquitoes.
The Wash Post article didn't claim otherwise. It claimed that by the time DDT was banned in the US, resistance in mosquito populations was already reducing the usefulness of pesticide. If it had continued in common use, its effectiveness would be even lower today.
DDT can be a useful component of malaria control if used in combination with other unrelated pesticides -- this requires careful control, because some mutations can cause resistance to multiple pesticides. DDT resistance can also make an insect resistant to pyrethroids which are another very important group of pesticides with low toxicity to humans. DDT is not a magic bullet, and if its overuse had continued in the 1970s, it would probably be almost useless today. We can actually count ourselves lucky that it is still effective against mosquitos. Fruitflies are almost 100% resistant, because DDT-resistance confers other advantages. (see: McCart et al. (2005) Current Biology 15:R587-R589)
Yes, this is clearly true for all the left. Thank you for this keen and accurate observation.
But more on topic, I'm strongly in favor of limited DDT use in situations like this. Those few people on the left who might really think birds are more important than people (like those few people on the right who think a tiny clump of cells is more important than the human being carrying them), clearly have to re-assess their priorities.
Then you're not on the left. You just grew up thinking the left was cool. But as you grew up and thought about it you started abandoning their crazy ideas, but you still want to identify with the left because you can't admit that the right was right all along.
You are correct, because large political tendencies are best defined by one's relative feelings towards birds and mosquitos.
I hate mosquitos and like birds. But where does that put me? Is there an online quiz I can take somewhere?
Some of us grew up think the right was cool because it represented freedom and capitalism. Then the last 6 years happened and now it suddenly equals Jesus, massive gov't power, and run-away spending. But if it's still strongly anti-mosquito maybe I'll stick around.
Rachel Carson was an idiot, but I don’t know about a foaming part. A long time ago I read a critique of her book “Silent Spring.” Some of the accusations didn’t seem credible (how could she be that stupid) so I went out and bought the book. Egad she did write that! Here is one example. She claimed that the percentage of children dying from leukemia was much greater in 1970 than in 1900 and this proved that the chemical industry was dangerous because exposure was so much less in 1900. Let’s put aside the fact that records from 1900 might not be as accurate as in 1970. What she didn’t grasp is the concept of competing risks. By 1970 we had already cured or prevented most of the childhood diseases that killed children in 1900. So naturally the fraction of the children dying from leukemia would increase—duh. She really needed to compare incidence rates.
After that experience I tended to scrutinize claims by environmentalists much more carefully, and have generally found them to be a pack liars and ignoramuses. I actually worked in the field for about four years doing risk assessment, mostly the effects of air pollution on trees. I was lucky; the people I worked with were sane and intelligent, but to my dismay I found out they were an unusual bunch.
http://www.junkscience.com/ddtfaq.htm
"To only a few chemicals does man owe as great a debt as to DDT... In little more than two decades, DDT has prevented 500 million human deaths, due to malaria, that otherwise would have been inevitable."
[National Academy of Sciences, Committee on Research in the Life Sciences of the Committee on Science and Public Policy. 1970. The Life Sciences; Recent Progress and Application to Human Affairs; The World of Biological Research; Requirements for the Future.]
Why? Do you understand the biochemicals at issue? Do you understand how DDT kills insects, and how a DDT-resistance gene would, in theory, function?
Neither do I, so I don't mean to be snarky.
The thing is, it's already happened. A very small percentage of the population of at least some mosquito species was already carrying the genes before DDT was even invented.
Starting from that small group, if you throw DDT into the mix, that group is going to multiply much faster than the non-resistant group.
Carson, a renowned nature author and a former marine biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, was uniquely equipped to create so startling and inflammatory a book.
Silent Spring took Carson four years to complete. It meticulously described how DDT entered the food chain and accumulated in the fatty tissues of animals, including human beings, and caused cancer and genetic damage.
One of the landmark books of the 20th century, Silent Spring's message resonates loudly today, even several decades after its publication.
Her careful preparation, however, had paid off. Anticipating the reaction of the chemical industry, she had compiled Silent Spring as one would a lawyer's brief, with no fewer than 55 pages of notes and a list of experts who had read and approved the manuscript.
From Wikipedia on Silent Spring.
In short: very bad for raptors, harmless to chickens and other gallinaceous birds that were often used as study subjects. Minimum direct human impact. Indoor spraying is good for malaria control. Outdoor spraying, particularly agricultural, renders indoor spraying ineffective and gets you back to square one in just a few years.
Allowing indoor spraying while controlling agricultural use may be very hard, because there are huge incentives to use a little DDT on your crops if the usage is otherwise rare.
This BS about "environmentalists killing people" is really depressing - it's sad to see important arguments hijacked by such irresponsible rhetoric, because lives are at stake.
We must ban DDT because everybody will use it inappropriately and bring a plague of resistant insects or kill off all the birds.
We must ban guns because everybody will kill each other with them.
We must ban witty double entendre speech on airwaves because otherwise everybody will broadcast filth to our children 24/7/365.
We must ban drugs because everybody will use them and become crazed killers or at least lazy loafers.
We must ban "hate speech" everybody will use it to oppress somebody.
We must ban political speech before elections because everybody rich will buy more political speech than somebody poor, and get elected.
We must ban fatty foods because everybody will eat themselves to an early death or burden the healthcare system.
In aggregate, the ultimate agenda seems to be to ban everything because otherwise everybody will always do the wrong thing.
The underlying rationale is always that everybody is either so craven or so stupid, that disaster will ensue if anybody is allowed to do anything, anytime, anywhere.
Maybe we should just get on with it.
I, for one, welcome our new impoverished and powerless, thin, sober, gunless, politically correct speaking, non-insecticide-resistant insect overlords.
[1] "everybody" means "everybody but me and thee, and I'm not too sure about thee".
However, the radical anti-DDT legislation that her book created was due almost entirely to panic at Carson's shriller, and later disproven, assertions that DDT was responsible for a plethora of deadly diseases in humans. It is hard for me to generate a lot of sympathy, let alone respect, for the woman and her followers.
By the way, a natural experiment involving human consumption of DDT started sometime either before or at the beginning of WW II. A standard bar drink at the time was a "Mickey Slim", a shot of gin with a tablespoon or so of DDT mixed in. The mother of a friend bartended during the War and used to mix this drink regualarly. She said that the addition of DDT was supposed to give drinkers a bit of a buzz. There's no evidence that drinking them caused any permanent harm.
That’s true-- she was limited by the data available at that time. But that does not explain her inability to reason correctly about evidence and inference. Either that or she deliberately intended to mislead her readers about the human effects. The latter is a possibility as many people feel it’s ok to be deceptive in pursuit of a greater good.
But, again, as others have pointed out above, the best use is sparingly and in the boundaries of the homes, depending both on its repellent and its killing actions, not dumping tons of it out of airplanes flying over whole counties. Raptors will not be likely to get much, even up the food chain, that way. Perhaps make it so that it can only be sold in small cans or something, with no bulk sales, even to governments.
What worries and greatly saddens me is that no one is out there researching the next generation of super-insecticides. Think about how glorious it was to discover something that could be made cheaply, had no harmful effect on humans (the species we should all care about the most...) and was very effective at killing its target. Okay, some some birds may have suffered declining numbers. But the next generation of DDT (maybe named DDT-light) could have solved this problem (or non-problem, if you don't buy into "species extinction" theories of tree huggers). In other words, human ingenuity could've moved us up one more level.
But that's not going to happen. According to Harper's, no one is looking to invent this kind of stuff any more. Whether it's mosquitos in Minnesota, bed bugs in NYC or fire ants in VA, no one is looking for substitute pesticides and the once-conquered pests are making a triumphant return.
Why? Because, like any and all industries in the history of mankind, once government is given license to kill ideas before they are born, the industry built upon such ideas dies. Just imagine if an agency like the EPA could control the development of software. I'd be typing this in Wordstar or a selectric typewriter.
In another Harpers (or maybe it was Atlantic) article, the author wrote how some popular herbicide is soon to be banned because some sub-species of a sub-species of frogs develop more deformed testes when exposed to it. That's it! That's all it takes to end the production of something that benefits millions of humans by significantly boosting agricultural production. And even worse, no one is spending money to find alternatives because the licensing process is more onerous than the one needed to build a refinery or fill a bloody wetland.
Now that's news.
Bring back DDT. Woohoo.
http://www.cdc.gov/malaria/history/index.htm
http://www.epa.gov/history/topics/ddt/01.htm
There would also be real evidence of harmful effects, agreed upon by all scientists, rather than the wide agreement by scientists that it is probably harmless to humans, while only environmentalists consider it dangerous. Lives are at stake, and environmentalists (and socialistic governments and the UN) are to blame for the deaths due to malaria in Africa that could have been prevented with DDT.
As to the concern "What worries and greatly saddens me is that no one is out there researching the next generation of super-insecticides. ... According to Harper's, no one is looking to invent this kind of stuff any more."
Actually, government has not killed off this industry. There are some great insecticides and herbicides being made for agricultural use that are biochemically genius and cannot harm humans or mammals - literally cannot - but you'll still find them as targets of the environmentalist movement. Consider Roundup.
The biochemical pathway only exists in plants, I learned about it in my biochemistry class and there is no reason to be concerned that any amount of it (short of drowning yourself drinking it) could hurt a human. The pathway simply doesn't exist in humans, nor in mammals generally. Yet, the environmentalists claim that it is more evil than the last one, of course.
Finally, being a bunch of lawyers, you might actually try and look for the laws and regulations that you think banned DDT worldwide. Please note that a ban for agricultural use is not a ban against use as an insecticide. Here is a place to start.
It was the WSJ that said it was "banned or tightly restricted worldwide". I think most people here would recognize that its not actually banned worldwide, however many African countries have policies against its use and it is therefor not imported and is difficult to get. Those who need it are left without it because the UN, the environmental groups and the various governments are against it, discourage it and sometimes regulate it.
Army Protocol was to place the fogger in the center of camp and pop the top. It would then spray for some minutes. As usually happens when you release pressure from a can for a long period of time, the fogger would cool down, eventually icing up.
Accepted Field Procedures, then, was to place [warm] beer around the base of the fogger. Pop the top and initiate mosquito control procedures. When complete, retrieve cold[er] beer from the base of the DDT sprayed and sit in the fog, relaxing. Some evenings required more than one fogger.
-'all the while trying to convince you that they care more than you do; and you're a bigot, capitalist pig for disagreeing with them.'