Its Time To Spray DDT

[NATO AIR]

something great Pres. Bush could do to save lives, at little cost to the US.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/08/opinion/8kristof.html?oref=login&hp

It's Time to Spray DDT
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

Published: January 8, 2005

If the U.S. wants to help people in tsunami-hit countries like Sri Lanka and Indonesia - not to mention other poor countries in Africa - there's one step that would cost us nothing and would save hundreds of thousands of lives.

It would be to allow DDT in malaria-ravaged countries.

I'm thrilled that we're pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into the relief effort, but the tsunami was only a blip in third-world mortality. Mosquitoes kill 20 times more people each year than the tsunami did, and in the long war between humans and mosquitoes it looks as if mosquitoes are winning.

One reason is that the U.S. and other rich countries are siding with the mosquitoes against the world's poor - by opposing the use of DDT.

"It's a colossal tragedy," says Donald Roberts, a professor of tropical public health at Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences. "And it's embroiled in environmental politics and incompetent bureaucracies."

In the 1950's, 60's and early 70's, DDT was used to reduce malaria around the world, even eliminating it in places like Taiwan. But then the growing recognition of the harm DDT can cause in the environment - threatening the extinction of the bald eagle, for example - led DDT to be banned in the West and stigmatized worldwide. Ever since, malaria has been on the rise.

The poor countries that were able to keep malaria in check tend to be the same few that continued to use DDT, like Ecuador. Similarly, in Mexico, malaria rose and fell with the use of DDT. South Africa brought back DDT in 2000, after a switch to other pesticides had led to a surge in malaria, and now the disease is under control again. The evidence is overwhelming: DDT saves lives.

But most Western aid agencies will not pay for anti-malarial programs that use DDT, and that pretty much ensures that DDT won't be used. Instead, the U.N. and Western donors encourage use of insecticide-treated bed nets and medicine to cure malaria.

Bed nets and medicines are critical tools in fighting malaria, but they're not enough. The existing anti-malaria strategy is an underfinanced failure, with malaria probably killing 2 million or 3 million people each year.

DDT doesn't work everywhere. It wasn't nearly as effective in West African savannah as it was in southern Africa, and it's hard to apply in remote villages. And some countries, like Vietnam, have managed to curb malaria without DDT.

But overall, one of the best ways to protect people is to spray the inside of a hut, about once a year, with DDT. This uses tiny amounts of DDT - 450,000 people can be protected with the same amount that was applied in the 1960's to a single 1,000-acre American cotton farm.

Is it safe? DDT was sprayed in America in the 1950's as children played in the spray, and up to 80,000 tons a year were sprayed on American crops. There is some research suggesting that it could lead to premature births, but humans are far better off exposed to DDT than exposed to malaria.

I called the World Wildlife Fund, thinking I would get a fight. But Richard Liroff, its expert on toxins, said he could accept the use of DDT when necessary in anti-malaria programs.

"South Africa was right to use DDT," he said. "If the alternatives to DDT aren't working, as they weren't in South Africa, geez, you've got to use it. In South Africa it prevented tens of thousands of malaria cases and saved lots of lives."

At Greenpeace, Rick Hind noted reasons to be wary of DDT, but added: "If there's nothing else and it's going to save lives, we're all for it. Nobody's dogmatic about it."

So why do the U.N. and donor agencies, including the U.S. Agency for International Development, generally avoid financing DDT programs? The main obstacle seems to be bureaucratic caution and inertia. President Bush should cut through that and lead an effort to fight malaria using all necessary tools - including DDT.

One of my most exhilarating moments with my children came when we were backpacking together and spotted a bald eagle. It was a tragedy that we nearly allowed DDT to wipe out such magnificent birds, and we should continue to ban DDT in the U.S.

But it's also tragic that our squeamishness about DDT is killing more people in poor countries, year in and year out, than even a once-in-a-century tsunami.

 

[manu1959]

double edged sword....advocate DDT to wipe out malaria and save lives but kill wildlife ....or oppose the use of DDT lose lives and save wildlife

let them fix their own problem

i vote we rebuild florida first

 

[NATO AIR]

double edged sword....advocate DDT to wipe out malaria and save lives but kill wildlife ....or oppose the use of DDT lose lives and save wildlife

let them fix their own problem

i vote we rebuild florida first

this would be little cost to us, save millions of lives and help foster further goodwill for the US in the world... at the cost of some dead wildlife, i'm sorry but we should let them spray DDT. its wrong to let the environmentalists control our foreign policy in such a way. there are issues far more important to the environment and to the safety of the world that they should focus on, not preventing DDT from being sprayed.

 

[freeandfun1]

on one of the news shows the other night, a doctor was on and talking about how if Malaria gets out of control over there, it is only a matter of time before somebody gets on a plane with it, brings it here, gets bitten by a mosquito and it spreads here.....

 

[KarlMarx]

Let's put this puppy in perspective, shall we?

What animal kills more people than any other? The answer... the mosquito!

Malaria kills 2 MILLION people a year. That is almost 16 times the number of people that have been killed by the tsunami in Southeast Asia thus far, and over 20 times the number of AIDS cases that have been reported in the United States since 1981. And that is happening each and every year. But, this problem doesn't affect gays and may be solved using DDT, which is against the environmentalist agenda. Therefore, this problem has been the victim of politics and left wing ideology and swept under the rug.

Malaria kills people in underdeveloped countries rather than here because we took care of the problem before DDT was banned. DDT is one of the few insecticides that effectively kills malaria carrying mosquitoes.

Whether DDT actually kills off wildlife and so on is a matter of debate. I've read that amount of DDT needed to address the problem of malaria carrying mosquitos is a lot less than what was used in the past. This may just be a case of "environmental whackos" bending science to fit their political ideology.

P.S. On a somewhat tangential issue, I once read that the Ethiopian famines of the 1980s were partially the result of environmentalists opposing the research and development of "supergrains" which could be grown in the arid climate of the Sahara and sub-Saharan Africa. I'm not sure how much validity there is to that charge, but it wouldn't surpirse me if it turned out to be true.

 

[dilloduck]

Let's put this puppy in perspective, shall we?

What animal kills more people than any other? The answer... the mosquito!

Malaria kills 2 MILLION people a year. That is almost 16 times the number of people that have been killed by the tsunami in Southeast Asia thus far, and over 20 times the number of AIDS cases that have been reported in the United States since 1981. And that is happening each and every year. But, this problem doesn't affect gays and may be solved using DDT, which is against the environmentalist agenda. Therefore, this problem has been the victim of politics and left wing ideology and swept under the rug.

Malaria kills people in underdeveloped countries rather than here because we took care of the problem before DDT was banned. DDT is one of the few insecticides that effectively kills malaria carrying mosquitoes.

Whether DDT actually kills off wildlife and so on is a matter of debate. I've read that amount of DDT needed to address the problem of malaria carrying mosquitos is a lot less than what was used in the past. This may just be a case of "environmental whackos" bending science to fit their political ideology.

P.S. On a somewhat tangential issue, I once read that the Ethiopian famines of the 1980s were partially the result of environmentalists opposing the research and development of "supergrains" which could be grown in the arid climate of the Sahara and sub-Saharan Africa. I'm not sure how much validity there is to that charge, but it wouldn't surpirse me if it turned out to be true.

It's their part of the world to do with as they please--if they want DDT by all means let em use it and not let em die because a few animals may die.