FRANCIS DA DON
JF-Expert Member
- Sep 4, 2013
- 36,039
- 40,701
Je, wamarekani wana damu chungu?
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Update: 30/06/2021
China wamefanikiwa kutokomeza Malaria baada ya kutumia dawa jamii ya DDT. Wakati huo huo wako busy kutengeneza mabilioni ya dollar kama faida kwa kuuza dawa za malaria kwa nchi za kusini mwa Jangwa la Sahara.
Update:
One of the first countries to benefit fromthe use of DDT for civilian purposes wasthe United States. In the years immediately preceding World War II, between one and six million Americans, mostly drawn from the rural South, contracted malaria annually. In 1946, the U.S. Public HealthService initiated a campaign to wipe out malaria through the application of DDT to the interior walls of homes. The resultswere dramatic. In the first half of 1952, there were only two confirmed cases of malaria contracted within the United States.[12]
Other countries were quick to take note of the American success, and those that could afford it swiftly put DDT into action. In Europe, malaria was virtually eradicated by the mid-1950s. South African cases of malaria quickly dropped by 80 percent; Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) reduced its malaria incidence from 2.8 million in 1946 to 17 in 1963; and India cut its malaria death rate almost to zero. In 1955, with financial backing from the United States, the U.N.World Health Organization launched a global campaign to use DDT to eradicate malaria. Implemented successfully across large areas of the developing world, thiseffort soon cut malaria rates in numerous countries in Latin America and Asia by 99 percent or better. Even for Africa, hope that the age-old scourge would be brought to an end appeared to be in sight.[13]
A Bestseller Begins a Movement
But events took another turn with the appearance of Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring. A former marine biologist and accomplished nature writer, Carson in1958 contacted E. B. White, a contributor toThe New Yorker, suggesting someone should write about DDT. White declined, but the magazine’s editor, William Shawn,suggested that Carson herself write it. The ensuing articles, supplemented by additional material, became Silent Spring, for which Carson signed a contract withHoughton Mifflin in August 1958.[14]
Carson based her passionate argumentagainst pesticides on the desire to protect wildlife. Using evocative language, Carson told a powerful fable of a town whosepeople had been poisoned, and whose spring had been silenced of birdsong, because all life had been extinguished by pesticides.[15]
Published in September 1962, Silent Springwas a phenomenal success. As a literary work, it was a masterpiece, and as such, received rave reviews everywhere. Deeplymoved by Carson’s poignant depiction of a lifeless future, millions of well-meaning people rallied to her banner. Virtually at a stroke, environmentalism grew from a narrow aristocratic cult into a crusadingliberal mass movement.
While excellent literature, however, Silent Spring was very poor science. Carson claimed that DDT was threatening many avian species with imminent extinction.Her evidence for this, however, was anecdotal and unfounded. In fact, during the period of widespread DDT use preceding the publication of Silent Spring, bird populations in the United Statesincreased significantly, probably as a result of the pesticide’s suppression of their insect disease vectors and parasites. In herchapter “Elixirs of Death,” Carson wrote that synthetic insecticides can affect the human body in “sinister and often deadly ways,” so that cumulatively, the “threat ofchronic poisoning and degenerative changes of the liver and other organs isvery real.” In terms of DDT specifically, in her chapter on cancer she reported thatone expert “now gives DDT the definite rating of a ‘chemical carcinogen.’”[16]These alarming assertions were false as well.[17] (Carson’s claims about thesupposed pernicious effects of DDT areexamined more fully below.)
=======================================
UPDATE:
The Banning of DDT
The panic raised by Carson’s book spreadfar beyond American borders. Responding to its warning, the governments of a number of developing countries (such as Tanganyika) called ahalt to their DDT-based anti-malaria programs. The results were catastrophic.In Ceylon, for example, where, as noted,DDT use had cut malaria cases frommillions per year in the 1940s down to just 17 by 1963, its banning in 1964 led to a resurgence of half a million victims per year by 1969.[18] In many other countries, the effects were even worse.
Attempting to head off a hysteria-induced global health disaster, in 1970 the National Academy of Sciences issued a report praising the beleaguered pesticide:
To only a few chemicals does man owe as great a debt as to DDT. It has contributed to the great increase in agricultural productivity, while sparing countless humanity from a host of diseases, most notably, perhaps, scrub typhus and malaria. Indeed, it is estimated that, in little more than two decades, DDT has prevented 500 million deaths due to malaria that would otherwise have been inevitable. Abandonment of this valuable insecticide should be undertaken only at such time and in such places as it is evident that the prospective gain to humanity exceeds the consequent losses. At this writing, all available substitutes for DDT are both more expensive per crop-year and decidedly more hazardous.[19]
To some, however, five hundred million human lives were irrelevant. Disregarding the NAS findings, environmentalists continued to demand that DDT be banned. Responding to their pressure, in 1971 the newly-formed Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) launched an investigation of the pesticide. Lasting seven months, the investigative hearings led by JudgeEdmund Sweeney gathered testimony from 125 expert witnesses with 365 exhibits. The conclusion of the inquest, however,was exactly the opposite of what the environmentalists had hoped for. After assessing all the evidence, Judge Sweeney found: “The uses of DDT under the registration involved here do not have adeleterious effect on freshwater fish, estuarine organisms, wild birds, or other wildlife.... DDT is not a carcinogenic hazard to man.... DDT is not a mutagenic or teratogenic hazard to man.”[20]Accordingly, Judge Sweeney ruled that DDT should remain available for use.
Unfortunately, however, the administrator of the EPA was William D. Ruckelshaus,who reportedly did not attend a single hour of the investigative hearings, and according to his chief of staff, did not even read Judge Sweeney’s report.[21] Instead, he apparently chose to ignore the science: overruling Sweeney, in 1972 Ruckelshausbanned the use of DDT in the United States except under conditions of medical emergencies.[22]
As a result of the ban on DDT, millions of African children continue to die every year from malaria.
[© Cris Bouroncle/AFP/Getty Images]
Initially, the ban only affected the United States. But the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) soonadopted strict environmental regulations that effectively prohibited it from funding international projects that used DDT.[23]Around the globe, Third Worldgovernments were told that if they wanted USAID or other foreign aid money to play with, they needed to stop using the most effective weapon against malaria.[24]Given the corrupt nature of many of the recipient regimes, it is not surprising that many chose lucre over life. And even for those that did not, the halting of American DDT exports (since U.S. producers slowed and then stopped manufacturing it) made DDT much more expensive, and thus effectively unavailable for poor countries in desperate need of the substance.[25] As a result, insect-borne diseases returned to the tropics with a vengeance. By some estimates, the death toll in Africa alonefrom unnecessary malaria resulting fromthe restrictions on DDT has exceeded 100million people.[26]
Debunking False Claims About DDT
While critics of Silent Spring have tended to focus on the one-sidedness of Rachel Carson’s case or on those of her claims that have not held up over time, the fraudulence of Silent Springgoes beyond mere cherry-picking or discredited data:Carson abused, twisted, and distorted many of the studies that she cited, in a brazen act of scientific dishonesty.[27] Sothe real tragic irony of the millions ofdeaths to malaria in the past severaldecades is that the three central anti-DDT claims made by Carson and other activists are all false. We shall examine each in turn.
=======================================
BY THE WAY:
=======================================
See post no. 78 for full paper.
======================================
Update: 30/06/2021
China wamefanikiwa kutokomeza Malaria baada ya kutumia dawa jamii ya DDT. Wakati huo huo wako busy kutengeneza mabilioni ya dollar kama faida kwa kuuza dawa za malaria kwa nchi za kusini mwa Jangwa la Sahara.
Update:
One of the first countries to benefit fromthe use of DDT for civilian purposes wasthe United States. In the years immediately preceding World War II, between one and six million Americans, mostly drawn from the rural South, contracted malaria annually. In 1946, the U.S. Public HealthService initiated a campaign to wipe out malaria through the application of DDT to the interior walls of homes. The resultswere dramatic. In the first half of 1952, there were only two confirmed cases of malaria contracted within the United States.[12]
Other countries were quick to take note of the American success, and those that could afford it swiftly put DDT into action. In Europe, malaria was virtually eradicated by the mid-1950s. South African cases of malaria quickly dropped by 80 percent; Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) reduced its malaria incidence from 2.8 million in 1946 to 17 in 1963; and India cut its malaria death rate almost to zero. In 1955, with financial backing from the United States, the U.N.World Health Organization launched a global campaign to use DDT to eradicate malaria. Implemented successfully across large areas of the developing world, thiseffort soon cut malaria rates in numerous countries in Latin America and Asia by 99 percent or better. Even for Africa, hope that the age-old scourge would be brought to an end appeared to be in sight.[13]
A Bestseller Begins a Movement
But events took another turn with the appearance of Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring. A former marine biologist and accomplished nature writer, Carson in1958 contacted E. B. White, a contributor toThe New Yorker, suggesting someone should write about DDT. White declined, but the magazine’s editor, William Shawn,suggested that Carson herself write it. The ensuing articles, supplemented by additional material, became Silent Spring, for which Carson signed a contract withHoughton Mifflin in August 1958.[14]
Carson based her passionate argumentagainst pesticides on the desire to protect wildlife. Using evocative language, Carson told a powerful fable of a town whosepeople had been poisoned, and whose spring had been silenced of birdsong, because all life had been extinguished by pesticides.[15]
Published in September 1962, Silent Springwas a phenomenal success. As a literary work, it was a masterpiece, and as such, received rave reviews everywhere. Deeplymoved by Carson’s poignant depiction of a lifeless future, millions of well-meaning people rallied to her banner. Virtually at a stroke, environmentalism grew from a narrow aristocratic cult into a crusadingliberal mass movement.
While excellent literature, however, Silent Spring was very poor science. Carson claimed that DDT was threatening many avian species with imminent extinction.Her evidence for this, however, was anecdotal and unfounded. In fact, during the period of widespread DDT use preceding the publication of Silent Spring, bird populations in the United Statesincreased significantly, probably as a result of the pesticide’s suppression of their insect disease vectors and parasites. In herchapter “Elixirs of Death,” Carson wrote that synthetic insecticides can affect the human body in “sinister and often deadly ways,” so that cumulatively, the “threat ofchronic poisoning and degenerative changes of the liver and other organs isvery real.” In terms of DDT specifically, in her chapter on cancer she reported thatone expert “now gives DDT the definite rating of a ‘chemical carcinogen.’”[16]These alarming assertions were false as well.[17] (Carson’s claims about thesupposed pernicious effects of DDT areexamined more fully below.)
=======================================
UPDATE:
The Banning of DDT
The panic raised by Carson’s book spreadfar beyond American borders. Responding to its warning, the governments of a number of developing countries (such as Tanganyika) called ahalt to their DDT-based anti-malaria programs. The results were catastrophic.In Ceylon, for example, where, as noted,DDT use had cut malaria cases frommillions per year in the 1940s down to just 17 by 1963, its banning in 1964 led to a resurgence of half a million victims per year by 1969.[18] In many other countries, the effects were even worse.
Attempting to head off a hysteria-induced global health disaster, in 1970 the National Academy of Sciences issued a report praising the beleaguered pesticide:
To only a few chemicals does man owe as great a debt as to DDT. It has contributed to the great increase in agricultural productivity, while sparing countless humanity from a host of diseases, most notably, perhaps, scrub typhus and malaria. Indeed, it is estimated that, in little more than two decades, DDT has prevented 500 million deaths due to malaria that would otherwise have been inevitable. Abandonment of this valuable insecticide should be undertaken only at such time and in such places as it is evident that the prospective gain to humanity exceeds the consequent losses. At this writing, all available substitutes for DDT are both more expensive per crop-year and decidedly more hazardous.[19]
To some, however, five hundred million human lives were irrelevant. Disregarding the NAS findings, environmentalists continued to demand that DDT be banned. Responding to their pressure, in 1971 the newly-formed Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) launched an investigation of the pesticide. Lasting seven months, the investigative hearings led by JudgeEdmund Sweeney gathered testimony from 125 expert witnesses with 365 exhibits. The conclusion of the inquest, however,was exactly the opposite of what the environmentalists had hoped for. After assessing all the evidence, Judge Sweeney found: “The uses of DDT under the registration involved here do not have adeleterious effect on freshwater fish, estuarine organisms, wild birds, or other wildlife.... DDT is not a carcinogenic hazard to man.... DDT is not a mutagenic or teratogenic hazard to man.”[20]Accordingly, Judge Sweeney ruled that DDT should remain available for use.
Unfortunately, however, the administrator of the EPA was William D. Ruckelshaus,who reportedly did not attend a single hour of the investigative hearings, and according to his chief of staff, did not even read Judge Sweeney’s report.[21] Instead, he apparently chose to ignore the science: overruling Sweeney, in 1972 Ruckelshausbanned the use of DDT in the United States except under conditions of medical emergencies.[22]
As a result of the ban on DDT, millions of African children continue to die every year from malaria.
[© Cris Bouroncle/AFP/Getty Images]
Initially, the ban only affected the United States. But the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) soonadopted strict environmental regulations that effectively prohibited it from funding international projects that used DDT.[23]Around the globe, Third Worldgovernments were told that if they wanted USAID or other foreign aid money to play with, they needed to stop using the most effective weapon against malaria.[24]Given the corrupt nature of many of the recipient regimes, it is not surprising that many chose lucre over life. And even for those that did not, the halting of American DDT exports (since U.S. producers slowed and then stopped manufacturing it) made DDT much more expensive, and thus effectively unavailable for poor countries in desperate need of the substance.[25] As a result, insect-borne diseases returned to the tropics with a vengeance. By some estimates, the death toll in Africa alonefrom unnecessary malaria resulting fromthe restrictions on DDT has exceeded 100million people.[26]
Debunking False Claims About DDT
While critics of Silent Spring have tended to focus on the one-sidedness of Rachel Carson’s case or on those of her claims that have not held up over time, the fraudulence of Silent Springgoes beyond mere cherry-picking or discredited data:Carson abused, twisted, and distorted many of the studies that she cited, in a brazen act of scientific dishonesty.[27] Sothe real tragic irony of the millions ofdeaths to malaria in the past severaldecades is that the three central anti-DDT claims made by Carson and other activists are all false. We shall examine each in turn.
=======================================
BY THE WAY:
=======================================
See post no. 78 for full paper.
