Saturday, May 23, 2009
DDT and the Third World: Malaria, Politics and DDT - The U.N. bows to the anti-insecticide lobby
...Most malarial deaths occur in sub-Saharan Africa, where chloroquine once worked but started failing in the 1970s as the parasite developed resistance. Even if the drugs were still effective in Africa, they're expensive and thus impractical for one of the world's poorest regions. That's not an argument against chloroquine, bed nets or other interventions. But it is an argument for continuing to make DDT spraying a key part of any effort to eradicate malaria, which kills about a million people -- mainly children -- every year. Nearly all of this spraying is done indoors, by the way, to block mosquito nesting at night. It is not sprayed willy-nilly in jungle habitat.
WHO is not saying that DDT shouldn't be used. But by revoking its stamp of approval, it sends a clear message to donors and afflicted countries that it prefers more politically correct interventions, even if they don't work as well. In recent years, countries like Uganda, Tanzania and Zambia have started or expanded DDT spraying, often with the help of outside aid groups. But these governments are also eager to remain in the U.N.'s good graces, and donors typically are less interested in funding interventions that WHO discourages.
"Sadly, WHO's about-face has nothing to do with science or health and everything to do with bending to the will of well-placed environmentalists," says Roger Bate of Africa Fighting Malaria. "Bed net manufacturers and sellers of less-effective insecticides also don't benefit when DDT is employed and therefore oppose it, often behind the scenes."
It's no coincidence that WHO officials were joined by the head of the U.N. Environment Program to announce the new policy. There's no evidence that spraying DDT in the amounts necessary to kill dangerous mosquitoes imperils crops, animals or human health. But that didn't stop green groups like the Pesticide Action Network from urging the public to celebrate World Malaria Day last month by telling "the U.S. to protect children and families from malaria without spraying pesticides like DDT inside people's homes."...
The Wall Street Journal gets several important facts exactly wrong. I've made corrections, showing the errors, here.
Ed Darrell,
I won't get involved very extensively in this debate as I'm not well acquainted with it, but regarding your one million vs. two million malaria deaths per year item (your first "correction"), and spending less than ten minutes on-line at presumably authoritative sites such as CDC, upward estimates of half-a-billion malaria cases per year are indicated, together with upward estimates of nearly three million deaths per year. (E.g., the CDC, for 2000 thru 2003, estimated roughly 850,000 malaria deaths for children aged under five years alone.)
That alleged "correction" of yours, emphasizing one million rather than two million deaths per year, doesn't bode well for the remainder of your critique. Given the additional perspective of there being as many as half-a-billion cases of malaria per year, further light is thrown on your certitude of there being one million - and NOT two million, malaria caused deaths per year. Such an absolute, broach no doubt conviction, where does that come from?
Additionally and generally, your review is less than clinical, to put it in understanded terms. Why those who purport to defend "science" are forever needful of smarm, arrogations and certitudes that broach little or no tentativeness, much less more serious and trenchant criticisms still, is a signal indicator that ideology and presumption is at play at least as much as science, better conceived.
I'll take your claim of unfamiliarity with the issue as dispositive.
If you have statistics that show 2 million deaths a year, please point the way. Most deaths are to children. They are not just a third of the deaths -- so your calculation of multiplying child deaths by three is significantly off the mark.
In any case, that's just the start of the problem. DDT spraying was stopped in Africa largely in the middle 1960s, when mosquitoes became resistant to the stuff. Consequently, any claim that a ban on DDT in the U.S. in 1972 caused Africans to stop using the stuff in 1965 is simply wrong on the calendar.
And the U.S. "ban" didn't stop the manufacture in the U.S. of DDT for export. Claims that stopping the use of DDT in Texas somehow caused an increase in malaria anywhere in Africa are geographically suspect.
Malaria is a nasty disease. DDT is not a miracle drug. It's not a drug at all. If you're serious in your concern about Africans, get some information on the disease and how to fight it, and go into action.
We can't poison Africa to health, and we never could. My "smarm" is in response to the unmitigated false claims in the WSJ editorial. You could check out the claims yourself, but I suspect you have a political agenda, not a health agenda to follow. You're not concerned with the health of Africans just as WSJ is not. You can't miss a chance to snark at environmentalists, though, even at the risk of killing 50 million more African kids.
Thank goodness that we illiminated Malaria in the US before the do gooder environutters prevented that possibility.
But those darkies will just have to suffer, their lives arent worth as much. ;)
Malaria was counted as eliminated in the U.S. in 1939 -- a good five years before DDT was first used against mosquitoes. Good medical care, lots of screens, draining breeding areas near homes.
Africa could do that, too, if people would quit telling them poison would do it better (which it won't).
Ed Darrell,
Here's a clue, since I specifically and unambiguously indicated my interest was marginal, nonetheless noting one of my resources was the CDC, you can begin there, at the CDC, should you care to do so.
Here's another set of clues, 1) since it's the CDC who indicated 850,000 deaths per year for children under the age of five, 2) since other children are above the age of five, 3) since children are not the sole victims, 4) since there's upwards of half-a-billion malarial cases per year, again according to the CDC, and 5) since some mortalities can presumably be attributed to multiple factors and not merely a single, discrete and isolated cause - perhaps you could cite your own wouldbe, authoritative sources and methodologies before you require others to cite their sources and numbers.
Just a thought, that your own numbers and arguments might themselves be subjected to critical review and based upon transparent citations and references. Not that your own august smarm shouldn't be considered a preeminent source of authoritative science, certainly.
Total deaths "over 1 million" annually:
http://www.cdc.gov/Malaria/facts.htm
Please come over to Millard Fillmore's bathtub and subject my many posts on the fight against malaria to critical review. I'd appreciate it if you'd send $10 to the Nothing But Nets campaign first, to save a kid, but even if you don't come help us get the information accurate.
This issue is too important to leave policy to a few loudmouths who have an axe to grind and who get the basic facts wrong.
Millard Fillmore might need a cold shower or two, and I have my own annual and some occasional ad hoc charities and don't have the time to wade through all your smarm, variously conflated with the science. I can't even tell to what extent you're sincere or insincere, in large part due to that fact, which reflects one of the two basic criticisms I initially forwarded.
I found three per annum estimates from ostensibly non-biased sources, all within that earlier 10 minutes of on-line searches:
CDC: over 1 million
WHO: 1.5 million
2008 UCLA epidemiology study: 1 to 3 million
I also saw a 2 million and a 2.7 million estimate, though both of those had some more obvious quasi-political associations.
(And I don't doubt your sincerity on one level and have bookmarked your site.)
http://www.cdc.gov/malaria/history/index.htm
Dont let the revisionist historians sell you lies Michael B.