April 13, 2004

• I was just talking about this with my roommate last night and I totally agree. It should not go into general distribution, but in the hands of gov't technicians or UN reps it could make a very real and tangible difference in the fight against malaria. Doesn't it seem that malaria shouldn't be a problem on this planet anymore? We've got other problems to deal with.
• I was just talking about this with my roommate last night and I totally agree. It should not go into general distribution, but in the hands of gov't technicians or UN reps it could make a very real and tangible difference in the fight against malaria. Doesn't it seem that malaria shouldn't be a problem on this planet anymore? We've got other problems to deal with.
• This link is also illuminating as to the damage that the DDT ban has caused in human suffering and death. Thanks, Rachel.
• I saw that coming. Before the issue-wars starts, let put some informative links about junkscience. I personally don't consider Steven Milloy reliable and avoided using him as reference.
• And don't call me Rachel!
• There's a great deal of spin to the DDT wars. PR Watch takes a look at some of them. I also have misgivings about information presented by Malaria.org. My views will become even more clear after this link.
• Ok, the big problem with DDT is that it's cumulative in the food chain. Your mosquitos will get a little, a duck will eat lots of mosquitos, accumulating all the DDT from all the mosquitos it eats. Then, the duck gets eaten by the alligators, and pretty soon all the alligators are dead from DDT poisoning. Then if you continue using DDT, the ducks start dying. You can completely wreck the food chain leaving nothing but the smallest creatures in a particular area by overusing DDT. Why on earth would you want to bring this back?
• Interesting links Zemat and fractal_badger. Very helpful. Much to learn!
• That's the problem--malaria and DDT use is a complex issue. I'm less enthusiastic about DDT (though not outright against it) because the long term effects are not clear. Whatever method of disease prevention chosen, it should be established for the long long term. Otherwise people will once again be worse off if the chosen method is abandoned--loss of immunity and all of that. I can't reference hard numbers, but I think there have been some studies about bed net use (instead of pesticides) that show increased disease incidence because people do not use them consistently.
• let's not forget that mosquitos are more than just a nuisance - they're important pollinators of a variety of plants, a major food source for a lot of other animals, as well as being a vector for some diseases. DDTing them to death won't just impact the ecosystem through adding DDT to the food chain, it can affect whether some animals get enough food to survive or whether some species of mosquito-dependent plants ever get pollinated. plus DDT doesn't just kill mosquitos. it's tempting to use it, especially in some hard-hit regions, but i can't help but think that maybe it's better that we just try and forget it exists. it doesn't just go away, not quickly; there are traces of DDT still around, in a lot of places in the US, and as we all know it only takes a tiny amount to have a huge impact. better to err on the side of caution, i guess. of course i'm saying this from the safety of a malaria-free region (just a little west nile 'round here, is all...)
• There was an article on the news here a couple of days ago about the Bald Eagle colony on the Catalina Islands off the coast of California. There was a big release of DDT into the sea in that area thirty years ago and, because it's in the fish the eagles eat, it softens the eggs they lay and the eggs break before the eglets can hatch. The guy they interviewed said that DDT levels in the fish and in the eggshells has barely changed from thirty years ago, so it's likely to be another fifty to a hundred years before the eagle eggs are strong enough for the eglets to be hatched naturally. At the moment they hoist someone in on a helicopter to remove the new eggs and replace them with decoy eggs, take the eggs back and incubate them until they hatch, feed the fledglings with a hand-puppet and then fly the newly-hatched eagles and their broken shells back to the nests so the parents think the eggs have hatched while they've been away from the nest. It's complicated but the species is endangered enough without something like this DDT disaster to destroy them completely.
• BigCalm, the first article I linked doesn't encourage the mass spraying of DDT as it used to be that caused the most damage to the environment. And the food chain isn't contaminated through contaminated mosquitoes. DDT is supposed to kill them right away, not poison them little by little just to latter be eaten by ducks. The problem with mass spraying as it was done is that it also contaminated the soil and plants that would be used by other more resistant insects. Contaminating this way the whole food chain. fractal_badger badger badger badger... Malaria.org doesn't seem to encourage right away the use of DDT or any other extreme chemical method of insect extermination. Many welfare organizations are supported by the privated sector and that doesn't mean right away that they are sell-out PR fronts. Any organization could be motivated by special interests even if they aren't supported specific industries. And not all donations coming from them have evil intentions. And cinically what I could assume by the link you posted is that what chemical companies and others really want is more support for their own "solutions" not specifically DDT. As the first article says, why promote a chemical which no longer is patent protected, costs very little to produce and implies no research at all? Respecting the DDT Ban Myth. I don't think it necesarily disagrees with the content of main link which I think it's fairly well researched. And you can't negate there's an evil connotation to the use of DDT and that there's a lot of political and social pressure preventing it's use even in minimal quantities. Like the double standart issue metioned.
• clf and tracicle, it's not about trying to exterminate the whole mosquitoes around the world with mass spraying. It's just using DDT minimally indoors to protect houses. Not bombarding whole ecosystems with it. Yes it could have some secondary effects in household health. But, by the research done, seem to be minimal compared to what was done to the ecosystems with earlier methods and the benefits seem to outweight the costs by much. While ecosystems can come completely unharmed.
• Sorry for the repetition of ideas and abundant mispellings.
• Zemat: I recognize -- when my knee isn't jerking -- that not all private sector initiatives are evil. I spend a lot of time worrying about their effect on civil society. If I could come up with better solutions to problems governments can't or won't address, I would be a lot happier.
• fractal_badger, I too, worry much about the interests behind those initiatives. The problem with private sector initiatives, and here I will contradict myself, is that definetively most of them, or all, are motivated by special interests. Or at least those initiatives can't be contrarian to their own interests. But that is not necesarily a bad thing, and trying to push aside all private sector initiative could be highly counter-productive. The only solutions I can think about is high scrutiny from governments and special watchdog groups that not necesarily are impartial but at least are ethical enough to recognize the benefits of those efforts. Governments should worry that those special interests will spawn benefits for the rest of society and not viceversa.
• The REAL point that Carson made in Silent Spring that almost universally goes over-looked is that any means of a mass-killing of insects is inherently going to backfire. Insects are an r-selected species: they have millions and millions of babies. If only .1% of those babies are immune to any chosen method of poison, there will still be a sufficient population to produce another generation. What's more, that next generation WILL BE IMMUNE to the poison. Rather than spend bags of money on a preventive measure that is doomed to a quick failure, why not try to undercut the whole process of malaria: find an effective vaccine or cure and make it widely available. The other point that's overlooked is that DDT can be RELATIVELY harmless if used in TINY doses in the house. However, if it happens to mix with other inorganic pesticides, they can very easily cause paralysis and death. So I'd ask: if your ultimate goal is the better health of people living in tropical and subtropical areas, why would you go about improving their health by poisoning them? Look, let me address the article directly: "DDT is most likely not harmful to people or the environment. Certainly, the possible harm from DDT is vastly outweighed by its ability to save children's lives." Most likely? Certainly? According to who? Although it's in the science section of the Times, no science is actually presented. Instead, clever word manipulation has convinced you that DDT is harmless. That's just false. "Carson detailed how DDT travels up the food chain in greater and greater concentrations, how robins died when they ate earthworms exposed to DDT, how DDT doomed eagle young to an early death, how salmon died because DDT had killed the stream insects they ate, how fiddler crabs collapsed in convulsions in tidal marshes sprayed with DDT." Carson ALSO detailed the thousands of deaths of migrant workers from improper mixing of chlorine-based pesticides. What about those human costs? They're not mentioned. Again: "But this time around, I was also struck by something that did not occur to me when I first read the book in the early 1980's. In her 297 pages, Rachel Carson never mentioned the fact that by the time she was writing, DDT was responsible for saving tens of millions of lives, perhaps hundreds of millions." Says who? Just because they used DDT in the 40's and 50's and malaria disappeared around the same time does not prove a correlation. We certainly didn't eliminate mosquitoes from any part of the United Staes or Canada. Just as likely would be the mass elimination of wetlands across the country as the suburbs spread out into the country. People just don't live near swamps any more in America. That is as plausible a reason for the eradication or malaria than the one the author presents. Neither of us have offered any evidence, though. The author also doesn't address WHY malaria hasn't re-entered the U.S. As I said, we still have mosquitoes, and surely they are, through a chain, in contact with mosquitoes in Mexico. So why doesn't malaria re-enter the United States? We aren't spraying DDT. I don't have much of an answer to this question, but it's something the author does not address. How are we keeping malaria out without using DDT, and why can't those methods be used in malaria-ravaged countries? [more]
• [cont'd] In the end, this is a lame polemic. The author doesn't bother talking to a single health official that isn't involved in malaria control. There is no scientific evidence that the DDT in the home won't escape into the ecosystem. Let me just ask you this: if we can all agree that DDT is impossible to eliminate from the ecosystem, that the DDT we sprayed over the country 50 years ago is STILL AROUND, why is it okay to spray a house every other year to keep malaria at bay? After 10 years, you've sprayed five times the amount you claimed you were spraying, and there's no evidence that the chemicals stay in the house.. they'll get outside. And stay in the ecosystem.
• One illustration of donor stinginess is the fact that the world today employs malaria cures that don't work. . . . They are still in use because they are cheap; chloroquine costs only pennies per dose, a cost most African families can handle themselves. New, effective drugs are available, but they cost a minimum of 40 cents for a child's treatment and $1.50 for an adult's, which means that African governments -- and therefore donors -- will have to pay. . . . Those prices may not seem like much to cure malaria, especially when contrasted with the hundreds of dollars a year for life needed to treat AIDS. But 40 cents a child is apparently too much for donors to provide. I think this is an important point, which doesn't get the attention it deserves in this discussion. Whether the risks of using DDT are outweighed by the risks of more widespread malaria is an important question, with no easy answers. But there can be no question that wealthy nations like the US and many in Europe could eradicate death from malaria, if we only put our minds to doing it -- instead of spending $400 billion each year (in the US) on weapons of mass destruction, and untold thousands on wasteful SUVs. The same is true of TB.
• I seem to remember a more recent NPR segment on this topic, but I did find this older one entitled Malaria Cases Drop as S. Africa Resumes DDT Use. It is about 5 mins long and requires RealPlayer or Windows Media.
• Honestly, tmb48, It will take some effort to respond to all that, and I'm pretty lazy. but here I go... You say: ------- The REAL point that Carson made in Silent Spring that almost universally goes over-looked is that any means of a mass-killing of insects is inherently going to backfire. Insects are an r-selected species: they have millions and millions of babies. If only .1% of those babies are immune to any chosen method of poison, there will still be a sufficient population to produce another generation. What's more, that next generation WILL BE IMMUNE to the poison. Rather than spend bags of money on a preventive measure that is doomed to a quick failure, why not try to undercut the whole process of malaria: find an effective vaccine or cure and make it widely available. The article says: ----------------- DDT had not been sold as a way to control malaria but to eradicate it, so the world would never have to think about malaria again. But eradication failed -- it is now considered biologically impossible -- and because DDT had not lived up to its billing, disillusion set in. At the same time, DDT's indiscriminate use was provoking the development of resistance among mosquitoes... I say: ------ Sadly, bacteria are also r-selected species. Finding and effective vaccine or cure that would undercut the whole process of malaria is near-impossible, like erradicating mosquitoes. And don't say scientist haven't tried to find vaccines or stopped doing so. The solution in this cases is moderation and persistence. As with antibiotics, you could use DDT them in small but enough doses and periodically. Since the genes that provide resistance to DDT probably doesn't conveys an evolutionary other evolutionary advantages over normal mosquitoes and could carry some disavantage (or most mosquitoes would already carry that gene) it would never take over the gene-pool if we don't push it hard enough. Bacterias can evolve more rapidly resistance to antibiotics and its much more costly to develop them. You say: --------- The other point that's overlooked is that DDT can be RELATIVELY harmless if used in TINY doses in the house. However, if it happens to mix with other inorganic pesticides, they can very easily cause paralysis and death. So I'd ask: if your ultimate goal is the better health of people living in tropical and subtropical areas, why would you go about improving their health by poisoning them? I say: ------ That kind of logic can be applied to many other things. From domestic gas to electricity. Still its fair point to ask why would we want to bring home all those potentially harmful things. Tell me how many persons, specially kids, end intoxicated or electrocuted because they or their parents couldn't follow basic safety guidelines. Yet we still decide to bring them home. Because the benefits vastly outweight the risks, and those risks can be handled. The article don't even talk about common people using DDT like domestic gas or electricity. It's seldom used and only applied by trained personnel. (continued...)
• You say: --------- Look, let me address the article directly: "DDT is most likely not harmful to people or the environment. Certainly, the possible harm from DDT is vastly outweighed by its ability to save children's lives." Most likely? Certainly? According to who? Although it's in the science section of the Times, no science is actually presented. Instead, clever word manipulation has convinced you that DDT is harmless. That's just false. I say: ------ The full sentence from the article says: "The paradox is that sprayed in tiny quantities inside houses -- the only way anyone proposes to use it today -- DDT is most likely not harmful to people or the environment." Since when science sections in newspapers present actual science? I did my little googling and found the government link I put on the FPP just to balance things out a little. You say: --------- Carson ALSO detailed the thousands of deaths of migrant workers from improper mixing of chlorine-based pesticides. What about those human costs? They're not mentioned. I say: ------ Do firefighters die fighting fires? The fact that the workers were migrants speaks more of a social problem than an ecological one. You say: --------- Just because they used DDT in the 40's and 50's and malaria disappeared around the same time does not prove a correlation. We certainly didn't eliminate mosquitoes from any part of the United Staes or Canada. Just as likely would be the mass elimination of wetlands across the country as the suburbs spread out into the country. People just don't live near swamps any more in America. That is as plausible a reason for the eradication or malaria than the one the author presents. Neither of us have offered any evidence, though. The article says: ----------------- Malaria no longer afflicts the United States, Canada and Northern Europe in part because of changes in living habits -- the shift to cities, better sanitation, window screens. But another major reason was DDT, sprayed from airplanes over American cities and towns while children played outside. I say: ------ I think all those things, DDT, shifting habits, and the mass elimination of wetlands, helped in the erradication of malaria from the US. -"People just don't live near swamps any more in America" Tell that to Floridians. (/joke) Also, mass elimination of wetlands doesn't sounds like an ecological solution to me. But that's just a snark. (continued...)
• You say: --------- The author also doesn't address WHY malaria hasn't re-entered the U.S. As I said, we still have mosquitoes, and surely they are, through a chain, in contact with mosquitoes in Mexico. So why doesn't malaria re-enter the United States? We aren't spraying DDT. I don't have much of an answer to this question, but it's something the author does not address. How are we keeping malaria out without using DDT, and why can't those methods be used in malaria-ravaged countries? I say: ------ "People just don't live near swamps any more in America." You say: --------- In the end, this is a lame polemic. The author doesn't bother talking to a single health official that isn't involved in malaria control. I say: ------ -Renato Gusmao, M.D., Ph.D., program director of Communicable Diseases, Division of Disease Prevention and Control, Pan American Health Organization (There's a typo in the article with his name). -Dr Janet Hemingway, director of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine. -Dr. Brian Sharp, Director of the Malaria Research Programme, Medical Research Council of South Africa. -Dr. Lawrence M. Barat, World Bank's adviser on malaria control. -Jotham Mthembu, head of the malaria control programme at Jozini in KwaZulu Natal. You say: --------- Let me just ask you this: if we can all agree that DDT is impossible to eliminate from the ecosystem, that the DDT we sprayed over the country 50 years ago is STILL AROUND, why is it okay to spray a house every other year to keep malaria at bay? After 10 years, you've sprayed five times the amount you claimed you were spraying, and there's no evidence that the chemicals stay in the house.. they'll get outside. And stay in the ecosystem. I say: ------ Yes, it stays for a long long time, but it eventualy degrades. For that about chemicals not staying in the house, you are right. But you just assumed that, here's a summary (PDF) of a dense article from the World Wild Life Fund that shows how DDTs used in homes can cause damage to the health and the environment. In the end, it was that link from the WWF that convinced me that DDT's are not a definitive solution against malaria. But it actually justifies in part some of it's actual use and, indeed, it could be used just a little more while other more withstanding, economical and safer solutions are defined and implemented.
• Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeh...
• Holy fuck!!! sorry tmb48. I made a big huge mistake with this part... In the end, this is a lame polemic. The author doesn't bother talking to a single health official that isn't involved in malaria control. You are completely right.
• But that doesn't make it lame polemic, though.
• *tiny malaria-weakened hand trembles*
• Can DDT be used to control the length of some of these comments?
• This could be geat news for malaria sufferers.
• Great news!
• The latest edition of Nature focusses on malaria.
• Rachel Carson's birthday bashing: The right has revved up its claim that the environmental pioneer who criticized DDT was responsible for the spread of malaria that killed millions. The facts say otherwise.