Sunday, December 9, 2007

Malaria spreading because of environmentalist groups

The Dallas Morning News reprinted an article fr... (more)
Added: December 09, 2007
The Dallas Morning News reprinted an article from the Associated Press, blaming the spread of malaria on global warming. It is a pure lie. The truth is malaria was nearly wiped off the face of the earth, when the wacko anti-capitalist environmentalist had the Democratic led Congress ban DDT. Since the ban, malaria has been spreading among the poorer nations of the earth. Malaria will continue to spread as long as Congress remains hostage to the wacko environmentalist. The leftist Democrats and stupid Republicans need to wake up and end the ban on DDT.

2 comments:

Ed Darrell said...

It's fascinating that on a blog called "Propaganda Buster," anyone would fall prey to the propaganda that DDT could have saved the world from malaria.

That's untrue.

In the first place, there were many nations where DDT was never used against malaria, generally for political reasons (the governments were unstable, or at war with the people where malaria was endemic) or economic reasons (the nation was poor and couldn't afford any governmental program to fight mosquito vectors). In the second place, by 1960 the anopheles mosquitoes had already begun to show significant resistance and, in some cases, immunity to DDT. In the third place, no program against malaria has ever worked without significant barrier prophylaxis -- screens -- to keep out mosquitoes that are not killed by the sprays. In the fourth place, no program against malaria has ever worked without a relatively reliable health care system to treat and cure malaria victims (if no human had malaria, there would be no place from which mosquitoes could get the parasite; curing malaria in victims is a huge part of beating the disease).

That is why the World Health Organization abandoned the program to "eradicate" malaria in the late 1960s: It was unrealistic, and counterproductive.

Counterproductive? Yes -- you see, DDT kills lots of stuff, but is particularly deadly on the predators of vector mosquitoes. One spraying of DDT does away with most of the mosquitoes today, but it also kills the mosquito predators. Next week, when the next generation of mosquitoes comes along, there are no predators to reduce them. Since the next generation is generally more resistant to DDT, we have an explosion in the populations of vector mosquitoes, and malaria rises dramatically.

No environmentalist group can be blamed for any of those conditions. In fact, they have been warning us about them for 50 years.

Funny, you fall victim to the propaganda campaign to blame the heroes. No, on second thought, that's not funny at all.

Come on over to Millard Fillmore's Bathtub, do a search for "malaria" or "DDT" and start following the links; you can get the facts.

Millard Fillmore's Bathtub:
www.timpanogos.wordpress.com

Ed Darrell said...

While we're at it, let's get a few other facts untwisted.

First, Congress has never issued any ban on DDT. EPA, under court order, removed the registration for pesticide use in broadcast spraying out of doors. This affected chiefly agricultural crops -- we can't spray DDT willy-nilly on cotton any more. The courts were concerned about EPA's slowness in acting, since the harms of DDT had been established in court years.

Second, warming has indeed spread the range of malaria-bearing mosquitoes in New Guinea, and elsewhere.

Third, it was a Republican administration that "banned" DDT.

Fourth, all bans on DDT, since the first in Scandanavia in 1970, have left DDT available for use in a campaign against malaria. This loophole has been perpetuated, and is part of the Persistent Organic Pesticides (POPs) Treaty, which otherwise requires the phase out of such damaging substances.

Finally, since you appear to be close to Dallas, you probably should get these facts down. Malaria has been spreading in Mexico despite the fact that DDT was never out of use there since 1946. DDT is not magic, and the disease is getting closer to Dallas as DDT fails and global warming extends the ranges of the vector mosquitoes.

Mexico is working now with a Rachel Carson-approved program of integrated pest management to reduce the numbers of mosquitoes. It appears to be working where 50 years of DDT failed. We'd all better pray it does work