Uganda: DDT Will Eliminate Malaria
Richard Tren
23 April 2010
opinion
On World Malaria Day, marked on April 25 (Sunday), governments and activists will boast of millions of dollars spent on tackling the disease that still kills a child every 30 seconds somewhere in the world. But most of them are culpable of disarming our most effective weapon--insecticides such as DDT. DDT was first used on a large scale in World War II to stop insect-borne epidemics such as typhus. It surpassed all expectations in fighting malaria around the world, saving millions of lives. In 1960s India, for example, DDT cut malaria cases from 75 million a year to less than 100,000.
The 1960s, however, saw the rise of the Western environmentalist movement, which vilified the use of insecticides such as DDT. This helped malaria rise again, in India as in South Africa, and even now, four decades later, insecticide use is threatened by environmentalist alarmism.
For example, new research published in the British Journal of Urology International alleges a link between DDT and birth defects in boys among the Venda people in northeastern South Africa. A grave finding if true but, as with the charges thrown around by environmentalists, it does not stand up to scrutiny. The incidence among Vendas living in houses with DDT indoor residual spraying is high, at around 11 per cent, so there is a problem. But the figure for those living in houses never sprayed with DDT is also high and statistically equivalent, at 10.2 per cent.
Clearly, more research is needed but this generated typically scaremongering headlines about DDT, even though there is still no evidence that it can harm humans. Indeed, for decades DDT was used in great quantities in agriculture around the world with reckless abandon--and malaria was eradicated in the Southern US States, Southern Europe and many other regions.
For instance, in 2005 one of the world's most highly malarial countries, Uganda, started using DDT. Infections and deaths fell rapidly yet the programme was shut down in 2006 after statements by European Union officials in Kampala raised fears that even the tiniest residues of any insecticide on exported food would cause the EU to reject it. Ironically, growers even feared that DDT, a chemical we know does not cause cancer, would be found on tobacco, a product we know does cause cancer. This shut down a life-saving programme, with zero benefit to EU citizens.
Although DDT is highly effective, fighting malaria requires new weapons. Yet so successful has been the anti-insecticides campaign that there has been almost no investment in new insecticides that could be used against malaria. Meanwhile, governments, foundations and companies have invested hundreds of millions of dollars over decades in the elusive search for a malaria vaccine. There is now only one maker of DDT.
Shamefully, tens of millions of dollars have also gone into the desperate, and fruitless, search to find some harm to humans from DDT.
Relevant Links
America's USAID used to put pressure on some countries to reject DDT, like most donors. Now, USAID alone funds DDT use, so maybe there is hope. African governments must now stand up to the double standards of aid donors and activists who prevent the use of insecticides with fears of human harm and threats to trade.
Richard Tren is president of Africa Fighting Malaria and author (with Donald Roberts) of the book The Excellent Powder--DDT's Political and Scientific History, launched this week
April 24, 2009
Tomorrow Is World Malaria Day -- We Need DDT-Day
By Todd Seavey
In 2000, African leaders vowed to reduce malaria deaths by 50% in ten years. Tomorrow marks the ninth anniversary of the vow, and though it hasn't been fulfilled, we are drawing very close to another marker of malaria's toll: 100 million dead from malaria since the Environmental Protection Agency's 1972 ban on DDT, the insecticide best suited to combat malarial mosquitoes.
For comparison, the total number of people killed by cigarette smoking in the twentieth century is thought to be about 60 million, total casualties from World War II perhaps as high as 70 million, and the total killed by Communist regimes about 100 million. Thus, anti-chemical greens (inspired by Rachel Carson's fear-mongering book Silent Spring) may already be humanity's most prolific killers -- and surely the most widely praised.
Africa Malaria Day was declared on April 25, 2000. President Bush noted Malaria Awareness Day on April 25, 2006. The World Health Organization decided in 2007 to begin marking World Malaria Day, with 2008 officially being the first and tomorrow the second -- with just one year to go before the original ten-year deadline is reached.
To make real progress in time for World Malaria Day 2010, instead of gauging progress by government spending or how many times Jimmy Carter praises bed nets, how about simply getting government out of the way and letting DDT (which, at worst, has been accused, likely incorrectly, of thinning some bird eggshells) do its lifesaving work around the world, as it did in once-malarial Europe and America for three decades before the ban? (I made this point back in 2002, in an ACSH piece cited this year in the New York Times bestseller Liberty and Tyranny by Mark Levin.)
By means such as bed nets and an impending malaria vaccine, we are making commendable strides in fighting malaria, but this is not a fight we should be waging with the most effective weapon needlessly kept beyond our reach. End the ban. Save millions of lives. Not a hard choice.
Todd Seavey is Director of Publications at the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH.org, HealthFactsAndFears.com) and will host a Debate at Lolita Bar at 8pm on Wednesday, May 6, on the question "Should Humans Radically Decrease Their Exploitation of Animals?"
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