July 14, 2004

The fact that DDT saves lives might account for part of the hostility toward it.

by Walter Williams

Jewish World Review

July 2004

Ever since Rachel Carson’s 1962 book “Silent Spring,” environmental extremists have sought to ban all DDT use. Using phony studies from the Environmental Defense Fund and the Natural Resources Defense Council, the environmental activist-controlled Environmental Protection Agency banned DDT in 1972. The extremists convinced the nation that DDT was not only unsafe for humans but unsafe to birds and other creatures as well. Their arguments have since been scientifically refuted.

While DDT saved crops, forests and livestock, it also saved humans. In 1970, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences estimated that DDT saved more than 500 million lives during the time it was widely used. A scientific review board of the EPA showed that DDT is not harmful to the environment and showed it to be a beneficial substance that “should not be banned.” According to the World Health Organization, worldwide malaria infects 300 million people. About 1 million die of malaria each year. Most of the victims are in Africa, and most are children. //

The fact that DDT saves lives might account for part of the hostility toward it. Alexander King, founder of the Malthusian Club of Rome, wrote in a biographical essay in 1990:

“My own doubts came when DDT was introduced. In Guyana, within two years, it had almost eliminated malaria. So my chief quarrel with DDT, in hindsight, is that it has greatly added to the population problem.”

Dr. Charles Wurster, one of the major opponents of DDT, is reported to have said,

“People are the cause of all the problems. We have too many of them. We need to get rid of some of them, and this (referring to malaria deaths) is as good a way as any.”

Spraying a house with small amounts of DDT costs $1.44 per year; alternatives are five to 10 times more, making them unaffordable in poor countries. Rich countries that used DDT themselves threaten reprisals against poor countries if they use DDT.

One really wonders about religious groups, the Congressional Black Caucus, government and non-government organizations, politicians and others who profess concern over the plight of poor people around the world while at the same time accepting or promoting DDT bans and the needless suffering and death that follow. Mosquito-borne malaria not only has devastating health effects but stifles economic growth as well.

Published: Aug. 15, 2014 at 11:13 a.m. ET
By Diana Furchtgott-Roth

The world is focused on Ebola, but malaria is far deadlier, and a well-known insecticide could change that //

300 million to 600 million people suffer from malaria each year, and that disease kills about 1 million annually, 90% in sub-Saharan Africa.

If the world really cared about Africa, why not reverse the ban on the insecticide DDT to help fight malaria? An African death from malaria, a protistan parasite that has no cure, is equally tragic as a death from Ebola. Now we are debating how we should allocate experimental drugs to treat Ebola. But we have the means to reduce malaria, and we are not using it. //

Under the Global Malaria Eradication Program, which started in 1955, DDT was used to kill the mosquitoes that carried the parasite, and malaria was practically eliminated. Some countries, including Sri Lanka, which started using DDT in the late 1940s, saw profound improvements. Reported cases fell from nearly 3 million a year to just 17 cases in 1963. In Venezuela, cases fell from over 8 million in 1943 to 800 in 1958. India saw a dramatic drop from 75 million cases a year to 75,000 in 1961.

This changed with the publication of Rachel Carson’s 1962 book, “Silent Spring,” which claimed that DDT was hazardous. After lengthy hearings between August 1971 and March 1972, Judge Edmund Sweeney, the Environmental Protection Agency hearing examiner, decided there was insufficient evidence to ban DDT and that its benefits outweighed any adverse effects. Yet two months later, then-EPA Administrator William D. Ruckelshaus overruled him and banned DDT, effective Dec. 31, 1972. That was a big win for the mosquitoes, but a big loss for people who lived in Latin America, Asia and Africa. //

Carson, the writer, claimed that DDT, because it is fat-soluble, accumulated in the fatty tissues of animals and humans as the compound moved through the food chain, causing cancer and other genetic damage. Carson’s concerns and the EPA action halted the program in its tracks, and malaria deaths started to rise again, reaching 600,000 in 1970, 900,000 in 1990 and over 1 million in 1997 — back to pre-DDT levels.

Many say DDT was banned in vain. There remains no compelling evidence that the chemical has produced any ill public health effects. According to an article in the British medical journal The Lancet by professor A.G. Smith of Leicester University:

“The early toxicological information on DDT was reassuring; it seemed that acute risks to health were small. If the huge amounts of DDT used are taken into account, the safety record for human beings is extremely good. In the 1940s, many people were deliberately exposed to high concentrations of DDT thorough dusting programmes or impregnation of clothes, without any apparent ill effect. … In summary, DDT can cause toxicological effects but the effects on human beings at likely exposure are very slight.” //

Carson died in 1964, but the legacy of “Silent Spring” and its recommended ban on DDT live with us today. As we mourn the thousand-plus people who have died of the latest outbreak of Ebola, and we look at the photos in the New York Times of the sad African children, we should remember the millions of people who are suffering from malaria as a result of the DDT ban. They were never given the choice of living with DDT or dying without it. Ruckelshaus made that choice for them in 1972. Before millions more die, we should recognize the benefits of DDT and encourage its use in fighting malaria.

Worldwide, malaria infects more than 500 million people annually, and kills at least 1 million. Most of the victims--375 million--are women and children.

"That's more victims than there are people in the United States and Canada combined," said Roy Innis, national chairman of the U.S.-based Congress of Racial Equality.

"We [have] emphasized fears about speculative risks from trace amounts of insecticides and ignored the real, immediate, life-or-death risks that those insecticides could prevent," said Innis. "The result has been another holocaust of African mothers, fathers, and children every few years, a death toll since the 1972 DDT ban that surpasses World War II's--over 50 million people. It is a travesty worse than colonialism ever was, a human rights violation of monstrous proportions."

"The result of the DDT ban has been an unspeakable death toll," observed film producer and preventive medicine doctor D. Rutledge Taylor in the March 20 issue of American Daily. "It is about the greatest human death toll in the known history of man, far greater than the holocaust and all the wars combined. It is time that we as generations of humans wake up and do what is right for humanity."

EU Threatens Africans

European Union officials and nongovernmental organizations, who claim DDT spraying inside Ugandan huts may result in trace levels of the chemical being found on exported Ugandan crops, threatened to restrict the import of Ugandan crops in retaliation for the nation's use of DDT. //

No Threat to Crops

Today, DDT is used in carefully controlled campaigns that spray tiny amounts of the chemical on the inside walls of canvas, mud-and-thatch, or cinder-block dwellings. A single treatment lasts up to eight months (versus eight hours for bug repellants with DEET, the most common active ingredient in mosquito repellants currently legal worldwide), keeps 90 percent of mosquitoes from entering homes, irritates any that do come in so they don't bite, and kills many of those that land on the inside walls.

Used this way, virtually no DDT ever enters the surrounding environment, and results are astounding.

"Within two years of starting DDT programs, South Africa, Mozambique, Zambia, Madagascar, and Swaziland slashed their malaria rates by 75 percent or more," Innis noted.

Ban Keeps Africans Poor

In addition to the direct annual death toll, malaria strangles African economies, preventing them from escaping near-universal poverty. According to a March 22 statement from the United Nations Integrated Regional Information Networks, "Economically, malaria drains the wealth of nations and households.

"Recently the [World Health Organization] reported that malaria costs Africa $12 billion a year. In countries where this disease is endemic, it grinds down the per-capita economic growth rate by 1.3 percent yearly. Poor households can spend up to 34 percent of their total income fighting malaria," the statement continued.