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.