Everything Has A Cost
This article from the Cap Times is celebrating the return of the Bald Eagle and crediting, with justification, the banning of DDT. This is a good thing. Eagles are cool and we shouldn’t needlessly kill them.
But there is a cost for this celebration. Malaria was virtually eliminated in the United States with the use of DDT, but it’s back and the number of people infected is steadily increasing. But we have it easy. Even though the use of DDT has been shown to reduce Malaria infections by over 90%, its prohibition in Africa for years resulted in millions of infections and deaths. Fortunately, its use is slowly returning.
The use of and banning of DDT is a nice reminder that everything has a cost. Sure, we saved the Bald Eagle by banning DDT. That’s great. But the spread of that ban killed thousands of people - especially in Africa.
Was it worth the cost?
“I don’t presume to the stature of moralists. I leave pretension like that, sir, to you.”
Nice quote you have there. Since when do we quote Broadway in public?
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on July 15, 2007 at 2205 hrs
I heard that the use of DDT to prevent malaria was never banned. I heard that this was a class-A piece of right wing bullshit designed to make environmental regulation look bad. Do I have it wrong?
Posted by scott on July 15, 2007 at 2213 hrs
http://www.epa.gov/history/topics/ddt/02.htm
Posted by Owen on July 15, 2007 at 2258 hrs
Re: scott
Right you are. In addition:
1. DDT was being used less before the 1972 US ban anyway because mosquitoes were becoming resistant. It’s hardly used today as a malaria stopper primarily because of this.
2. The amounts used in malaria prevention are minuscule compared to the amounts that were used by agri-business. Spray a little bit around your house vs. using planes to spray a whole field. It’s the field spraying that killed so many eagles—simple math.3. It wasn’t just eagles, it was pretty much all avian raptors.
Never let facts get in the way of spin.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on July 15, 2007 at 2310 hrs
More on what Nick said: The banning of DDT in the United States in 1972 had nothing to do with the rise of malaria in Africa. How could a ban here affect mosquitoes across the Atlantic Ocean? Fact is, in some countries DDT has never been banned—in Turkey you could still buy legal cans of bug spray that contained DDT at least into the 1980s.
In countries where DDT was heavily used for decades, mosquitoes had developed a resistance by the 1970s and 1980s. This is why its use decreased in much of Sub-Saharan Africa and India.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on July 16, 2007 at 0722 hrs
The DDT issue is not right-wing BS. According to the World Health Organization (who, last time I checked, was not some right-wing group. But of course, Nancy Pelosi and CNN are considered “right-wing” by leftists these days, so who knows?):
http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2006/pr50/en/index.html
15 SEPTEMBER 2006 | WASHINGTON, D.C.—Nearly thirty years after phasing out the widespread use of indoor spraying with DDT and other insecticides to control malaria, the World Health Organization (WHO) today announced that this intervention will once again play a major role in its efforts to fight the disease. WHO is now recommending the use of indoor residual spraying (IRS) not only in epidemic areas but also in areas with constant and high malaria transmission, including throughout Africa.
(emphasis mine)
So, no Scott; nobody was making it up that DDT use in Africa was banned.
The issue with DDT should have been about quantity and quality of application, not just the mere existence of it. But Rachel Carson’s book ‘Silent Spring’ - which was later shown to have used faulty and incomplete data - sent the anti-industrial zealots on a crusade to get the substance banned outright.
If only we had the blog world, cable news, and talk radio back then. But hey, what’s a few million dead Africans good for if not to make pampered left-wing environmentalists feel good about themselves?
Posted by David on July 16, 2007 at 1043 hrs
I’m no expert on the subject, but I remembered reading this not long ago.
Posted by scott on July 16, 2007 at 1103 hrs
okay lests all actually read the link from the WHO in post 6. It was not banned but the WHO stopped promoting its use. Since the WHO is basically the body that tells the third world what to do and gives them the money to do it this was basically a ban. Sounds like the presure from to re-evaluate it may save millions of lives a year. Even the groups that originally pushed the WHO to stop using DDT have come around.
I have no idea if the Tabocco folks were behind this or not but I am glad someone raised this issue and got the WHO back on track.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on July 16, 2007 at 1256 hrs
I spent the past week at my siters cabin near Superior, sharing it with an adult pair and a juvinile. Truly majestic birds.
Nope, the near anhialation of an entire class of preditor would really knock the food chain out of whack, and would not be worth the cost while viable alternatives are available.
The whole butterfly in Japan thing, you know?
Spice
Posted by jimspice on July 16, 2007 at 1257 hrs
Or butterfly in Beijing, as the saying goes. The idea has always fascinated me.
Posted by scott on July 16, 2007 at 1305 hrs
Scott, or should I call you Fred, you’re being a hypocrite. Any rightwinger that says that DDT is banned anywhere in Africa for anything besides whidespread agricultural use is full of shit and shouldn’t be taken seriously. Kevin Drum’s answer isn’t addressing the right question. It’s a pure strawman. To characterize the pro-DDT arguments as class-A right wing bullshit is just about the most hypocritical thing I can think of (except, obviously, everything real-debate Fred has ever said). It’s a fact that the anti-DDT movement was fueled by Silent Spring, and it’s a fact that Silent Spring is full of bullshit. Republicans and Democrats like you Scott should really take off the blinders.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on July 16, 2007 at 1310 hrs
Actually, Jesus, it was more of a question. I don’t really know anything more than what I’ve read on the link I gave. You could very well be right about everything. This is why I concluded my remark by asking if I’d gotten it wrong. Thanks for clarifying in such a non-aggressive fashion.
Posted by scott on July 16, 2007 at 1315 hrs
According to my National Geographic (July, 2007, p. 50)
“The ban on DDT,” says Gwadz of the National Institutes of Health, “may have killed 20 million children.”
Posted by Owen on July 16, 2007 at 1758 hrs
Read the National Geographic stuff online. Gwadz is hyperventilating, but the article gets it right: DDT resistance caused the phase-out of DDT outside the U.S.; DDT was not the tool of malaria eradication in the U.S. so much as good medical care, helpful climate and the lack of serious malaria-carrying mosquitoes; the hope for Africa is in better medical care and pinpoint use of DDT; broadcast use of DDT nearly wiped out ecosystems that help prevent malaria, including the predators fo the mosquito carriers; malaria mutated, too, and that’s caused deeper problems (DDT is ineffective completely against the malaria parasite); etc., etc.
Rachel Carson warned that unless we curbed the use of some insecticides in broadcast crop spraying, we’d cause human health pests to become resistant to the stuff, we’d kill the predators of human health pests, and the toxicity would threaten human health all by itself. All of those things came true.
The sad fact is that malaria control today includes all the things Rachel Carson advocated in 1962. But between 1962 and 2004, it was very difficult to get anyone to go along. Introduction of Carson’s advocated techniques in Mexico in 2004 has led to a decline in malaria cases and a decline in malaria deaths (Mexico used DDT in all the intervening years, by the way).
And there is a bizarre anti-Rachel Carson lobby spreading disinformation. That it exists at all is just wacky, but that it has won adherence from people who don’t know science, don’t know nature, and don’t know history, or who just like to tweak environmentalists even when the environmentalists are right, and when the environmentalists lead the fight against malaria, is certainly troubling.
I’ve been following the hoaxing for some weeks—you can get more at Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub (my site).
Posted by Ed Darrell on July 20, 2007 at 1043 hrs
I like the site and I commend your service, thanks to both of you.
I had Ed (above) drop by my site and attack me on the post I did on DDT. He has linked to you and I on his post. I answered him back with the best logic possible on my site and he reverted to the Bush is evil mantra.
I call it ‘Compassionate Environmentalism’, they seek to appear compassionate yet the results of their policies too often end in death of innocence.Posted by Squamata on July 24, 2007 at 2026 hrs
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