How not to do environmental cost-benefit analysis…
The World Health Organization estimates that a child dies every 30 seconds from malaria, and acknowledges that this is largely preventable by the judicious use of DDT. Yet, it still concludes that the unknown costs of DDT use outweigh the known benefits. Hmm..
More…
http://greenhellblog.wordpress.com/2009/05/25/a-dead-child-every-30-sec-vs/
December 20, 2009 at 5:59 am
If DDT would prevent those deaths, don’t you think Africans would use DDT?
You may not have thought about the implicit racism in that claim, but Africans are not so stupid.
Consider that in those nations where DDT has been banned, malaria is gone. Not so in any nation where DDT use continues. Maybe DDT is not a panacea against the disease.
December 22, 2009 at 7:26 pm
“Consider that in those nations where DDT has been banned, malaria is gone.”
Are you refering to developed nations? If so, your argument is invalid since such a correlation is confounded by other important factors. If not, I would appreciate a reference for my own info.
“You may not have thought about the implicit racism in that claim, but Africans are not so stupid.”
I’m not suggesting that Africans are stupid, but that they are influenced (politically and economically) by the US and europe (http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/11/magazine/11DDT.html?scp=3&sq=DDT%20world%20needs&st=cse). As for racism–that may involved, but not in the way you infer–read the quotes by environmentalists here (http://www.lewrockwell.com/englund/englund28.html).
December 22, 2009 at 9:01 pm
Developed or undeveloped nations, it doesn’t matter. Yes, you’re right, there are a log of confounding factors, none of which you take into account. Accounting for all of those factors, the fact remains that malaria has been eradicated only in nations where DDT is banned, and malaria remains a serious problem only in nations where DDT is used. What you allege is a simple “use DDT/eliminate malaria” equation can’t account for that.
Now that you realize there are confounding factors, you should consider them.
Steve Milloy is an old tobacco lobbyist — he’s skilled at the art of sowing doubt about science, and he appears to have found fertile soil with you. DDT is a dangerous substance because it’s uncontrollable in the wild. It kills indiscriminately. No malaria fighter today suggests anyone can beat back malaria with DDT alone, nor with DDT in greatly increased applications. DDT can be useful in some integrated pest management schemes, but not many. The campaign for DDT is a campaign to impugn the reputation of WHO, especially as WHO gears up for a major anti-tobacco campaign worldwide.
Sure, Africans are influenced by the west. But the implicit claim that Africans would stand by and watch their children die rather than cross Rachel Carson, a dead American woman most of them have never heard of, is repugnant and racist. Nor is it accurate to say, as you are also implicitly claiming, that people like Idi Amin stopped DDT spraying or refused to start it out of environmental concerns. You don’t mean to, I’m sure, but you’re saying Africans are stupid. It’s just not so. DDT is freely available to any African nation who wishes to use it to fight malaria.
However, spraying DDT gives only a few weeks respite before a greater plague of disease-carrying mosquitoes, in the absence of improved health care, better education about how to avoid being bitten, wider dispersal of barriers to mosquitoes like bednets, and pharmaceuticals that are effective against the disease. All those other solutions cost money and require involvement well beyond just poisoning Africa.
The U.S. “ban” on DDT covered only agricultural crops, and only in the U.S. We specifically allowed manufacture of DDT for export to Africa. The claim that the U.S. ban increased malaria is physically impossible — mosquitoes don’t migrate between Texas and Africa. Mosquitoes left alive in the U.S. can’t fly the Atlantic. Besides, DDT use in Africa in broadcast use was largely ended in the middle 1960s, five to seven years prior to the U.S. ban.
Bed nets have proven much more effective than DDT in fighting malaria in Africa in projects conducted over the past ten years — 50% reduction in malaria minimum, to 85% percent reduction. Bednets cost about $10.00 and last about five years. DDT can be applied successfully only where the mosquitoes have not developed resistance or immunity, which requires testing. It must be applied only indoors by professional exterminators, and it lasts six months. Each application runs about $12.00/ house. DDT applications bring about a 25% to 50% reduction in malaria. Bednets cost $2.00 a year amortized, and reduce malaria 50% to 85%; DDT costs $24.00 a year amortized, and reduces malaria 50% or less.
How in the world does anyone calculate that DDT is cheaper? More effective?
Milloy’s come around a bit on bed nets, especially since the Gates Foundation, WHO and every other serious malaria-fighting organization has gotten the word out. Now Milloy doesn’t condemn them as wholly ineffective.
He’s got some bizarre political agenda that does not include fighting malaria or improving the health of Africa.
If, as you claim, it’s racist to promote polices that leave Africans victim to malaria, then advocacy of DDT as a quick and easy solution is a racist advocacy. At best it works briefly, it leaves malaria rampant in its wake.
The claim that environmentalists want African to die of disease for population control is equally wrong and repugnant. Lew Rockwall has quite a collection of quotes taken out of context. The best way to control population is to raise economic development for the mass of the people of a nation. Then they freely choose to have fewer children. For this discussion, they also get less malaria because they can afford better housing that is more mosquito-proof.
Is this a moral issue? I think it is — and I resent people like Milloy and Rockwell trying to push the clock to tick faster with their advocacy of unworkable, damaging solutions.
We can’t poison Africa to good health. Denigrating the malaria fighters doesn’t help much, either. WHO does good work, with too little funding. So does the Gates Foundation, and Nothing But Nets.
Come on over to Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub, do a search for “malaria” and start reading. There is much we can do, and much we should do. DDT is no panacea against malaria, or anything else — well, it might be a panacea to produce disaster.
Come on and join the fight against malaria, instead of the fight against malaria fighters.
December 23, 2009 at 8:36 pm
Ed: Thanks for your input. I don’t find any convincing arguments above except for the data. Please refer me to a source. Incidentally, I do not advocate any government aid programs at all.
December 22, 2009 at 9:05 pm
P.S.: AT the Rockwell site:
I invoke Godwin’s law. This is as crass a lie as I can think of. It requires distortions of history and science, and is a cheap shot at a good dead scientist.
If snark is the main weapon of the pro-DDT forces, people concerned about morality may want to consider riding a different horse.
December 23, 2009 at 8:39 pm
Of course it’s possible that the pro-DDT movement is misguided, and libertarians are certain suceptible to such arguments because they are predisposed against the environmental movement due to its advocacy of state power. As a scientist, I am fully aware of the biases and motivations that drive science and know well that scientists are not immune from political and economic motivations any more than lobbyists.
December 23, 2009 at 8:47 pm
From the WHO report on DDT: “It is expected that there will be a continued role for DDT in malaria control until equally cost-effective alternatives are developed. A premature shift to less effective or more costly alternatives to DDT, without a strengthening of the capacity (human, technical, financial) of Member States will not only be unsustainable, but will also have a negative impact on the disease burden in endemic countries.” This statement makes me doubt your data above. Again, please refer me to your source.
December 23, 2009 at 8:53 pm
I have a couple of responses that appear to be wound up in your spam or moderation queues. Would you take a look?
Thanks.
December 23, 2009 at 9:08 pm
Ed: I got them out of the spam folder.
December 23, 2009 at 9:02 pm
From the Malaria Policy Center: “Then in the 1960s, Rachel Carson published Silent Spring, exploring the effects of DDT on birds and ecosystems as DDT killed birds who ate insects that had contact with DDT. After these obstacles and the somewhat negative effects of Carson’s book, the momentum for the eradication program faded and the money dried up. ”
From Nat’l Geographic (July 2007): In 1962 Rachel Carson published Silent Spring, documenting this abuse and painting so damning a picture
that the chemical was eventually outlawed by most of the world for agricultural use. Exceptions were made for malaria control, but DDT
became nearly impossible to procure. “The ban on DDT,” says Gwadz of the National Institutes of Health, “may have killed 20 million children.”
From the Malaria Foundation: “Is There a Moral Dimension to this Question? Yes. Certain countries with high morbidity and mortality rates from malaria have trouble affording high-tech medical treatments or the latest insecticides. If DDT is effective for use against vectors in these regions it should be used to prevent premature death and disability. The preservation of human life is paramount.”
Where are you coming from, Ed?
December 23, 2009 at 10:28 pm
What Malaria Foundation? You ask for links, but you don’t do the courtesy of providing them to your readers . . .
The best way to beat malaria is to drain breeding areas around homes, and screen windows. Malaria-carrying mosquitoes tend not to travel more than about 50 yards in their lifetimes — sometimes as much as 200 yards, but that’s rare. They bite in the late evening to early morning, when most people are getting indoors to get to bed.
Draining rain gutters, old tires, potholes and other water-catching things within 100 yards of a home generally will do the trick. Bed nets are so effective because they provide a physical barrier — and they’re cheap.
DDT costs more than bed nets — where are you coming from?
While you’re at the Malaria Foundation, read this page. Notice there is no call for more DDT. See that section that talks about mosquito resistance to pesticides? That’s DDT and its relatives.
And the moral dimension? On that page you cited, they lay out the case for DDT use exactly as Rachel Carson urged in 1962. You cited Steven Milloy, who calls Carson a mass murderer. If you’re going to claim Rachel Carson’s methods are accurate, you have a moral duty to rebuke Steven Milloy and get down to fighting malaria instead of going over old political grudges that, while we discuss, let a child die every 30 seconds.
We know how to beat malaria. DDT can play a small role, and maybe a crucial role in a few places. But to beat the disease we need to beef up pharmaceuticals to treat the disease, improve the delivery and availability of medical care to provide quick and accurate diagnoses and quick and accurately applied medical care, and create enough wealth so that people can avoid contact with the mosquitoes, especially when the humans are infected.
There are two parts to the eradication campaign. If we can get rid of malaria in humans, when the mosquitoes come back, there is no pool of disease for them to draw from. But simply killing mosquitoes, birds and fish without providing the treatment to humans does nothing but waste money and resources.
Malaria is preventable. Insecticides are a part of integrated pest management to prevent the disease, but the smaller part. DDT is the smaller part of insecticide use.
Increasing the use of DDT will kill a lot more animals and insects. But it will also spread malaria.
Are you pro-DDT, or anti-malaria? Where are you coming from?
December 24, 2009 at 5:47 pm
Where I’m coming from: I am for a free market in malaria prevention, free from government intervention and interference. If DDT is the best way to deal with malaria, then the market will bear that out, if not, it will not. From what I have read (see the NYT mag article cited above) it seems that there has been government interference in the use of DDT, which seems to be recommended even by the WHO. I don’t support government foreign aid at all, but I think it should at least be free of political correctness and environmental extremism. I certainly would not claim a DDT-only approach is the best way. I really don’t care where Steve Milloy stands, or Carson for that matter. For me, this is not about personailities at all. Thanks again for the input. Honest debate is always good.
December 23, 2009 at 10:29 pm
You’ve got your spam filter to catch any post with more than one or two links in it. My last post is there, too, I’ll wager.