Not So Silent Summer
June 13, 2007
The latest Sanity Squad podcast is up.This week, we look at outcome based science, the kind of ‘made to order science’ that conveniently fits a particular agenda or ideology.
It isn’t just global warming that has has come under scrutiny. Recent admissions that the removal of DDT has resulted in the far greater number of deaths by malaria than previously thought, or the massive downward revision of the number of Africans who suffer from HIV/AIDS, are the tip of the iceberg of a scientific and journalistic community for whom a particular ideology trumps the integrity of the science.
Rachel Carson, author of Silent Spring and credited with founding the modern environmentalist movement is given a free pass on the ‘junk science’ that has resulted in the deaths of hundreds of millions- because ‘she meant well.’
Presidential candidate John Edwards made tens of millions of dollars because he brought junk science to the courtroom. He claimed that cerebral palsy was caused by poor obstetric and delivery room care, knowing all the while his assertions were untrue. In the process of making himself rich, ripped apart the North Carolina medical care system who now fear the ‘junk science’ lawsuits. The added costs of malpractice insurance have been passed on to North Carolinians and those added costs. Those costs have impacted those who can least afford it (Edwards is reviled in his home state. In the last election, not only did the local kid not carry his sown state, he couldn’t even win in his own county).
Did you know that prostate cancer affects many more men than breast cancer affects women? No? Ask yourselves why? Ask yourselves why there is no outcry when federal research money is disproportionately directed towards breast cancer instead of the far greater problem of prostate cancer
There are parents refusing to immunize their children because they believe- without any supporting scientific evidence- that immunizations cause autism. The parents of some of these children are going to court and suing the makers of vaccines to demand damages despite there being no evidence whatsoever to back up their assertions.
In the podcast, Shrinkwrapped noted that real science is critical, skeptical, analytical and dispassionate. Dr Saniy notes that scientists ought not to be calling press conferences before their work is published. Neo noted that media science writers/journalists have an obligation to present science with a credible and scientific slant.
Then again, why on earth would we expect credible and unbiased science journalists when we can’t find credible and unbiased political journalists?
It is a scientific fact that Neo, Dr Sanity, Shrinkwrapped and ourselves will agitate and warm your brain cells faster than an industrial microwave.
The Sanity Squad podcast is recommended by 9 our of 10 brain surgeons, 8 out of 10 rocket scientists and 3 out of 3 thickly accented, blogging, dead German psychiatrists.
June 13, 2007 at 8:26 AM
So, speaking of science, care to provide some scientific support for your claim that Rachel Carson killed hundreds of millions people?
And just to be clear here, scientific support means an article in a peer-reviewed science journal, not something published by Lyndon LaRouche.
June 13, 2007 at 9:04 AM
Where exactly did I say Carson killed hundreds of millions of people?
I would imagine that reading and reading comprehension ought to be required for those who opine on science, but clearly, that is not the case.
What I did say WAS “..modern environmentalist movement is given a free pass on the ‘junk science’ that has resulted in the deaths of hundreds of millions- because ’she meant well.’
Since the sixties, there have been about 800,000 death a year of children under 5. That figure only reflects the reported deaths of children under 5. The actual number may be considerably higher.
In addition, the number of total deaths that can be attributed to malaria each year is considerably higher.
And that’s just malaria.
Perhaps you had best not consider Al Gore as a scientific point of reference.
June 13, 2007 at 9:19 AM
So you don’t have any scientific support for your claim.
June 13, 2007 at 9:32 AM
Of course I have numbers.
See the CDC numbers here:
http://www.cdc.gov/malaria/impact/index.htm
See this too:
http://blogs.forbes.com/digitalrules/2007/05/but_her_heart_w.html
See this:
“A pandemic is slaughtering millions, mostly children and pregnant women — one child every 15 seconds; 3 million people annually; and over 100 million people since 1972.
The resurgence of a disease that was almost eradicated 30 years ago is a case study in the danger of putting concern for nature above concern for people,” said Nizam Ahmad, an analyst from Bangladesh that focuses on problems affecting developing countries.
“It’s worse than it was 50 years ago,” said University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill malaria expert Dr. Robert Desowitz said.
According to the WHO, “more people are now infected [with malaria] than at any point in history,” with “up to half a billion cases [being reported] every year.” The National Institute of Health reports that “infectious diseases remain the leading cause of death” in the world and is “the third leading cause of death in the United States.” WHO estimates put the number of people in Africa dying from malaria annually is equal to the number of AIDS’ deaths over the last 15 years combined!
“Carson and those who joined her in the crusade against DDT have contributed to millions of preventable deaths. Used responsibly, DDT can be quite safe for man and the environment,” Koenig said, summing up what many infectious disease experts believe.
The discovery of DDT by scientist Paul Herman Muller, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1948, was originally hailed as a major public health success because DDT kills mosquitoes, lice and fleas, which are carriers for more than 20 serious infectious diseases like the bubonic plague, typhus, yellow fever, encephalitis and malaria.
“To only a few chemicals does man owe as great a debt as to DDT. It is estimated that, in little more than two decades DDT has prevented 500 million human deaths, due to malaria, that would otherwise have been inevitable,” a statement from the National Academy of Sciences said. Before DDT, infectious diseases spread like wildfire, leaving millions dead in their wake. During World War I, typhus epidemics killed 3 million Russians and millions elsewhere in European. But during World War II, before it was blacklisted by Carson and her crew, DDT saved millions of Allied troops from becoming ill and/or dying from infectious diseases such as malaria, typhus and the plague. Plus, DDT also saved the lives of recently liberated Nazi concentration camp survivors by killing off typhus-causing lice.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=9169
All the above notwithstanding and given your inability to read and comprehend (it is interesting that you don’t take issue with that and the other remarks I made), please give me a reason why I should further engage you.
Now go away and pretend to be important elsewhere.
June 13, 2007 at 9:38 AM
In the interest of transparency and the public’s right to know, I suggest the development of a basic statistics test for journalists and a requirement that the personal score appear next to their byline. These folks are so impressed with phrases like 100% increase, which is totally meaningless in itself. They also seem to think that the values on x and y axes are holy truths rather than choice made by the compiler of the graph; they should always be questioned. I actually heard one report that a day last month was the hottest of the year, as if it were unexpected for the temperatures in spring and summer to exceed those of January.
June 13, 2007 at 9:47 AM
The only scientific source you cited was the CDC, which put deaths at one million a year. If you add up all the deaths since 1972 you might get 35 million. Which is not the same as hundreds of millions. The CDC does not blame the DDT ban for the deaths, since the anti-malarial use of DDT was not banned.
FrontPage magazine is not a scientific source and Lisa Makson is a journalist and not a scientist. As far as I can tell she has no scientific training and isn’t even a science journalist.
June 13, 2007 at 10:17 AM
You really are an idiot. Stick to fixing broken printers.
Frontpage quoted sources from UNC Chapel Hill and elsewhere. UNC Chapel Hill is not NSW Computer Tech.
The numbers initially referred to were children under 5. THAT IS NOT THE TOTAL NUMBER OF DEATHS. That is made clear in the links I posted and that also serves to highlight your reading incomprehension of matters scientific. Further, we are counting the deaths attributed by malaria from the 60′s, not from 1972.
See this:
http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/eid/vol4no4/adobe/malakooti.pdf
http://www.malaria.org/tren.html
http://www.panna.org/campaigns/docsPops/docsPops_030317.dv.html
http://www.ncseonline.org/2007conference/SessionFiles/chafee%20lecture%20transcript-lbrilliant.pdf
There are thousands of similar scientific articles out there. The scientists at UNC and elsewhere are not writing based on projection and wishful thinking (unlike certain idiot bloggers).
Your critique of Lisa Makon is interesting. As far as I can tell, you aren’t a scientist either- and by your standards, that makes your opinions both inconsequential and irrelevant.
In any event, since you have repeatedly shown yourself to be an idiot, allow me to thank you for acting as a poster boy for the insignificant voices that purport to speak for the scientific unwashed masses.
You have provided me with great fodder for a post on the irrelevant left.
June 13, 2007 at 11:45 AM
You have once more failed to support your claim about hundred of millions of deaths. Going through your links I find.
1. A peer reviewed paper. Well done! Except that it attributes an increase in malaria in Kenya to drug resistance, not a DDT ban.
2. Not a peer reviewed paper.
3. A whole list of peer reviewed papers. Good work! Except that they don’t seem to support you. Did you notice this one?
7) Curtis, S.F. Should DDT continue to be recommended for malaria vector control? Medical and Veterinary Entomology (1994) 8. 107-112.
PANNA summary: The author reviews studies from the early 1990s on DDT and alternative insecticides, both effectiveness and resistance studies, and studies on DDT’s impacts on health, including its connection with certain cancers and elevated levels in the breast milk of mothers in areas being sprayed for malaria vector control. The author concludes, after a list of stern warnings and precautions for the switch from DDT to other malaria control techniques, that DDT should no longer be the insecticide of choice for malaria vector control.
4. Not a peer reviewed paper.
June 13, 2007 at 12:25 PM
Sorry dude, you can dance all you want but the facts in evidence bear me out- not you and the deliberate distortions you are attempting to foist on readers- which by the way, is apparently something with which you you have some experience.
In fact, the UNC prof and Malaria Foundation International Chairman and countless others attribute the death of a hundred of million to malaria and even more millions to other junk science- as I noted in my post.
You really are like an ape in a tuxedo. You can sing, you can dance and you might even be able to use a knife and fork- but in the end, the only one who believes the tuxedo camouflages the truth, is the ape.
From your initial response, you have misrepresented what I said and went on to misrepresent the truth- and as it turns out, not at all surprising.
You can’t make the real science of the cost of junk science go away.
“…{We tried for years – decades – to get them to listen to us about climate change. To do that we had to ramp up our rhetoric. We had to figure out ways to tone down our natural skepticism (we are scientists, after all) in order to put on a united face. We knew it would mean pushing the science harder than it should be. We knew it would mean allowing the boundary-pushers on the “it’s happening” side free reign while stifling the boundary-pushers on the other side. But knowing the science, we knew the stakes to humanity were high and that the opposition to the truth would be fierce, so we knew we had to dig in. But now they are listening. Now they do believe us. Now they say they’re ready to take action. And now we’re wondering if we didn’t create a monster. We’re wondering if they realize how uncertain our projections of future climate are. We wonder if we’ve oversold the science. We’re wondering what happened to our community, that individuals caveat even the most minor questionings of barely-proven climate change evidence, lest they be tagged as “skeptics.” We’re wondering if we’ve let our alarm at the problem trickle to the public sphere, missing all the caveats in translation that we have internalized. And we’re wondering if we’ve let some of our scientists take the science too far, promise too much knowledge, and promote more certainty in ourselves than is warranted.}”
http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/prometheus/archives/climate_change/001030so_what_happened_at_.html
Try this;
“This discourse is now characterised by phrases such as “climate change is worse than we thought”, that we are approaching “irreversible tipping in the Earth’s climate”, and that we are “at the point of no return”.
I have found myself increasingly chastised by climate change campaigners when my public statements and lectures on climate change have not satisfied their thirst for environmental drama and exaggerated rhetoric.
It seems that it is we, the professional climate scientists, who are now the (catastrophe) sceptics. How the wheel turns.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/5236482.stm
See this, “The Real Gore Primer.”
http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/story.html?id=0dbbfab1-05c6-481e-ad77-8a3343fc3a30
I find it particularly humorous that you, who are so dismissive of the science that doesn’t fit your rather deceptive agenda, seems to take great umbrage when your assertions (clearly unqualified and deceitful, as evidenced by some of your earlier remarks) are challenged.
Still, you are entertaining, in a buffoon-esque way.
Some of the other psych bloggers and myself are taking bets on how long you will insist on making an ass of yourself.
I have great faith in you. After reading your blog, it is clear you have built up a great tolerance to reality and psychological insight.
I find it fascinating that your ‘problem’ is with me and not the deaths of over a hundred million due to bad science.
You make it sound as if I were the problem. It is fascinating in which direction your outrage is focused. You attempt to justify the ban on DDT and make no effort to even pretend to care about the results of that bad science.
The truth is, I would have had a hell of a of of respect for you had you said, “We were wrong on DDT. We overreacted and we didn’t have all the evidence we needed. We went too far.”
I do wonder what it is about African victims of malaria that makes them so disposable in your world- that even now, you won’t admit there has been a problem and make an effort to fix the problem.
Yup- I’m the problem.
June 14, 2007 at 1:40 PM
“Some of the other psych bloggers and myself are taking bets on how long you will insist on making an ass of yourself.”
So, what do the Psych bloggers say about someone who insults somebody for asking for evidence?
Here is your claim:
Bad science proposed by Rachel Carson has killed millions of Africans.
Here is your evidence:
Some people said so.
Millions of people have died from malaria.
But your claim relies on assumptions that are false:
1. Carson advocated banning DDT for malrial use–FALSE. In her book she says to spray, but reduce the amount of spraying to reduce the evolution of resistance.
2. DDT was banned–FALSE. DDT was banned for ag use, not disease.
3. Mllions of people would have been saved if DDT had been used–FALSE. DDT was used around the world and its use continues. But developed resistance to DDT and pesticides in general has led to a decline in its efficacy.
You can see that your claim needs support for its assumptions. You need to show that DDT was banned, that Carson wanted it banned and that resistance would not be a factor. I wish you the best in finding credible scientific sources.
Let’s do be civil.
June 14, 2007 at 1:48 PM
Boris, the ‘some people’ who said malaria has killed millions are pretty much the entire scientific community.
What was in dispute were the numbers.
Some of the most important scientists and malaria research scientists agree with my figure, including the renowned UNC prof and Malaria Foundation International Chairman agree with the number.
June 14, 2007 at 2:17 PM
“Some of the most important scientists and malaria research scientists agree with my figure, including the renowned UNC prof and Malaria Foundation International Chairman agree with the number.”
I am not disputing the number of deaths related to malaria. I am disputing this claim:
“Rachel Carson, author of Silent Spring and credited with founding the modern environmentalist movement is given a free pass on the ‘junk science’ that has resulted in the deaths of hundreds of millions- because ’she meant well.’”
As my post points out this claims makes several unsupported–and unsupportable–assumptions. Do you now agree that your claim is unfounded?
June 14, 2007 at 2:23 PM
““Rachel Carson, author of Silent Spring and credited with founding the modern environmentalist movement is given a free pass on the ‘junk science’ that has resulted in the deaths of hundreds of millions- because ’she meant well.”
That is opinion- unlike the remarks quoting the ‘numbers.’
That said, I do believe that there is merit to the argument that PC environmentalism has resulted in the deaths of millions. It is not logical to assume that the more radical environmentalists assumed a more responsible position on everything else with the EXCEPTION of DDT.
June 14, 2007 at 2:47 PM
SC&A: Perhaps you should learn to construct a logically sound argument before calling everyone else an idiot. Specifically, you go to great lengths to add up the number of deaths from malaria, but barely even mention how the continued agricultural use of DDT would’ve saved these lives.
Further to that, you’re a hypocrite. You cry foul at Lambert misrepresenting you, but then you proceed to do it to him twice in your replies. Most notably, like the majority of climate change denialists, you’re constantly referring to Al Gore, as though Lambert or any else for that matter is using him as a reference.
June 14, 2007 at 2:58 PM
The fact remains the post was not about the continued ag use of DDT.
Secondly, I didn’t add up the number deaths- well qualified malaria experts did that.
lastly, I was not the hypocrite here- Lambert was and remains a hypocrite. He has continues to misrepresent and misquote what was said.
As I noted, “I find it fascinating that your ‘problem’ is with me and not the deaths of over a hundred million due to bad science.
You make it sound as if I were the problem. It is fascinating in which direction your outrage is focused. You attempt to justify the ban on DDT and make no effort to even pretend to care about the results of that bad science.
The truth is, I would have had a hell of a of of respect for you had you said, “We were wrong on DDT. We overreacted and we didn’t have all the evidence we needed. We went too far.”
I do wonder what it is about African victims of malaria that makes them so disposable in your world- that even now, you won’t admit there has been a problem and make an effort to fix the problem.”
Liek I said, he is the hypocrite here.
June 15, 2007 at 9:41 AM
I’m puzzled. The CDC figures you refer to claim 853,000 deaths a year to malaria in the under-5s, and, separately, at least a million deaths a year overall. The WHO link from that page claims “over a million each year, mostly children”. Even going back to the 60s, how does that add up to the “hundreds of millions” referred to in your original post? Even if “over a million” is actually 1,999,999, that is (over 40 years) still less than 80 million. A more natural reading of the words suggest between 40 and 50 million.
Secondly, why are you going back to the 60s; I may be wrong, but I thought that DDT wasn’t banned until the 70s.
Are you really claiming that every single death to malaria since the 1960s (and then some) could have been prevented by the agricultural use of DDT that Carson sought to prevent, as opposed to the targeted use that Rachel Carson advocated? Do you really claim that *any* deaths could have been prevented in this way? Do you competely dismiss the fact that overuse of DDT was already causing resistance to arise in malaria vectors when Carson wrote her book?
June 15, 2007 at 9:49 AM
To repeat- I never said ALL those deaths were related to DDT and malaria (though experts in the field made that claim).
What I actually said that the number of deaths that can be attributed to ‘junk science’ was astronomical.
Unfortunately, I have been misquoted and misrepresented.
June 15, 2007 at 10:36 AM
How? What particular pieces of junk science are you refering to, if not DDT? Where do you get your figures? How do you know all ‘junk science’ is due to Rachel Carson?
June 15, 2007 at 10:55 AM
Pay attention!
I never attributed all the deaths to Carson.
As for the numbers, start with the CDC, then move on to the UNC and the Malaria Foundation International Chairman.
Not that they know more than you, of course.
June 15, 2007 at 11:41 AM
How many are you attributing to Rachel Carson?
Got any links? You’re making this up aren’t you?! Well, two can play at that game. Just scanned to whole of the CDC site and found no evidence that the DDT ban has resulted in a single death. Now, it should be easy to disprove me. All you have to do is find one page at the CDC that attributes just one death to the DDT ban.
June 15, 2007 at 12:44 PM
Of course, YOU’RE right.
“To only a few chemicals does man owe as great a debt as to DDT… In little more than two decades, DDT has prevented 500 million human deaths, due to malaria, that otherwise would have been inevitable.”
[National Academy of Sciences, Committee on Research in the Life Sciences of the Committee on Science and Public Policy. 1970. The Life Sciences; Recent Progress and Application to Human Affairs; The World of Biological Research; Requirements for the Future.]
“In May 1955 the Eighth World Health Assembly adopted a Global Malaria Eradication Campaign based on the widespread use of DDT against mosquitos and of antimalarial drugs to treat malaria and to eliminate the parasite in humans. As a result of the Campaign, malaria was eradicated by 1967 from all developed countries where the disease was endemic and large areas of tropical Asia and Latin America were freed from the risk of infection. The Malaria Eradication Campaign was only launched in three countries of tropical Africa since it was not considered feasible in the others. Despite these achievements, improvements in the malaria situation could not be maintained indefinitely by time-limited, highly prescriptive and centralized programmes.”
[Bull World Health Organ 1998;76(1):11-6]
Population control advocates blamed DDT for increasing third world population. In the 1960s, World Health Organization authorities believed there was no alternative to the overpopulation problem but to assure than up to 40 percent of the children in poor nations would die of malaria. As an official of the Agency for International Development stated, “Rather dead than alive and riotously reproducing.”
[Desowitz, RS. 1992. Malaria Capers, W.W. Norton & Company]
June 15, 2007 at 1:42 PM
No Meyrick SC&A is perfectly correct, Steve Milloy is killing a lot of people by misleading them. Please pass the pinata stick
June 15, 2007 at 5:48 PM
SC&A
You claim to have been misrepresented; yet you said that:
“Rachel Carson…is given a free pass on the ‘junk science’ that has resulted in the deaths of hundreds of millions”
It was not “junk science” to which you referred – it was Rachel Carson’s “junk science”. Your reference to her authorship of Silent Spring and her being credited with founding the modern environmentalist movement were parenthetical; trying to argue (as you have done above) that you were referring to the modern environmentalist movement as having caused the deaths is just lame. I’ve seen creationists with reading comprehension difficulties, but writing comprehension difficulties are a new one on me.
You have also, in your June 13, 9:32am comment to this post, tried to defend the figure as a malaria death figure; and malaria is the only cause of death you have referred to elsewhere.
Will you now, however, say exactly what proportion of malaria deaths you claim are due to the ban on the agricultural use of DDT; and explain where the other hundreds of millions of deaths you credit to Rachel Carson’s “junk science” come from? Or simply withdraw the accusation?
June 15, 2007 at 5:49 PM
Sort of a pathetic “ban” on DDT, when the evidence given for the bad effects of the ban consists of the wonderful results had by the people who continue to use it.
Well, in the same spirit I decry the ban on Russian Roulette, as I read about somebody who tried it twice and survived.
June 15, 2007 at 5:56 PM
yeah, make it about me. I’m the problem.
“Rachel Carson sounded the initial alarm against DDT, but represented the science of DDT erroneously in her 1962 book Silent Spring. Carson wrote “Dr. DeWitt’s now classic experiments [on quail and pheasants] have now established the fact that exposure to DDT, even when doing no observable harm to the birds, may seriously affect reproduction. Quail into whose diet DDT was introduced throughout the breeding season survived and even produced normal numbers of fertile eggs. But few of the eggs hatched.” DeWitt’s 1956 article (in Journal of Agriculture and Food Chemistry) actually yielded a very different conclusion. Quail were fed 200 parts per million of DDT in all of their food throughout the breeding season. DeWitt reports that 80% of their eggs hatched, compared with the “control”" birds which hatched 83.9% of their eggs. Carson also omitted mention of DeWitt’s report that “control” pheasants hatched only 57 percent of their eggs, while those that were fed high levels of DDT in all of their food for an entire year hatched more than 80% of their eggs.”
““To only a few chemicals does man owe as great a debt as to DDT… In little more than two decades, DDT has prevented 500 million human deaths, due to malaria, that otherwise would have been inevitable.”
[National Academy of Sciences, Committee on Research in the Life Sciences of the Committee on Science and Public Policy. 1970. The Life Sciences; Recent Progress and Application to Human Affairs; The World of Biological Research; Requirements for the Future.]”
The environmental movement used DDT as a means to increase their power. Charles Wurster, chief scientist for the Environmental Defense Fund, commented, “If the environmentalists win on DDT, they will achieve a level of authority they have never had before.. In a sense, much more is at stake than DDT.”
[Seattle Times, October 5, 1969]
Environmental activists planned to defame scientists who defended DDT. In an uncontradicted deposition in a federal lawsuit, Victor Yannacone, a founder of the Environmental Defense Fund, testified that he attended a meeting in which Roland Clement of the Audubon Society and officials of the Environmental Defense Fund decided that University of California-Berkeley professor and DDT-supporter Thomas H. Jukes was to be muzzled by attacking his credibility.
[21st Century, Spring 1992]
Yeah, I’m the problem.
I mean, it’s not as if a few million dead Africans matter, right?
Let me guess- the Holocaust didn’t happen, either, right? I mean, there is so much to debate, right?
June 15, 2007 at 6:04 PM
SC&A
I’m now listening to your podcast; you quite clearly refers to hundreds of millions of deaths from malaria; “because DDT is not available”. Justify that allegation.
June 15, 2007 at 6:08 PM
“As an official of the Agency for International Development stated, “Rather dead than alive and riotously reproducing.”
[Desowitz, RS. 1992. Malaria Capers, W.W. Norton & Company]”
I know that this is going to whoosh right past you guys (or else you would make the effort to chase down the original, primary source) but Desowitz says
“He also said IN EFFECT, on behalf of AID, “better dead than alive and riotously reproducing”. (emphasis mine)
June 15, 2007 at 6:17 PM
“To only a few chemicals does man owe as great a debt as to DDT… In little more than two decades, DDT has prevented 500 million human deaths, due to malaria, that otherwise would have been inevitable.”
[National Academy of Sciences, Committee on Research in the Life Sciences of the Committee on Science and Public Policy. 1970. The Life Sciences; Recent Progress and Application to Human Affairs; The World of Biological Research; Requirements for the Future.]
But hell, what do they know?
I mean, they CAN’T be as smart as you!
June 15, 2007 at 6:19 PM
By the way, thank you for brilliant insights and logic. My upcoming post on the subject will only be enhanced by the examples of your thought processes.
June 15, 2007 at 6:41 PM
“The Malaria Eradication Campaign was only launched in three countries of tropical Africa since it was not considered feasible in the others. ”
And thus…. the “ban” on DDT is to blame? I fail to follow your logic.
June 15, 2007 at 9:07 PM
So, let’s see. “As an official of the Agency for International Development stated, “Rather dead than alive and riotously reproducing.”
[Desowitz, RS. 1992. Malaria Capers, W.W. Norton & Company]” Now, 1992, that is at the end of Bush I, after eight years of Ronald Regan. I could believe that from a Republican.
June 15, 2007 at 10:14 PM
That the NAS points to the past effectiveness of DDT does not support any of the assumptions your claim about “junk science” makes. You still need to prove 1) there was a ban on DDT for malaria 2) Rachel Carson supported a ban on DDT for malaria, 3) Resistance to DDT would not deter its effectiveness.
I hope your upcoming post refers to non-partisan scientific sources. Think tanks, advocacy groups and op-eds are unacceptable no matter their ideology.
June 16, 2007 at 4:11 AM
Before I said:
You have not done so. No one disputes DDT can be an effective agent against malaria. You have not demonstrated who the words of Rachel Carson, or anyone else, have lead to a DDT ban that has lead to avoidable deaths from malaria.
You complain others have been misrepresenting & misinterpreting your words, yet you seem to be equally guilty of misinterpreting peoples questions given that your responses fail to provide answers.
June 19, 2007 at 4:59 AM
Malaria is a killer, yes. DDT is not the savior of those killed. If one bothers to peruse the data, say at the National Academy of Sciences or at WHO sites, one discovers that some mosquitoes simply did not respond to DDT spraying, especially in Central Africa, and especially those carriers of the most nasty parasites. One also learns that, by the late 1960s, DDT’s effectiveness was signficantly reduced by agricultural overspraying, so DDT was not abandoned as a result of any ban, but instead was used much less because it didn’t work.
But if one seriously peruses the literature, one finds that the chief reason malaria is resurgent is because the various Plasmodium species developed resistance to the drugs that are used to treat malaria — so deaths rose simply because we didn’t have the drugs to treat cases effectively.
Another cause of rising malaria numbers is the spread of mosquitoes, due to changes in climate.
The “500 million deaths” quote cannot be sourced. It’s probably a distortion of studies that suggested 500 million people had reduced exposure to malaria infections. But do the math: You can’t get 500 million deaths from malaria since the discovery of DDT in the 19th century, not at the rate of malaria deaths at any time since then.
Let me up the challenge: Show me anyone in North Carolina who right out says they think it’s unfair to require swimming pool manufacturers not to suck the bowels out of children.
Junk science? How could you tell for all the junk history, junk politics, and just plain junk thinking?
June 20, 2007 at 11:28 AM
Have you guys checked out to be sure you got all the Lyndon LaRouche stuff out of your case against Carson?
And, have you seen this?
http://rabett.blogspot.com/2007/05/who-ordered-that-hundred-year-wingnuts.html