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[Lucky Pittman <lucky.pittman@murraystate.edu>]

Bravo, Don.  A wonderfully written piece.
Indeed the baby was thrown out with the bathwater, and a lot of the 
'science' that was put forward in the effort to ban DDT was, indeed 'junk 
science' .
At 09:20 PM 3/8/2005 -0500, you wrote:
> 1. Our politicians and regulators certainly rose up to smite DDT in 
> response to the public uproar of the 60's (provoked in large measure by 
> Rachel Carson's book "Silent Spring"), but, as in so many other cases, we 
> threw out the babies with the bathwater.  For not only did we prohibit the 
> use of DDT in this country, we also prohibited its export, and applied 
> maximum pressure to international development and lending institutions, as 
> well as the World Health Organization, to stop its use worldwide.  In this 
> we were quite successful.
>
> 2. While the negative environmental effects of DDT when used in the 
> quantites and with the application methods of the 50's and 60's seems to 
> be a settled question, the effect on the human organism is much less 
> so.  DDT was, and remains, the best weapon against one of the world's 
> greatest killers: malaria.  But of course we didn't have to worry about 
> malaria because we had eliminated it in this country.  Using DDT.
>
> 3. Now, the weapons of choice against malaria are remedial, not 
> prophylactic, (which means you have to get the disease before you can be 
> treated), and it continues to kill nearly 3 million people annually 
> worldwide, more than one third of them in Africa, disproportionately 
> children under the age of 5.   And malaria is making a strong comeback in 
> many parts of the world where it was nearly eliminated in the 1960's by 
> using DDT.  If all those dead children could speak, I wonder what they 
> would have to say about our environmental principles.  There is not much 
> you can do to enjoy the environment when you are buried under it.
>
> 4. No one is advocating a return to the days of excessive and 
> indiscriminate application of DDT, only its use in and around the huts and 
> wikiups of people who stand a far greater chance of dying from malaria 
> than from even the most incidental effects of DDT.  DDT is proven to be 
> effective in reducing mosquito populations and repelling their presence 
> from treated areas, but now people in carrier infested areas are offered 
> netting to put over their beds.  Good luck.
>
> 5. I have had  some personal brushes with malaria, which color my 
> views.  I took chloroquine phosphate tablets for several years while 
> serving in lowland Ecuador and northeastern Brazil.  But I was still 
> cautious when traveling upcountry in the Amazon region, and one of my 
> close friends and colleagues did get malaria and has it to this day.  I 
> saw many people who were suffering from this disease, and this was not 
> even one of the worst parts of the world for its effects.  Like AIDS, once 
> you get malaria you have it for life, and my friend still suffers from 
> sporadic recurrences of the disease that must be promptly treated.  Big, 
> strong people like my friend can fight off malaria, but children, 
> especially weak and poorly nourished children, cannot.
>
> 6. I often wish we would apply our moralizing skills closer to home rather 
> than export them to places where they are neither needed nor 
> wanted.  Large, fire-breathing SUV's and 360 hp. sedans would be a good 
> place to start.  You don't see too many of those in Africa.
>
> 7. Lucky's cows showed very poor judgment in busting into that shed and 
> eating DDT directly from the can.  I wonder what would happen to them if 
> they ate a case of Tylenol.
>
> Don Yellman, Great Falls, VA
> Barely a BA