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  • From: Lucky Pittman <lucky.pittman@murraystate.edu>
  • To: North American Fruit Explorers <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [NAFEX] DDT
  • Date: Tue, 08 Mar 2005 21:54:22 -0600

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





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