Deltoid

Following the tsunami, the folks at Junk Tech Fumento Central Science Station (JTFCSS) have been calling for DDT spraying. Here’s Michael Fumento:

The best answer would be spraying with DDT. Unfortunately, environmentalists have demonized DDT based essentially on unfounded accusations in a 1962 book, Silent Spring. … DDT should be sprayed on water pools, tents, and on people themselves—as indeed was once common in Sri Lanka and throughout most of the world.

And Tech Central Station:

Imagine that every year the world suffered from six or more tsunamis producing the horrific death toll recently experienced. That’s how many people die every year from malaria alone, and the tsunami may contribute to even higher rates this year. That disaster has created new habitat suitable for the proliferation of malaria and other disease-carrying mosquitoes.

Public health officials can take steps to reduce the impact, one of which involves using the controversial pesticide DDT. Since the 1960s green activists pushed bans of the substance around the world based largely on false claims about its health affects. The result was a public health disaster—contributing to skyrocketing malaria rates.

Junkscience has a death clock, attributing almost 90 million deaths to the EPA’s ban on DDT in 1972. Michael Crichton is a little more conservative, only blaming the ban for 50 million deaths:

“Since the ban, two million people a year have died unnecessarily from malaria, mostly children. The ban has caused more than fifty million needless deaths. Banning DDT killed more people than Hitler.”

OK, first the Junkscience death counter. On this page I have a corrected version that shows that the EPA’s ban on DDT has caused deaths. You see, by 1972 malaria had been eradicated from the US, so there was no need for DDT spraying for malaria control. There have been some small outbreaks since 1972, but these have been eradicated by other insecticides. (From reading JTFCSS you would think that DDT was the only insecticide in existence.) The Junkscience death counter is particularly dishonest, since as the author concedes in a footnote hidden at the bottom of the page, the number it gives is more than the total number of malaria deaths in the entire world since 1972.

What about the ban on using DDT to fight malaria? There is no such ban. DDT is banned from agricultural use (and rightly so because of environmental damage) but can still be used for disease prevention. JTFCSS pretends that there is a ban so they can hang malaria deaths around the neck of environmentalists.

So we should be spraying DDT in Sri Lanka to prevent malaria? Well, no. The World Health Organization’s plan for malaria prevention in the wake of the tsunami reports:

Sri Lanka

Endemic sporadic malaria close to the affected areas transmitted by An.culicifacies, which has been considered DDT-resistant for many years, but is still sensitive to organophosphates, such as malathion, and pyrethroids.

Yes, the mosquitoes in Sri Lanka have evolved resistance to DDT. It doesn’t work any more. In fact, that is the reason why they stopped using DDT in Sri Lanka. It wasn’t because of any ban—it was because it stopped being effective. Steve Milloy, Mr Junkscience, has only a half-hearted belief in evolution. This may explain why he and other right-wing authors have trouble grasping the idea that mosquitoes evolve resistance to DDT. Fortunately, the World Health Organization is not taking advice from JTFCSS and sending DDT to Sri Lanka. They are sending malathion, which will actually be able to kill the mosquitoes there.
Correction: Malathion is not a good idea either, since mosquitoes in Sri Lanka have developed resistance to that as well.

For more information see the WHO Roll Back Malaria Department, Jim Norton on the DDT Ban Myth and John Quiggin giving the facts on DDT.

Update: Check out Africa Fighting Malaria, which pretends to be an organization devoted to fighting malaria, but posts this article which as well as arguing for the use of DDT in Sri Lanka where the mosquitoes are resistant to DDT, (remarkably ill-informed for a supposed anti-malaria organization, don’t you think?) claims that environmentalists are opposed to DDT because they want malaria to kill more people. Sure enough, it’s yet another astroturf operation. Sourcewatch has the details.

In a recent post I observed that the Junk Central Station crew were ignorantly advocating the use of DDT in Sri Lanka after the tsunami, apparently unaware that mosquitoes in Sri Lanka were resistant to DDT. The World Health Organization’s plan for malaria prevention in the wake of the tsunami advised against using DDT because:

Sri Lanka

Endemic sporadic malaria close to the affected areas transmitted by An.culicifacies, which has been considered DDT-resistant for many years, but is still sensitive to organophosphates, such as malathion, and pyrethroids.

Conclusive, you would think? Not to Roger Bate, who says Sri Lanka should be spraying DDT despite resistance and that the WHO is just pushing an anti-DDT environmentalist agenda. Read, and marvel:

One alarming new difference [in Galle, Sri Lanka] is that malaria is back, and is poised to strike down still more of the children, many orphaned, of this wretched place. It can be stopped, but only if ill-informed prejudice against DDT, the insecticide, is dropped. …

the malaria-control program is being compromised by outdated thinking, especially from the world’s leading health and government-aid agencies.

The prime example of their folly is found in a paper, “Malaria Risk and Malaria Control in Asian Countries Affected by the Tsunami,” in which the World Health Organization (WHO) outlines its policy for the affected region.

Historically, the primary method of malaria control has been Indoor Residual Spraying (IRS)—the spraying of house walls with tiny amounts of an insecticide, usually DDT. IRS often kills mosquitoes, but more important, it creates a barrier between man and mosquito. Studies show the vast majority of mosquitoes won’t enter a DDT-sprayed building, and this chemical barrier prevents transmission of the disease, much as prophylactic drugs or bed nets do, but more cheaply. Such an approach was highly successful in Sri Lanka. Owing to DDT, malaria rates fell from three million cases a year in the 1940s to fewer than 50 in 1963.

But then environmental pressures against DDT led to its abandonment, first in Western countries and then in most other parts of the world. …

Studies showed that Sri Lankan mosquitoes may be developing resistance to DDT, which meant that some of them would not be killed by the insecticide. Even the WHO report says Sri Lanka’s malaria vectors have been considered DDT-resistant for many years. But DDT’s main role is as a repellent, not as a toxic agent. Houses sprayed with DDT repel far more mosquitoes than any other insecticide tested and so remain effective even when resistance is substantial. This information, although known by health entomologists, is ignored by the WHO, which has adopted the anti-DDT environmentalist agenda. The WHO advises using alternative insecticides—although the organization buys precious few even of these.

So that’s Bate’s story. How does it compare with the facts?

“WHO … has adopted the anti-DDT environmentalist agenda”

Here is a letter from WHO’s Allan Schapira in response to similar claims:

Nature 432, 439 (25 November 2004);

DDT still has a role in the fight against malaria

Sir — Your News story about the Roll Back Malaria campaign (”Struggling to make an impact” Nature 430, 935; 2004) quotes me as claiming that pressure from government and other donors made spraying difficult to push through politically. I am also quoted as saying: “We have had very, very strong lobbying over DDT. We have had to give up.” The quotations give the impression that the World Health Organization (WHO) has given up on DDT under the pressure of lobbying. I believe this is misleading.

When interviewed, I explained that we sometimes had to give up trying to convince a specific donor to financially support indoor spraying with DDT, if they flatly refused because of its perceived toxicity and ecological hazard. This has occasionally occurred in countries where the government wished to use DDT, and there was evidence that it was the best option for malaria-vector control.

However, in general terms, the WHO has never given up in its efforts to ensure access to DDT where it is needed. At meetings of the intergovernmental negotiation committee on the Stockholm Convention—which seeks to control the spread of persistent organic pollutants—the WHO has successfully defended the right of countries to use DDT for disease-vector control, if no suitable alternative can be found. The WHO also supports worldwide efforts to develop alternative products and phase in alternative control strategies (link).

The Stockholm Convention came into force in May this year. Its exemption allowing restricted and controlled use of DDT according to WHO guidelines is a good example of appropriate international regulation on a difficult dilemma. It is not a compromise but a solution, which ensures that disease-control programmes maintain access to a useful product, while fully respecting the need to prevent environmental damage from persistent organic pollutants, such as DDT.

Allan Schapira
Strategy and Policy Team,
Roll Back Malaria Department,
World Health Organization,

“WHO advises using alternative insecticides”

From the WHO’s FAQ on DDT:

WHO recommends indoor residual spraying of DDT for malaria vector control.

Bate’s statement is a sort of half-truth because the WHO does recommend alternatives depending on the local circumstances:

Indoor residual application of DDT may have very little impact, for instance, if the malaria vector tends to rest and bite outdoors, and does not enter houses.

Information on vector susceptibility and tolerance to DDT should be up-to-date and backed up by an effective pesticide resistance management strategy to ensure continuing pesticide effectiveness. Local vector resistance or increased tolerance to DDT may affect its overall effectiveness.

This is why they don’t recommend DDT in Sri Lanka.

“Studies showed that Sri Lankan mosquitoes may be developing resistance to DDT”

Pinikahana and Dixon, Trends in malaria morbidity and mortality in Sri Lanka. (Indian J Malariology):

After the discovery of DDT resistance in 1969, malathion spraying took over in 1973, and USAID-assisted control programme, involving case-detection and treatment, started in 1977.

This is not “may be developing resistance”. They have developed resistance, and it was way back in 1969.

“Houses sprayed with DDT repel far more mosquitoes than any other insecticide tested and so remain effective even when resistance is substantial”

India has been using DDT against malaria continuously since the 1940’s. V.P. Sharma, DDT: The Fallen Angel (Current Science 85 1532-1537) explains why it is becoming ineffective:

The Health Department of Maharashtra reported an increasing trend of malaria even after two rounds of DDT indoor spraying between 1995 and 1997, with a 75-83% coverage of rooms in houses. Monitoring in 74 villages revealed that malaria transmission continued, and cases had sharply increased by the third quarter of 1997. In November 1997, a special spraying round with Lambda-cyhalothrin (10% WP) managed to interrupt malaria transmission …

The declining effectiveness of DDT is a result of several factors which frequently operate in tandem. The first and the most important factor is vector resistance to DDT. All populations of the main vector, An. culicifacies have become resistant to DDT. The excito-repellent effect of DDT, often reported useful in other countries, actually promotes outdoor transmission …

Third, DDT, cheaper by weight than alternative pesticides and manufactured indigenously by government-controlled HIL, is sprayed with the false belief that its excito-repellent action prevents transmission.

In India at least, it seems that the “outdated thinking” belongs to those who continue to use DDT even though it has lost effectiveness.

“[Malaria in Galle] can be stopped only if ill-informed prejudice against DDT is dropped.”

Olivier Briet et al have just published a study on malaria in Sri Lanka after the tsunami (Malaria Journal 2005 4:8). They write:

DDT and Malathion are no longer recommended since An. culicifacies and An. subpictus has been found resistant.

Figure 2 in their paper shows that since 2000, malaria incidence has been reduced by a factor of 100 without any use of DDT. Figures 3 and 4 show that Galle has been free of malaria for years.

“[That DDT is effective despite resistance is] known by health entomologists”

I asked Olivier Briet, lead author of the Sri Lanka malaria study I just cited. He allowed that it might be true, but he was unaware of any study supporting Bate’s claim, especially in realation to Sri Lanka.

“[Spraying DDT] prevents transmission of the disease, much as prophylactic drugs or bed nets do, but more cheaply”

Bhatia et al conducted experiments in India to see whether indoor spraying or bed nets were more effective. They found that bed nets were more effective at preventing malaria and were more cost effective as well. Because of DDT resistance they sprayed with deltamethrin rather than DDT, which would have been even less effective. Bed nets were also found to be more cost effective in Sri Lanka.

Conclusion

DDT spraying may well be effective in other places, but it does not seem necessary or at all likely to be effective in Sri Lanka. As a supposed expert on malaria, Bate should be aware of these facts.

So who is Roger Bate, anyway? Well, apart from being an economist at the American Enterprise Institute, he is a director of the astroturf operation Africans Fighting Malaria. He writes frequently for Tech Central Station. He is an adjunct fellow of the Competitive Enterprise Institute. He was a cofounder of European Science and Environment Forum (ESEF), which was another astroturf operation, secretly funded by Philip Morris to push a pro-tobacco agenda. ESEF was the European version of The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition (TASSC), so I guess that makes Bate the European version of Steve Milloy.

Supporting sources for this post on the resurgence of malaria in Sri Lanka despite DDT spraying.

(more…)

Anti-environmentalist writers frequently claim that after DDT had all but eliminated malaria from Sri Lanka, environmentalist pressure forced Sri Lanka to ban DDT, leading to a resurgence of malaria:

Roger Bate in Politicizing Science: The Alchemy of Policymaking writes:

Some developing countries imposed a complete ban on the pesticide, as Sri Lanka did in 1964, when officials believed the malaria problem was solved. By 1969 the number of cases had risen from the low of seventeen (when DDT was used) to over a half million.

Walter Williams in in Capitalism Magazine writes

In Sri Lanka, in 1948, there were 2.8 million malaria cases and 7,300 malaria deaths. With widespread DDT use, malaria cases fell to 17 and no deaths in 1963. After DDT use was discontinued, Sri Lankan malaria cases rose to 2.5 million in the years 1968 and 1969, and the disease remains a killer in Sri Lanka today.

Ted Lapkin in Quadrant writes:

When Sri Lankan authorities agreed to ban DDT during the mid-1960s, rates of malaria infection exploded from twenty-nine cases in 1964 to over 500,000 a mere five years later.

In his book The Epidemiologists John Brignell writes:

1948 Annual malaria rate in Sri Lanka reaches 2.8million
1962 Publication of Silent Spring by Rachel Carson
1963 DDT reduces annual malaria rate in Sri Lanka to 17
1964 DDT banned in Sri Lanka
1969 Annual malaria rate in Sri Lanka reaches 2.5million.

Jim Norton lists even more examples.

Now when you think about it, the story that they tell just isn’t credible. If DDT spraying had almost eliminated malaria, and they got a new outbreak, then no environmentalists would be able to stop them from resuming spraying. So I went to the library to find out what really happened. And it wasn’t hard to find out. The definitive history of malaria is Gordon Harrison’s Mosquitoes, Malaria and Man and it turns out that, yes of course they went back to spraying. Harrison writes:

Sri Lanka went back to the spray guns, reducing malaria once more to 150,000 cases in 1972; but there the attack stalled. Anopheles culicifacies, completely susceptible to DDT when the spray stopped in 1964, was now found resistant presumably because of the use of DDT for crop protection in the interim. Within a couple of years, so many culicifacies survived that despite the spraying malaria spread in 1975 to more than 400,000 people.

So in 1977 they switched to the more expensive malathion and were able to reduce the number of cases to about 50,000 by 1980. In 2004, the number was down to 3,000, without using DDT.

And the reason why they stopped spraying in 1964? It wasn’t environmentalist pressure. With only 17 cases in 1963, they didn’t think it was needed any more. And this wasn’t an unreasonable belief. In the countries where malaria had been eradicated, once the number was this low, treating the remaining cases with drugs to kill the malaria parasite was sufficient to completely eradicate it.

Just to prove that there is no question about any of this, I have extracts from Harrison and two other supporting sources here.

The anti-environmentalist version of what happened is a hoax. That doesn’t mean that all the writers above were being deliberately misleading: they might be just repeating what another anti-environmentalist wrote and be unaware of the true story. AEI scholar Roger Bate, however, coauthored an entire book on DDT and Malaria which relies very heavily on Harrison’s history, citing him over twenty times. They conspicuously fail to mention that Sri Lanka resumed DDT spraying and that it failed because of resistance, instead claiming that

pressure not to use DDT may have been applied by western donors using resistance as a convenient argument. Recent evidence shows that even where resistance to DDT has emerged, the excito-repellancy of DDT causes mosquitoes not to enter buildings that have been sprayed (Roberts et al., 2000). Under test conditions (see Grieco et al., 2000), for at least one type of malarial mosquito in Belize (the only country in which these tests have so far been conducted),DDT is far more successful than the most favoured vector control pesticide Deltamethrin. Hence it is unlikely that malaria rates would have increased (significantly) even if resistance were found.

But malaria rates did increase even though DDT was extensively used. Harrison has an entire chapter on this. How could Bate possibly not have noticed this? (And tests on a different continent on a different species of mosquito aren’t even close to relevant).

Ted Lapkin has objected to my reference to him in my post on the Great DDT Hoax. In his email he writes:

I would very much prefer, if possible, to keep things on an informal basis rather than a legal one. Thus this whole misunderstanding can be cleared up by a retraction and apology on your blog. In that event I would see no need to pursue matters further.

I offered to post his argument as to why he felt that I was wrong, but he declined, saying that it was a private communication. I have posted the paragraph above because I don’t think threats are entitled to privacy.

Meanwhile, the DDT hoax has appeared in The American Spectator, with Gerald and Natalie Sirkin writing:

Sri Lanka (Ceylon), reacting to Silent Spring, in the 1960s gave up DDT. Its malarial cases had decreased from 2.8 million down to 17. After Sri Lanka gave it up, malaria shot back up to over 2.5 million. …

The search for an effective substitute for DDT continues to fail 30 years after the Ruckelshaus ban. The search for a treatment for malaria continues to fail; the mutations of the malaria virus soon make a drug ineffective. The search for a malaria-vaccine continues to fail.

As well as repeating the hoax story about environmentalists pressuring Sri Lanka to give up DDT, they pretend that there are no alternatives to DDT, when in fact there is plety of research that shows that insecticide treated netting is more effective in most places. And they manage to avoid mentioning that mosquitoes can and do develop resistance to DDT while mentioning that the “malaria virus” develops resistance to drugs. (And malaria is not caused by a virus.)

Two more lazy and ignorant pundits have been spotted spreading the hoax about a non-existant DDT ban. In the New York Times Nicholas Kristof writes

Environmentalists were right about DDT’s threat to bald eagles, for example, but blocking all spraying in the third world has led to hundreds of thousands of malaria deaths.

There is no ban on the the use of DDT against malaria. It is still used for that purpose. This fact is not a secret. Kristof just hasn’t bothered to find out the truth.

Writing in London’s Daily Telegraph, Dick Taverne perpetrates this howler:

DDT is another good example of a chemical that saved millions of lives by eliminating malarial mosquitoes yet was banned after environmentalists - including Rachel Carson, author of The Silent Spring - accused it of causing cancers. Yet not a single study shows that exposure to DDT damages the health of human beings. In Sri Lanka alone, the reported number of malaria cases rose from just 17 in 1963 to more than a million in 1968 after DDT was banned.

DDT was not banned in Sri Lanka in 1963. Nor did malaria increase to more than a million cases there in 1968. Some studies have found links between DDT and cancer (thogh more studies have found no link). The title “Silent Spring” does not refer to cancer, but the possibility that song birds could be wiped out by DDT.

Kristof at least has the excuse that he has to bang out a column a week and doesn’t have the time to properly research them. Taverne does not have that excuse since since his column is an extract from what would seem to be a rather poorly researched book.

The latest folks to spread the DDT hoax are Kopel, Gallant and Eisen. They claim:

[Malaria] is a disaster manufactured by First World political correctness; DDT prohibition is scientifically indefensible, and is responsible for millions of deaths every year.

However, as explained in my posts on DDT, DDT is not banned from use against malaria, and while it is still helps against malaria in some places, it is not the panacea that Kopel et al make it out to be.

They also write

But rather than limiting DDT use, the United Nations is actively encouraging a worldwide ban on DDT.⁶³

But reference 63 is to the Stockholm Convention on Persistant Organic Pollutants, which specifically exempts DDT use for vector control from the ban. Banning agricultural use of DDT greatly aids its use against malaria, since mosquitoes will be much less likely to develop resistance.

Tim Blair’s ability to detect fake quotes mysteriously deserts him when the fake quote supports his anti-environmentalist agenda. After quoting the usual falsehoods about how the ban on DDT killed 50 million. (It was only the agricultural use that was banned, and far from costing lives, this saved lives since it slows the evolution of resistance.) He has this:

The likely reason was spelled out with chilling clarity by Charles Wurster of the Environmental Defence Fund in the USA in 1971 when it was pointed out to him that DDT saved the lives of poor people in poor countries. He said: ‘So what? People are the main cause of our problems. We have too many of them. We need to get rid of some of them and this is as good a way as anything.’

Does that sound like Dr Wurster or Dr Evil? How gullible do you have to be to find that quote plausible? Jim Norton has tracked down the source of the quote. It seems that after one Victor Yannacone was fired by the EDF, he came up with the claim that Wurster made the statement above at a press conference. You would think that an outrageous statement like that would have been reported by at least one reporter, but no, there is no contemporary record of him saying it, just the unsupported atatement of a man with an axe to grind. Wurster denies Yannacone’s claim:

I wish to deny all of the statements of Mr, Yannacone. His remarks about me, attributed to me, and about other trustees of EDF are purely fantasy and bear no resemblance to the truth. It was in part because Mr. Yannacone lost touch with reality that he was dismissed by EDF, and his remarks of May 1970 indicate that his inability to separate fact from fiction has accelerated.

John Quiggin catches Miranda Devine spreading the DDT Hoax in the Sun Herald. If DDT is banned, how come this company will sell you some? They say:

In the past several years, we supplied DDT 75% WDP to Madagascar, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Sudan, South Africa, Namibia, Solomon Island, Papua New Guinea, Algeria, Thailand, Myanmar for Malaria Control project, and won a good reputation from WHO and relevant countries’ government.

I was particularly impressed by this argument from Devine:

Advertisements of the time, which today seem preposterous, extolled it as a benefactor of all humanity, with slogans such as “DDT is good for me-e-e“.

If an advertisement from a company selling DDT says that it is good, then it must be good? Using similar logic I can prove that athletes can smoke as many Camels as they want without it affecting their performance.

Update: Jim Easter, intrigued by the anachronistic Star Trek reference in the DDT ad tracks down the original version.

The World Bank is the largest funder of Eritrea’s anti-malaria program. The Eritrea Daily reports on the good results:

But today Eritrea, one of the poorest countries in the world, stands out as a success story in controlling malaria.

The statistics are compelling. The number of people dying from malaria has dropped by between 55 to 65 percent since 1999. Mortality of children under five years of age dropped by 53 percent, while there was a 64 percent drop in the death rate for older children and adults.

“In 1991, our death toll among pregnant women from malaria was very high” Eritrea’s Health Minister, Saleh Meky says.

Today, it is non-existent.”

And what did they do to get such dramatic reductions? Why they significantly increased the use of insecticide treated nets:

Eritrea has used a range of proven strategies for malaria control. An important part of this is to reduce human contact with mosquitoes. Insecticide treated bed nets have been vital to the program with the use of the nets significantly increased in high risk areas.

Walker says there are now more than 850,000 nets are being used in Eritrea with the numbers increasing.

“It’s become a major very cost effective way of dealing with the problem,” he says.

And stopped using DDT:

“If you go back five years, Eritrea used indoor spraying very extensively. But that’s been cut back a lot with this project,” he says.

“We’ve also introduced other kinds of insecticides which are more environmentally friendly than those they were using. Spraying though still continues, according to the extent of the malaria problem and the behavior of the mosquito in a particular area.”

So what do Roger Bate and Richard Tren of the DDT advocacy group Africa Fighting Malaria write about the World Bank and malaria? Look:

Almost all of the efforts to prevent malaria cases have focused on providing people with insecticide-treated nets. People, particularly pregnant women and young children–those most at risk–are encouraged to sleep under these nets in order to protect themselves from the Anopheles mosquito. The problem isn’t that these nets don’t work; it is simply that as a sole strategy they haven’t been shown to have any significant large-scale impact on malaria transmission.

Those countries that are making progress against the disease have ramped up their indoor insecticide-spraying programs. These programs entail spraying tiny amounts of insecticide, such as DDT, on the inside walls of houses to repel or kill (or both) the malaria-carrying mosquitoes. This method of control is safe and highly effective: Malaria rates have plummeted in the very poor northern parts of Zambia where this approach is currently employed. Yet RBM and the World Bank, always politically correct, have eschewed this method of control. The World Bank even went as far as to require that its of funding malaria control in Eritrea be conditional on non-use of DDT.

The World Bank did not switch away from DDT in Eritrea because of “political correctness”. They did so because the alternatives were more effective. Where DDT spraying is the most cost-effective method, the World Bank funds it. For example, they fund DDT spraying in India:

In accordance with guidelines from the World Health Organization and also in accordance with the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants, what the Bank does is to support the program of the government of India with technical sanction from WHO.

Specifically, it means the government of India is using a range of tools including indoor residual spraying. The government of India actually does use DDT because that is what the government of India wants to do.

Bate and Tren’s article is deliberately misleading. One blogger who was misled by it is Rafe Champion who falsely claimed that the World Bank would not fund DDT because of “political correctness”. He then compounded his error by refusing to correct his falsehood despite repeated requests.

Last week, in response to more repetition of the false claim that environmentalists had killed many millions of people with a ban of DDT. John Quiggin set out the facts of the matter:

DDT has never been banned in antimalarial use. The main reason for declining use of DDT as an antimalarial has been the development of resistance. Antimalarial uses have received specific exemptions from proposals to phase out DDT, until alternatives are developed. Bans on the use of DDT as an agricultural insecticide, promoted by Rachel Carson and others, have helped to slow the development of resistance, and therefore increased the effectiveness of DDT in antimalarial use (links on this here).

Attempts to get some of those responsible for spreading the false claims about environmentalists and DDT to correct them have proved largely unsuccessful.

Rafe Champion did not make even a token correction.

Two weeks after posting an obviously fabricated quote Tim Blair finally made a stealth correction, adding an update after the post had fallen off his front page by about five pages. No apology or correction for posting the outrageously false claim that “In a single crime [the greens] have killed about 50 million people.”

Miranda Devine failed to correct her false claim that DDT had been banned or her false claim that environmentalists had killed 50 million people. The only correction she offered was this:

Last week I inadvertently misquoted Rachel Carson by repeating a mistake from The Age of January 29. In an article by Keith Lockitch of the Ayn Rand Institute, Carson was quoted: “We should seek not to eliminate malarial mosquitoes with pesticides, but to find instead a reasonable accommodation between the insect hordes and ourselves.”

But in Lockitch’s original, published in FrontPage Magazine, the quote was part paraphrase: “We should seek, Carson wrote, not to eliminate malarial mosquitoes with pesticides, but to find instead, ‘a reasonable accommodation between the insect hordes and ourselves’.” Apologies.

There are a couple of problems with Devine’s correction. First, if you search the Age’s archive, you’ll find that no article by Lockitch was published in the Age or any other Fairfax paper on January 29 or any other date. Nor has the quote appeared in any article in any Fairfax paper other than Devine’s. Just to be sure, I checked the microfilm version of January 29’s Age. No article on DDT by Lockitch or anyone else. It is wrong for Devine to blame the Age for her mistake. [Update: John Quiggin tracks down the source of the fake quote: it was in the tabloid Herald-Sun on Jan 13.]

Second, Lockitch has not paraphrased Carson at all. Here is the complete paragraph that the quote was drawn from:

Through all these new, imaginative, and creative approaches to the problem of sharing our earth with other creatures there runs a constant theme, the awareness that we are dealing with life — with living populations and all their pressures and counter pressures, their surges and recessions. Only by taking account of such life forces and by cautiously seeking to guide them into channels favorable to ourselves can we hope to achieve a reasonable accommodation between the insect hordes and ourselves

Carson does not mention malarial mosquitoes at all in that paragraph and by no stretch of the imagination can it be interpreted to mean that we should learn to live with malaria. Here’s what Carson actually wrote about malarial mosquitoes in an earlier chapter (my emphasis):

Although insect resistance is a matter of concern in agriculture and forestry, it is in the field of public health that the most serious apprehensions have been felt. The relation between various insects and many diseases of man is an ancient one Mosquitoes of the genus Anopheles may inject into the human bloodstream the single-celled organism of malaria. …

These are important problems and must be met. No responsible person contends that insect-borne disease should be ignored. The question that has now urgently presented itself is whether it is either wise or responsible to attack the problem by methods that are rapidly making it worse. The world has heard much of the triumphant war against disease through the control of insect vectors of infection, but it has heard little of the other side of the story - the defeats, the short-lived triumphs that now strongly support the alarming view that the insect enemy has been made actually stronger by our efforts. Even worse, we may have destroyed our very means of fighting.

A distinguished Canadian entomologist, Dr A. W. A. Brown, was engaged by the World Health Organization to make a comprehensive survey of the resistance problem. In the resulting monograph, published in 1958, Dr Brown has this to say: Barely a decade after the introduction of the potent synthetic insecticides in public health programmes, the main technical problem is the development of resistance to them by the insects they formerly controlled. In publishing his monograph, the World Health Organization warned that the vigorous offensive now being pursued against arthropod-borne diseases such as malaria, typhus fever, and plague risks a serious setback unless this new problem can be rapidly mastered.

What is the measure of this setback? The list of resistant species now includes practically all of the insect groups of medical importance. … Malaria programmes are threatened by resistance among mosquitoes. …

Probably the first medical use of modem insecticides occurred in Italy in 1943 when the Allied Military Government launched a successful attack on typhus by dusting enormous numbers of people with DDT. This was followed two years later by extensive application of residual sprays for the control of malaria mosquitoes. Only a year later the first signs of trouble appeared. Both houseflies and mosquitoes of the genus Culex began to show resistance to the sprays. In 1948 a new chemical, chlordane, was tried as a supplement to DDT. This time good control was obtained for two years, but by August of 1950 chlordane-resistant flies appeared, and by the end of that year all of the houseflies as well as the Culex mosquitoes seemed to be resistant to chlordane. As rapidly as new chemicals were brought into use, resistance developed. …

The first malaria mosquito to develop resistance to DDT was Anopheles sacharovi in Greece. Extensive spraying was begun in 1946 with early success, by 1949, however, observers noticed that adult mosquitoes were resting in large numbers under road bridges, although they were absent from houses and stables that had been treated. Soon this habit of outside resting was extended to caves, outbuildings, and culverts and to the foliage and trunks of orange trees. Apparently the adult mosquitoes had become sufficiently tolerant of DDT to escape from sprayed buildings and rest and recover in the open. A few months later they were able to remain in houses, where they were found resting on treated walls.

This was a portent of the extremely serious situation that has now developed. Resistance to insecticides by mosquitoes of the anopheline group has surged upwards at an astounding rate, being created by the thoroughness of the very house-spraying programmes designed to eliminate malaria. In 1956, only 5 species of these mosquitoes displayed resistance; by early 1960 the number had risen from 5 to 28! The number includes very dangerous malaria vectors in West Africa, the Middle East, Central America, Indonesia, and the eastern European region. …

The consequences of resistance in terms of malaria and other diseases are indicated by reports from many parts of the world. An outbreak of yellow fever in Trinidad in 1954 followed failure to control the vector mosquito because of resistance. There has been a flare-up of malaria in Indonesia and Iran. …

Some malaria mosquitoes have a habit that so reduces their exposure to DDT as to make them virtually immune. Irritated by the spray, they leave the huts and survive outside. …

It is more sensible in some cases to take a small amount of damage in preference to having none for a time but paying for it in the long run by losing the very means of fighting [is the advice given in Holland by Dr Briejer in his capacity as director of the Plant Protection Service]. Practical advice should be ‘Spray as little as you possibly can’ rather than Spray to the limit of your capacity’…, Pressure on the pest population should always be as slight as possible.

Dr Briejer says:

It is more than clear that we are travelling a dangerous road. We are going to have to do some very energetic research on other control measures, measures that will have to be biological, not chemical. Our aim should be to guide natural processes as cautiously as possible in the desired direction rather than to use brute force….

It’s clear from this that our current policy of reserving DDT for public health use is the sort of DDT use that Carson would have approved. But don’t expect the Miranda Devines of this world to ever admit that.

In response to my post showing that DDT is not banned, David Adesnik suggests that there is a de facto ban on DDT

There are two ways that this de facto ban is supposed to work: first, by aid agencies refusing to fund DDT use, and second by the EU banning imports from DDT-using countries.

However, the agencies do fund DDT use and the stories claiming that they don’t have had to be corrected. A correction of the story Adesnik cites was published on May 23 2004 in the New York Times:

An article on April 11 about DDT and its effectiveness in controlling malaria in developing countries misstated the position of an international health organization on it. The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria indeed plans to finance some DDT spraying, in Somalia.

And a correction on 21 July 2005 in The Atlanta Journal - Constitution states:

A Monday editorial on the pesticide DDT to prevent malaria in developing countries misstated the position of USAID. The relief agency does pay for its use, in some cases.

Second, if you look at the article on the EU’s warnings, it just says this:

“If Uganda is to use DDT for malaria control, it is advisable to do so under strictly controlled circumstances, and in consultation with other countries in the region which may be affected,” the Brussels-based union said in a statement.

A parallel system to monitor foodstuffs for the presence of DDT also had to be set up. “This would ensure that any contamination of foodstuffs is detected and corrective measures taken,” the EU noted.

So they aren’t saying that Uganda can’t use DDT, just that it needs to make sure that DDT does not contaminate the food it exports to the EU. If DDT is sprayed indoors to control malaria it will not get into food exports, so this should not hinder its use against malaria at all.

Finally we have this recent news story from The Monitor (Uganda) on 18 July 2005:

The sub-counties of Mugoye, Bujumba and Kalangala town council in Kalangala district have been selected to pilot the spraying of DDT to fight malaria.

The Executive Director of the Community Welfare Services, who is also the MP for Bukoto South, Dr Herbert Wilson Lwanga, said they had received funding from the Global Fund, to fight malaria in Masaka, Rakai, Kalangala and Sembabule. “In this programme, we are to pilot means through which we can wipe out malaria in our country,” Lwanga said.

So Uganda is spraying DDT and it is being funded by an aid agency. There is no de facto ban on DDT.

Tina Rosenberg’s article, What the World Needs Now Is DDT, published in the New York Times last year contains many factual errors about DDT. The errors combine to present a false picture of a world where DDT is a magic bullet that could end malaria if only dogmatic environmentalists would allow it. After seven weeks one (and only one) correction was made to her article:

An article on April 11 about DDT and its effectiveness in controlling malaria in developing countries misstated the position of an international health organization on it. The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria indeed plans to finance some DDT spraying, in Somalia.

Many more corrections should have been made but were not:

It costs a quarter as much as the next cheapest insecticide. It is DDT.

Correction: Deltamethrin costs the same as DDT.

But at the moment, there is only one country in the world getting donor money to finance the use of DDT: Eritrea, which gets money for its program from the World Bank with the understanding that it will look for alternatives.

Correction: The World Bank also funds DDT in India, Madagascar and the Solomon Islands.

The move away from DDT in the 60’s and 70’s led to a resurgence of malaria in various countries — Sri Lanka, Madagascar, Swaziland, South Africa and Belize, to cite a few; those countries that then returned to DDT saw their epidemics controlled.

Correction: Only one of those countries moved away from DDT in the 60s and 70s. And that country, Sri Lanka, abandoned DDT in 1977 because the mosquitoes had developed resistance to DDT and a malaria epidemic had resulted. It was only by switching to malathion that they were able to control the epidemic.

In her 297 pages, Rachel Carson never mentioned the fact that by the time she was writing, DDT was responsible for saving tens of millions of lives, perhaps hundreds of millions.

Correction: Carson did mention the the triumphs agaisnt disease, writing:

The world has heard much of the triumphant war against disease through the control of insect vectors of infection, but it has heard little of the other side of the story - the defeats, the short-lived triumphs that now strongly support the alarming view that the insect enemy has been made actually stronger by our efforts. Even worse, we may have destroyed our very means of fighting.

Yes, one of the reasons that Carson was against the overuse of pesticides was that it would destroy their usefulness against disease.

Back to Rosenberg:

DDT killed bald eagles because of its persistence in the environment. ‘’Silent Spring'’ is now killing African children because of its persistence in the public mind.

Correction: “Silent Spring” is now saving African children. If it hadn’t been for bans on the agricultural use of DDT that Carson inspired, mosquitoes in Africa would have developed resistance as they did in Sri Lanka and many other places. The African children being saved from malaria with DDT spraying can thank Rachel Carson.

Ruckelshaus made the right decision—for the United States. At the time, DDT was mainly sprayed on crops, mostly cotton, a use far riskier than indoor house spraying. There was no malaria in the United States—in part thanks to DDT—so there were no public health benefits from its use. ‘’But if I were a decision maker in Sri Lanka, where the benefits from use outweigh the risks, I would decide differently,'’ Ruckleshaus told me recently.

Correction: Mosquitoes in Sri Lanka are resistant to DDT so there are no public health benefits to its use.

But the most pernicious falsehood in the article is the title:

What the World Needs Now Is DDT

This is contradicted by information deep in the article, but Rosenberg fails to draw the obvious conclusion:

Malaria’s status can be read in the aid figures. By the 1990’s, it was almost completely ignored, and Africa’s malaria-control programs disintegrated. In some countries, the entire federal antimalaria program employed only two or three people. … Both bed nets and house spraying can be effective, and studies comparing costs differ on which is cheaper.

What the world needs now is not DDT but money to combat malaria. It doesn’t matter that much whether it is spent on bed nets or spraying with DDT or other insecticides—they all work and the costs don’t differ that much (and DDT isn’t necessarily the cheapest solution). Rosenberg makes it look like that all that is preventing malaria from being controlled is environmentalists’ prejudices against malaria and that just isn’t true.

Fortunately other reporters have done a better job of reporting the facts than Rosenberg. A recent LA Times article gets it right:

DDT, banned in the U.S. for harming the environment, is still used in limited circumstances as a house spray, but it is not the miracle worker some suggest it could be if only Western aid groups would get behind it.

Today’s weapon of choice in the war on malaria is a net treated with a biodegradable pyrethroid insecticide. The net works not so much because it forms a foolproof barrier against mosquitoes—it doesn’t—but because the insecticide kills the bugs. The most astounding results come when treated nets multiply across a village. When net use reaches a tipping point of about 60% of households, they kill enough mosquitoes that the protective benefits extend even to the households without nets.

The tsunami and Katrina both left behind pools of stagnant water in which things have swarmed and multiplied and emerged to infect humanity. I’m referring, of cause, to clueless articles extolling the virtues of DDT.

The latest is by Henry Miller in the National Review Online.

The six-year old U.S. outbreak of West Nile virus is a significant threat to public health and shows no signs of abating. … As of September 6, Louisiana ranked fourth in the nation in human West Nile virus infections; but with most of New Orleans still under water and a perfect breeding ground for mosquitoes, there are likely to be far more cases. …

The regulators who banned DDT also failed to take into consideration the inadequacy of alternatives. Because it persists after spraying, DDT works far better than many pesticides now in use, some of which are toxic to fish and other aquatic organisms. Also, the need to spray other insecticides repeatedly — especially in marshlands and forests, where mosquito-breeding areas are large — drives up costs and depletes public coffers. … Pyrethroid pesticides, the most common alternative to DDT, are inactivated within an hour or two.

You can tell the deeply ignorant pro-DDT articles because the authors don’t mention or even seem aware that mosquitoes evolve resistance to insecticides. DDT’s persistence is only an advantage when it sprayed indoors and it stays where it is sprayed. Persistence is a big disadvantage when spraying outdoors because the insecticide is rapidly diluted and the mosquitoes get exposed to sublethal doses. This is perhaps the best method know for breeding insecticide resistant mosquitoes. That is why DDT is only used for indoor residual spraying. these days.

regulators should make DDT available immediately for mosquito control in the United States.

That would be pointless since malathion and pyrethroids are more effective without the disadvantage of resistance.

Second, the United States should oppose international strictures on DDT. This includes retracting American support for the heinous United Nations Persistent Organic Pollutants Convention, which severely stigmatizes DDT and makes it exceedingly difficult for developing countries — many of which are plagued by malaria — to use the chemical.

No it doesn’t. Malaria Foundation International was quite pleased with the Stockholm Convention writing:

The outcome of the treaty is arguably better than the status quo going into the negotiations over two years ago. For the first time, there is now an insecticide which is restricted to vector control only, meaning that the selection of resistant mosquitoes will be slower than before.

Also, there is a clear procedure that endemic countries may follow to use DDT, and having done so, they have the RIGHT at international law to use DDT, without pressure from the developed countries or international institutions who have in the past threatened them against doing so.

Miller also claims

The website of the Centers for Disease Control suggests several measures to avoid West Nile virus infection: “avoid mosquito bites,” by wearing clothes that expose little skin, using insect repellent, and staying indoors during peak mosquito hours (dusk to dawn); “mosquito-proof your home,” by removing standing water, and installing and maintaining screens; and “help your community,” by reporting dead birds.

Conspicuously absent from its list of suggestions is any mention of insecticides or widespread spraying. Anyone curious about the role of pesticides in battling mosquitoes and West Nile is directed to a maze of other Web sites.

Perhaps the Atlanta-based CDC officials don’t get out much. You don’t have to be a Rocket Entomologist to know that emptying birdbaths and the saucers under flower pots is not going to get rid of a zillion hungry mosquitoes.

IF you look at the CDC page that Miller refers to you can see the links that somehow escaped his attention. The second item under “Help Your Community” is “Mosquito Control Programs” which links to this page on the CDC’s web site which discusses spraying. There is also a prominent link to the CDC’s Guidelines for Surveillance, Prevention, & Control, which has much about insecticides and spraying. Maybe the CDC didn’t give spraying the emphasis that Miller would have liked, but that’s because it isn’t the magic bullet that Miller imagines it to be.

Hat tip: John Fleck.

I’ve written several posts debunking the myth that using DDT is banned, pointing out that is used in places like South Africa. Now Professor Bunyip has finally discovered this fact and slams Tim Blair for spreading the myth:

This item from the BBC will have Tim Blair beside himself — a contortion worth seeing, given that he has long since assumed the initial improbable position of being well up himself.

South Africa had stopped using DDT in 1996. Until then the total number of malaria cases was below 10,000 and there were seldom more than 30 deaths per year. But in 2000, [South Africa] saw malaria cases skyrocket to 65,000 and 458 people were killed….

Last year [after DDT’s re-introduction] only 89 deaths were recorded.

Off you go, Tim, get cracking. Several thousand words, if you please, about how your sort of statistics never lie and why, in the great right-eyed scheme of things, hundreds of little black and brown lives preserved don’t make a rational objection to a favoured theory.

Oh wait, that’s not what he wrote. He actually slams me. Apparently he thinks this story contradicts some theory he thinks I hold. What he thinks that theory is, I cannot tell.

Mind you, the BBC article is rather misleading. The only insecticide ever mentioned is DDT, so this leaves the impression that they are spraying DDT in Mozambique:

But the disease can never be fully eradicated without neighbouring countries also jacking up their malaria control programmes.

This led to the creation of the Lubombo Spatial Development Initiative, backed by the Global Fund to Fight HIV/Aids, Malaria and TB, which has led to an 83% and 67% drop in malaria cases in Swaziland and Mozambique respectively.

But actually, they are spraying Bendiocarb. The reason why the article is so misleading isn’t hard to find. The scientific authority cited is Richard Tren from the astroturf operation Africa Fighting Malaria.

To get a better idea of what happened I thought I’d consult a scientific journal. Tropical Medicine & International Health Dec 2004:

One problem in this data set was the coincidence of different explanatory variables. In the late-1980s, imported malaria and chloroquine drug resistance peaked simultaneously and a local outbreak occurred because of agricultural practice. In the 1990s, HIV infection and SP resistance emerged simultaneously and in addition DDT was replaced with pyrethroids. Finally, in 2000/01 malaria incidence fell substantially after re-introduction of DDT spraying, introduction of a new effective antimalaria drug, and implementation of large-scale vector control in Southern Mozambique … as part of the Lubombo Spatial Development Initiative (LSDI). The relative importance of each variable can only be inferred if long time series of malaria case data and explanatory variables are available, and perhaps not even then. So the problem is not a lack of possible explanations, but the abundance of highly plausible ones

Hmm, all those other factors got left out of the BBC story.

This article from the same journal on the reasons for the switch to pyrethroids is also interesting:

However, in recent years several shortcomings of RHS have been highlighted. The effectiveness of DDT was compromised by the insecticide’s irritant effect, which led to a high proportion of bloodfed mosquitoes leaving huts and not resting indoors (Sharp et al. 1990). Frequent replastering and painting over sprayed walls has also impaired effectiveness. In 1995, more than 48% of the homesteads replastered at least some of their walls, rendering the insecticide ineffective (Mnzava et al. 1998). The switch to pyrethroid insecticides, which do not smell or leave visible deposits, has reduced the prevalence of this practice, but it remains a common occurrence, with a fifth of homesteads replastering or painting before the end of the malaria season in 1997±1998 … Other households avoid RHS altogether by locking their houses during the spraying round.

So the repellent effect of DDT makes it less effective, even though Roger Bate claimed the repellent effect meant that DDT was still effective even when the mosquitoes were resistant.

Senator Inhofe comes in for some well-deserved mocking for inviting novelist Michael Crichton to testify on global warming science. RealClimate has a detailed dissection of Crichton’s testimony.

I watched the proceedings and learned that as well as believing that global warming is a big hoax, Inhofe believes that the 1972 US ban on DDT has caused millions to die from malaria. He had Donald Roberts up to testifiy about it and Roberts presented the usual misleading arguments about this non-existant ban.

Testimony like that of Roberts is pernicious. Malaria really is a solvable problem, but the solution is not revoking a non-existant ban. It requires spending money on drugs and insecticides (and the insecticides will only include DDT some of the time). By making it appear that malaria can be solved without spending money and promoting DDT when it is not appropriate, people like Roberts and Inhofe hurt the fight against malaria.

Sebastian Mallaby’s article in the Washington Post has all the hallmarks of the clueless DDT-boosting article.

• The only expert mentioned is not a malariologist but comes from some right-wing think tank. In this case it’s Roger Bate.

• Nowhere is mentioned the main reason why anti-malaria programs have shifted away from DDT—the widespread development of resistance to DDT by mosquitoes.

• Other insecticides and drugs against malaria are ignored. South Africa did reintroduce DDT for spraying traditional houses, but they also used deltamethrin on western-style houses and switched to a more effective anti-malaria drug.

• Nowhere does it mention that the ban on agricultural use of DDT that Silent Spring saved lives by slowing the development of resistance against DDT.

But it’s even worse than the usual Rachel-Carson-was-worse-than-Hitler piece. The villains of Mallaby’s piece are consumers in the European Union who eat don’t want to eat food containing DDT. Mallaby reckons that they are being irrational because:

hundreds of millions have been exposed to DDT without generating any solid evidence that the chemical harms people.

Right, it is only classified as a probable human carcinogen not as a certain human carcinogen. Still, EU consumers may not be completely irrational if they don’t want to eat the stuff.

Mallaby fails to mention that if the DDT is sprayed on the walls of huts to stop malaria it won’t actually get on crops destined for export so there is actually no conflict between EU consumers’ wish not to eat DDT-laced food and Uganda’s plan to use DDT against malaria. The only way it could get on crops is if some was diverted for agricultural use. All the EU is asking is for Uganda to test its export crops to make sure that they don’t contain DDT. Mallaby calls this an “absurd proposal” because it “might constitute an impossible administrative burden on a poor country.”, but surely testing a few samples from export crops would be simple and insignificant compared to the cost of the spraying program.

So the answer to Mallaby’s question about who is ignoring science now is: Sebastian Mallaby.

Extracts from “Agricultural production and malaria resurgence in Central America and India” by Georganne Chapin and Robert Wassertrom published in Nature Vol 293 17 Sepember 1981 pages 181–185

Among the inhabitants of Asia, Latin America and tropical Africa malaria, remains a major cause for alarm. Yet only a few years ago, health officials in a dozen developing countries (capitalizing on the discoveries of British parasitologist Ronald Ross half a century earlier) pointed triumphantly at their efforts to eradicate entirely this mosquito-borne scourge[1-5]. Following World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines, for example, Indian authorities instituted a programme of medical treatment and pesticide application in 1952 which within a single decade reduced the number of cases from over 100 million to 50,000 (ref. 6). Ten years later, using the same methods, health workers in Sri Lanka cut the annual incidence of malaria from three million cases to fewer than 25.

By 1970, however, it had become clear that malaria eradication had run into severe difficulties. Instead of dwindling to insignificance, the number of infected individuals rose again to distressing proportions. In India, which had served as a showplace for WHO policies, five million people were soon infected; in Sri Lanka, two million people became sick again almost overnight; and in Central America infection rates grew to previously unknown levels[7]. Moreover, unlike earlier outbreaks, this new plague was often carried by mosquitoes which had become resistant to pesticides like DDT and dieldrin and could not be controlled by conventional means[8-15]. The origins of this major ecological disaster must be sought as much in the unwitting actions of international organizations as in hapless nature.

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Andrew Kenny in The Spectator writes

Judged on sheer evil, the worst crime in history was brown, the Nazi genocide, although the reds slaughtered more people. The death toll (difficult to measure) is roughly, Hitler’s holocaust 6 million, Stalin’s famine and terror 8 million, and Mao’s famine 30 million. But the greens have topped them all. In a single crime they have killed about 50 million people. In purely numerical terms, it was the worst crime of the 20th century. It took place in the USA in 1972. It was the banning of DDT. …

In 1971 DDT was poised to rid the world of malaria. In 1972 it was banned. …

This was the time of Rachel Carson’s mendacious book Silent Spring, about the horrors of pesticides, when the newly emerging green ideology was looking for a cause célèbre. … The greens, leaning heavily on Ruckelshaus, were determined to ban it and did so, with catastrophic consequences for poor people with dark skins. Tens of millions of humans were sacrificed on the green altar.

The US extended the ban overseas by various measures, including refusing aid to countries that used DDT. Other rich countries, urged on by their greens, followed suit. Malaria, which had been in retreat, came surging back, killing multitudes.

In a review of Michael Crichton’s State of Fear Ron Bailey agrees with Crichton that the greens killed 50 million:

Along the way, Mr. Crichton makes vividly apparent how environmentalist misinformation costs lives and money. He has Kenner tell fatuous Hollywood environmentalist Ted Bradley (Martin Sheen?) that banning DDT was “arguably the greatest tragedy of the twentieth century.” Why? Because DDT was the best defense against malaria-carrying mosquitoes. “All together, the ban has caused more than 50 million needless deaths,” Kenner says. “Banning DDT killed more people than Hitler, Ted. And the environmental movement pushed hard for it.” True enough.

Junkscience has a death clock that puts the death toll even higher at 90 million deaths.

However, it is conceivable that relying on a science fiction writer and an astroturf web site might not be wise. so I checked to see what the peer-reviewed scientific literature. “Agricultural production and malaria resurgence in Central America and India” published in Nature by Chapin and Wasserstrom tells us what really happened. The graph on the left shows that malaria did skyrocket in India in the 70s. But not because they cut back on DDT spraying because of pressure from environmentalists. The graph shows that they didn’t cut back on DDT, but dramatically increased its use. So how come malaria increased? Well, the increase in DDT use was in agriculture. This caused the insects to become resistant, so they had to use more DDT to get the same effect. This caused more resistance, so even more DDT was used and so on. The end result was that in the areas where DDT was used in agriculture, the mosquitoes became completely resistant and DDT no longer stopped them from spreading malaria, with the disastrous results shown in the graph.

Was this catastrophe predictable? Well, yes. In fact, Rachel Carson warned about it in Silent Spring. If India had followed the example of the United States and banned the agricultural use of DDT and reserved it for public health many millions of cases of malaria would have been prevented. However, India probably could not have afforded the more expensive alternative insecticides to DDT, so this may not have been feasible. But there were other alternatives that would have greatly reduced pesticide use and slowed the development of resistance. Chapin and Wasserstrom continue the story:

In response, entomologists developed what they call integrated pest management systems[85-86], the key to which lies in timing insecticide applications so that the crop is protected from predators only at the most vulnerable stages of its growth cycle. As it turns out, cotton buds destroyed by pests regrow throughout the plant’s life, so that producers can afford to sustain a high level of insect damage before there is a need to apply pesticides. Simple precautionary measures may also lower their chemical costs: up to 75 per cent of the hibernating boll weevil population may be eliminated by the ploughing under of crop debris after harvest. Thus many growers west of the Mississippi now spray their fields only seven or eight times each season instead of 25 or 30; similar measures have been developed for raising corn, rice and many kinds of fruit[87].

So why did WHO not urge cotton producing countries to employ integrated management systems that would not interfere with malaria eradication programmes? A possible answer may perhaps be found in the activities of another international agency, the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO). Like WHO, FAO was established to provide technical advice and assistance to members of the United Nations. In the case of pesticides, which are manufactured and distributed by a few multinational corporations, FAO’s advice might have played a critical role in reducing environmental contamination. Both farmers and extension agents in developing nations must normally rely on pesticide company salesmen for information about how to use agricultural chemicals — much as physicians in Western countries rely upon pharmaceutical companies for information about new drugs. Beginning in 1967, therefore, FAO put together a small working group of experts on integrated pest management which published technical manuals and disseminated other information[88-94].

Three years later, it commissioned an American entomologist, Dr Louis Falcon, to develop an integrated system in Nicaragua, a system which achieved remarkable success within a few seasons. Similar programmes were subsequently undertaken in Mexico, Peru and Pakistan[95].

But FAO did not recommend these programs.

Why did FAO choose this course of action, which in retrospect does not appear to have been guided by an accurate appreciation of the perils of pesticide addiction? It is important to examine how pesticide manufacturers have influenced the policies of international agencies. As public concern about the effects of toxins like DDT began to grow in the 1960s, these corporations formed a trade association called GIFAP (Groupement International des Associations Nationales de Pesticides) which in turn worked directly with UN technicians through a FAO bureau known as the Industry Cooperative Programme (ICP). By the early 1970s joint FAO-ICP regional seminars had been organized in many parts of the world to promote new and better ways of distributing agricultural, pesticides. More important, high-level officials in WHO and FAO, who share the industry’s views on many major issues, invited GIFAP to play an active part in agency “consultations” and other internal meetings[98,99]. In this way, for example, no fewer than 25 corporate representatives lent their expertise to the meeting in Rome on pesticides in agriculture and public health and served on subcommittees responsible for formulating UN policy. Not surprisingly, these subcommittees stressed the need to apply more pesticides in a more effective manner rather than to limit their use or replace them with alternative forms of pest control. And what is more curious, none of these deliberations included representatives of other international constituencies such as environmental groups, labour unions or farmers’ organizations. Perhaps for these reasons, in June 1978, the current director general of FAO, Eduard Saoumi, finally expelled ICP from his agency[100].

So the people with significant responsibility for the resurgence in malaria were the chemical companies that stymied efforts to reduce the agricultural use of pesticides. And it was chemical companies that helped set up the astroturf junkscience site that has attempted to blame Rachel Carson for causing the resurgence. Nice. It’s like a hit-and-run driver who, instead of admitting responsibility for the accident, frames the person who tried to prevent the accident. Bastards.

Update: See follow-up post

Extracts from “Should DDT continue to be recommended for malaria vector control?” by C. F. Curtis published in Medical and Vetinary Entomology (1994) 8, 107–112

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John Bruton, the EU ambassador to the US responds to Mallaby’s clueless DDT boosting piece.

In his Oct. 10 op-ed column, “Look Who’s Ignoring Science Now,” Sebastian Mallaby suggested that European regulations are to blame for the misery in Uganda and other malaria-stricken nations. The facts testify otherwise.

The European Union has no objection to the safe spraying of houses with DDT for malaria control, but it does have concerns about illegal agricultural uses. The E.U., like the United States and 149 other countries that signed the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants in 2001, believes that the use of DDT in agriculture should be phased out.

Nations have the right to use DDT for public health protection, and the convention includes an exemption to allow such uses. It even sets out conditions for the safe use of DDT in malaria control — a use unlikely to leave residues in crops.

It is up to Uganda how to fight malaria, and DDT is one tool in that fight. The European Union continues to assist Uganda and other affected countries in efforts to combat malaria and contributes almost $100 million to this cause annually.

Health protection should not, however, provide an alibi for illegal use in agriculture. The European Union has granted $30 million to developing countries to strengthen infrastructures and encourage the sharing of best practices — a program singled out for praise by the World Bank.

Michael Fumento has responded to my post way back in January demolishing his foolish proposal that after the tsunami:

DDT should be sprayed on water pools, tents, and on people themselves—as indeed was once common in Sri Lanka and throughout most of the world.

Unfortunately, mosquitoes in Sri Lanka are resistant to DDT, so DDT spraying would be a waste of time and money.

Fumento insists that DDT spraying would be effective despite resistance because

Resistance doesn’t mean “immunity.” Often it simply means using more insecticide in the spray than you would otherwise.

And then when you do that, the mosquitoes evolve resistance to the higher dosage. Sri Lanka switched from DDT to Malathion in the 70s because DDT was no longer preventing malaria.

Further, because resistance is a drain on an insect’s physiology, after a time that resistance begins to fade. It has certainly been long enough since mosquitoes in those areas were sprayed with DDT that many will have lost resistance.

However, since there are some DDT-resistance genes still on the population, the whole population would quickly become resistant once DDT is sprayed.

Mosquitoes “are almost certainly not going to become immune to DDT’s most valuable attribute: its repellency,” writes DDT expert Paul Driessen. Even in tiny quantities “DDT keeps up to 90% of the mosquitoes from even entering a home. It irritates those that do come in, so they don’t bite; and it kills any that land on the walls, before they can infect another person. No other insecticide, at any price, can do that or do it for six months or more with a single application.”

Paul Driessen is not an expert on DDT, entomology, malaria or tropical medicine. His area of expertise is public relations. Nor is his statement relevant—DDT does not kill resistant mosquitoes.

The Journal of Vector Borne Diseases last June concluded: “The overall results of the study revealed that DDT is still a viable insecticide in indoor residual spraying owing to its effectivity in well supervised spray operation and high excito-repellency factor.”

But if you look at the full paper you will find that the study was conducted in India and not Sri Lanka and that the mosquitoes were only partly resistant to DDT. Sri Lanka switched from DDT to Malathion in the 70s because the mosquitoes were fully resistant and DDT was no longer preventing malaria.

In any case, even if DDT was still somewhat effective against partially resistant mosquitoes it would be still not necessarily be a good idea to use it, because other insecticides are more effective in such circumstances. Professor C F Curtis of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine wrote:

Deltamethrin and cyfluthrin were found to be much superior to DDT, HCH or malathion in vector control in trials in India (Ansari et al., 1990; Schofield, 1993). However, these data are not entirely relevant to the question under discussion because they were in areas where the vector (An.culicifacies) was resistant to DDT, and it should be recalled that the W.H.O. recommendation of the use of DDT only applies to susceptible populations (W.H.O., 1984).

That’s why the real experts on DDT don’t recommend that it be used where the mosquitoes are resistant. Nor, for that matter, does the World Health Organization or any other expert recommend that be sprayed on people or pools of water as Fumento proposed. Fumento is just out of his depth on this topic.

There were some letters written to Nature by malariologists disputing Chapin and Wasserstrom’s paper that argued that agricultural use of DDT was the major factor in the resurgence of malaria in India and Central America. Before I write about the dispute I should stress what they all agreed on:

It is generally agreed among malariologists that agricultural insecticides have made a contribution to selection for insecticide resistance in mosquitoes and that such resistance has made a contribution to the resurgence of malaria in Central America and South Asia.

Furthermore none of the malariologists suggested that environmentalist pressure had anything to do with the resurgence of malaria. I doubt that anyone could have made such a claim in 1981 without being laughed at.

Where they differ is in how important the agricultural use of DDT was in causing the resurgence. C&W had a dramatic graph showing the number of malaria cases plotted against the use of DDT. However, they were careless with the data they used with the graph, not noticing that their source (Harrison) had reported recorded cases for the start of the 70s and estimated cases at the end. This had the effect of greatly overstating the increase in malaria. A version of the graph which just shows recorded cases is shown on the left. The true number of cases is certainly much more than what is shown on the graph, but this gives a better indication of how much malaria increased. The graph still shows a strong correlation, but there are clearly other factors operating.

In the reply C&W refer to the geographic pattern of DDT resistance and increases in malaria and I think an analysis of this could give an indication of the relative importance of agricultural spraying. Unfortunately, they don’t present such an analysis, so they have not proved their case.

So certainly agricultural use of DDT caused some of the increase in malaria and it may have caused a major part of the increase, but the second part is unproven.

Correspondence on the paper “Agricultural production and malaria resurgence in Central America and India” Nature Vol 294 26 November 1981 pages 302,388

(more…)

Kent R. Hill, assistant administrator, Bureau of Global Health, USAID, corrects yet another ignorant claim that USAID won’t fund DDT spraying:

Paul Driessen’s opinion article titled “USAID Could Stop This Epidemic” (Nov. 2) misrepresents the U.S. Agency for International Development’s support for indoor residual spraying to control malaria, as well as the United States government’s position on the use of DDT internationally. USAID strongly supports spraying as a preventative measure for malaria and will support the use of DDT when it is scientifically sound and warranted.

In the past, USAID has provided critically needed technical support to implement the use of DDT, including training, logistic and planning support in countries where DDT has proved to be the best insecticide for spraying and when its use is permitted in that country. Also absent from Mr. Driessen’s letter is the essential fact that DDT is only one of 12 World Health Organization-approved insecticides for spraying in malaria control.

USAID will begin implementing the president’s malaria initiative in coming weeks, with a large-scale spraying campaign in southern Angola as the first activity to be launched in the field. President Bush’s initiative will include substantial spraying activities in Angola, Tanzania and Uganda, as well as in future programs, as the president himself made clear in his announcement. We at USAID fully expect our funded spraying programs to include DDT where most effective, and where it is permitted by the government.

Mr. Driessen seems to believe there is an anti-DDT agenda at play. In fact, the debate around DDT has seemingly moved far from the technical and operational issues, which should be the issues for consideration, rather than political ones.

Given the human toll this disease, the United States public and Congress should be aware of the true nature of the efforts made by the U.S. foreign-aid agency to defeat this terrible disease.

This editorial from Africa Fighting Malaria contains the usual misleading statements about what happened in South Africa and the usual false claim about the EU threatening to ban imports from Uganda. But it adds this attack on Bayer:

The obstacles to good malaria control unfortunately do not end there. Big business also plays a distasteful role in this saga. Recently, the Financial Times reported that Gerhard Hesse, business manager for vector control of Bayer Crop Sciences and a board member of the Roll Back Malaria Partnership, wrote an e-mail to various health academics claiming: “We fully support EU to ban [sic] imports of agricultural products from countries using DDT … DDT remains for us a commercial threat [but] mainly a public image threat.”

Bayer produces alternatives to DDT and clearly attempts to direct malaria-control programmes so that they benefit its bottom line. Recently, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation donated more than $50-million to the Innovative Vector Control Consortium to create new insecticides. Regretfully, the commercial-development arm of the project is none other than Bayer Crop Sciences.

Of course, the EU isn’t going to ban agricultural imports from countries that use DDT, so something is wrong here, and sure enough, Hesse’s words were taken out of context:

In a statement, Bayer said Mr Hesse meant to refer purely to DDT for crop use. “Bayer CropScience rejects any interpretation that the company would support the EU move to ban imports of agricultural products coming from countries using DDT for company specific competitive reasons,” it said.

“Gerhard Hesse’s statement in this respect was written in a way which might lead to wrong conclusions. It does not reflect the actual opinion of Mr Hesse and of Bayer CropScience.”

The EU said it did not ban food imports from countries using DDT but required them to comply with maximum residue limits.

And contrary to the impression that the AFM people wanted to give, Bayer does support DDT use for the control of malaria.

Note to Bayer: AFM is an astroturf operation. If you want them to stop attacking you, give them some money.

The latest stunt from Africa Fighting Malaria is a petition advocating policies that would cripple the United States efforts against malaria. The petition asks that Congress and the President

• Ensure that at least 2/3 (two-thirds) of annual Congressional appropriations for malaria control are earmarked for insecticidal and medicinal commodities – with up to half of such monies targeted to the treatment and cure of infected patients.