Arrogant and myopic United States environmental policy concerning the banning of DDT

has lead directly to the death of millions in developing countries. Government entities on the

federal, state and local levels ban things. They love it. In fact, they can't get enough of making

sure you don't have enough. They ban books, skateboarding, trans fat (mmmmmm trans fat),

fishing, cool Mohawks and energy drinks. Special thanks to my favorite energy drink, Red Bull®

for keeping me awake as I write. Then again, maybe governments aren't so good at banning. We

can still get our hands on guns, alcohol, cigarettes, big scary knives, and Justin Bieber records.

Lord, save me from Justin Bieber records. Not only that, but they can all be easily procured from

the comfort of your own home via the internet. I know, I know, some of these things are just

regulated, not banned, but general access is certainly banned.

In 2006, over thirty thousand people were killed by firearm related injuries. That same

year, 438,000 deaths were related to tobacco use and 22,073* to the use of alcohol.

*If this number for alcohol use seems low, it does not include unintentional injuries,

homicides, and other causes indirectly related to alcohol use as well as deaths due to fetal

alcohol syndrome. That means it doesn't include drunken driving deaths or your dumb friend

Mike who fell off a balcony during Spring Break.

So, some of these bans take place on local or state levels, but to get to the really big bans,

the ones that really make a difference in the world, you've got to go all the way to the top, all the

way to the government of the United States of America. They've banned DDT, which not only

has never killed any one human being, but could save millions of lives if properly used.

What is DDT?

DDT: dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane

Pronounced: daɪˌklɔr oʊdaɪˌfɛn l traɪˌklɔr oʊˈɛθeɪn, daɪˌkloʊroʊdaɪˌfɛn

Chemical formula: C14 H9 Cl5

Pretty picture:

Use: Pesticide

First synthesized by: Othmar Zeidler in 1874

Discovered for the miraculous, life-saving potion it truly is: The Nobel Prize in Physiology or

Medicine is awarded to Paul Hermann Müller in 1948 for "his discovery of the high efficiency of

DDT as a contact poison against several arthropods."* (arthropods = bugs)

*Dr. Müller had to wait nine years for his discovery to be recognized. He actually made this

discovery in time for DDT to be used during World War II, beginning in 1939 to fight malaria

and typhus for both civilians and military.

What Does DDT Do?

DDT does one thing really well. It kills mosquitoes. I like that. Malaria

notwithstanding, I am not a fan of mosquitoes. If ever I were to write a book about the ongoing

struggle between good and evil in the world, strawberries would symbolize all that is good, and

mosquitoes all that is bad. And trust me, the strawberries will be using DDT to get the job done

in that epic battle.

Mosquitoes carry all sorts of nasty diseases. A partial list includes Eastern equine

encephalitis, Japanese encephalitis, La Crosse encephalitis, St. Louis encephalitis, West Nile

virus, Western equine encephalitis, Dengue Fever, Rift Valley Fever, Yellow Fever, and

everybody's favorite, malaria. It's hard to imagine that the world wouldn't be a better place

without those annoying little guys. And don't worry, the world will go on without them. Just ask

my good friend Elizabeth Willott from the University of Arizona.* She doesn't advocate for total

mosquito eradication worldwide, and doesn't really believe it would be a good idea, but she'll tell

you that the ecosystem isn't so fragile that we couldn't get along without them.

DDT works in two ways. First, it is a wonderful repellant. When sprayed on the walls of

a mud hut in Africa, mosquitoes come in, look around, maybe visit for a very short while, but

they don't bite. When sprayed over mosquito breeding areas, the DDT disrupts the bug's nervous

system, interfering with the transmission of neural messages. No more mosquito. Sadly, it cannot

be proven that mosquitoes can feel pain. If I thought that DDT caused a painful death in

mosquitoes, I might change my way of thinking. I'd actually overthrow governments to get DDT

legalized.

*Technically speaking, Dr. Willott is not my good friend. I do, however like to think that we're

not enemies and would get along quite well if given the chance.

The Banning of DDT

DDT is a victim of its own success. Too much of anything can kill you. That's right.

Anything. Too much oxygen? Dead. Too much water? Dead. In 1962, farmers in America had

really caught on to the wonder that is DDT. The only problem was that they got carried away. In

fact, at the height of its use, farmers were dumping 80,000 tons of the stuff onto every creepy

crawly arthropod they could find. That's too much. More of this good thing is not a good thing.

Allow me to go back to what I was mentioning before about the government banning or

regulating things. This is a matter of shifting from banning to regulating. I'm not calling for a

chicken in every pot, a car in every driveway and DDT in every garden. To the contrary, I'm

calling for the government to regulate the use of DDT so that instead of 80,000 tons of overkill,

10,000 tons will be more reasonable. By lifting the ban and making DDT available to American

farmers, companies will have the incentive to again begin producing this chemical that will save

lives in developing countries.

In that same year, 1962, Rachel Carson published Silent Spring which alleged DDT was

not only killing mosquitoes and pests, but that it was also radically reducing the bird population

by weakening their eggs and making them less likely to support prospective life and more

vulnerable to cracking. Her published findings were not necessarily as alarming as she made

them out to be.

One of the studies Carson cites is one performed by a Dr. James DeWitt. She writes,

"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."

The findings of DeWitt's experiment were published in the Journal of Agriculture and

Food Chemistry. They paint a different picture than does Ms. Carson. As part of the study, quail

were fed 200 parts per million of DDT in all of their food throughout the breeding season. Not a

little here, a little there, a sprinkling, but in all of their food. So, as we analyze the findings, it's a

matter of defining what Ms. Carson means by the word "few." When I think of "few," I think of

a sum that is more than a couple, less than a lot. The actual numbers, as it turns out, show that of

those birds fed DDT, about 80% of their eggs hatched. Even when compared with humans, that's

a good number. In fact, one in five human pregnancies ends in miscarriage. The "control" birds

in the quail experiment hatched 83.9% of their eggs. The difference is negligible and performed

only over one breeding season. A three to four percent increase or decrease is not abnormal.

And oh yeah, the pheasants. Remember, it's not just quail we're talking about here. The

pheasants that were fed DDT hatched 80% of their eggs as well. Way to go, pheasants! You

know, especially since in this case, the "control" pheasants only hatched 57%.

Rachel Carson

May 27, 1907 – April 14, 1964

Environmentalist, Author, Biologist,

Bird Lover, DDT Hater

The Outcry

Quail and pheasant were disappearing from the face of the earth. Very soon there would

be no more Next step: Zombie America. At least that's how the public and the US Government

reacted. Even after reviewing testimony and scientific evidence that DDT was not the

bird/human killer Carson claimed it to be, the powers that be, banned.

Malaria

Pretty Picture:

What Does Malaria Do?

.

.

.

.

I know. That's the same picture I used for what DDT does. Same concept, though. Only this

time, malaria kills children.

Where Is Malaria?

Draw a horizontal line through the middle of that picture. Hint: it's the equator. The

countries that are considered malaria endemic, or that are faced by the real and pressing problem

of widespread malaria outbreak are below that line to the south. They have populations that are

predominantly poor and non-white.

Case in point: Uganda. In 2007, Ugandan minister of health Jim Muhwezi claimed, "We

are losing between two million and three million people a year." Muhwezi made this claim after

Uganda had attempted using DDT during the previous two years. During those two years,

malaria rates dropped dramatically until European Union (EU) officials in Kampala (the capital)

stated that even a small amount of DDT residue on exported food would cause the EU to reject

it. Guess what, though not a food, Uganda also exports tobacco. The EU was concerned that

DDT, a chemical never proven to cause cancer, would be found on cancer-causing tobacco. This

is the shortsightedness of the Western environmental movement.

Statistics

Pop Quiz!

Which of the two boys pictured above is more likely to contract Malaria?

Ready? Okay, go.

Wrong. It's a trick question. The cute little white sailor on the left is Gustav Adolph, Prince of

Sweden. He's long dead, but living in Sweden, being white and rich pretty much guarantee that

he would not have contracted Malaria. Odds are you picked the other boy anyway. The poor

black African child on the right is, well, nobody knows. He's just some nameless kid that will

probably die of Malaria. The disease is rampant in 42 of the 46 African countries and is the third

leading cause of death on the continent. According to the World Health Organization, as of the

year 2003, three thousand African children die of malaria every day. I'll do the math for you.

That's 125 every hour, two every minute, one every thirty seconds. If you spend five minutes

reading this paper, ten African children will already have died from malaria. And that's just

African children. The elderly and infirm are already more susceptible to the disease and malaria

exists on more than the African continent.

What to Do?

The Western world has its own problems. Pollution, nuclear proliferation, a bottoming

economy: these are enough to keep any number of governments busy. I understand the will of

governments to want to help themselves, but without forethought and visionary wisdom, helping

themselves often comes at the cost of others who are less able to control their own destiny.

There are unintended consequences to most all actions. When DDT was banned in the United

States, it was not done for the dubious purpose of exterminating poor Africans or anybody else in

the developing world. It was done with the noble intent of protecting bird populations from

poison.

At this point, however, when the true research bears the point that not using DDT in

Africa is worse than using it in America, it's time for the US government to understand. It's time

for the US government to understand that by legalizing and regulating DDT, an untold number of

lives may be saved.

The Breakdown

I don't know why I didn't think of this before. I should have put this at the very beginning

and saved us both a lot of time. Here's what you need to know in 10 seconds or less:

1.) DDT kills mosquitoes, not people, not birds.

2.) Mosquitoes (with malaria) kill people.

3.) DDT is illegal in the United States and banned in use as foreign aid to many malaria

endemic countries.

4.) That's dumb.

And now, just contact those government officials who represent you. Tell them that even though

you appreciate their care for you in these here United States of America, that in this case, their

irrational reaction to the environmental movement is a mistake. Tell them, every so nicely, to re-

legalize DDT.

Let me make it easy for you. Click HERE.

For Further Reading:

World Health Organization on the use of DDT in Malaria Vector Control

AgainstMalaria.com – An Informative and Basic FAQ about Malaria

Please go to the bottom of that page for another list of further reading.

Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants