Mickey Z
Cool Observer
Saturday, January 08, 2005
Little Nicky Kristof Bugs Out
Kristof is hopeless, quite stupid and can’t be taken seriously. There’s no need to use dangerous synthetic pyrethroids (DDT) when pyrethroids already exist in nature in a much safer form. It’s ghoulish of him to use the tsunami to shill for Big Poison.
Posted by Harry on from 01/08 at 06:27 PMLittle Nicky Kristof is not just an ignorant but harmless whacko in the discipline of biology. His silly DDT piece is part of the long-standing program of the Right to undo Silent Spring and bring back the era of unrestricted pesticides. I don’t think it’s an accident that last week Thomas Sowell included gratuitous slander agains Rachel Carson in his column (which had nothing to do with malaria or the tsunami).
The facts are that malaria is resurging because of 1) widespread resistance to pesticides including DDT in malaria carrying mosquitoes; and 2) premature termination of anti-malaria campaigns because they appeared to be working so well. Like ignoring your doctor when he tells you to take ALL those antibiotic pills in your perscription. Long after DDT was banned in the US it was perfectly legal to use it in the Third World. One more thing: the legal ban on DDT was orchestrated by the government and the pesticide industry. DDT had become ineffective and a PR embarassment. The industry was ready to move on, even if Right-wing slandermongers haven’t.Posted by Wills Flowers on from Tallahassee, FL 01/08 at 08:03 PMGood point. Living in Guatemala 1998 I occasioned to engage conversation with a medical techician in the local hospital, Flores El Peten. To my surprise, wondering if AIDS was the greatest medical challenge, he responded malaria. What can be done? I asked. Get the phuccin’ gringo boot out of our face, was his reply.
Posted by Roger Kemble on from British Columbia 01/10 at 10:27 AMI found the response rather ignorant. Malaria has been eliminated from many parts of the world due to pesticides. The environmental impact of DDT has nothing to do with the impact of DDT when used for anti-malarial campaigns. DDT is used against malaria in very targetted ways; it’s not intended to eliminate all mosquitos, simply to kill mosquitos after they feed on humans (typically by applying pesticides to houses).
The quantity of pesticides required is miniscule compared to the amount used on farms. During the 60’s the anti-malarial campaign for all of Guyana used about as much DDT as a single US farm would use. There’s simply no comparing the two.Malaria is a disease that has the potential to be eliminated, completely. Locally, this has already happened—Malaria is gone from the US, Japan, pretty much from Mexico, and many other countries. If malaria transmission could be completely halted for 4-6 years, the disease would simply disappear, like Polio or Smallpox. This means working extremely hard for a limited period of time; and to work that hard, we have to use pesticides. There’s simply no other way. In the density required, DDT hasn’t been shown to have any detrimental effects to humans or most animals (besides mosquitos and other insects, of course), and wouldn’t even significantly effect the insect population.
Mickey’s article doesn’t seem to be informed about how malaria works or what pesticide’s role is. Curing malaria obviously won’t eliminate poverty or bring social justice. But ####, isn’t it worth it to save hundreds and hundreds of thousands of lives anyway? If malaria was a problem in the US, I doubt the anti-DDT sentiment would get very far. But because it’s poor people who are dying in droves from a preventable disease, he seems willing to propose that they be sacrificed to prevent an unproven risk to the environment, and because anything short of Complete Justice isn’t good enough.
Posted by Ian Bicking on from Chicago 01/11 at 01:24 AMIan,
You certainly have every right to believe what you believe about DDT and you come across as someone ready to present evidence to defend your stance...until the last two sentences. Where in my writing do I express anything of the sort?
You’d do yourself a service by leaving the unfounded personal attacks out of your posts.
As for DDT, I find it extremely difficult to accept it as a force to save lives. Be that as it may, the point of the article was this: Too many in the West are unwilling to examine the deep causes of poverty and would rather settle for quick fixes like donations to the Red Cross or the spraying of DDT.
Thanks,
MZ
Posted by Mickey Z. on from 01/11 at 06:23 AMI am fairly convinced that DDT is definitly a thing of the past, it is so persistant in the environment that you can find it in human milk even nowadays, mosquitoes developp rapid resistance to it and because of accumulation in the food chain, it tends to destroy mosquitoes predators (rather counter-productive), most of this is pretty well known and the reason why DDT was abandoned years ago.
What appears to be less well known from the comments above, is that vast campaigns of eradication have been mostly useless, initially because there are less vecotrs (mosquitoes)the number of cases drops, but because they are not exposed to the disease people loose their immunity and children born at the height of the programm have none, when the disease reappears because of resistance to the pesticide, the effect is devastating.
In fact plasmodium the protozoan causing the disease is also very good at becoming resistant to chemicals, chemicals against malaria are to be taken preventively and they are rather toxic, unsuitable for long term use and vaccine development has not been very successful
Thinking that the US is not affected by malaria and other parasitic diseases is naive, actually as far as I know there is a real fear of those desease in America and being affected can sometimes get you in more trouble than being muslim.
For example if you are a drifter caught with TB you will be locked with forced treatment until declared cured and released to your previous life something gained nothing lost (just a few microorganisms) to protect the rest of the population…
This stated we can expect anything from our rulers!Posted by Genevieve Bart on from Finland 01/11 at 11:04 AMMickey, I’m sorry if it came off as a personal attack, that wasn’t intended. But I am concerned that an over-emphasis on systemic problems are dehumanizing, even by those who are looking for social justice. When someone dies of malaria, their family doesn’t think “damn you deep causes of poverty!” or “why, oh why this reminder of the systemic flaws in our system that undervalues the health of the poor!” No, they feel the direct loss of a loved one, and the larger social context of that loss is not their primary concern. And I don’t think it should be—for it to be so would be very dehumanizing, it’s asking them to reduce their personal relationship to a general political statement.
It’s easy from afar to ignore the multitude of individual tragedies that occur because of malaria. Malaria isn’t a political statement, it’s a disease, and while it exists in a larger social context, it’s still an identifiable and preventable physical disease.
Posted by Ian Bicking on from Chicago 01/11 at 01:00 PMIan,
You and I agree on the need for both immediate and systemic change (see the Bolivia project I was involved for more on that)...but you seem not to accept that I am not ignoring personal pain from afar. I am not convinced that DDT will work and I stated that. As Genevieve states above, the eradication model rarely works...in science, war, etc.
Again, the point of my article went deeper than that debate...without discounting the importance of that debate.
Thanks,
MZ
Posted by Mickey Z. on from 01/11 at 01:05 PMTotal eradication of malaria is not possible. Some serious inroads could be made against it by cleaning up the urban breeding grounds, pools of stagnant water, of the vectors. Use of synthetic pesticides only increases tolerance. Using them in sufficient quantities to completely destroy the mosquito population would devastate the environment completely. Natural pesticides, such as pyrethrum, do not build tolerance. Until recently, you couldn’t patent them and make a bundle with enforceable “intellectual property rights” on a scale sufficient to guarantee a steady killing.
Conflating opposition to use of DDT with disregard for human life is faulty thinking. The argument against a quick fix that does more harm than good in both the short term and long term is simple, conservative good sense. DDT demonstrably stopped working and led to other problems as serious as malaria.
Posted by Harry on from 01/12 at 10:51 AMCheck 4. “I found the response rather ignorant. Malaria has been eliminated from many parts of the world due to pesticides. The environmental . . .”
Thanqz but no thanqz for the lecture Ian . . . Go talk to the techie. Don’t call me or him IGNORANT . . . Go find out for your self and get off your smug attitude . . .Posted by Roger kemble on from Nanaimo BC Canada 09/29 at 07:19 PM
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