# Breitbart News: Zika is a conspiracy, DDT is the answer. **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [October 23, 2016, 2:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/breitbart-news-zika-is-a-conspiracy-ddt-is-the-answer/769429 "2016-10-23T02:58:19Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2016, 7:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/breitbart-news-zika-is-a-conspiracy-ddt-is-the-answer/769429/21 "2016-10-24T19:09:48Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > It’s true that DDT is not as evil as thought. Used carefully and with controls, it can be a good addition to the anti-mosquito arsenal. > > The problem was, here in America, it was NOT used carefully or with controls. > > And you cant let farmers make that decision. Generally they dont give a fuck if they can be convinced they can make more money. I have to add that IMHO it had a lot to do also because many did ignore or willfully ignored that evolution is a real thing. > **[Fifty Years After Silent Spring, Attacks on Science Continue](https://e360.yale.edu/features/fifty_years_after_rachel_carsons_silent_spring_assacult_on_science_continues)** > > When Silent Spring was published in 1962, author Rachel Carson was subjected to vicious personal assaults that had nothing do with the science or the merits of pesticide use. Those attacks find a troubling parallel today in the campaigns against... > [@](#): > > So, as with the global warming debate today, politics trumps science. In the byzantine mindset of right-wing think tanks, concerns about environmental health reflect a godless, anti-business, anti-American mind-set. These critics never mention the fact that DDT was banned in the U. S. and some other countries, but globally is still available; nor that, even when Silent Spring first appeared, DDT’s importance against malaria had been greatly diminished because mosquitoes were evolving resistance to the chemical; nor that alternative pesticides, as well as drugs that attack the malaria parasite and bug nets, are more feasible than using DDT. Ironically, many of Carson’s bitterest critics are creationists, who deny the existence of the same evolution that shapes those insects and makes them pesticide resistant. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2016, 7:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/breitbart-news-zika-is-a-conspiracy-ddt-is-the-answer/769429/22 "2016-10-24T19:15:09Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > I have to add that IMHO it had a lot to do also because many did ignore or willfully ignored that evolution is a real thing. > > [Fifty Years After Silent Spring, Attacks on Science Continue - Yale E360](http://e360.yale.edu/feature/fifty_years_after_rachel_carsons_silent_spring_assacult_on_science_continues/2544/) Yes, and widespread and uncontrolled use leads to insects being resistant. ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2016, 8:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/breitbart-news-zika-is-a-conspiracy-ddt-is-the-answer/769429/23 "2016-10-24T20:51:28Z")
> [@wolfpup](#): > > Breitbart are a bunch of far-right idiots and conspiracy theorists who are being grossly irresponsible in making these claims. If you look hard enough you can find a few crackpot environmentalists who believe the same nonsense. If you keep looking you might find an anti-GMO group who does, too, as indeed you just did. So what? You don’t have to look hard at all. This stuff has been spewing out of anti-GMO and pseudo-environmental websites for months. It has all the perfect ingredients such as Monsanto (though the larvacide is not made by Monsanto or any company it owns or controls), government coverup etc. What’s irresponsible is pretending that embracing pseudoscience and its accompanying conspiracy theories is only a right-wing foible. Sorry that the mention of anti-GMOers latching onto the larvacide meme sent you into elliptical orbit. But it’s been [linked with anti-GMO sentiment](http://www.forbes.com/sites/kavinsenapathy/2016/02/16/anti-gmo-doctors-behind-monsanto-microcephaly-link/#67b4499668fb) from the beginning. \*"The leader of Médicos de Pueblos Fumigados, Dr. Ávila Vazquez has come under fire for making giant albeit unfounded scientific leaps. In 2014 for example, Dean of Agricultural Sciences at the National University of Cordoba, Juan Marcelo Conrero called for an investigation into Vazquez’s research, for overreaching conclusions in a study linking genetically engineered crops and agrochemicals to cancer, infertility and birth defect rates in the town of Monte Maiz, 300 kilometers from Cordoba. Médicos de Pueblos Fumigados is far from a scientifically sound organization. With its (translated) “Manifesto Against Pesticides” asserting that pesticide use is malicious, and a website littered with citations from the oft-ridiculed, retracted rat study from Gilles-Eric Seralini claiming a since thoroughly-debunked link between herbicides, GMOs and cancer, Vazquez’s group of physicians is more fringe than credible; more biased than objective. Shortly after Conrero requested the administrative inquiry for spreading fear without evidence that agrochemicals cause cancer and other health problems, a group of academics, scientific authorities and social leaders from twelve countries wrote a letter in Vazquez’s defense. With signatories like Zen Honeycutt, head of anti-GMO group Moms Across America, who believes that organic food can cure autism, international anti-GMO leader Vandana Shiva, known for butchering science and deemed a “dangerous fabulist” and part of the “lunatic fringe,” and anti-GMO leader and yogic levitator Jeffrey Smith, the letter featured the cream of the agricultural conspiracy theorist crop."\* While I haven’t yet read the more recent study Breitbart et al are embracing, one of its authors is a colleague of Nassim Taleb, a financial risk analyst turned anti-GMO advocate. They were co-authors on an earlier paper (written under the auspices of an “extreme risk initiative”) warning of “ruin in the future” from using genetically modified crops (unless we follow their advice on dealing with “systemic risk” of GMOs, which they eloquently equated to a “gambler’s ruin problem”). So maybe the “precautionary principle” is advisable in evaluating this latest work, not to mention acknowledging that the link between Zika and microcephaly is on solid ground. 🙂 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/breitbart-news-zika-is-a-conspiracy-ddt-is-the-answer/769429.md?page=1)