Like I said: link to some data instead of wikipedia and articles that say the exact opposite of what you are trying to point out.
I do agree Wikipedia is not that great a cite, but the cite from Source Watch points to the likely origin of the idea of blaming environmentalists came from, and why it is a myth.
That was from **Haunted **, as for me, I did not use Wikipedia at all.
More disinformation from you even in this thread alone.
I’m sorry for getting so emotional/angry in my posts. This whole thing is just so unbelievably disgusting that it makes me furious. It seems like every time you turn around you see another greedy person doing things that are so selfish and twisted, so hard to fathom, that you can hardly wrap your brain around them.
Blah. It’s so discouraging.
On a brighter note, here’s the truth about Rachel Carson. http://www.time.com/time/time100/scientist/profile/carson.html
I apologize for my comments. I can’t edit and I responded a bit too quickly.
My point was simply that casting doubt on motives is easy to do, but doesn’t prove much. I haven’t linked to junkscience, I’ve linked to scientific research. Further, there is the fact that DDT isn’t a profit-maker for chemical companies. The DDT ban benefits them, as they can sell more profitable patented insecticides.
I also am a bit emotionally involved in the issue; I’ve seen firsthand the remarkable success in Eritrea and I’ve seen firsthand the terrible failures of overused drugs and expensive nets.
Indeed. 
This is the first time we’ve heard about your firsthand experience. Please supply heart-wrenching details.
Unfortunately, the anti-Rachel Carson, anti-environmental sources you’ve already cited have sullied your message. And cast doubts upon your motives. (As does your User name.)
The only two things I’ve provided links to are scientific studies, both on pubmed, both in journals. Perhaps you’re referring to someone else’s links? I did suggest that you could read the NYT articles linked by someone else, but I didn’t think the NYT was very controversial.
And again, arguing that something is false because the source has a bias is a logical fallacy. Don’t sources that have a pro-environmental bias sully your point?
As far as my experiences in Africa, I’ve been there and discussed the situation with humanitarian workers, locals, and government officials, and I’ve kept up on scientific research in the area. For heartrending details, you can google for malaria victim images. In any case, it is irrelevant to any issue save that of me not being a “pesticide pusher”.
And my user name? Mosk is a California supreme court justice that had a tendency to dissent from the majority. The first several Google hits reveal this. It’s really silly that you’d even mention it, though.
Sure it is. They just don’t make as much per kilo.
With DDT they make it up in volume. And that contributed to the vicious circle we had in the 60s; we’d put down some DDT and some mosquitos survived it and produced more DDT-resistant mosquitos so we put down more DDT and some mosquitos survived it, etc. We humans and our DDT were the agents of anopheles evolution and were inadvertently encouraging the eventual respread of one of our greatest killers by making a superskeeter out of its vector.
Do you have more recent data than this?
It looks to me like they are cutting back on the worse pesticide actors, presumably including DDT, and those “expensive” nets they’re giving away are doing their job. But yes, the WHO does support the surgical use of indoor DDT spraying on walls where mosquitos light, and that is where DDT’s persistence helps it shine while not attacking enough of the anopheles population to select for resistance, which is what the spraying the whole outdoors method of the 40s-60s did.
Aside from making up profits by selling DDT in volumes, how does that disagree with anything I said? I did talk about the success in Eritrea as compared to the wetter mid-african area.
And why would they want to ramp up and sell a ton of DDT when with the status quo they can make the stuff they are making now and make the same proft? It’s not as if we are going to start up with massive spraying efforts again. No one is suggesting that; I at least am suggesting only that we get on board with the WHO and other who have recently come around and make sure that DDT is cheap and available for those countries that need it, instead of insisting they use more toxic or less effective treatments.
Check out the whois info for the domain junkscience.com
Registrant:
Steve Milloy
12309 Briarbush Lane
Potomac, MD 20854
US
Now check out what sourcewatch.org has to say about Steven Milloy.
Whether or not you agree with the political stance of these organizations I think it’s hard to escape the fact that this man is pushing a specific political agenda.
So, you’re generally anti-environment. Not simply where DDT is concerned.
And you did speak approvingly of one of the more notorious anti-environmental, pro-corporate sites.
Thanks for telling me about Judge Mosk. Odd that you’d choose his name.
Again, it’s sad that you hurt your cause by not immediately identifying yourself as someone with personal experience. This story about Eritrean success against malaria doesn’t mention DDT.
I am pretty sure that personal observations about other posters are not going to move the discussion forward, so I really suggest that such remarks be left for a different Forum.
[ /Modding ]
Actually, that’s why I don’t really think many of the pro-DDT people are in the employ of the pesticide industry. I suspect some are True Conservatives[sup]TM[/sup] who are convinced that, “what worked in 1947 should still work in 2007, dagnabbit!” I’ll try to think of other examples of groups whose goals have been disavowed by the industries rumored to bankroll them because the groups’ goals are counter to the industries’ self-interests. I’ll get back to you about that.
And there’s an element of disingenuous pro-business-at-all-costs anti-environmentalism behind a lot of the pro-DDT discussion, especially when those same people also vilify the UN, the WHO, and foreign aid in other discussions. Milloy, though, takes that to a whole new, sleazier level.
OK. I’ll try to behave…
I must confess, I do get tired of the ad hominem arguments. Yes, Steve Milloy has an agenda … and so do Hilary Clinton and President Bush and you and I. So what? The question is scientific, look to science for the answers.
Milloy has an interesting page here , which references dozens and dozens of scientific studies. Please don’t bother saying once again that Milloy has an agenda … read the studies, read the results, then we’ll have something to discuss.
Any pesticide is deleterious when overused. However, having lived and worked many years in malarious tropical countries, and having seen people die from the disease, I can assure you that malaria is a serious problem, one that requires serious solutions.
Currently, the only way to successfully attack tropical malaria is a multifaceted program involving education, landscape cleanup (removing standing water), treated bed nets, anti-malarial drugs, and judicious use of insecticides. The reason DDT is a good one is that it is cheap, and the countries with malaria are by and large broke beyond belief.
The patents on DDT expired long ago, so there is competition in the market. As a result, it does not have the high profit margins for the producers which other chemicals have. The idea that chemical companies are pushing its use is nonsense, they make much more money on more modern chemicals. Sure, they’d like you to buy it, but they’d prefer you bought Malathion™ or the like.
The proper use of DDT is to use it only when the other methods have failed, to use small quantities, and to avoid spraying it outdoors.
Finally, Rachel Carlson overhyped the dangers of DDT, but so what? She was a pioneer and a lone voice pointing out the dangers of the indiscriminate use of pesticides, and deserves immense respect for that, regardless of any errors she might have made.
w.
Great idea. Let’s start with this:
intention, would you please get a copy of the October, 1956 Journal of the American Medical Association, scan it and post it?
Then, after we’ve all discussed it, we can move on to this:
We’re going to need you to get whatever the IARC, V.5, from 1974, and scan it and post it. Then after we discuss that study, we’ll move on to the next ones.
Those would be:
They should be easy to find!
Thanks!
Gosh, I wonder why Mr. Milloy didn’t use any “evidence” for his statements that he could link to so we could review it for ourselves? Oh, well, I’m sure it’s not important. I mean, it’s not like we can’t trust the guy.
Right, I agree. DDT is fairly safe when used as you say- in small amounts, inside, as a vector control.
But I don’t think R Carlson really overhyped it. DDT *was *being used in truely massive and dangerous amounts back then, with no thought as to safety.
Again:Look at this line from Wiki again: “*This use only requires a small fraction of that previously used in agriculture; for the whole country of Guyana, covering an area of 215,000 km², the required amount is roughly equal to the amount of DDT that might previously have been used to spray 4 km² of cotton during a single growing season.”
*
They used FIFTY THOUSAND times what is considered safe today. And, worse, the skeeters were growing resistant to it, due to that wasteful and dangerous over-usage.
Sure, if by overhyped you meanthis:
It sounds to me like she pretty much wrote the same things you did. Are you overhyping or was it just her?
A blogger, Tim Lambert, has been tirelessly tracking the right-wing effort to blame Rachel Carson and the environmental movement for all the malaria deaths. As he continually point out, they have actually probably saved lives by reducing the widespread use of DDT in agriculture and thereby slowing the development of resistance in mosquitoes to it and other pesticides, thus allowing DDT and other pesticides to be effective in some areas.
Here is another blogger, an entomologist, who has jumped into the fray.
Actually, I was referring to her claim that DDT causes cancer when I said “overhyped”. I can’t find any scientific evidence for that at all. But like I said, it’s no matter, she did the world an outstanding service by pointing out the dangers of indiscriminate use of poisonous chemicals.
w.