Logically, then, there is also nothing special about an entire species. If there was, the dodo, passenger pigeon, and all the dinosaurs would have found a way to survive.
Again, if the death of 40 million individuals isn’t a big deal, do you mind if we start with your family? Yes or no?
Species come and go, but humans caused the extinction of the Dodo and the Passenger Pigeon. The dinosaurs were on their own.
Let me try a question out on you. DDT can damage the developing brain, causing hypersensitivity, behavioral abnormalities and reduced nerve function. It has also been shown to suppress the immune system, which causes slower response to infections. DDT can cause damage at very low doses, and that it can affect unborn infants.
Can I come to your house and spray it all over you, your pregnant wife, your kids, your house and your yard?
Or might we come to a more rational compromise. I don’t spray your family, you don’t kill mine, and instead we phase out DDT while also increasing funding for diagnosis and treatment of existing cases, increase funding for alternative, safer pesticides, use of bed-nets and increase funding for education in dealing with malaria, mosquitoes and disease fighting in general.
Sure, 40 million may have died from malaria. How many more may have suffered and died, or still be suffering, not from malaria, but from the effects of persistent organic pollutants?
Finally, while I’d rather you didn’t kill my family, I’m also pretty sure that the loss of my family would not jeopardize the continued existence of the human species. Nor has the loss of 40 million people to malaria. Over 50 million people die each year anyway. Further, I’m pretty sure there are 6.5 billion people on this planet that wouldn’t care one whit if my family suddenly vanished.
No, your problem is that you think of the deaths as being generic birds, instead of as someone’s wife, husband, daughter, or son, which they are. Birds are more social on average than are humans. Furthermore, entire bird families were wiped out. Furthermore, entire bird species were wiped out. Nothing of the kind was or is happening (yet) to humans, else we’d be an endangered species already.
And then there’s economics. Yeah, we love our fellow man. Until he takes our jobs, or starts stealing the water supply from our wells. Birds, OTOH, aren’t in direct competition, & just brighten our day.
And really, you really think deaths from DDT, chlordane, etc., were going to stop with birds? It was also fish, frogs, predator insects–all of which, like birds keep pest populations down. Or do you want to live in a world where you’re covered by CHC-resistant mosquitoes & cockroaches, but no “good” critters remain? This was where it was going, buddy. The amount of pesticide dumped into the environment would have to keep increasing, & the predatory insectivorous species, with smaller populations & more bio-accumulation, would have less time to adapt before going well & truly extinct.
And as for saving human beings, ask someone whose father, mother, brother, or sister died of prostate or breast cancer how they feel about accumulated environmental DDT!
That anyone would list Rachel Carson as a worst woman, it never occurred to me. Ach du lieber Himmel!
Oddly, my college philosophy professor made a similar assumption. He was wrong, like you. He was, incidentally, a Jew, like you.
I blame the Talmud. (I used to blame Descartes, but really, it goes back to the Talmud.)
Look, if morality is only tradition, then it can be anything. Rachel Carson could be admired for her (very indirect) role in not preventing the natural deaths of millions. Heck, she could be deified. If that’s what you believe, hey, bring on the Mongols, the Nietzscheans, & the vampire wannabes, 'cos nothing really matters!
On the other hand, if the world has an actual moral meaning, rather than being a meaningless expanse of random stuff, then restricting our understanding of that moral meaning to only human beings is unintelligent. Just as we are not the only species in the physical universe, we are not the only species in the moral universe.
I think I may tattoo that last sentence on my forehead, it’s so profound.
Yeah, right. While you’re waiting the two million years for an average of one random new genus to appear in each class of lifeform (ballpark estimate; since the average drops with smaller base populations); your uneducated fellow men can exterminate a few hundred genera in a century without really trying; which really puts a crimp in that spontaneous new speciation you were hoping for.
And, yeah, variants is about you’ve developed, Fred. So far, no one’s actually disproven Old Earth Creationism & the divine creation of species. Pretty sad, really. I’m not holding my breath for Big Pharma’s genetic research arms to rebuild pollinator populations.
Yes, but does the bird “community” view these deaths with the same amount of sadness as the human one? Sure, a bird might act depressed when its mate dies, but does the bird have enough theory of mind to be able to process its grief in a meaningful way? Or is its “depression” merely instinctual, not requiring any higher brain functions at all? Also, birds live much shorter lives than humans, so they have fewer years to spend in mateless grief. Then again, humans don’t mate for life (in the same way some animals do… we can find a new partner after ours is killed or leaves), so maybe the grief really is less for us than for a bird. A complicated question.
I think DDT was a net bad thing, though. The amount of pollutants that built up in the environment would have killed or endangered way more than 40m people by now (the deaths and/or disabilities from cancer and birth defects would have increased at an exponential rate, not an additive one, as the old pollutants would still remain in the environment). Also, non-human species don’t exist in a bubble; the loss of beneficial insects and other creatures would have a negative effect on human life and well-being, resulting in further deaths. And that’s if you don’t include the deaths of animals as being on the moral tally at all.
Has anybody stopped this exercise in philosophical masturbation to realize that, for all we know, NOBODY died because DDT was banned? Sure, it was a real good pesticide in its day but it was nearing the end of its useful life, what with all the skeeters that were immune to it, and it never has been universally banned and even where it was banned there’s no doubt the authorities just dumped more malathion or whatever on the mosquitos. Where is the proof that people died because DDT was banned? All I have seen is a citation of yearly deaths and the assumption that all of those people lived somewhere with an effective public health system and a well-funded mosquito abatement program. These are BIG assumptions to be making about the Third World and without some proof otherwise this is just more libel of the environmental movement.
I don’t even know where to start. I have been reading the “Worst Woman” thread, and the first time I saw Rachel Carson’s name nominated I did a quadruple take. This continued every time anyone chimed in their agreement.
The species-centric views that are being expressed in this thread, and in the actions and perceptions of many people on this planet, have always been completely foreign to me. There is simply no translation in my moral, spiritual, intellectual, biological, or logical dialect, for the concept that the humans species is the cream of the species crop. Nor can I comprehend the notion that the world exists within the human context alone, with everything “not human” being reduced to three categories: 1) a potential resource to be exploited in the sustainment and advancement of the human species 2) an obstacle or threat to sustainment and advancement that can and should be eliminated, or 3) unknown at this time whether it is a potential resource or a potential obstacle/threat.
Taking it from general to individual, there are indeed times when items in my environment may be reduced to such a simple classification, but by far, most of the time I am oblivious to most items in my environment. Most of the time I am not thinking about how to either exploit or eliminate everything around me. I and my environment are simply co-existing. Further, there are times when I am not oblivious, but instead I am able to benefit from simply observing my environment without directly exploiting it at all.
I think it is a very dangerous perspective to perpetually justify actions based on circumstances that only exist a fraction of the time, and that is what it seems like a lot of people are doing in our current global culture. We seem to act, and justify those actions, as if every moment is a moment of life and death crisis for ourselves, our families, or our species. Even if what we’re actually doing is just going to the store to buy groceries for dinner.
The ultimate irony, I think, is that by doing so, we very well may be a self-fulfilling profecy. We very well may be responsible for creating a perpetual, global, life and death crisis for all life on this planet, including all human life.
We as a species are toddlers of self-awareness. We barely understand ourselves, how can we be at all confident in our understanding of other species, or that we can determine if they are self-aware?
We are toddlers when it comes to our understanding of the world in which we live, our interactions with that world, and the interactions within that world that do not directly involve us. We are still discovering new species even as we directly plow under many, many more into extinction.
Anything that we destroy in this infancy of our’s is an invaluable loss. We don’t yet have the understanding to even begin to quantify or qualify such things.
Really? Let me give you some examples.
In Sri Lanka, in 1948, there were 2.8 million malaria cases and 7,300 malaria deaths. That year, Sri Lanka started spraying DDT. Malaria cases immediately began to drop. By 1963, there were only 17 cases of malaria and NO deaths. Then Sri Lanka suspended spraying of DDT, and in 1968 and 1969 there were 2.5 million cases of malaria again.
in Zanzibar, 70 percent of the population in 1958 contracted malaria. Zanzibar began spraying, and malaria cases dropped to 5 percent of the population. In 1968 Zanzibar suspended spraying, and infection rates climbed back up to 50-60%.
Some environmentalists claim, with little evidence, that DDT spraying was stopped not because of DDT scare, but because of resistance to the chemical by mosquitos. While it’s clear that new strains did develop somewhat of a resistance, it was not total, and DDT was still very effective when it was banned.
For example, after South Africa stopped using DDT in 1996, the number of malaria cases in KwaZulu-Natal province went from 8,000 to 42,000. By 2000, there had been an approximate 400 percent increase in malaria deaths. Then DDT spraying was started again, and by 2003 there was not a single case of malaria reported.
As for all the supposed risks to humans of DDT, here’s what the experts have to say:
“There is no scientific evidence supporting a link between the proper application of pesticides and any ill health effects in humans. Moreover, there is no evidence that the approved use of pesticides contributes in any way to human cancer.” – Lawrence Garfinkel, Director of Cancer Prevention, American Cancer Society
“The risk of pesticide residues to consumers is effectively zero. This is what some fourteen scientific societies representing over 100,000 microbiologists, toxicologists and food scientists said at the time of the ridiculous Alar scare. But we were ignored.” – Dr. Sanford Miller, Dean of the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, University of Texas at San Antonio
And here’s an excellent middle-of-the-road letter from the Malaria Foundation on DDT.
I don’t think there can be any question that the widespread banning of DDT use in the 60’s after the publication of Silent Spring and the resulting anti-DDT hysteria cost millions of lives.
Why should be empathy be necessarily extendedto other species?
Besides, empathy being a feeling, it doesn’t mix well with words like “logical”.
Because as we learn more about ourselves, we realize that the differences between us and others are mighty slim, and perhaps completely inconsequential.
It wasn’t that long ago (50 yrs?) that racial slurs were commonplace, people “over there” thought to be vastly different from “us”. I’ll just give you one cite from popular culture - read Gone With the Wind for its description of the first African Americans. Mitchell makes the argument that slavery was doing them a favor.
Animals engage in a great many “human” activities, from using tools to loving their offspring to communicating within their particular societies. And face it - humans engage in a lot of barbaric, uncivilized, despicable behavior that erodes any claims of moral superiority.
But Zanzibar can continue to spray. There is no “world law” forbidding DDT. What won’t happen is the U.S. won’t pay for that spraying. If its important enough to save their population, they will spray. South Africa did.
Its “opportunity cost” in the U.S. we have few cases of malaria, almost none that were contracted here, it makes no sense to spray. It may make far more sense in South Africa.
And malaria is treatable - not 100%, but it has a fatality rate when treated far less than it has in Africa, where it often runs its course without any treatment. If the lives were that important, we’d manage to save them with out without DDT.
Yes, but you see, the US will end up paying, both in environmental damage costs and real payments.
The right-wing free-market think-tanks that engineered the current anti-environmentalist “pro-DDT hysteria” and successfully campaigned to not only resume use of DDT, but also got any kind of time schedule for DDT’s eventual phase-out removed from the table, say it themselves:
See, DDT is cheap and it works fast. What are the odds that these “African nations” are ever going to agree that our guaranteed funding and alternatives, which they already have, or will ever be sufficient?
First, they’ll get all the DDT they want, it will be diverted to agriculture and used indiscriminately, and in 20-30 years when everything goes to shit, all these right wing free-market groups are going to change their name from Africa Fighting Malaria, to Save Africa from the Evils of DDT, and guess who’s going to get blamed for “poisoning” all those helpless poor dark-skinned people with DDT? We will, of course.
As Dangerosa points out, the claim that the environmental movement and some non-existent worldwide ban on DDT were responsible for all these malaria deaths is a fiction invented and pedaled by the likes of Elizabeth Whalen and Steve Milloy (junkscience.com).
Here is a good debunking of the myth. The Nature article from 1981 listed in the references is particularly interesting as it shows that malaria deaths in India, for example, skyrocketed while DDT use there was continuing to increase. It was being used willy-nilly in agriculture, which led to indiscriminate spraying and widespread development of resistance by mosquitoes.
I agree that the available evidence suggests DDT is not too harmful to humans or the environment when it is used as part of an indoor spraying program, as is most effective in combatting DDT. (Unfortunately, as levdrakon notes, there is the danger of it being diverted for use in agriculture and other harmful and indiscriminate ways so there do have to be safeguards against this.)
There was never a worldwide ban on DDT and the closest we came to such a ban was around ~2000 when the treaty on persistent organic pollutants was being negotiated. Some environmental groups like the World Wildlife Fund were pushing for having some firm future date for the phaseout of DDT because they argued this was necessary in order to push alternatives to be developed. However, even before a final agreement was reached, WWF decided to drop this negotiating position. The final treaty allows DDT to continue to be used for anti-malarial purposes, a result that the Malaria.Org organization that Sam Stone linked to say:
Indeed, you do find junkscience.com and other perveyors or nonsense trying to make the claim that DDT doesn’t harm avian species. However, this is believed by few outside the far right anti-environmentalist circles. For example, the letter that Sam Stone linked to by the Malaria Foundation International arguing for the continued use of DDT against malaria admits:
The good news is that such devastation does not seem to occur when DDT is used for indoor spraying programs using to fight malaria because in such programs, much less DDT gets into the environment than when it is used in agriculture.
Are you seriously comparing relations between blacks and whites to relations between animals and humans? I don’t know about anyone else, but I think that’s a little offensive.
IANA Racist, and IANA fessie, but there’s plenty of disturbing racist dogma that somehow places pretty much any [insert “race” construct here] as being “sub-human” or “more closely related to filthy animals than to humans” which simultaneously implies that whatever group is making such comparisons are not animals (which is not the case), and further, that whatever group making such comparisons are not only seperate from this perceived world of animals, but superior to it (which is not the case).
I think fessie is simply reminding us of, and pointing out the consequences of, a recent example of our species’ gross ignorance with respect to itself and other species, and I for one don’t consider that offensive or too far of a reach.
Thank you, honeydewgrrl; that was precisely my point.
I would just like to point out that “Feed the Children et al” does not happen on its own. Development consists of a wide variety of challenges. Education is high on the list and is correlated to reduced fertility rates.
By which I mean women who are more educated tend to have fewer children.