Rachel Carson saved lives (or tried to), not destroyed them (DDT and malaria)

Great Debates
1

Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring” is often roundly and without much question decried as having cost millions of lives, supposedly because she convinced many many people to stop using DDT, which led to a resurgence in malaria, which is deadly. Carson may have been wrong about exactly how environmentally damaging DDT really is, though as far as I can tell, honestly wrong. And that is irrelevant to the question of malaria, because it’s a rather different question anyway.

The problem with this case is that it’s not so simple and most of the key elements are historically false or misleading. DDT has never been banned for anti-malaria use in any case: exemptions for that use have been carved out in nearly every DDT-related law and agreement there is.

But even more silly is that many of the countries which supposedly stopped using DDT, leading to malaria deaths did not in fact stop using it at all. Some stopped it not out of any concern for the environment, but instead because it was completely useless to them. Take India. India did not cut back on DDT after Carson’s work as the “Carson killed millions” tale would lead us to believe: instead it RAMPED UP its use. At the same time, malaria got worse and worse. How does the “Carson killed more than Hitler” claims make any sense in the face of this? What happened was precisely what Carson pointed out: wide agricultural use, aside from whether or not it hurt the environment, led to resistance, which required more and more DDT which led to more resistance and so on, which is precisely why malaria deaths increased as DDT use did. The widespread industrial use of DDT made it less and less useful for fighting malaria.

Because as it turns out, DDT is not a magic bullet against mosquitoes. If DDT is widely used and abused, they develop resistance to it: after which it becomes near useless. And, guess what: Carson warned against exactly this. The primary use for DDT has rarely ever been to combat malaria, but as an agricultural insecticide, and this was the primary thing she spoke out against and what made her name mud in the chemical industry and still does. DDT can also be used quite effectively to fight malaria in ways that wouldn’t get into the water supply and are quite effective at fighting malaria (treated mosquito nets, for instance), and so far none of the right wing critics have produced any evidence that Carson ever opposed this sort of use.

What DDT is used today is effective largely only because some countries listened to her advice and stopped using DDT for agricultural use, thus preventing them from evolving resistance and making DDT useless against malaria.

Of course, it should come as no surprise that many of the big DDT know it alls like junkscience.com have ties to, or favorably link to anti-evolutionists as well.

2

Your post fascinates me. I have two copies of “Silent Spring” on my shelves. She did so much to help start the environmental movement really going that I have always had the utmost respect for her. I always thought that those who tried to paint her in a strong negative light were generally regarded as idiots.

You seem to be implying that there are entire movements out there that think she is responsible for the death of millions. I am surprised and appalled by this.

I thought the link between DDT and the decline in Raptor populations was well-established and well document. Is their some controversy now over this decades old data?

I had the happy experience of watch three hatchlings grow and eventually fly this spring, summer and fall on the Navesink River. The hatchlings in question were Ospreys. Once nearly gone from the Jersey shore, each year their numbers are slowly growing.

I believe I have Rachel Carson to thank for this wonderful experience.

Jim

3

Been hearing this DDT debate for years, and any number of other detractors criticisms as well. Some might well be valid, others not. But most importantly, she pioneered in a scientific and social movement, she made us think. Even if she were proved largely wrong, the effort in research and the subsequent gain in knowledge is a positive. Egg shells and DDT are one thing, imagine if she were talking about three legged frogs.

She done good.

4

Rachel Carson is a local hero around here, and I think she did a lot of good. I remember seeing a documentary on DDT once, and they used to spray it EVERYWHERE, all willy nilly. There was a group of kids sitting at a picnic table eating hotdogs at a local swimming pool-and they were absolutely drenched with it. Like that’s supposed to be a good thing?

Another thing to remember-like it or not, the state of the environment DOES indeed affect us, and even things you might think are minor aren’t.

5

I am not an expert here perhaps someone could enlighten me. I think that malaria was endemic to the USA and Malaysia before DDT. Is this not right?
I would not blame Carson for something that happened after though.

6

The idea that she killed millions is a common talking point amongst anti-environmental regulation types. It’s a passing trope in Michael Crichton’s State of Fear, for instance.

Here’s John Stossel’s telling of the tale:
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/JohnStossel/2006/10/04/hooray_for_ddts_life-saving_comeback

Stossel’s article is chock full of misrepresentations of the facts of the malaria crisis and the use of DDT, and his cited expert (Milloy) is a man that was unearthed in tobacco-industry docs as being one of their astroturf go-to guys. It’s hard to believe that Stossel could have done a modicum of research into the story before writing about it, and not know that he is basically lying to people in this article about the state and history of pesticide usage and DDT in particular. But then, he’s such a sloppy pundit that it’s hard to know for sure.

The number of examples of this are pretty darn common. Among many in the right wing, Carson is regularly compared to Hitler in terms of supposed death toll.

Here’s one example:
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3724/is_200505/ai_n14903608

Note that the article tries to give the impression that the cessation of the use of DDT caused malaria to shoot up, and the reintroduction of it caused it to shoot back down. But of course, that little story leaves out all sorts of tiny facts, and if you read the actual tropical disease literature, you don’t find this quaint little pat story, but instead a lot of other factors at play, and the use of DDT being one of the more inconsequential, rather than the sole important thing:

http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/links/doi/10.1111/j.1365-3156.2004.01341.x/full/?cookieSet=1

7

To make this even more clear:

  • DDT is just one tool out of many different tools to fight malaria, and only one type of insecticide out of many. It is not always the cheapest, and it is not always the most effective. DDT was not and is not “banned” worldwide for the purposes of fighting malaria, and exemptions and exceptions for this purpose are a common feature of local and international legislation in this area.

-It IS used to fight malaria in most countries with a major malaria epidemic, and has been for almost all the time there have been malaria epidemics in those countries. During the times when all these countries were supposedly getting hammered by environmentalists to stop using DDT, they almost all continued to use DDT anyway for the purposes of fighting malaria, and they had varying successes: alot of which were due to other factors rather than with DDT usage alone.

-The few exceptions to the reality of DDT use (despite the myth that it is completely banned), like Sri Lanka, are not due to raging environmentalists but rather to the fact that vast agricultural use has rendered DDT ineffective by helping insects build resistance to DDT far far faster, making it ineffective in those countries. They didn’t stop using DDT because they cared about the environment: they switched to other insecticides because DDT was working very well anymore in those places (in fact, far from jumping on banning DDT for crazy environmental reasons, Sri Lanka held onto using DDT far longer than it should have because many people in the government couldn’t admit that their programs were starting to fail to control malaria anymore).

-If anything, the those that laud DDT for fighting malaria today owe a debt of gratitude to the restriction of DDT for massive agricultural use, which in nearly every country that continued to use it, saw the effectiveness of its malaria fighting powers vastly diminished. DDT isn’t the magic bullet it’s painted to be, but what it can do is owed to its use in moderation, rather than the massive industrial sale that made Carson public enemy #1 with anti-regulation groups.

-Regardless of the ultimate soundness of Carson’s claims about the negative environmental effects of DDT, the case that she somehow led to millions of malaria deaths is simply ridiculous. If anything, her efforts led to more moderation in the very use of DDT that renders it least effective and has little to do with actually controlling malaria, not any sort of banning of DDT for malaria control out of environmental hysteria. Countries stopped and started using DDT to fight malaria for all sorts of different reasons, in many cases, it was because the overuse of DDT was causing widespread resistance, which called for a change in strategy.

There was a lot of hysteria about DDT from environmentalists that was unwarranted. But the reality is that the widespead outdoor spraying of DDT that Carson opposed is not an effective malaria fighting strategy in the first place. Targeted use of DDT indoors along with lots of other elements to control the disease are… and these methods were not and are not, in fact, substantially banned.

8

I don’t think anyone doubts the connection between DDT and raptor populations–the issue is that malaria kills between one and three million people per year, mostly children. The accusation leveled at Carson is usually that because we like to watch beautiful raptors fly by, we pushed through international standards that resulted in the deaths millions a year. Put that way, enviromentalism looks like the worst sort of imperialistic indulgence–we’d rather have the pretty scenery in our ocuntry than worry about dead babies in Africa dying of a disease our kids will never face.

As Apos has shown, it’s not that simple. It was overly simplified when we were taught as children that enviroment = good, DDT = bad, but it’s also over simplified when the opposite side says DDT was a panacea to all that.

9

The Wall Street Journal published an editorial this very Wednesday which claims to dispute that very connection and it was written by none other than Steven Milloy. A recent thread also featured a newly arrived Staightdoper linking to Milloy’s site, which is almost entirely dedicated to spreading lies about DDT, as proof in a global warming debate. Citing Milloy as an expert on the environment (or anything else) would be like citing Fred Phelps as an expert on AIDS. The fact that he’s still among the most quoted sources by environment-haters big and small shows clearly how bankrupt their movement is.

10

'Fraid so.

11

Clarification: I meant, I’m afraid that there are such movements, not that their arguments are correct.

12

Great posts, Apos. There have been a couple of sites that have worked to dispel the right-wing myths propagated about DDT and malaria. Here is one and here is another.

13

Here is what our own unca Cecil has to say on the subject:

-XT

14

Wow, scary stuff.

Apos, great post.

I was going to write a rebuttal to Ronald Bailey, but thanks to xtisme, we have **Cecil ** doing a far better job than I could ever hope to.

Jim

15

Yep. It’s clear now that Carson’s understanding of DDT in particular and the use of chemicals in the environment was far too simplified, and like all things in science, especially new things, a lot of it turned out not to be what we first thought.

But that’s neither here nor there in regards to fighting malaria. The fact is simply that critics of Carson have vastly vastly over-inflated the importance of DDT (even Cecil claims that its cheap and more effective than other insecticides, which as far as I can tell isn’t true either) in fighting malaria and the ACTUAL history of DDT and malaria. They also flat out lie when they claim that Carson and other environmentalists didn’t acknowledge the importance of fighting malaria and even the use of DDT to do it in particular. And, in fact, DDT was used to fight malaria even during the times it was supposedly “banned” and still is, despite the implication that it is still “banned.”
The plain fact of the matter, and what’s particularly sickening about the debate, is that what is needed to fight malaria is not DDT in particular, but rather more money to create full and effective programs, which use a comprehensive approach to which DDT is just one factor, and not even a particularly necessary one. The sudden concern for malaria amongst many of these people is as phony as the sudden concern for human rights amongst many conservatives. What they don’t like is the idea that environmental concerns have any place at the table at all, and oftentimes their real motives are to sell product and knock down restrictions that don’t have anything to do with, as in this case, fighting malaria.

16

http://www.cdc.gov/malaria/

That’s the CDC’s take on malaria. I’ve always more thought of it as a disease contracted on the African continent, just from explorerer type stories. I also remember some biology class where sickle cell anemia (if I remember correctly–if both parents are carriers, its very deadly–but if one is, it rarely is) being helpful against something like malaria. I have no cite.

I also remember reading about ague in like the Little House Books. I assumed it was something like malaria.

They were settlers, so not acclimatized. They were in swampy areas.

I live in Houston, TX. I think there have been small scale malaria things b/c of folks from endemic areas. And Houston is VERY swampy and lowlying.

17

Having had malaria 4 times (actually 3 times plus a relapse) has given me a pretty good understanding of the disease. You don’t want it, I had a friend who died from it, it is perhaps the single biggest killer on the planet.

When used properly, DDT is effective against malaria, and was the initial reason that many countries no longer have malaria. However, resistance does develop, particularly if it is not used properly. “Used properly” means sprayed indoors on the walls of the building. After mosquitoes feed on a person, they fly to the nearest wall to rest and digest. At that point the DDT kills them. Since it is not out in the environment, resistance is much slower to develop. DDT also acts as a repellent, keeping the mosquitoes out of the building.

In the US, DDT has been replaced by other insecticides such as Malathion. The problem is that all of them are much, much more expensive than DDT, and the countries where there is malaria are generally poor beyond belief. Typically, they depend on aid donors for their anti-malarial insecticides, but that doesn’t solve the price problem. $100 of DDT goes a whole lot farther than $100 of Malathion, no matter who is paying.

However, DDT is not a magic bullet. It needs to be used sparingly, and in conjunction with other methods such as bed nets (the malaria mosquitoes only bite dusk to dawn), particularly treated bed nets. They repel mosquitoes, don’t create resistance, work even after the treatment wears out, and can be re-treated. Another crucial part of the puzzle is environmental cleanup (getting rid of stagnant water). We used to go around and turn over the empty coconut shells because they’d fill up with water, and we’d find a handful of wrigglers in each one.

Does Rachel Carson bear any of the blame for the overblown fears of DDT? Not really. She brought to the fore what was believed at the time, and she believed it herself. The fact that some of what was believed then turned out not to be true is not her fault, and is more than made up for by the fact that she alerted the world to the dangers of indiscriminately dumping chemicals around the landscape.

I would be very happy never to have malaria again …

w.

18

Cite? Every time I’ve looked at this particular issue, I’ve found a lot of confusing counter-claims by various interested parties. I’m really not sure who to believe at this point.

19

Apos, thanks for your question about the costs. From here

If it costs twice as much, and needs to be sprayed twice as often, Malathion can only protect a quarter of the number of people as DDT.

w.

20

I don’t trust the CEI as far as I can throw them. They routinely selectively and creatively present facts and cites in order to mislead people, and the rest of the article is the exact standard malaria narrative I just spent the thread debunking.