This space is a big fan of DDT, and we have been calling for its massive re-introduction for years in order to save lives that are needlessly lost due to the narcissism of the American and global Left. Now it appears about to happen (WSJ):

The World Health Organization announced Friday that it will begin actively promoting use of the pesticide DDT to combat malaria in developing nations. Do you believe in miracles? Malaria is the number one killer of pregnant women and children in Africa and among the top killers in Asia and South America. It’s long been known that DDT is the cheapest and most effective way to contain the disease, which is spread by infected mosquitoes. But United Nations health agencies and others have for decades resisted employing DDT under pressure from anti-pesticide environmentalists. After tens of millions of preventable malarial deaths in these poor countries, it’s nice to see WHO finally come to its senses….

For decades, the science and empirical data about DDT’s effectiveness have been distorted or suppressed. Nevertheless, and Rachel Carson’s scare-mongering notwithstanding, there is no evidence that DDT use in the amounts necessary to ward off malarial mosquitoes is harmful to humans, wildlife or the environment. Period.

By contrast, there’s plenty of evidence — from the U.S. and Europe to Australia, India, Sri Lanka and Brazil — that spraying DDT is the best intervention. According to Pierre Guillet, another WHO official at Friday’s press conference, South Africa temporarily stopped using DDT in 1996 because green groups were opposed, not because it wasn’t working. Malaria takes a heavy toll on a country’s economy by discouraging foreign investment and incapacitating otherwise productive people, so these anti-DDT alarmists have been helping to impoverish those they don’t kill. There is something other-worldly, or worse, about well-heeled greens trying to deny the world’s poorest people the very tool used by rich nations to eradicate this disease.

Never have so many lives been lost so needlessly as happened because of the envionmentalist fools letting Africans suffer and die.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 18th, 2006 at 3:57 pm and is filed under art, culture, Democrats, General, idiots!, Left of Left. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.