Bug bitten

Debunk the DDT bugaboo--and let kids live.

Date published: 6/9/2005

Bug bitten

WITH A MILLION lives a year at stake, science, not politics, should rule the day. But in malaria-ridden nations, wide- eyed children and pregnant moms, fathers and grandparents are being held hostage by questionable science--and the political correctness of entities from the World Health Organization on down.

Americans think of malaria as a disease of tropical countries, but the mosquito-borne plague once rampaged across the United States and Europe. What killed it? Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane. DDT.

If you are older than 10, you are at this point no doubt recoiling in horror. DDT? The scourge of Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring"? The bane of raptors, the Lucrezia Borgia of brown pelicans? DDT, first developed in the late 1800s, was the weapon of choice against malaria in the 1950s. Even the WHO acknowledges that DDT "was probably instrumental in eradicating the disease from North America."

Then, the environmental movement began pushing for a ban on the insecticide, and despite the ruling of an Environmental Protection Agency administrative law judge that no scientific evidence existed of DDT's harm to man or beast (save mosquitoes and other bugs), the EPA administrator banned it anyway. Much of the world has followed suit, despite decades of scientific studies that have debunked the "bird-eggshell-thinning" and "carcinogenic" charges against the insecticide. Consequently, in areas such as sub-Saharan Africa, the children continue to suffer. Three times as many kids die of malaria as of AIDS. Many others struggle through life with permanent, malaria-induced brain damage.

And all because of a little mosquito and a lot of politics. The WHO's answer to the problem is to jack up production of anti-malarial drugs and pass out insecticide-treated nets. Bowing to radical greens, the WHO ignores the obvious: Judicious use of DDT, sprayed carefully on interior walls of native huts, could eliminate the threat. Granted, the organization pays lip service to the use of DDT, but, through the Persistent Organic Pollutants treaty, raises high hurdles to it.

South Africa, however, provides an example of the insecticide's worth. After banning DDT in 1996 and reaping a tenfold increase in malaria, the country re-allowed the chemical in 2001--and promptly saw its malaria cases plummet. Dr. Elizabeth Whelan, president of the chemical-industry-backed American Council on Science and Health, says that 60 million or more lives "have been needlessly lost since the ban on DDT took effect. It's a real tragedy that DDT has been so demonized over the years by activist organizations such as Environmental Defense and the regulatory bodies that they have duped."

The WHO claims that one child under the age of 5 dies every 30 seconds from malaria. That's a tragedy when three little letters--and some actual scientific thinking--could save them.

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Date published: 6/9/2005