Reject Environmentalism, Not DDT - DDT could help prevent malaria among tsunami survivors, but environmental ideology forbids its use

By Keith Lockitch
for Eco-Logic Powerhouse

January 15, 2004

Unfortunately, survivors of December's tsunami are not yet safe from harm; they now face the threat of deadly diseases, such as cholera and dysentery. But, as heavy rains create breeding conditions for disease-carrying mosquitoes, there is one threat they should not have to face: malaria.

Though nearly eradicated decades ago, malaria has resurged with a vengeance, and kills over a million people each year. But, its horrific death toll is largely preventable. The most effective agent of mosquito control, the pesticide DDT, has been essentially discarded - discarded based not on scientific concerns about its safety, but on environmental dogma.

The environmental crusade against DDT began with Rachel Carson's anti-pesticide diatribe Silent Spring, published in 1962, at the height of the worldwide antimalaria campaign. The widespread spraying of DDT had caused a spectacular drop in malaria incidence - Sri Lanka, for example, reported 2.8 million malaria victims in 1948, but by 1963, it had only 17. Yet, Carson's book made no mention of this. It said nothing of DDT's crucial role in eradicating malaria in industrialized countries, or of the tens of millions of lives saved by its use.

Instead, Carson filled her book with misinformation - alleging, among other claims, that DDT causes cancer. Her unsubstantiated assertion that continued DDT use would unleash a cancer epidemic, generated a panicked fear of the pesticide that endures as public opinion to this day.

But the scientific case against DDT was, and still is, nonexistent. Almost 60 years have passed since the malaria-spraying campaigns began - with hundreds of millions of people exposed to large concentrations of DDT - yet, according to international health scholar Amir Attaran, the scientific literature "has not even one peer-reviewed, independently-replicated study linking exposure to DDT with any adverse health outcome." Indeed, in one study, human volunteers ate DDT every day, for over two years, with no ill effects.

Abundant scientific evidence supporting the safety and importance of DDT was presented during seven months of testimony before the newly-formed EPA in 1971. The presiding judge ruled unequivocally against a ban. But, the public furor against DDT - fueled by Silent Spring and the growing environmental movement - was so great, that a ban was imposed anyway.

The EPA administrator, who hadn't even bothered to attend the hearings, overruled his own judge, and imposed the ban, in defiance of the facts and evidence. And, the 1972 ban in the United States led to an effective worldwide ban, as countries dependent on U.S.-funded aid agencies curtailed their DDT use, to comply with those agencies' demands.

So, if scientific facts are not what has driven the furor against DDT, what has? Estimates put today's malaria incidence, worldwide, at around 300 million cases, with a million deaths every year. If this enormous toll of human suffering and death is preventable, why do environmentalists - who profess to be the defenders of life - continue to press for a global DDT ban?

The answer is that environmental ideology values an untouched environment, above human life. The root of the opposition to DDT is not science, but the environmentalist moral premise that it is wrong for man to "tamper" with nature.

The large-scale eradication of disease-carrying insects epitomizes the control of nature by man. This is DDT's sin. To Carson and the environmentalists she inspired, "the "control of nature" is a phrase conceived in arrogance, born of the Neanderthal age of biology and philosophy." Nature, they hold, is intrinsically valuable, and must be kept free from human interference.

On this environmentalist premise, the proper attitude to nature is not to seek to improve it for human benefit, but to show "humility" before its "vast forces," and leave it alone. We should seek, Carson wrote, not to eliminate malarial mosquitoes with pesticides, but to find, instead, "a reasonable accommodation between the insect hordes and ourselves." If the untouched, "natural" state is one in which millions contract deadly diseases, so be it.

Carson's current heirs agree. Earth First! founder Dave Foreman writes:

"Ours is an ecological perspective that views Earth as a community, and recognizes such apparent enemies as "disease" (e.g., malaria), and "pests" (e.g., mosquitoes) not as manifestations of evil to be overcome, but rather as vital and necessary components of a complex and vibrant biosphere."

Ask the tsunami survivors if malaria is only an apparent enemy.

In the few minutes it has taken you to read this article, over a thousand people have contracted malaria, and half a dozen have died. This is the life-or-death consequence of viewing pestilent insects as a "necessary" component of a "vibrant biosphere," and seeking a "reasonable accommodation" with them.

To stop this global health catastrophe, the ban on DDT must be rescinded. But, even more important, is to reject the environmental ideology on which the ban is based.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Keith Lockitch is a Ph.D. in physics and a junior fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute in Irvine, Calif. The Institute promotes The Institute promotes objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand, author of "Atlas Shrugged" and "The Fountainhead." Send comments to reaction@aynrand.org.

 

 

In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, any copyrighted work in this message is distributed under fair use without profit or payment for non-profit research and educational purposes only. [Ref. http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml]

Back to Current Edition Citizen Review Archive LINKS Search This Site