malaria in Africa

[Martin Lewis]

On 2/18/08, Dan M <dsummersminet at comcast.net> wrote:

> >  You really thought that posting hearsay from your daughter was a good
> > way of validating an argument that you have made misleading comments
> > about many times in the past?
>
> Which misleading comments were those?  IIRC, I was told by Charlie that DDT
> was stopped because it lost its effectiveness.  The data from South Africa
> clearly showed that isn't true....I know data patterns....and the pattern
> for that is an initial drop in the disease followed by a rise as DDT
> resistant mosquitoes become a larger part of the population.  The data
> screams that DDT works....but I am tearing my hair out trying to explain
> data patterns.

 The claim started off as being that DDT was banned worldwide due to
pressure from environmentalists and that this lead to millions of
deaths in Africa. This claim has now collapsed to something that
sounds like EU aid to fight malaria may sometimes be contingent on
conditions that are too onerous for poor countries. If that. From one
of the articles you link to below:

 " "Nothing will happen, at least on the official side, if they decide
to use DDT in strict compliance with the Stockholm Convention" on
chemicals, the EU's trade representative to Uganda said recently."

> Your are right, this evidence is not admissible in a court of law.  And, I'm
> sure similar data on Uganda:
>
> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/09/AR2005100901
> 255.html
>
> is meaningless to you, well because they didn't actually say the folks of
> Uganda couldn't use DDT....its just a coincidence that they couldn't sell to
> Europe if they could because of a non-existent health risk.

 Here is another article from the Post, although this time it is from
an expert in the field rather than an op-ed writer:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/04/AR2005060400130.html

 It concludes:

"Overselling a chemical's capacity to solve a problem can do
irretrievable harm not only by raising false hopes but by delaying the
use of more effective long-term methods. So let's drop the hyperbole
and overblown rhetoric -- it's not what Africa needs. What's needed is
a recognition of the problem's complexity and a willingness to use
every available weapon to fight disease in an informed and rational
way."

> I'm guessing that, no matter what data I provide, how long I work at
> providing it, there is no possible way you will not regard my arguments on
> DDT as bogus. Facts exist though,
>
> 1) Hundreds of thousands of people, if not millions, die each year from
> Malaria
>
> 2)  House spraying with DDT has a recent, multi-year record of reducing
> these deaths _significantly_ in South Africa
>
> 3) It is so much cheaper than other techniques.
>
> 4) There are multiple websites that attest to the EU's veiled threats
> against the use of DDT in Africa
>
> http://www.policynetwork.net/main/press_release.php?pr_id=92
> http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=19127
> http://www.cbgnetwork.org/1180.html

 These websites always seem to boil down to Africa Fighting Malaria,
the American Enterprise Institute or some other organisation that is
paid to lie.

 Unlike the majority of people making these claims you do actually
care about people in Africa at risk of malaria. However you have
allied yourself with a smear campaign with no other goal but to
discredit environmentalists.

 The EU is not some sort of magical utopia, like all states (or
quasi-states) it sometimes acts in its own best interests. However the
fact remains that DDT is not banned, it continues to be used to fight
malaria and Western countries continue to fund the fight against
malaria in Africa.

 Martin