July 7, 2004
Walter
Williams
http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com
| Ever
since Rachel Carson's 1962 book "Silent Spring," environmental
extremists have sought to ban all DDT use. Using phony studies from the
Environmental Defense Fund and the Natural Resources Defense Council, the
environmental activist-controlled Environmental Protection Agency banned DDT in
1972. The extremists convinced the nation that DDT was not only unsafe for
humans but unsafe to birds and other creatures as well. Their arguments have
since been scientifically refuted.
While DDT saved crops, forests and
livestock, it also saved humans. In 1970, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences
estimated that DDT saved more than 500 million lives during the time it was
widely used. A scientific review board of the EPA showed that DDT is not
harmful to the environment and showed it to be a beneficial substance that
"should not be banned." According to the World Health Organization,
worldwide malaria infects 300 million people. About 1 million die of malaria
each year. Most of the victims are in Africa, and most are children.
In Sri Lanka, in 1948, there were
2.8 million malaria cases and 7,300 malaria deaths. With widespread DDT use,
malaria cases fell to 17 and no deaths in 1963. After DDT use was discontinued,
Sri Lankan malaria cases rose to 2.5 million in the years 1968 and 1969, and
the disease remains a killer in Sri Lanka today. More than 100,000 people died
during malaria epidemics in Swaziland and Madagascar in the mid-1980s,
following the suspension of DDT house spraying. After South Africa stopped
using DDT in 1996, the number of malaria cases in KwaZulu-Natal province
skyrocketed from 8,000 to 42,000. By 2000, there had been an approximate 400
percent increase in malaria deaths. Now that DDT is being used again, the number
of deaths from malaria in the region has dropped from 340 in 2000 to none at
the last reporting in February 2003.
In South America, where malaria is
endemic, malaria rates soared in countries that halted house spraying with DDT
after 1993 — Guyana, Bolivia, Paraguay, Peru, Brazil, Colombia and Venezuela.
In Ecuador, DDT spraying was increased after 1993, and the malaria rate of
infection was reduced by 60 percent. In a 2001 study published by the
London-based Institute for Economic Affairs, "Malaria and the DDT
Story," Richard Tren and Roger Bate say that "Malaria is a human
tragedy," adding, "Over 1 million people, mostly children, die from
the disease each year, and over 300 million fall sick."
The fact that DDT saves lives
might account for part of the hostility toward it. Alexander King, founder of
the Malthusian Club of Rome, wrote in a biographical essay in 1990: "My
own doubts came when DDT was introduced. In Guyana, within two years, it had
almost eliminated malaria. So my chief quarrel with DDT, in hindsight, is that
it has greatly added to the population problem." Dr. Charles Wurster, one
of the major opponents of DDT, is reported to have said, "People are the
cause of all the problems. We have too many of them. We need to get rid of some
of them, and this (referring to malaria deaths) is as good a way as any."
Spraying a house with small
amounts of DDT costs $1.44 per year; alternatives are five to 10 times more,
making them unaffordable in poor countries. Rich countries that used DDT
themselves threaten reprisals against poor countries if they use DDT.
One really wonders about religious
groups, the Congressional Black Caucus, government and non-government
organizations, politicians and others who profess concern over the plight of
poor people around the world while at the same time accepting or promoting DDT
bans and the needless suffering and death that follow. Mosquito-borne malaria
not only has devastating health effects but stifles economic growth as well.