five by five: The Elephant (Sized Mosquito) in the Room

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March 21, 2005

The Elephant (Sized Mosquito) in the Room

Read the Cox and Forkum blog entry for the cartoon above

I don't know why I should have been remotely surprised to read an article about mosquito-borne diseases in the New York times that contained not one single reference to DDT. You would think that it might be germane -among weighing the ins and outs of pesticide treated mosquito nets and "lymphatic filariasis, a disease caused by eight-inch worms that ball up and nest in the lymph glands, clogging them until victims' legs swell to the thickness of an elephant's"- that once upon a time mosquito-borne diseases had been all but obliterated in many of the most mosquito-infested areas of the world. Robert Bidinotto writes....

...in an article entitled "Death by Environmentalism" that "In India, for example, malaria's horrific annual toll in lives plunged dramatically, from a million deaths per year to fewer than 50,000 total cases of malaria infection in 1961." Currently India averages over two million cases of malaria per year.

Before Rachel Carson's Silent Spring was published in 1962, DDT had been responsible for saving millions of lives all over the world. Carson, without any evidence to support her claims, suggested that DDT would cause a massive increase in the incidence of cancer if its use were to be continued. While there is evidence that some wildlife had been affected by over-spraying, at the height of its use, DDT had caused no reported symptoms in inhabitants of sprayed houses or even in the spraymen themselves. Indeed, "Scientists have studied very few chemicals as extensively as DDT, either experimentally or in humanbeings. Opponents of DDT have made many claims about the toxicity of DDT to humans but most claims have not withstood careful investigation." (source: fightingmalaria.org)

But Carson didn't seem to have much use for evidence. Like many scaremongering junk-scientists, she painted a horrific if implausible picture of what continued DDT would produce:
"The only reason millions of lives are being lost to infectious disease is because of Carson's crusade against DDT in her 1962 doomsday book "Silent Spring." Carson predicted that pesticides -- namely DDT -- would cause "practically 100 percent" of the human population would be wiped out from a cancer epidemic after one more generation. This would come about because a race of super-insects, impervious to pesticides, would come about threatening U.S. farms. Desperate farmers then would triple the amount of pesticides they were using so they could stop the super-bugs from destroying their crops. As a result, DDT would eventually work its way up the food chain, killing off first the bugs, then the worms, then the birds (hence her title), the fish and finally mankind." (From Frontpagemag.com)

In fact, not only did (and does) Carson's pseudo-scientific smear mean a death sentence for millions in the third world don't have the luxury of her back-to-nature hyprocrisy, she created in Silent Spring a blueprint for an environmental movement marked by contempt for scientific rigor and technological advance and callous indifference to any human suffering caused by its naive philosophy. Consider the motivating principle behind Carson's thesis- basically it amounts to "I can come up with a semi-plausible, if improbable scenario whereby not banning DDT right now might lead to widespread death, therefore, until we can prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that my nightmare won't come true, we should just accept the status quo (ie, millions continuing to die each year)". This is the essence of the precautionary principle. It is a central tool in the environmentalist core's war against human advancement. Consider this article "Proving a Negative" by Bonner Cohen. Here's a great quote from the article:

"The so-called 'precautionary principle,'" notes Washington State University toxicologist Alan S. Felsot, "essentially holds that when any concerns or allegations, no matter how spurious, are raised about the safety of a product, precautionary measures should be put in place and all burden of proof to the contrary should fall on the proponent of the allegedly unsafe product or activity."

This kind of thinking has and will continue to stifle advancement in technology and medicine, and millions will continue to die as long as environmentalist paranoia is accepted as a substitute for science, and man is expected to somehow survive and thrive without altering the "natural order of things" in any significant way.

I leave you with this little gem from John Muir, one of the founding fathers of the environmental movement:

"I have precious little sympathy for the selfish propriety of civilized man, and if a war of races should occur between the wild beasts and Lord Man, I would be tempted to sympathize with the bears."

So much for clean air and water.

Posted by exaltron at March 21, 2005 08:38 PM

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