| reason: You suggest that your understanding of modern ideas about food production arises from interactions with your students. What is it that they want? Paarlberg: My students know just what kind of food system they want: a food system that isn't based on industrial scale monoculture. They want instead small farms built around nature imitating polycultures. They don't want chemical use; they certainly don't want genetic engineering. They want slow food instead of fast food. They've got this image of what would be better than what we have now. And what they probably don't realize is that Africa is an extreme version of that fantasy. If we were producing our own food that way, 60 percent of us would still be farming and would be earning a dollar a day, and a third of us would be malnourished. I'm trying to find some way to honor the rejection that my students have for some aspects of modern farming, but I don't want them to fantasize about the exact opposite. [...] reason: How pervasive are genetically modified foods in the U.S.? Paarlberg: Roughly 90 percent of the cotton and soybeans produced in the US are genetically modified. Fifty or 70 percent of the corn is genetically modified. If you look at the products on a retail store shelf, probably 70 percent of them contain some ingredients from genetically modified crops. Mostly corn or soybeans. reason: Are there documented safety risks that merit caution? Paarlberg: There aren't any. It's like the first ten years of aviation without a plane crash. [...] reason: What exactly have European NGOs done to discourage productivity in farming? You quote Doug Parr, a chemist at Greenpeace, arguing that the de facto organic status of farms in Africa is an opportunity to lock in organic farming, since African farmers have yet to advance beyond that. Paarlberg: Some of it is well intentioned. The organic farming movement believes this is an appropriate corrective to the chemical intensive farming that they see in Europe. In Europe, where prosperous consumers are willing to pay a premium for organic products, it sometimes makes sense to use a more costly production process. So they think, "Well it's the wave of the future here in Europe, so it should be the future in Africa as well." So they tell Africans who don't use enough fertilizer that instead of using more they should go to zero and certify themselves as organic. That's probably the most damaging influence -- discouraging Africans from using enough fertilizer to restore the nutrients they mine out of their soil. They classify African farmers as either certified organic, or de facto organic. Indeed, many are de facto organic. And their goal is not to increase the productivity of the organic farmers, but to certify them as organic. I just find that to be lacking in moral clarity. |
Malaria has ALWAYS killed hundreds of thousands in Africa, There never was a period where malaria was wiped out by DDT.
GM crops and DDT are different issues.
There are insecticides every bit as effective as DDT that do not exterminate birds.
I see no reason why GM foods should not be labeled as such.
That article did not mention anything about africans refusing GM foods
| In May 2002, in the midst of a severe food shortage in sub-Saharan Africa, the government of Zimbabwe turned away 10,000 tons of corn from the World Food Program (WFP). The WFP then diverted the food to other countries, including Zambia, where 2.5 million people were in need. The Zambian government locked away the corn, banned its distribution, and stopped another shipment on its way to the country. "Simply because my people are hungry," President Levy Mwanawasa later said, "is no justification to give them poison." |
also things needs to be brought up about GM crops
they have a greater yield than organics
meaning much more food
the whole point of GM foods is higher food production.
This would be because they are not using these insecticides where the malaria is. I live in a tropical climate, and there is no malaria here, because they spray, and it is so occasional, that unless you know when to look, you never notice.
And it is quite well known that when DDT is used, birds die, and when it isn't, they don't. To say that it hasn';t been proven is the usual dodge. It isn't proven that cigarettes cause cancer, or that there is such a thing as gobal warming.
Bull.
| Partly as a result of Carson's work, the U.S. banned DDT in 1972, around the same time as most of the developed world. In 2001, the Stockholm Convention, a global treaty, banned DDT as part of a "dirty dozen" of agricultural chemicals. The convention contains a tightly circumscribed exception for continued public health use, but even that exception almost didn't make it into the final document. Greenpeace, the World Wildlife Fund and more than 300 other environmental groups fought tooth and nail against it. In recent years, many such groups tried to get a complete ban on all DDT uses by 2007 -- in time for Carson's birthday. To what effect? The World Health Organization now estimates that there are between 300 and 500 million cases of malaria annually, causing approximately one million deaths. About 80% of those are young children, millions of whom could have been saved over the years with the regular application of DDT to their environments. [...] In the years before it lost the public's support in the mid-1960s, the Global Malaria Eradication Programme wiped out malaria in the American South, several Latin American countries, Taiwan, the Balkans, much of the Caribbean, sections of northern Africa and much of Australia and the South Pacific. Exposes like Carson's made the global campaign's methods increasingly unpopular and eventually brought to a halt the effort to end malaria on a global scale. The disease has since bounced back in many developing countries. In the mid-'90s, the only South American country that continued to use DDT, Ecuador, was also the only country to experience a significant decline in malaria. Many countries, like Uganda, remain hesitant to use DDT because European nations have threatened to refuse their agricultural exports if they do. "It's a paradox that right now we are using pesticides at a greater rate than when 'Silent Spring' was published," Diana Post, executive director of an environmental nonprofit called the Rachel Carson Council, told the Washington Post. Paradoxically, widespread use of DDT for malaria control would likely result in fewer pounds of insecticide being released, not more, since countries struggling with malaria are now using much larger quantities of less potent alternatives. Spraying houses in the whole country of Guyana required the same amount of DDT once used on a single cotton field in a single growing season. |
The Bill and Melinda Gates foundation has poured a lot of money into malaria in the past few years. I'd be interested to know what they think about DDT?
It seems unfair to blame all of Africa on one incident with in one country.
If the world says you can't use DDT, then use something else. Bitching about how you can't use it, while people are dying is just plain stupid.
The bitching I hear about DDT and GM crops always come from the rightwingers. You can almost hear Rush crumpling paper and banging on his desk in the background. Once they have learned the lyrics to the fight song, they feel obliged to sing it until everyone is either converted or annoyed. The latter seems to be happening, so far as I can tell.
If eating produce or drinking coffee that has been sprayed with DDT causes birth defects, then who can blame the Europeans from rejecting products that might be contaminated?
DDT, really?
XO is right of course, there are significantly superior insecticides to DDT.
The World Health Organization Program (WHO) had already seen the success rate decline and even increase in many areas BEFORE DDT was ever banned. The problem was that the arthropods and other insects DDT was designed to target quickly grew immune to the effects of 4,4'-(2,2,2-trichloroethane-1,1-diyl)bis(chlorobenzene).
| DDT, the miracle insecticide turned environmental bogeyman, is once again playing an important role in public health. In the malaria-plagued regions of Africa, where mosquitoes are becoming resistant to other chemicals, DDT is now being used as an indoor repellent. Research that I and my colleagues recently conducted shows that DDT is the most effective pesticide for spraying on walls, because it can keep mosquitoes from even entering the room. The news may seem surprising, as some mosquitoes worldwide are already resistant to DDT. But we?ve learned that even mosquitoes that have developed an immunity to being directly poisoned by DDT are still repelled by it. |
What Carson and other scientists pointed out was not only the specific environmental impact of DDT, but the general problem of introducing massive chemical loads into an ecology without understanding the ramifications.
In conclusion, your analysis that "banning DDT was one of the stupidest things ever done in the history of mankind" is absolutely false and based upon false assumptions. The primary deaths from malaria then and today were never reduced by DDT usage and the insects quickly grew immune to it.
There is quite a bit wrong with the discussion on African agriculture as well, including a very basic racist premise upon which it is founded. But, I don't have time to get into that right now.
Well, gee, I don't need any evidence.
If I were the Minister of Health of Finland or France, I would not want to be fired for approving something that could cause birth defects among young Finns and Frenchmen, and I would ask the Ugandans or the makers of DDT to PROVE that it was safe before I would allow the products into my country.
If I offer you some food, and before you eat it, I say "I just don't think it's true about how eating this will make your thing fall off", are you going to eat it or run off to prove it's safe?
The burden of proof is on the persons introducing a previously unknown chemical into the ecology. The burden of proof does not dictate that you eat it because it has not been proven dangerous.
It DOES cause birth defects. There IS evidence of this, just look it up.
The Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) determined that DDT may reasonable be anticipated to be a human carcinogen. The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) determined that DDT may possibly cause cancer in humans. The EPA determined that DDT, DDE, and DDD are probable human carcinogens.
Again there are better insecticides that do not have this risk.
This DDTY thing is a tired old argument, and it's just bogus.
If the EPA says that DDT is a "probable carcinogen" that is enough for me to want to avoid it.
Cooking up a carcinogen: should we worry about all that acrylamide in our diet? - Brief Articlehttp://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1200/is_8_162/ai_91210148 (http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1200/is_8_162/ai_91210148)
Science News, August 24, 2002 by Janet Raloff
Turns out that hamburgers have it. So do french fries, crackers, breakfast cereals, pizza, fried fish, cauliflower au gratin, minced chicken, cooked beets, potato pancakes, powdered chocolate, and coffee. It's acrylamide. Though best known as a carcinogenic and neurotoxic building block of many plastics, scientists are now discovering it in more and more foods. Oddly enough, it seems to be getting there not as a chemical contaminant but as the product of common cooking practices. The toxic compound forms during chemical reactions between ingredients in a wide variety of foods as they fry, bake, or undergo other forms of heating.
If the EPA says that DDT is a "probable carcinogen" that is enough for me to want to avoid it.
Being as there are better insecticides available, a point that you seem incapable of acknowledging, it seems prudent to simply avoid using DDT.
YOu can look up stuff on the Internet as easily as I do.
There are insecticides that are (a) safer and (b) just as or more effective. If there weren't, we'd have endemic malaria in pretty much the entire Southern US.
This 'DDT could save Africa if not for the Liberals' crap is at least ten years old. And it's bogus.
Find out what Bill Gates' charity is doing. He;s smarter than you, richer than you, and is doing something other than bitch about the same tired old crap.
Screw the birds, save the people.
And they are?
The World Health Organization Program (WHO) had already seen the success rate decline and even increase in many areas BEFORE DDT was ever banned. The problem was that the arthropods and other insects DDT was designed to target quickly grew immune to the effects of 4,4'-(2,2,2-trichloroethane-1,1-diyl)bis(chlorobenzene).
| DDT, the miracle insecticide turned environmental bogeyman, is once again playing an important role in public health. In the malaria-plagued regions of Africa, where mosquitoes are becoming resistant to other chemicals, DDT is now being used as an indoor repellent. Research that I and my colleagues recently conducted shows that DDT is the most effective pesticide for spraying on walls, because it can keep mosquitoes from even entering the room. The news may seem surprising, as some mosquitoes worldwide are already resistant to DDT. But we?ve learned that even mosquitoes that have developed an immunity to being directly poisoned by DDT are still repelled by it. |
I'm not arguing in favor of introducing massive chemical loads into any ecology without understanding the ramifications. I'm arguing there was a better solution to the problems with DDT.
According to what I can discover, you're wrong. I'm not arguing it would have eliminated malaria or prevented all malaria deaths. But the evidence I can find says DDT was effective in reducing malaria cases, reducing the spread of malaria from insects, and therefore in reducing the number of malaria deaths. So I stand by my assertion that banning DDT outright was one of the stupidest things ever done in the history of mankind.
I would be most interested in seeing you explain what is racist about suggesting biotechonology and GM crops could help farmers in Africa produce more food.
Nicotine is but one example.
It was done a long time ago. This is not new.
The problem, which you seem to quickly toss aside by comparing it to saccharin, is that DDT is not easily metabolised by animals (especially humans). It has a half-life of eight years and it also has a cumulative effect. In other words it builds in your system.
You mislead. You use the data from the initial use of DDT, which was amazing. But that was when DDT was really knocking out mosquito populations. It will not do that now.
Just because the US banned it (in a country where malaria no longer exists as a real threat) does not mean that scientists could not study the substance. You know that.
You're suggesting that Africans cannot decide for themselves and that Europeans and Americans make the decisions for them.
You do realize that Africans have very talented Agricultural Engineers and capable decision-makers as well.
The problem lies not with the African scientists or European and American diplomats out for their nations' own personal gains, but with the IMF, World Bank and American and European Agribusinesses who have destroyed any chance that the African farmer has of competing.
Seeds from this years crop will be sterile, or closer to sterile than other seeds, and again, the planter must buy the entire package from Cargill (or ADM, Bunge y Born, DeKalb, whomever). It turns the farmer into basically a puppet controlled by the party who developed the GM package.