Killing Africans with "kindness"

[Universe Prince]

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?

"If" being the key word there. Does it? Got any evidence?

[_JS]

DDT, really?

XO is right of course, there are significantly superior insecticides to DDT.

More to the point Prince, you are only giving a very selective view of DDT's success. DDT was succesful in significantly lowering malaria mortality rates throughout the world and especially in regions with highly developed healthcare systems and higher standards of living. It was not as successful in the tropical regions of the Southern Hemisphere where it was most needed (and consequently causing the most damage as Rachel Carson famously pointed out in Silent Spring).

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). Plasmodium falciparum the protozoan that causes the most dangerous and most common malarial infections in the world today (primarily in Sub-Saharan Africa) was never reduced in any significant way by DDT.

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.

[Xavier_Onassis]

If" being the key word there. Does it? Got any evidence?

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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?

I think not. You no doubt value your thing too highly for that. 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.

[Universe Prince]

DDT, really?

Really. Though DDT was never intended to be the focus of this thread.

XO is right of course, there are significantly superior insecticides to DDT.

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.

"A New Home for DDT" by Donald Roberts, published August 20, 2007. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/20/opinion/20roberts.html

Research that should have been done a long time ago, imo.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

[Universe Prince]

Well, gee, I don't need any evidence.

So, policy against DDT should be motivated by groundless rumors and speculation? How is that reasonable?

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.

You would ask them to prove something like that beacuse... you heard from the nephew of someone who was a nurse who worked for a doctor who was an assistant to someone read it on the internet? Your case is AMBE.

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?

I'd laugh at you for thinking me that gullible.

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.

DDT is not an unknown chemical. And asking for something to be proven safe for eating is not the same a banning something for causing some specific health problem when there is no evidence to suggest that it does so. One is reasonable, the other is asinine fear-mongering.

[Xavier_Onassis]

 banning something for causing some specific health problem when there is no evidence to suggest that it does so.

It DOES cause birth defects. There IS evidence of this, just look it up.

[Universe Prince]

It DOES cause birth defects. There IS evidence of this, just look it up.

Then produce the evidence if finding it so easy. You made the claim. You back it up.

[fatman]

It's not really my fight here, as I don't have a strong opinion about DDT one way or another, but here's some DDT/birth defect material.

The EPA has banned in the U.S. the use of the following chemicals suspected of endocrine disruption: PCBs, chlordane, DDT, aldrin, dieldrin, endrin, heptachlor, kepone, toxaphene, and 2,4,5-T.

But true to EPA bias that chemicals are safe, until proven otherwise, the EPA's official position is that "with few exceptions (e.g., DES, dioxin, DDT/DDE), a causal relationship between exposure to a specific environmental agent and an adverse effect on human health operating via an endocrine disruption mechanism has not been established." US Environmental Protection Agency, Special Report on Environmental Endocrine Disruption: An Effects Assessment and Analysis, Prepared for the Risk Assessment Forum, US Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, DC., February 1997.

Link

[Universe Prince]

http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/tfacts35.html#bookmark07

[Universe Prince]

Also, applying the chemical to houses, the most common called for application of DDT that I can find, would not result in people getting enough DDT in their bodies to interfere with hormones or reproduction. How much gets onto food, I don't know. But I have to question if this isn't a case like that of saccharin causing cancer in lab mice, where the equivalent human consumption needed to get cancer would be something like 350 cans of soda every day for a year or something like that. At some point, any chemical in too large an amount becomes bad for the body, even water. So I'm highly skeptical. I need to be convinced, and so far, no one has come even close to doing so.

[Xavier_Onassis]

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.

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You may eat all you want.

But not me.

Again there are better insecticides that do not have this risk. They are using them here, in Miami, now, to keep down the mosquito population. They work, whatever they are.

This DDTY thing is a tired old argument, and it's just bogus.

[Universe Prince]

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, no evidence, just speculation.

Again there are better insecticides that do not have this risk.

Again, what are they?

This DDTY thing is a tired old argument, and it's just bogus.

If it's so bogus, how come all you can muster up to support your argument is speculation?

[Xavier_Onassis]

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. Apparently the Gates foundation has done this, and I would im

[Amianthus]

If the EPA says that DDT is a "probable carcinogen" that is enough for me to want to avoid it.

Do you avoid nearly all cooked foods?

Cooking up a carcinogen: should we worry about all that acrylamide in our diet? - Brief Article
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.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1200/is_8_162/ai_91210148

[Universe Prince]

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.

I would be happy to acknowledge there are better insecticides, but no one will tell me what they are. Or how you know they are not also "probable carcinogens". Or how they are proven not to cause birth defects. Or why they are at all safer than DDT. As I have pointed out here many times, what I need to be persuaded is not your say so but actual evidence. If all you have is speculation, I have zero reason to believe you.