Killing Africans with "kindness"

[Universe Prince]

Okay, not bad enough that we've banned DDT and allowed millions of people to die from malaria. Apparently we've got to stop people in Africa from being able to improve their agricultural situation as well. Apparently Bastiat was correct, some people really do think that scarcity is preferable to abundance.

Excerpts from a Reason interview with Robert Paarlberg, author of the book Starved for Science: How Biotechnology is Being Kept Out of Africa:

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.

Lacking in moral clarity. There is the understatement of the year.

Whole interview at http://www.reason.com/news/show/125722.html.

[Xavier_Onassis]

Malaria has ALWAYS killed hundreds of thousands in Africa, There never was a period where malaria was wiped out by DDT. Whene DDT was legal, they never had enough. They have insecticides that will destroy mosquitos other than DDT. They spray several times a month here in Miami-Dade County. DDT is not required, but what is needed is more money spent on effective insecticides.

Of course, the main reason why subsaharan Africa is not Muslim is mostly the tsetse fly, which killed off missionaries travelling south of the Sahel.

[Universe Prince]

Malaria has ALWAYS killed hundreds of thousands in Africa, There never was a period where malaria was wiped out by DDT.

There was a period where deaths from malaria was severely reduced to far less than millions of people a year. When they banned DDT to save the eaglets, malaria cases shot through the roof, and millions of people have died as a result. Banning DDT was one of the stupidest things ever done in the history of mankind. Trying to prevent GM crops and advancements in agricultural science from being used to feed people is just as stupid.

[Xavier_Onassis]

GM crops and DDT are different issues.

There are insecticides every bit as effective as DDT that do not exterminate birds. Remember that Africa's birds are also Europe's birds, as they migrate. Use DDT and there will be no more bustards or cranes or vultures.


I see no reason why GM foods should not be labeled as such. People who believe they are Frankenfoods have every bit as much right to avoid them as people have a right to drink only bottled water because they fear tap water.

[kimba1]

That article did not mention anything about africans refusing GM foods
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.

[Universe Prince]

GM crops and DDT are different issues.

Really?

There are insecticides every bit as effective as DDT that do not exterminate birds.

Actually, there is still some scientific controversy over whether or not DDT actually harms birds to the point of killing them. But if these other insecticides are so effective, why are there still millions of deaths each year from malaria? With the use of DDT, cases of malaria were brought down from tens of millions to thousands. Right now, the number of malaria cases each year are somewhere in the neighborhood of 400 million, with somewhere between 1 and 3 million people dying each year from malaria. So we might have saved the birds, but we doomed millions of people to die all because we had to ban DDT outright rather than use, oh I dunno, some scientific experiments to find better ways to use DDT to save lives and reduce harm to the environment. There is no excuse for that. It's a moral failure, and, as I said, one of the stupidest things ever done in the history of mankind.

I see no reason why GM foods should not be labeled as such.

Good for you, but that isn't the problem.

[Universe Prince]

That article did not mention anything about africans refusing GM foods

It starts right there in the first paragraph:

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."

The African farmers themselves probably are not opposed to GM seed. But they have a hard time getting it if their governments deliberately keep it from them.

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.

Yep. Which makes the opposition to them all the more bewildering.

[Xavier_Onassis]

Actually, there is still some scientific controversy over whether or not DDT actually harms birds to the point of killing them. But if these other insecticides are so effective, why are there still millions of deaths each year from malaria?
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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.

[kimba1]

wow
I totalling flaked on that paragraph
my bad

[fatman]

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?

Bill Gates and his foundation have spent more than $1 billion to fight malaria, putting a little-known disease back in the public consciousness. Now the man who revolutionized computing hopes his next big launch will be the world's first malaria vaccine.

Full Article (Q&A)

[Universe Prince]

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.

If the malaria prone countries could get DDT, what stops the other pesticides?

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.

What is known is that DDT causes thinning of eggshells. However there is also evidence that, for many bird species, thinning of eggshells began well before DDT was even invented. But again, even if we accept that DDT kills birds, MILLIONS OF PEOPLE DIED thanks to the ban. So where are all these insecticides that are just as effective as DDT?

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.

https://www.reason.com/news/show/119786.html

So where are all these insecticides that are just as effective as DDT?

Again I say scientific experimentation that allowed continued use of DDT to save lives while reducing harm to the environment would have been the intelligent choice.

[Universe Prince]

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?

I don't know. I hope their vaccine works.

[Xavier_Onassis]

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."

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Zambia is not Africa, it is one of 56 countries or so that is in Africa (if you include the island nations in the area). Chances are that President Mwanasana either does not know that GM foods are largely safe (being as the Europeans do not seem to want to eat them) or he expected a bribe in order to comply with the request. It also could be that he was appraoched in a way in which he felt insulted.

It seems unfair to blame all of Africa on one incident with in one country.

It could be like saying "Americans are rude and eat poi with dirty fingers", based on someone seeing one Hawaiian eating poi with dirty fingers, or perhaps just clean, yet tattooed fingers.


I suspect that the people in charge of the Gates Foundation know a lot about DDT and other insecticides. I know one of their main goals is to distribute sleep netting impregnated with an insecticide to as many people in Africa as possible.

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. I oberve that the Gates Foundation has not said anything about DDT, whicjh suggest that they either agree that it should not be used, or that it is not worth thr trouble to bitch about it, and have chsen other alternatives The latter seems to be the case.

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.

[Xavier_Onassis]

Many countries, like Uganda, remain hesitant to use DDT because European nations have threatened to refuse their agricultural exports if they do.

==============================================================
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?

Many insecticides cause birth defects. There was a recent ruling awarding a bunch of cash to a Mexican couple whose child was born without any arms or legs. They were working in the fields when she was pregnant and the landowner sprayed the fields (and these workers).

Naturally, they had to sue.
Unexpectedly for the grower, they won.

[Universe Prince]

It seems unfair to blame all of Africa on one incident with in one country.

Good thing that hasn't happened then.

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.

Great. But you still haven't answered the question of what else is there to use.

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.

Uh yeah, because expressing concern over the easily preventable deaths of millions of people is so annoying. Oh, and by the way, I'm not a rightwinger.