Aaron Swartz and FAIR prove you can be wrong all of the time. They don't even bother to make it hard to debunk. But their target audience would never bother, would they?

"There are actually an estimated 2.7 million malarial deaths per year rather than 1 million -- see Scientists Find Drastic Underestimations of Malaria Morbidity, Mortality, and Economic Burden (full paper: "The Intolerable Burden of Malaria: A New Look at the Numbers," - supplement to The American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene). " Junkscience, Sept. 21, 2007

Might as well cover all the rest of their(JS's) bulleted items--

"DDT is not "sprayed heavily on houses", Indoor Residual Spray regimes use minuscule quantities

Rachel Carson began her fantasy piece with "This is a fable about tomorrow" and that was about the only accurate statement between the covers

Bald eagles were never endangered by DDT and their numbers were lowest prior to and climbed throughout the period of DDT use, indeed most raptors and many other bird species increased during the period

Until recently WHO refused to fund and donor countries outright prohibited use of DDT as a condition of Aid, Green NGOs continue to lobby for transport bans under the POPs treaties and foment hysteria about "polluted" agricultural exports -- all of which creates an effective ban in all but name.

Mosquito resistance to DDT takes the form of excitation and avoidance making it an even more effective barrier against malaria transmission... "

As I started reading this blog, I was thinking of making a comment about referring to the NGS article in the latest magazine. I was then very happy to see that you were way ahead of me! It was a very enlightening article as is this one. Keep up the good work Attila! There are a LOT of us out here that are "somewhat green" without being rabid and afflicted with tunnel vision.

The reason that the radical greens receive the name of "environmentalist" is because the endings -ist and -ism are from the ending by which Latin forms superlatives. In the purer sense of the word, "environmentalism" means not a concern for nature based on the need to preserve it for our own use, but a concern for nature that trumps all human concerns.

Reminds me of the American Indian tribe that had, as one of its spiritual symbols from time immemorial, the swastika. When the Nazis turned the swastika into a symbol of racism, murder, and oppression, the tribe recognized that the only way to avoid being associated with Nazism was to forswear the use of the swastika, which they did.

The same goes here; the word "environmentalist" means different things to different people; if your meaning isn't getting across, find different words. Just say you're interested in conserving nature so that it will always be there for us, and your position will be clear enough.

Your search function isn't working, by the way. Try a search for "DDT." Isn't that in this post? The search function says not.

John...in fact, the US 45th Infantry Division, which contained many American Indians, had the swastika on its battle flag (although I believe the hooks were reversed from the Nazi version)...circa 1933, the swastika it was replaced by another Indian symbol, the Thunderbird, and the division became known as the Thunderbird Division.

And then there is are the ancient temples with that symbol on 'em. What a horrid thing to happen to a perfectly nice symbol.

Personally, I'd vote for retaining it, but keeping the hooks reversed in all future versions--for the sake of clarity.

20 Million African children. WOW!

What I find most appalling, is that far too many people will let more children die rather than retract their anti-DDT position. The cost of pride.

I'm told that soon, on a yearly basis, malaria will kill more people than AIDS in Africa.

Some bits of irony:

(1) it was DDT's high degree of safety that caused its over use in the first place. One of chemistry professors once remarked that the easiest way to kill a human with DDT is to beat them death with a five pound bag of it. Prior to the 60's, people used to just drench themselves in the stuff.

(2) If environmentalist hadn't gotten so mindlessly hysterical about DDT and blocked its use, then we couldn't use it now because most of the world's mosquito population would have evolved resistance to it.

I suspect the reason that DDT got singled out had to do with political marketing and brand recognition. For the WWII generation, DDT was a chemical rockstar like penicillin. It was the one pesticide that everyone knew by name.

When Leftist hitched their wagon to technophobia, they needed an easily recognizable brand of pesticide to stigmatize. DDT fit the bill. (if you like conspiracy theories, I would also point out that DDT was public domain by then but that the more expensive, "environmentally friendly" pesticides that replaced it when it was outlawed were still under patent. Who did fund the anti-DDT movement anyway?)

That's the problem with politics. It's not nobel leadership. It's an ugly scramble for power that stops just short of violence. DDT got band and millions died needlessly because a political class in the rich nations wanted to scare people into voting for them.

Didn't the tobacco companies benefit from chemical hysteria? After all, chemical hysteria distracted attention from real carcinogens.

The lies that rationalized prevention of the use of DDT resulted in millions of deaths per year.

That... is extremism.
That... is a holocaust.

Exactly what equivalence is there between that extremism, enabled by a MainStreamMedia willing to parrot the invalid claims behind the "BigLie", and those that try to expose them?

I know nothing about Roger Bate. Zero... Zilch... nada.

But I do know that he's done nothing to enable the slow horrific death of 30-50 million children in the 3rd world.

Tobacco is an anti-depressant.

So is chocolate!

And pretty girls!

Much as I regret Silent Spring Ms Carson's attack on DDT was based on what then was accepted, that DDT use caused thinning of eggshells and thus potentiated extinctions. After the book, possibly after her death, those studies were debunked - the experimenter(s) had deprived the birds he was feeding DDT of calcium - surprising they could make shells at all. Later studies show the thinning effect, but not nearly as bad.

Disregard all "studies", unless you are able to read them and understand them. [Both are a pain in the ass, I admit. But what better things do you have to do, given that you seem so interested?]

Rachel Carson had no studies. She was just asking the questions. Documenting observations. And that is a perfectly acceptable aspect of real science. When her cause was joined by the Club of Rome idiots that actually wanted people to die, she made the unforgivable error of saying we should forget about the research and ban its use immediately "We can't afford to wait for answers." That set the stage for all future junkscience agenda-driven campaigns--like Anthropogenic Global Warming. I met her once and feel really bad for her. But she brought it on herself. May she and the 70-or-so million Souls(and maybe an equal number of the blind), rest in Peace.

Children who die from Malaria often die from an encephalitis, that is, from a direct infection of the brain itself by the Malaria protozoan. It can't be very pleasant.

Adults, on the other hand, usually suffer merely from Malaria's attack on the red blood cells, where the agent lodges, then reproduces, eventually distorting and then exploding the red blood cells. This results in anemia - due to the frequent loss of red blood cells -and fever, due to the inflammatory load of destroyed red blood cells and the effect of the Malaria agent itself released into the bloodstream, only to then repeat its effects.

The anemia is somewhat like losing a certain amout of your blood every so often - about every four days in the case of Malaria.

At any rate, adults with Malaria suffer anemia and recurring fevers, which probably feels about like you think it would, resulting in chronic debilitation - low energy, fevers every four days or so, difficulty in maintaining caloric balance, i.e., starvation, difficulty in maintaining a normal immune response to other infectious challenges, like the flu or even anything we might fend off otherwise without noticing it, and so on.

But the adults somehow carry on, unlike the children. And, the adults can always get
Viagra!

Perhaps we could analogize Malaria's effect upon children and adults to that of Tuberculosis in respect to its chronic debilitating effect, and also in respect to its occasional specific effect, like destroying some structure of your body such as, say, your brain. But, why worry, since it's not your brain?

Malaria used to be fairly frequent in the U.S.. We've gotten rid of it via public health measures such as eliminating mosquito breeding grounds - mosguitos are the insect "vector" which transmits the Malaria agent, by injection - and reporting, tracing, and treating cases of Malaria. So far.

Others have not had the same benefits we in the U.S. have had, so we certainly should not let "them" use DDT in order to stop Malaria's transmission. After all, what's important is Eagle eggs, right?

I've wondered, on occasion - given the strange ignorance which afflicts people, not just me - if those who propose that mosquito nets will prevent mosquito-bites and their transmission of disease think that mosquitos come out only at night?

I sure wish that was true. But it's not.