Tuesday, March 5, 2013
Miscellaneous 168
1) Some additional buttressing from the Journal of American Physicians and
Surgeons -
http://www.scribd.com/doc/37484415/Edwards-DDT-A-Case-Study-in-Scientific-Fraud.............2) And these people aren't alone. The World Health Organization, the
Centers for Disease Control, and the U.S. Agency for International
Development ALL support the indoor spraying of DDT to combat malaria. No
offense, but I think that I'm going to go with these folks over some
extremist group like Greenpeace.
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6 comments:
Probably one of those 'lesser evil' tradeoffs. It is still produced and used in China, N. Korea and India. Given its
carcinogenity, mutagenity and teratogenicity, bio accumulation
properties and considerable half-life, cautious use would seem indicated. Odd...bees and earthworms are immune to the stuff.
Back in the '50s America was practically swimming in the stuff and there was no detectable link to increased cancer rates. The egg-shell study was a fraud and the mice with tumors study was a fraud (the mice that received DDT actually got FEWER tumors). And I just find it rather curious that we only banned it AFTER we used it to eradicate malaria and basically told the rest of the world to piss off.......As for proceeding with caution, I think that that advice is probably better served regarding bed nets that are easily perforated and often misused.
The increase in bald eagle, peregrine and osprey has been
extraordinary. I'm gonna stick
with my pals at Cornell ornithology
regarding any fraud in the matter.
I put human beings over birds any day and we aren't even talking about outside spraying here. We're talking about spraying the insides of huts just twice a year. And I'm telling you, if this situation was in America, we'd be doing it already because we wouldn't want to see our babies die the slow and agonizing death of typhus, malaria, etc.. Easy for the folks at Cornell to pry their correlational data toward a policy end and which doesn't affect their health/well-being one iota. Very easy.
Malaria continues to be a scourge
in the tropical regions. Interior spraying with DDT was very successful in the US. Its irradication includes some drainage work as well, and although we still have lots of mosquitos, they no longer host plasmodia. A problem occurs when
DDT is used widely and indiscrimately to spray for
agricultural use. It is twofold:
chlorocarbons of any kind tend
toxic, and mosquitoes gradually
build up a resistance, much like
bacteria to antibotics when they
are overused.
I would agree that in endemic
areas, it could and should be used.
It has and is being used for Tsetse fly control as well. But,
given the high bioaccumulation in
other species it shoule be done
carefully and wisely. Transgenic
vector control (introduction of sterile males) would seem to hold promise with less collateral damage, although tinkering with Ma
Nature always holds some surprises.
We went from overusing it to banning it and that was a mistake......And here's something funny. Uganda was using it on their crops and selling those crops to Europe. Europe of course protested and the Ugandans stopped. You want to know what one of the crops was? Tobacco.
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