So why not just admit that the hysteria whipped up over DDT was wrong? Because this was the founding issue of the environmentalist movement. Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring” was the first book to convince the common man that “chemicals” are scary and that modern industry and technology were going to destroy us. Banning DDT was the first triumph of the environmentalist movement in using political pressure to override scientific skepticism and impose its agenda by force.

http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/being-green-means-never-saying-your-are-sorry-for-killing-millions/

bb May 27, 2016 at 9:17 am

Andrew Klavan has a great, and short, commentary on some of the results of environmentalism, social justice and multiculturalism here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3DhquH12jQ

StuartHarris May 27, 2016 at 4:13 pm

Last year 800,000 people in Africa died from malaria. Multiple that by only three years and you’ve Pol Pot beat. Fifteen years and your into Hitler numbers. Effective use of DDT would end this.

From: http://www.malaria.com/questio.....aths-afric

QUESTION

What is the estimated number of deaths in Africa caused by malaria each year?

ANSWER

The exact numbers of deaths caused by malaria every year is very difficult to measure accurately, due to difficulties in diagnosis and also failure to report cases. However, the Roll Back Malaria partnership, coordinated by a host of international organisations including the World Health Organisation, estimates that last year approximately 801,000 people died of malaria in Africa, which represents over 90% of the total annual worldwide deaths. Of those, the vast majority of victims were children under the age of five.

StuartHarris May 27, 2016 at 6:13 pm

Needlessly dead people are dead people no matter how they died or what the intentions were. Stalin and Pol Pot’s forced collectivization of agriculture was not designed to kill people but to advance their nations by creating the New Soviet Man and New Khmer Man. Environmentalists are at best blind to the deaths caused by their policies, but many actually hate humankind and consider our species a cancer on the Earth.

“Fraud in science is a major problem.” So begins “DDT: A Case Study in Scientific Fraud” by the late J. Gordon Edwards, Professor Emeritus of Entomology at San Jose State University in San Jose, California.

…

Rachel Carson began the countrywide assault on DDT with her 1962 book, Silent Spring. Carson made errors, some designed to scare, about DDT and synthetic pesticides. “For the first time in the history of the world, every human being is now subjected to contact with dangerous chemicals, from the moment of conception to death,” she intoned.

“Rachel Carson set the style for environmentalism. Exaggeration and omission of pertinent contradictory evidence are acceptable for the holy cause.

There has never been any convincing evidence that DDT (or pesticide residues in food) has ever caused cancer in man,” – pesticide specialists Bruce N. Ames and Thomas H. Jukes of the University of California at Berkeley

(Ames is a professor of biochemistry and molecular biology, world renowned. Jukes, who died a few years ago, was a professor of biophysics and a leader in the defense of DDT.)

…

IN 1969, THE ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENSE FUND (then, three guys with a clipboard; now “Environmental Defense”), Sierra Club, and National Audubon Society petitioned the Secretary of Agriculture to ban DDT, claiming it is carcinogenic to humans. He agreed to partially phase it out by December 31, 1970, which did not satisfy the environmentalists.

“As you know, many mass uses of DDT have already been prohibited, including all uses around the home. Certainly we’ll all feel better when the persistent compounds can be phased out in favor of biological controls. But awaiting this millennium does not permit the luxury of dodging the harsh decisions of today. – William Ruckelshaus, Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency

The Audubon Society and the Natural Resources Defense Council, to stop exports of DDT to third-world countries, instituted a number of lawsuits, ultimately gaining the support of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) in 1977.

The article goes on at this juncture to thoroughly debunk all supposed health-risk claims made against DDT, none of which had ever been scientifically established and all of which were scientifically shown to be false.

From here:

However, two months later, ignoring his own agency’s ruling and advice, EPA Administrator William Ruckelshaus single-handedly outlawed almost all use of DDT. He made the unscientific assertion that it poses “unacceptable risk to the environment and potential harm to human health.” He had not bothered to attend a single day of the seven-month hearing and, according to aides, had not read any transcripts.

…

Ruckelshaus’ naïve response to criticism that his decision would endanger lives was, “There’s arrogance in the idea that everybody’s going to do what we do. We’re not making these decisions for the rest of the world, are we?” Was it possible he was unaware that DDT producers in the United States exported more than 60 percent of their product to worldwide malaria control programs?

Environmentalists next targeted DDT production and export. Industry producers had little incentive to fight for the inexpensive powder because they could make more money on higher-priced “alternatives” that were, ironically, toxic to humans and the environment. With little opposition and fueled by Ruckelshaus’ decision, environmental groups sued to ban DDT export. In response, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the bureau responsible for coordinating foreign assistance, threatened “to stop foreign aid to any country using it,” relate Gerald and Natalie Sirkin in their 2005 special report DDT, Fraud and Tragedy. “Its threat spread Ruckelshaus’ ban worldwide.”

WHO and UNICEF, the two UN agencies responsible for malaria eradication programs, reacted by decentralizing DDT-based efforts, placing them in the hands of local USAID mission directors in underdeveloped countries without the means or infrastructure to continue them. According to Javed Siddiqi in his 1995 book World Health and World Politics: The World Health Organization and the UN System, “Many USAID mission directors were more interested in endorsing family-planning programmes, which they felt would address the growing problem of over-population.”

Well, I guess one way to address the (also false) “over-population problem” was to effectively ban all use of an entirely safe and miraculously effective pesticide worldwide and just let tens of millions die from the repercussions.

[ Below there is reference to a poster on the site who uses the handle Clownfish and argues the 'DDT was never really banned' meme. Reminds one of combjelly on SI. ]

I’m sure that CF, however, in order to defend his worldview, will cling to his mantra that DDT use “to prevent malaria” was never officially banned, even though that technically true claim entirely misses the broader point: that apocalyptic environmental alarmism generated a worldwide, entirely unscientific hysteria against a perfectly good pesticide. That hysteria pressured manufacturers of DDT to stop making it altogether and switch to less effective, more expensive alternatives, and made healthcare organizations shy away from supporting the use, infrastructure and training wrt DDT in third world countries.

Even third world politicians, health administrators and leaders shied away from the use of DDT solely based on the false information generated entirely by Rachel Carson’s book and those that promoted it without any scientific basis whatsoever.

Does CF imagine that, in this atmosphere of hysteria against DDT, world leaders and health organizations were willing to try and find manufacturers of DDT, risk having foreign aid cut off, and expose third world populations directly to DDT by using it in populated “disease vectors” such as in homes and throughout populated areas? Do you think such health program directors and leaders, or those they might contact and work with, wanted to put themselves in the sights of rabid, litigious, hysteria-manufacturing apocalyptic environmentalists?

Yet, CF insists that it was just a lack of funding that has been the problem, where before the DDT scare there was absolutely no “lack of funding” issue: malaria had almost been entirely eradicated in many parts of the world via use of DDT. Funds were not cut off, CF; the DDT was, whether or not it was “technically” still legal to use in certain situations, and it was cut off because of the scare tactics and political pressure brought to bear on politicians, world health organizations, and DDT manufacturers by left-wing apocalyptic environmentalists with no regard for science whatsoever.

Barry Arrington May 28, 2016 at 1:07 pm

Clown Fish. Every word you write is an outright lie or a major distortion. How do I know? Because millions upon millions of Africans died as a result of the Western environmental colonialists decried by the Ugandan Minister of Health, and if what you write were true that would not have happened.

Let’s break down what the minister said:

Though Africa’s sad experience with colonialism ended in the 1960s, a lethal vestige remains: malaria. It is the biggest killer of Ugandan and all African children. Yet it remains preventable and curable . . . Now they must honor this promise by supporting African independence in the realm of disease control. We must be able to use Dichloro-Diphenyl-Trichloroethane — DDT.

Dear readers, Clown Fish implies that Western environmental colonialists have not prevented Uganda from using DDT to control the mosquitos that spread malaria. Here is some simple logic, if what Clown Fish says is true, the Minster of Health would not have written that. But he did write that. Therefore, we can be certain that Clown Fish is a liar.

Clown Fish says or implies there are alternative pesticides just as good as DDT. Dr. Zaramba talks about the use of some of those alternatives and then he writes:

But DDT lasts longer, costs less and is more effective against malaria-carrying mosquitoes than Icon. It functions as spatial repellent to keep mosquitoes out of homes, as an irritant to prevent them from biting, and as a toxic agent to kill those that land. The repellency effect works without physical contact. And because we will never use the chemical in agriculture, DDT also makes mosquitoes less likely to develop resistance.

Again, CF is shown to be a liar.

Clown Fish says that DDT is environmentally harmful.

Dr. Zaramba:

after decades of exhaustive scientific review, DDT has been shown to not only be safe for humans and the environment, but also the single most effective anti-malarial agent ever invented. Nothing else at any price does everything it can do. That is why the World Health Organization (WHO) has once again recommended using DDT wherever possible against malaria, alongside insecticidal nets and effective drugs.

Again, CF is a liar.

CF says DDT was never banned by law. Dr. Zaramaba:

Although Uganda’s National Environmental Management Authority has approved DDT for malaria control, Western environmentalists continue to undermine our efforts and discourage G-8 governments from supporting us.

Here CF’s statement is misleading and a distortion. There has never been a de jure ban. The ban has always been de facto. The Westerners have told the Africans, stop using DDT or commit economic suicide.
Distortion = lie. So, again, CF, is shown to be a shameless liar.

Millions have died. CF defends those who killed them. That’s the bottom line.

StephenB May 28, 2016 at 7:59 pm

Let’s not be too hard on Clown Fish. Subjectivists, after all, lack all moral conviction, so they are incapable of feeling righteous indication. If there is no such thing as right and wrong, then there can be no wrongs to be righted.

To be sure, subjectivists become miffed when someone calls an abortionist a “murderer,” but the murder itself–the violent invasion, the scalding to death, the slicing up of baby parts—moves them not in the least. Their ire is reserved for the moral reformer. You will never find a subjectivist marching into hell for a heavenly cause; his aim is to uncover the judgmentalism that may be lurking in the marcher’s vocabulary

The record shows that environmentalists stumped for a premature ban on DDT and tragedy followed. Still, we must make allowances for subjectivist priorities: Yes, says Clown Fish, millions of children died needlessly, and that is unfortunate; but great danger is looming: Someone, somewhere is considering the death penalty for homosexuals, Now that’s just too much.