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Politics : The Trump Presidency -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: i-node who wrote (67009)	4/16/2018 12:27:12 AM
From: Wharf Rat	1 Recommendation Recommended By bentway Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 358080

Perhaps you didn't understand that comment Perhaps I did, and Sowell doesn't know what the meaning of "is" is, so-to-speak. DDT is still being used for malaria control. The ban of DDT did not cause millions to die from malaria - Science 1 Summary On various websites dedicated to science and politics, usually of conservative persuasion, it is often alleged that the ban of the insecticide DDT, motivated by concerns about its damaging effects on the environment, has caused tens of millions in avoidable malaria fatalities over the last couple of decades. This position is untenable in light of the following scientific and historic facts: 1. DDT is banned internationally for use in agriculture, but its use in malaria control remains permitted under the regulations of the Stockholm Convention. The production of DDT and its use in malaria control have never been discontinued. 2. While DDT is cheaper than most other insecticides, cost of manufacture has risen in proportion to that of petroleum, the major required raw material. Moreover, like other insecticides, DDT selects for resistance in the targeted insect vectors. Rising cost and widespread resistance, not regulation, are the key reasons for the limited and declining worldwide use of DDT. 3. Most malaria fatalities occur in Africa. On this continent, no comprehensive effort has ever been made to control or eradicate malaria; instead, all such projects occurred only on a local or regional scale, and many were abandoned after only a few years. 4. In the most severely affected parts of the world, only a small fraction of malaria cases are actually seen by health care workers or recorded by health authorities. Regardless of the tools employed, effective malaria control is impossible with such inadequate levels of organization and preparedness

To: i-node who wrote (67009)	4/16/2018 2:13:44 PM
From: combjelly	Respond to of 358080

And that assertion is total nonsense. Except for some developed countries, DDT has never been banned for vector control. Now there have been various restrictions placed on control of agricultural pests, but that is a tangential issue. It is a tangential issue because heavy use of DDT for agricultural use can and does lead to immunity from DDT by mosquitoes and other pests. And that can have dire consequences for developing countries because other pesticides can be dramatically more expensive, like orders of magnitude more expensive and often notg as effective. Leading to increases in deaths from malaria and other mosquito born diseases. So the increases malarial deaths were not due to underuse of DDT because of an imaginary ban, they were due to the overuse of DDT. No amount of bolding, capitalization or outright lying can change those facts.