DDT is not a magic bullet
Source: AlertNet
Not everyone thinks the World Health Organisation was right when it
lifted a ban on the use of DDT spray in the fight against malaria.
Jessie Stone, a doctor and director of Soft Power Health, a non-profit
organization in Uganda, believes it's a mistake to give the green light
to a spray that can remain in the environment long after its initial
use, entering the food chain and accumulating in fatty tissue.
What's more, spraying is costly, she says in an opinion piece for New York Times. Take Uganda: Any comprehensive,
nationwide spraying effort would have to reach some four million huts,
costing more than $80 million, and that's only for the first of several
rounds of spraying. It makes little sense to take an approach that will
prove costly from fiscal, human and environmental standpoints for a
country with such stretched resources like Uganda.
DDT is not the magic bullet that will eradicate malaria, Stone
concludes. "What is needed is focus on basic malaria education and
prevention with insecticide-treated bed nets."
Any views expressed in this article are those of the author and not of Reuters.
9 responses to “DDT is not a magic bullet”
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23 Sep 2006 10:39:03 GMT
Dr. Stone's proposals to stop malaria have proven to be an abysmal failure over the past three decades. Millions of people, including Ugandans, have died from malaria. Does she consider in her fiscal calculations the cost to society of these lives lost? Has she invented a method of educating mosquitoes not to bite?
The indoor residual spraying has no effect on the "environment," so that is not a credible argument. The only effective way to succeed against malaria is to achieve high coverage in high transmission areas with indoor residual spraying and bednets treated with long-lasting insecticides. Any other proposals have been proven to be genocidal.25 Sep 2006 16:02:01 GMT
Dr Stone, we are not asking for DDT a lone but all the necessary methods. IRS with DDT is the most effective so far in combination with ACT drugs. You need to have lost some one to malaria and to have been threatened then you too could ask for any thing withought trying to apply the conventional wisdom motivated with profit concerns for the ITNs
25 Sep 2006 16:04:04 GMT
The other reason DDT is not the magic answer is that there are still many possible links between DDT and breast cancer. In 1993 a study in the JOURNAL OF THE NATIONAL CANCER INSTITUTE reported that breast cancer in American women is strongly associated with DDE (a form of DDT) in their blood. Another study in Occupational and Environmental Medicine reported women with breast cancer are five times as likely to have DDT pesticide residues in their blood. In a Cedars-Sinai Medical Center "Final Report" it was determined in 2003 that "DDT can mimic or interfere with natural hormonal responses in humans and animals; therefore, exposure to these manmade hormone imitators may disrupt normal responses resulting in earlier breast cancer development." Of course this is Africa where we can be a little more wreckless with human life. Bed nets and other approaches should be maximized first.
25 Sep 2006 16:05:03 GMT
Dr. Stone begins her anti-DDT argument with a false pretense as well. The claim that DDT brought the American bald eagle to "the brink of extinction" has long since been disproven. "DDT is not a magic bullet" is a strawman behind which soft-power bearers and ideologues hide. Any sensible scientist, public health official or advocate knows an integrated approach is needed to fight malaria. DDT has been historically sidelined based on a potential harm that has not been borne out by decades of scientific review. It has a place in malaria control alongside IRS with other insecticides, ITNs and effective drugs.
25 Sep 2006 16:08:33 GMT
It is baffling, to say the least, that spraying DDT, the method that was key in ridding Europe and the USA of malaria is considered "dangerous" for countries that suffer malaria's impact in a most devastating way. Properly used, DDT removes malaria's scourge and does so far more effectively than impregnated nets and other fancy methods that are promoted from sterile and - needless to say - malaria-free boardrooms. It seems to me that the environmental sensitivities of Hecht and her ilk are more important than the millions of people who die, completely unnecessarily, of this entirely preventable disease.
26 Sep 2006 08:44:48 GMT
Is this why we don't want a ban on Chlorinated hydrocabons? Quote: CHLORINE INTERMEDIATES ARE VERY USEFUL IN REACTION PATHWAYS LEADING TO MANY NONCHLORINATED PRODUCTS, SUCH AS SILICON FOR ELECTRONIC CHIPS OR EPOXY RESINS. ALMOST 85% OF THE PHARMACEUTICALS MANUFACTURED I
Author(s): HILEMAN, BETTE http://quanterion.com/RIAC26 Sep 2006 08:46:33 GMT
To C. P. Croft: In spite of these studies, The Stockholm Treaty exempts DDT for public health use because with reference to malaria's devastating toll, any rational cost-benefit analysis favors using DDT to stop a definite harm, malaria, over not using it to avoid demonstrably less sinister potential harms, breast cancer, endocrine disruption, etc. If you read through the CDC's Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/, you will find a glut of studies that both establish and disprove links between DDT and various human and animal health effects. Furthermore, the vast majority of them, including those you have cited, deal with concentrations of DDT characteristic of mass agricultural spraying, which has no relevance to the tiny amounts used in indoor residual spraying for malaria control. This is why the World Health Organization and the United States Agency for International Development, having ! "maximized bed nets and other approaches" to date and made little progress against malaria in the past decade, decided to be more explicit about IRS and DDT's benefits to an integrated approach to malaria control.
27 Sep 2006 09:22:27 GMT
Despite the arguement between the effectiveness of DDT vs its health risks (which are certainly valid concerns); DDT can never be a long-term solution because within a few years the mosquitoes will just become resistant to it and then you will have to resort to bed-nets anyway.
And the key to stopping malaria in the U.S. and other western countries was not DDT but the draining of swamps.27 Sep 2006 09:30:29 GMT
Despite the arguement between the effectiveness of DDT vs its health risks (which are certainly valid concerns); DDT can never be a long-term solution because within a few years the mosquitoes will just become resistant to it and then you will have to resort to bed-nets anyway.
And the key to stopping malaria in the U.S. and other western countries was not DDT but the draining of swamps.