Kill Malarial Mosquitoes NOW! declaration text version
------------------------------------------------------
Here is an updated text version of the aforementioned declara-
tion with sample signatures.
Kill Malarial Mosquitoes NOW!
A Declaration of the Informed and Concerned
We, the undersigned, are justifiably concerned, anguished and
outraged that:
· Over 500 million human beings suffer from malaria in Africa
and around the world annually. This is more people than live in
the United States, Canada and Mexico combined.
· Well over a million of these people mostly children and
pregnant women are killed by malaria each and every year.
· Malaria wreaks an enormous economic toll, incapacitating oth-
erwise productive people, leaving thousands with brain damage,
and keeping millions at home to care for the sick, instead of
producing goods and services to lift Africa and other regions
out of unacceptable, abject poverty.
· The United States, Europe and other advanced economies have
failed to use every available means to stop the devastation that
malarial mosquitoes inflict upon the world's poorest citizens.
They are the same methods we used to eradicate malaria in our
countries. Yet, we have mindlessly withheld them from other peo-
ple for over 30 years to tragic, almost genocidal effect.
· Almost none of the $200 million that US taxpayers contribute
to world malaria control each year is actually spent to kill or
repel the deadly mosquitoes that inject parasites into the
bloodstreams of their victims. These shortsighted policies fail
to recognize that spraying small amounts of DDT on the interior
walls of homes can effectively kill or repel malarial mosquitoes
giving long-lasting protection to the families within.
· Amazingly, some in government even oppose using malaria con-
trol monies to kill the parasite that malarial mosquitoes trans-
mit from person to person! These individuals would block or
limit funding for the purchase of medicines, such as artemisi-
nin-based combination therapies (ACTs), which cure malaria and
inhibit its spread wherever they are used.
· DDT as yet plays no part in the program announced by President
Bush in July 2005, to spend an additional $1.2 billion on ma-
laria control over the next five years. Without DDT and ACTs,
this spending will be needlessly wasted, along with millions of
additional lives.
We understand the facts about DDT and its historic opponents, as
summarized in the Background and References, below. We now seek
humane, heroic action by US leaders to alter the ugly course of
human history with regard to malaria.
Our objective: To end malaria's worldwide reign of terror
We want to slash disease and death tolls in Africa and world-
wide, by changing the way the US government funds malaria con-
trol. We want cost-effective measures that actually kill and re-
pel malarial mosquitoes, eliminate parasites, cure malaria pa-
tients and save lives.
We therefore ask Congress and the President to:
· Ensure that at least 2/3 (two-thirds) of annual Congressional
appropriations for malaria control are earmarked for insecti-
cidal and medicinal commodities with up to half of such monies
targeted to the treatment and cure of infected patients.
· Specifically direct such funds to the actual purchase and de-
ployment of: (1) DDT, or any other proven, more cost-effective
insecticide/repellant, for Indoor Residual Spraying (IRS) in any
given malarial locality; and (2) of ACTs, or other equally ef-
fective and durable drugs, for treatment of malaria patients and
reduction in disease transmission rates.
· Require that this 2/3 formula be mirrored in the annual ma-
laria control spending by any agency receiving US malaria con-
trol monies such as US Agency for International Development,
World Health Organization, World Bank, UNICEF, Roll Back Ma-
laria, and Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Malaria and Tuberculosis.
· Direct that this 2/3 proportion will be subject to reduction
ONLY if replaced by corresponding expenditures for any malaria
control measure (such as larvaciding) that has been proven
equally or more cost-effective in reducing malaria morbidity and
mortality rates in specific localities as certified, in ad-
vance of such expenditure and replacement, by the directors of
the US Centers for Disease Control, Uniformed Services Univer-
sity of the Health Sciences or similar independent agency, based
on controlled epidemiological studies in the field.
In full accord with the UN Stockholm Convention on Persistent
Organic Pollutants, this objective contemplates DDT use only for
indoor residual spraying (which results in zero-to-negligible
external environmental residue) and not for aerial or any
other form of outdoor application.
http://mail.google.com/mail/?view=page&name=gp&ver=3403410b768567d8#_edn1
It does not contemplate the use of insecticides, including in-
secticide-treated mosquito nets, not shown to be more cost-
effective than indoor residual spraying with DDT for all members
of affected populations.
In the absence of empirical evidence to the contrary, we the un-
dersigned regard as inadequate and therefore morally unaccept-
able any policy that permits any sum in excess of one-third of
US anti-malaria funding to be expended on contractors, consult-
ants, "technical assistance," conferences, "capacity building,"
overhead, bed nets or similar measures, rather than the proven
insecticidal and medical interventions described above.
Bureaucrats, contractors, academics, insecticide companies,
anti-pesticide activists and other self-interested parties have
frequently protested that DDT for indoor residual spraying is no
panacea and falsely claimed that alternative methods work
equally well in controlling malaria. However, the fact is, noth-
ing in the history of man has proven more effective than the
combination of insecticides such as DDT and effective medicines
like ACTs, for saving human lives from the scourge of malaria.
DDT enabled the United States, Europe and most advanced econo-
mies to eradicate malaria. It must now be permitted and encour-
aged to start saving lives in Africa, Asia, Latin America and
other parts of the world where malarial mosquitoes continue to
kill thousands of innocent children and parents every day. Be-
cause:
· Allocation decisions on US appropriations for malaria control
must be made by Congress and the White House;
· The US foreign aid and multilateral aid bureaucracies have
proven themselves incompetent and unwilling over many years to
make effective commodity purchases and allocation decisions;
· Most of the world, including the World Health Organization,
has endorsed DDT for indoor residual spraying through the UN
Stockholm Convention; and
· Americans and most of the world embrace life, liberty and the
pursuit of happiness as fundamental Human Rights and yet the
effect of current malaria policies is to deny those Human Rights
to billions of the world's poorest people;
Now, therefore, we the undersigned Coalition of the Informed and
Concerned hold that the burden of scientific and moral proof
rests with any who would argue that more than one-third of US
and world malaria control spending should support measures other
than DDT and ACTs (or any other proven, more cost-effective in-
terventions) for combating this horrific disease.
If and when the opponents of DDT and ACTs can show and obtain
certification as provided above that something else works better
to save human lives from malaria, we the undersigned will read-
ily even eagerly accede to something less than this two-
thirds formula.
Until then, however, we will fight furiously for every human
life now hanging in the balance, as a function of current, my-
opic, errant and unconscionable US and global malaria control
policies.
We urge all people of conscience, moral conviction and human de-
cency to join us in ending malaria's reign of terror in Africa
and the developing world. We hereby implore Congress and the
President to stop the misguided malaria spending, stop the talk-
ing, and finally take real action to:
--
Kill Malarial Mosquitoes NOW!
Signatories:
Note: Organizational affiliations are for identification pur-
poses only and do not necessarily imply any formal organiza-
tional endorsements of the Declaration.
Name and degree: Title, affiliation(s) and state or country of
residence:
Desmond M Tutu Nobel Peace Laureate, Archbishop Emeritus, South
Africa
Norman E. Borlaug, PhD Nobel Peace Laureate, Professor of Inter-
national Agriculture, Texas
Andrew Spielman, PhD Professor of Tropical Public Health, Har-
vard School of Public Health
Admiral Harold M. Koenig, MD Former Surgeon General of the US
Navy (retired), Maryland
Patrick Moore, PhD Co-founder of Greenpeace, British Columbia,
Canada
Kenneth D. Christman, MD President, Association of American Phy-
sicians and Surgeons, Ohio
Elizabeth Whelan, ScD President, American Council on Science &
Health, New York
Robert S. Desowitz, PhD Professor Emeritus, Tropical Medicine, U
of Hawaii and N Carolina
Theeraphap Chareonviriyaphap Professor of Entomology (PhD),
Kasetsart University, Thailand
Abere Mihrete, PhD Director, Anti-Malaria Association, Ethiopia
M. Fazlur Rahman Former Secretary, Ministry of Health & Family
Welfare, Bangladesh
Harry C. Alford President & CEO, Natl Black Chamber of Commerce,
Washington, DC
Roy Innis National Chairman, Congress of Racial Equality, New
York
Rabbi Daniel Lapin President, Toward Tradition, Washington
E. Calvin Beisner, PhD Associate Professor, Knox Theological
Seminary, Florida
Reverend Robert Sirico President, Acton Institute for the Study
of Religion & Liberty, Michigan
Rev. Ren Broekhuizen Retired Pastor and former African Mission-
ary, Michigan and Wyoming
Samuel C Wolgemuth Vice Chair, World Relief Corporation, Illi-
nois
Ed Crane President, Cato Institute, Washington, DC
David M. Beasley Former Governor of South Carolina
And many more...
For more information, see "Background: Facts about DDT," follow-
ing the signatories
To endorse the Declaration, send your personal information to
mailto:pdriessen@cox.net
--
Kill Malarial Mosquitoes NOW!
Background: Facts about DDT and opposition to it
The wide-ranging attacks on and near-banning of DDT is arguably
history's most devastating embrace of junk science. DDT is one
of the single most effective tools for fighting malaria, a dis-
ease that kills over 1 million people annually. Most of these
deaths are among children and pregnant women, and those lucky
enough to survive malaria are often left brain-damaged and fac-
ing a blighted future.
http://mail.google.com/mail/?view=page&name=gp&ver=3403410b768567d8#_edn2
About 2.2 billion people live in malarial regions, and over half
a billion people suffer acutely from the potentially fatal dis-
ease every year. Over 70 percent of them live in Africa.
http://mail.google.com/mail/?view=page&name=gp&ver=3403410b768567d8#_edn3
Malaria is not just an unnecessary human tragedy; it is also an
economic disaster. The disease imposes a huge economic toll on
malarial countries discouraging foreign investors, incapaci-
tating otherwise productive people, keeping millions at home to
care for the sick, instead of producing goods and services, and
exacting enormous healthcare costs that reduce budgets needed
for other health, social and environmental programs.
http://mail.google.com/mail/?view=page&name=gp&ver=3403410b768567d8#_edn4
The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that malaria may
exact an economic cost of more than $12 billion per year.
http://mail.google.com/mail/?view=page&name=gp&ver=3403410b768567d8#_edn5
On a cost-benefit basis, malaria control ranks among the top
priorities for measures to improve the world, according to the
Copenhagen Consensus 2004, a panel of world-leading economists
sponsored by The Economistmagazine.
http://mail.google.com/mail/?view=page&name=gp&ver=3403410b768567d8#_edn6
Malaria is transmitted by mosquitoes, which carry deadly or de-
bilitating protozoa from infected to non-infected people. Kill-
ing or repelling malarial mosquitoes has the bonus effect of
halting other mosquito-borne diseases such as yellow fever and
dengue fever. Shortly after the Second World War, DDT was used
to eradicate or dramatically reduce malaria in the U.S., Europe,
Canada, Australia, Brazil, Sri Lanka, India, and many southern
African countries.
In 1971, WHO said DDT is the "major single factor that made the
concept of time-limited eradication possible." It recommended
continuing insecticide availability, "particularly DDT."
Why? Because sprayed once or at most twice a year on mud and
thatch huts and cinderblock homes common in Africa and other
poor countries, DDT keeps mosquitoes from even entering, irri-
tates those that do so they rarely bite, and kills most that
land on the walls.
DDT both repels AND kills mosquitoes. Even mosquitoes resistant
to DDT's insect-killer properties are repelled from homes and
buildings whose walls have been sprayed with the insecticide,
thereby protecting all the people therein.
No other pesticide at any price is as effective, long-
lasting, cost-effective and safe as DDT for killing and repel-
ling malarial mosquitoes. In fact, DDT keeps up to 90 percent of
mosquitoes from even entering a home. However, to kill (but gen-
erally not repel) DDT-resistant mosquitoes, alternative pesti-
cides like synthetic pyrethroids and carbamates can also be ef-
fective.
No anti-malaria vaccine exists today, and there is little pros-
pect of an effective vaccine being commercially available in the
next ten years. Until that day, as history has shown, the best
way to reduce or eliminate the incidence of malaria is to pre-
vent the disease in the first place, by controlling the Anophe-
les mosquitoes that carry it.
This strategy works. Today, it can be combined with new and ex-
tremely effective artemisinin-combination therapy (ACT) medi-
cines, which both cure malaria in afflicted patients, and inter-
rupt the chain of malaria parasite transmission from an ill per-
son to another mosquito, and then to the next uninfected victim.
DDT targets the mosquito, and ACTs target the malaria parasite.
Used together, they are stunningly effective, as recent studies
from Southern Africa dramatically demonstrate.
Many malarial countries have woefully inadequate healthcare and
transportation systems. As a result, many of those in need of
treatment go without, and many die. If proper malaria controls
were in place, fewer people would be infected, and those that
are infected would have a better chance to receive effective
drugs and treatment.
The US government promotes the use of anti-malarial drugs and
insecticide-treated bed nets. These have a place in malaria con-
trol. But they cannot and should not replace other interven-
tions, such as indoor spraying with insecticides, which dramati-
cally reduce malaria cases and deaths.
In fact, indoor residual spraying with DDT reduced malaria cases
and deaths by nearly 75 percent in Zambia over a two-year period
and by over 80 percent in South Africa in just one year.
http://mail.google.com/mail/?view=page&name=gp&ver=3403410b768567d8#_edn7
Having reduced malaria rates so dramatically, South Africa was
then able to provide ACT medicines to a much smaller number of
people who still became critically ill. In just three years, it
slashed malaria rates by an astounding 96 percent!
http://mail.google.com/mail/?view=page&name=gp&ver=3403410b768567d8#_edn8
Other countries successfully followed South Africa's lead, and
others also want to.
It is therefore critical that the USAID, World Health Organiza-
tion (WHO), UNICEF, Roll Back Malaria and other agencies help
ensure that malaria endemic countries have ready access to DDT.
Indeed, according to its own website, "the WHO recommends indoor
residual spraying of DDT for vector control."[
http://mail.google.com/mail/?view=page&name=gp&ver=3403410b768567d8#_edn9
But in practice it rarely does. These agencies must ensure that
countries can reduce their malaria levels far enough that all
who nevertheless get the disease can be treated with ACTs (or
other equally effective) therapies that will remain in extremely
short supply for the foreseeable future.
Insecticide-treated nets certainly help to a limited degree.
However, they often get torn. They only protect one or two peo-
ple at a time. People often don't use them, because the insecti-
cide irritates their skin or they forget
kick them off when
it gets too unbearably hot under the net to sleep
don't have
enough for every family member
have no way to hang them up
properly
or are still doing homework or housework when mosqui-
toes arrive.
Sleeping under a bed net is nearly impossible during torrid Af-
rican nights, says Omololu Falobi, a journalist in Nigeria. Use
the net anyway, and you get heat rashes all over your face and
body. Most villages have no electricity to power fans or air
conditioners, and many of the same environmentalists who oppose
pesticides also oppose electricity generation on any scale that
would power these cooling systems. Even in cities like Lagos,
power outages are frequent, rendering fans and AC useless. "Even
if you have a generator, says Falobi, you don't want to put it
on throughout the night, for fear of carbon monoxide poisoning."
Medicines that actually cure malaria (Artemisinin-based) are in
critically short supply. Although some USAID bureaucrats also
oppose devoting agency funds to ACT medicines, official agency
statements raise its expectation that there will be 55 million
pediatric treatments by 2006. But those treatments must treat
500 million critically ill malaria patients worldwide. That
means 445 million will not even have a chance to get treated.
Indeed, even under the most optimistic scenarios, there will be
sufficient supplies of ACT drugs to treat fewer than 1 in 4 pa-
tients for at least the next several years. DDT is absolutely
critical to preventing malaria in the first place. Treatment
alone will never work.
Expanding the production of Artemisia is also critical, however,
and USAID, pharmaceutical companies and others are working hard
to do so. More resources must be devoted to these efforts, too.
In highly endemic areas, people can get 1,000 infectious mos-
quito bites in a single year! Even with a 90% reduction in mos-
quitoes in the home (via DDT indoor spraying) or outside
(through the use of other insecticides), they could still get
100 infectious bites per person per year. It is certain that
some people will get malaria even with regular, effective spray-
ing programs. That was and is the experience in South Africa and
other countries, and those patients must have access to the very
best medicine treatments in our repertoire.
Because they massively or completely eliminate malaria parasites
(gametocytes) from the victim's blood, ACTs have another equally
vital benefit. They significantly reduce the probability that a
malaria-infected person can pass the infection to a mosquito,
and in turn to the next person who gets bitten. Indeed, the ga-
metocidal effect of artemisinins may be comparable in magnitude
to entomological (insecticidal) effects of DDT. Some research
has found that one ACT drug (Coartem) slashed the proportion of
patients carrying transmissible parasites to around 1/25 of what
it had been when using older malaria medicines, such as SP or
chloroquine, which are no longer clinically appropriate. In
fact, these obsolete medicines may fail in 50 to 80 percent of
the cases.
Recognition of these facts is the principal reason that South
Africa was able to go from an 80 percent reduction in malaria
disease and death rates, using DDT alone to a 96 percent re-
duction over 3 years, using DDT in combination with Coartem.
Drugs designed to prevent (through prophylaxis) the onset of ma-
laria(Chloroquine, Malarone, Doxycycline and others) are like-
wise inadequate for 2.2 billion people who are at risk from ma-
laria worldwide. In any event, people living in malarial areas
cannot take malaria prophylaxis over an extended period of time,
because of the expense and the side-effects they will suffer
Only by slashing the number of people getting malaria, can ma-
laria-wracked countries get the best drugs to those who still
get sick. To do that, they need insecticides, especially DDT.
DDT and other insecticides helped eradicate malaria in the
United States and Europe, saving countless lives. Today, insec-
ticides are still our first line of defense against West Nile
virus and other diseases. It is callous and hypocritical for the
United States to tell African and other malarial endemic nations
that they cannot spray insecticides, when we use aerial and
ground spraying every day. Moreover, we spray insecticides di-
rectly into the environment, whereas spraying for malaria con-
trol only sprays insecticides inside houses.
The USAID once funded very effective indoor residual spraying
programs around the world. It can and must revive America's and
the world's once-proud anti-malaria programs.
Used by trained specialists in indoor residual spraying pro-
grams, almost no DDT gets into the environment. It's safe for
humans, too. In its latest review of DDT, the National Institute
of Environmental Health Sciences admits it cannot prove that DDT
harms human health.
Indeed, about the worst thing opponents can say is that "measur-
able quantities" of DDT are "present" in human fatty tissue and
mother's breast milk, and "could" inhibit lactation or cause low
birth weight babies. But these alleged problems are all but ir-
relevant compared to the risk of losing hundreds of thousands of
children to malaria, year after year.
To a large extent, Rachel Carson's 1962 book Silent Spring
launched the modern environmental movement and inspired the US
EPA's 1972 domestic ban of DDT. That US ban has since then ex-
panded into a de facto global ban on its use. Carson's facts,
however, were wrong.
http://mail.google.com/mail/?view=page&name=gp&ver=3403410b768567d8#_edn10
Extensive hearings on DDT before an EPA administrative law judge
occurred during 1971-1972. The EPA hearing examiner, Judge Ed-
mund Sweeney, concluded that "DDT is not a carcinogenic hazard
to man... DDT is not a mutagenic or teratogenic hazard to man...
The use of DDT under the regulations involved here does not have
a deleterious effect on freshwater fish, estuarine organisms,
wild birds or other wildlife."
http://mail.google.com/mail/?view=page&name=gp&ver=3403410b768567d8#_edn11
Overruling the EPA hearing examiner, EPA Administrator William
Ruckelshaus banned DDT in 1972. Ruckelshaus never attended a
single hour of the seven months of EPA hearings on DDT. His
aides reported that he did not even read the transcript of the
EPA hearings on DDT.
http://mail.google.com/mail/?view=page&name=gp&ver=3403410b768567d8#_edn12
How could this have happened? Because banning DDT was a politi-
cal, not a scientific, decision. And its real author was Presi-
dent Richard M. Nixon.
"On February 10, 1970 he announced: 'we have taken action to
phase out the use of DDT and other hard pesticides.' In December
1970, the administration created the EPA to implement executive
environmental policy. As a 1975 study out of Northern Illinois
University notes, 'This is important. Long before the EPA hear-
ings were convened and even before the EPA was created, Ruckel-
shaus' boss, President Nixon, had stated that DDT was being
phased out. This leaves the hearings themselves superfluous,
satisfying only a court requirement.'"
http://mail.google.com/mail/?view=page&name=gp&ver=3403410b768567d8#_edn13
The DDT ban by EPA was followed by a USAID and WHO shift away
from killing mosquitoes and toward other methods of malaria con-
trol (drug treatments, mosquito nets and more nebulous notions
like "capacity building" and "integrated vector management").
However, these methods have not proven even remotely as effec-
tive as indoor residual spraying and other pesticide programs.
http://mail.google.com/mail/?view=page&name=gp&ver=3403410b768567d8#_edn14
A now debunked, odiously Malthusian population control logic
also supported the de facto DDT ban in Africa and other poor re-
gions. A USAID official reportedly said of those whom malaria
would kill as a result of the ban on DDT: "Rather dead than
alive and riotously reproducing." Others have made similar
statements.
http://mail.google.com/mail/?view=page&name=gp&ver=3403410b768567d8#_edn15
Physician-author-medical researcher Michael Crichton has said
the de facto ban on DDT to control malaria "has killed more peo-
ple than Hitler."
http://mail.google.com/mail/?view=page&name=gp&ver=3403410b768567d8#_edn16
This is all the more tragic because, in the nearly half-century
since Silent Spring was written, no connection between DDT and
cancer, birth defects or any other human malady has ever been
scientifically demonstrated. The only documented environmental
effects of residual DDT are possible reproductive harms to rap-
tors, including thinning of their eggshells, and even these have
not been demonstrated conclusively.
http://mail.google.com/mail/?view=page&name=gp&ver=3403410b768567d8#_edn17
DDT junk science drove the world to the brink of imposing a uni-
versal ban on DDT via the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Or-
ganic Pollutants. The convention, known as the POPs Treaty,
would have made the de facto ban legally binding and permanent.
However, conscientious scientists and public health officials
rallied to carve out a "DDT exemption" in the treaty. That ex-
emption:
1) restricts DDT use and production to disease vector (e.g. mos-
quito) control only and does not permit the insecticide's re-
newed use for agriculture;
2) requires that countries using DDT must follow WHO guidelines
for disease/vector control;
3) requires that countries notify the WHO if they use DDT;
4) requires that rich countries pay the "agreed incremental
costs" of more expensive alternatives to DDT (this is located
elsewhere in the treaty); and
5) encourages rich countries to support research and development
of alternatives to DDT.
What the treaty does NOT require is equally important.
1) It does NOT require that a country notify WHO before it
sprays DDT; thus, in an epidemic, a country may spray first and
report to the WHO later.
2) It does NOT require that a country obtain the WHO's approval
at any time.
3) It does NOT require that poor countries bear the added cost
of alternatives to DDT.
4) It does NOT set a deadline by which countries must stop using
or producing DDT.
5) It does NOT restrict DDT use to malaria control, but allows
its use for controlling any vector-borne disease.
http://mail.google.com/mail/?view=page&name=gp&ver=3403410b768567d8#_edn18
And yet, environmental imperialist ideology and inertia inside
US-funded aid agencies keep ensuring the deaths of millions each
year: USAID spent $80 million on malaria in 2004, but not a dime
of it actually purchased insecticides and only $4 million may
have gone toward promoting or buying insecticide-treated bed
nets. Most was spent on conferences, consultants and training
programs.
http://mail.google.com/mail/?view=page&name=gp&ver=3403410b768567d8#_edn19
Overall, the world spends about $400 million a year in connec-
tion with malaria, most of it US money. Almost none of it is ac-
tually spent on killing and repelling mosquitoes.
Although signed in 2001 by the Bush Administration, the POPS
treaty has not yet been ratified by the United States Senate. US
ratification, if it occurs at all, should be conditioned on
prior legislation tying US aid monies to DDT deployment for
killing and repelling malarial mosquitoes.
Even big media have seen the light on DDT. In recent years, the
New York Times, Washington Times, Newsweek, Forbes, Wall Street
Journal, ChicagoSun-Times and other papers have run editorials
strongly advocating the use of DDT to control mosquitoes and re-
duce malaria. The New York Times Magazine, New Yorker, Time,
Washington Monthly, Washington Post, Christian Science Monitor
and numerous other periodicals have carried articles and opinion
columns advocating expanded DDT use to combat malaria and save
lives.
Even some Greenpeace and World Wildlife Fund officials have con-
ceded the life-saving need for DDT. "If alternatives to DDT
aren't working, you've got to use it. If there's nothing else
and it's going to save lives, we're all for it," their spokesmen
have said.
http://mail.google.com/mail/?view=page&name=gp&ver=3403410b768567d8#_edn20
DDT proponents advocate it primarily for indoor residual spray-
ing on unpainted mud or cinderblock walls, which usually is the
most cost-effective way to kill/repel malarial mosquitoes. This
is akin to Americans spraying Raid insect killer on the walls of
their homes, though DDT application typically would not involve
aerosols and would have to occur far less often. With indoor
spraying, there is a vanishingly-small risk that DDT will even
reach the environment.
DDT opponents, however, downplay or ignore the undeniable dis-
ease, disability and death tolls that their anti-DDT policies
have wreaked in Africa and other malaria-endemic regions.
They falsely equate indoor residual spraying (IRS) with aerial
spraying which itself involves only hypothetical, unproven
risk to birds, and may be cost-effective and appropriate (using
insecticides other than DDT) in swampy areas near population
centers.
They elevate minor hypothetical environmental risks from pesti-
cides over major, very real human risks that those pesticides
would reduce or eliminate.
DDT opponents ignore the fact that Dade County, Florida and nu-
merous other US communities routinely spray insecticides to con-
trol mosquitoes and other insects that carry far less lethal
diseases, like West Nile virus, or simply prove irksome to resi-
dents and tourists. They refuse to acknowledge that, in the wake
of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the US government sprayed much
of the flooded and devastated areas with insecticides, to halt
the spread of insect-borne diseases.
DDT opponents choose birds over little boys and girls, in a
false dichotomy that requires the sacrifice of neither. They ad-
vocate the development and distribution of vaccines, bed nets
and treatment drugs, plus the implementation of sanitation and
other programs. But these interventions will likely take decades
to become effective, if they ever do so and during that time
malaria will needlessly slaughter millions more people, who
would live if their countries could acquire and deploy DDT and
other pesticides now.
We recognize that achieving our objective may require aggressive
and public discrediting of these institutional opponents of DDT
for IRS who may, even now, be willing to sacrifice the lives
of countless millions of men, women and children in Africa and
on other continents, before the altar of junk science, nature
worship and callous eco-imperialism. We will not hesitate to ex-
pose these organizations or the individuals who set their poli-
cies.
Deploying DDT in developing countries is good for the United
States. Cutting malaria and other mosquito-borne disease rates:
(1) permits strides in education, individual productivity and
economic growth in Africa and elsewhere reducing foreign aid
claims on US politicians and taxpayers; (2) eliminates or quells
the kinds of misery and non-productivity that often underlie re-
gional unrest and result in requests for US military interven-
tion, and (3) diminishes the ever-present danger of outbreaks,
and even pandemics, of exotic, insect-borne diseases in the
United States as a result of global travel by infected persons.
Probably no other single action by the United States has the po-
tential for saving more lives, reducing or eliminating more dis-
ease, curtailing more human misery, and promoting greater devel-
opment and prosperity than support for DDT use to control ma-
laria.
Adding this insecticide to the world's disease control arsenal,
by compelling USAID and other aid and healthcare agencies to
support its use, would arguably be the greatest single humani-
tarian and human rights action taken in the past quarter cen-
tury. Its potential for changing world perceptions about the
United States and other donor nations is likewise extensive.
By contrast, failing to Kill or Repel Malarial Mosquitoes NOW
will clearly and inevitably result in the needless sickness of
billions of children and parents in Africa and other malaria en-
demic regions of the world and the needless deaths of mil-
lions. It will be seen by the world as a callous continuation of
a DDT ban that Michael Crichton properly called "one of the most
disgraceful episodes of the twentieth century history of Amer-
ica."
It is fraudulent science, incompetence and adamant refusal to
face reality rather than deliberate, calculated murder that
has spawned and perpetuated this slaughter. But the death toll
equals or exceeds that of the Holocaust (6 million men, women
and children) every five years. Since the ban on DDT was first
implemented, the body count has surpassed that of all World War
II.
People of compassion and conscience simply cannot permit the
slaughter of innocents to continue.
We know we can safely use DDT and other insecticides to save
lives through humanitarian and environmentally sound programs.
We must muster the moral clarity and political willpower to do
so NOW.
To endorse the Declaration, send your personal information to
mailto:pdriessen@cox.net
[i]
http://mail.google.com/mail/?view=page&name=gp&ver=3403410b768567d8#_ednref1
However, insecticides/repellants other than DDT are contemplated
herein for outdoor or indoor applications, including rotation
with DDT for IRS, if adjudged most cost-effective for malaria
control by national health administrators for any given country.
[ii]
http://mail.google.com/mail/?view=page&name=gp&ver=3403410b768567d8#_ednref2
Testimony of Dr. Anne Peterson, Assistant Administrator for
Global Health, USAID, before the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on
East Asian and Pacific Affairs, Committee on Foreign Relations,
October 6, 2004.
[iii]
http://mail.google.com/mail/?view=page&name=gp&ver=3403410b768567d8#_ednref3
Murru, Maurizio, "Malaria and DDT: Myths and Facts, Health Pol-
icy and Development, Vol. 2, No. 2, August 2004.
[iv]
http://mail.google.com/mail/?view=page&name=gp&ver=3403410b768567d8#_ednref4
Ibid. See also Roger Bate and Richard Tren, Malaria and the DDT
Story, Institute of Economic Affairs (2003), www.iea.org.uk and
Roger Bate, "The Blind Hydra: USAID policy fails to control ma-
laria," testimony before the United States Senate Committee on
Homeland Security and Government Affairs, Subcommittee on Fed-
eral Financial Management, Government Information & Interna-
tional Security, May 12, 2005.
[v]
http://mail.google.com/mail/?view=page&name=gp&ver=3403410b768567d8#_ednref5
WHO, Fact Sheet on Malaria, www.who.int
[vi]
http://mail.google.com/mail/?view=page&name=gp&ver=3403410b768567d8#_ednref6
See The Wall Street Journal, June 8, 2005 (editorial): "The
brainchild of Danish statistician Bjorn Lomborg, the Consensus
is an attempt by leading economists (including three Nobel Prize
Laureates) to set priorities for spending on development using
traditional cost-benefit analysis. 'We need to know what we
should do first,' says Mr. Lomborg. 'Not being willing to pri-
oritize does not make the problem go away: It simply becomes
less clear and, most likely, more expensive to solve in the
end.'" In a responsive June 21, 2005 letter to the editor of the
same periodical, physician James Horton said that malarial "dis-
ease control was crucial to the rise of the [American] South.
The lesson from Southern history is that Third Worldeconomies
improve when we address the burdens of diseases like malaria."
[vii]
http://mail.google.com/mail/?view=page&name=gp&ver=3403410b768567d8#_ednref7
See Richard Tren and Roger Bate, "South Africa's War on Malaria"
Policy Analysis No. 513, March 25, 2004, Cato Institute, Wash-
ington DC; Gautam Naik, "Novartis drug shows promise against ma-
laria," Wall Street Journal, October 3, 2005 ("Malaria infec-
tions and deaths plunged 96% in a three-year period," Naik
noted, when South Africa combined new Artemisin-based drugs with
DDT indoor spraying in KwaZulu-Natal Province, a region the size
of Indiana.)
[viii]
http://mail.google.com/mail/?view=page&name=gp&ver=3403410b768567d8#_ednref8
See Karen Barnes, David Durrheim, et al., "Effect of Artemether-
Lumefantrine policy and improved vector control on malaria bur-
den in KwaZuluNatal, South Africa," PLoS Medicine (Public Li-
brary of Science), Volume 2, Issue 11, November 2005;
http://medicine.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-
document&doi=10.1371/journal.pmed.0020330
[ix]
http://mail.google.com/mail/?view=page&name=gp&ver=3403410b768567d8#_ednref9
See http://www.who.int/malaria/docs/FAQonDDT.pdf
[x]
http://mail.google.com/mail/?view=page&name=gp&ver=3403410b768567d8#_ednref10
For example, Carson claimed "exposure to DDT, even when doing no
observable harm to birds, may seriously affect reproduction.
Quail into whose diet DDT was introduced throughout the breeding
season survived and even produced normal numbers of fertile
eggs. But few of the eggs hatched." In fact, the Journal of Ag-
riculture and Food Chemistry study she cited actually determined
that, when birds were fed high doses of DDT throughout their
breeding season, 80% of the quail eggs hatched (compared with
"control" birds that were fed no DDT and hatched 84% of their
eggs), and more than 80% of pheasant eggs hatched (compared with
"control" birds that hatched only 57% of their eggs). See Ed-
wards, J. Gordon, "DDT: A case study in scientific fraud," Jour-
nal of American Physicians and Surgeons, Vol. 9, No. 3, Fall
2004; http://www.jpands.org/vol9no3/edwards.pdf; Alexander
Gourevitch, "Better Living Through Chemistry: DDT could save
millions of Africans from dying of malaria if only environmen-
talists would let it," Washington Monthly, March 2003; Tina
Rosenberg, "What the world needs now is DDT," New York Times
Magazine, April 10, 2004.
[xi]
http://mail.google.com/mail/?view=page&name=gp&ver=3403410b768567d8#_ednref11
Sweeney, EM. 1972. EPA Hearing Examiner's recommendations and
findings concerning DDT hearings, April 25, 1972 (40 CFR 164.32,
113 pages). Summarized in Barrons (May 1, 1972), The Oregonian
(April 26, 1972) and J. Gordon Edwards (op. cit.). But in 1970,
then Assistant US Attorney General Ruckelshaus said: "DDT is not
endangering the public health and has an amazing and exemplary
record of safe use. DDT, when properly used at recommended con-
centrations, does not cause a toxic response in man or other
mammals and is not harmful. The carcinogenic claims regarding
DDT are unproved speculation."
[xii]
http://mail.google.com/mail/?view=page&name=gp&ver=3403410b768567d8#_ednref12
Santa Ana Register, April 25, 1972 and Edwards.
[xiii]
http://mail.google.com/mail/?view=page&name=gp&ver=3403410b768567d8#_ednref13
Bate, Roger, "The Worst Thing Richard Nixon Ever Did," 4/15/2004
at http://www.techcentralstation.com/041504I.html
[xiv]
http://mail.google.com/mail/?view=page&name=gp&ver=3403410b768567d8#_ednref14
See Donald Roberts, Professor of Tropical Medicine, Uniformed
Services University of the Health Sciences (Bethesda, MD), tes-
timony before U.S. Senate Subcommittee on East Asian and Pacific
Affairs, Committee on Foreign Relations, October 6, 2004.
[xv]
http://mail.google.com/mail/?view=page&name=gp&ver=3403410b768567d8#_ednref15
Desowitz, R.S., Malaria Capers, W.W. Norton Company, 1992.
Jacques Cousteau told Nouvelle Observateur, "In order to stabi-
lize world populations, we must eliminate 350,000 people a day."
Asked whether banning DDT would result in more deaths from dis-
ease, Environmental Defense Fund scientist Charles Wurster once
said, "People are the cause of all the problems. We need to get
rid of some of them, and this is as good a way as any." Club of
Rome director Alexander King wrote in The Discipline of Curios-
ity, "My chief quarrel with DDT in hindsight is that it greatly
added to the population problem." Sierra Club director Michael
McCloskey opined, "By using DDT, we reduce mortality rates in
underdeveloped countries, without the consideration of how to
support the increase in populations."
[xvi]
http://mail.google.com/mail/?view=page&name=gp&ver=3403410b768567d8#_ednref16
In a 2003 speech to the San Francisco Commonwealth Club, Crich-
ton said: "Banning DDT is one of the most disgraceful episodes
in the twentieth century history of America. We knew better, and
we did it anyway, and we let people around the world die, and we
didn't give a damn."
[xvii]
http://mail.google.com/mail/?view=page&name=gp&ver=3403410b768567d8#_ednref17
Further details on the faulty science behind claims against DDT
can be found on CATO Institute adjunct scholar Steven Milloy's
website: http://junkscience.com/ddtfaq.htm
[xviii]
http://mail.google.com/mail/?view=page&name=gp&ver=3403410b768567d8#_ednref18
Attaran, Amir, Malaria Foundation International website, at
http://www.malaria.org/DDTpage.html .
[xix]
http://mail.google.com/mail/?view=page&name=gp&ver=3403410b768567d8#_ednref19
Bate, Roger, "The Blind Hydra," testimony before U.S. Senate
Subcommittee on Federal Financial Management, Government Infor-
mation & International Security, May 12, 2005.
[xx]
http://mail.google.com/mail/?view=page&name=gp&ver=3403410b768567d8#_ednref20
Kristof, Nicholas, "It's time to spray DDT," New York Times,
January 8, 2005.