[afro-nets] RFI: Literature on the history of DDT usage (5)

[Philip Coticelli <pcoticelli@gmail.com>]

RFI: Literature on the history of DDT usage (5)
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Dear Mr. O'Connell and Dr. Thompson,

Mr. Tom O'Connell linked in an earlier post on this list serve a
recent blog post of yours refuting Chris Pearson's claim that
the environmental lobby has been responsible for millions of
avoidable deaths by campaigning against DDT for decades.
http://kenethmiles.blogspot.com/2004_02_01_kenethmiles_archive.html#107570569615970184

This posting is wrong on many accounts and I invite you both to
debate the issues on this list serve for those interested.

First, you need only look to the list of attendees to the 1999
WHO Conference on Persistent Organic Pollutants. Voting repre-
sentatives from environmental organizations VASTLY outnumbered
representatives from health ministries in the developing world.
Representatives from the Atlas Economic Research Foundation and
Malaria Foundation International were also attendees at this
conference and have given first hand accounts of the dynamics.
Quite simply, African governments wanted DDT off the list of re-
stricted chemicals, but the bands of representatives from envi-
ronmental organizations trumped them in voice and voting power
and called for a global ban on the chemical. DDT advocates from
AERF and MFI managed to get a compromise by putting DDT on a re-
stricted list of chemicals to be used only as a last resort by
governments. As you can imagine, this has served as an elastic
clause for WHO and donors to refuse to support or fund DDT be-
cause many alternatives exist, like bednets. Unfortunately, bed-
nets have proven to be dramatically less effective than DDT, but
so it goes for millions of African children dying of malaria. A
comical addendum is that DDT is on the same list of potential
carcinogens as coffee in the POPS Treaty. Not a very realistic
reflection on the benefits DDT has provided to millions and mil-
lions of people in the 20th century.

Second, Dr. Thompson is correct is citing the fact that wide-
spread use of DDT and its resulting persistence in the environ-
ment contributes to resistance. This is the same for any chemi-
cal or drug. If you apply enough, resistance becomes a factor.
However, this is a weak reason to use another insecticide in
place of DDT, because as I explained in my previous post, other
insecticides that are deemed "much more effective and accept-
able", (in Dr. Thompson words), are used doubly for crop spray-
ing and public health and generate far more resistance more
quickly than DDT.

Third, Dr. Thompson concludes:

"Malaria is responsible for enormous suffering and death. The
facts are readily available in the scientific literature. To
blame a reduction in DDT usage for the death of 10-30 million
people from malaria is not just simple-minded, it is demonstra-
bly wrong. To blame a mythical, monolithic entity called the en-
vironmental lobby for the total reduction in DDT usage is not
just paranoid, it is also demonstrably wrong. Your article is
not only poor journalism, it is an insult to the people who work
for the control of parasitic diseases that afflict developing
nations."

So, Dr. Thompson and Mr. O'Connell, you both explicitly deny the
existence and campaigning of the Green Party, a formal political
party in the US which itself cites the US ban on DDT in 1972 as
the watershed event for the environmental movement - and a for-
mal political party in many, many other countries in the world
citing similar precedent. You also deny, in light of the his-
toric consensus that DDT was largely responsible for ridding the
developed world of malaria in the 20th century, that its similar
application to the developing world in the past three decades
would not have saved some of the 10-30 million lives lost there
to malaria. I can't understand this.

I would appreciate a better explanation of why this is deemed
paranoia, poor journalism and an insult to the malaria commu-
nity. The factors contributing to the spread of malaria are in-
deed complex, but that is too broad a defense to hide behind for
the arguments you are claiming.


Sincerely,

Philip Coticelli
mailto:pcoticelli@gmail.com