More on DDT, the ban and Malaria

From Evan over at 101-280 comes some disturbing fact-checking and the implications regarding the USA ban on DDT and the continuing 2,000,000 deaths/year from Malaria: bq. Virginia Postrel, on last week's New York Times Magazine article, "What the World Needs Now is DDT": bq. Two million people a year, most of them little kids, are dying because of the West's anti-DDT superstition. Two...million...people...a...year. Evan's money quote: bq. This reminds me: you know how people will sometimes get into handwavy and/or inebriated debates over which book killed more people in the 20th century, The Communist Manifesto or Mein Kampf? On the usual, broad-brush causal assessment, considering both direct and tangential effects, and entirely ignoring authorial intention, the Manifesto typically wins with an estimate upwardly bounded at 100 million dead. That NYT story convinced me that the best answer to the question is actually neither of the above, but rather Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, the major cultural force in the anti-DDT mania of the 1970s. At the rate of 2 million preventable malaria deaths per year, plus (very conservatively) another 3 million due to effects of the additional poverty caused by malaria, it would only take Spring 20 years to catch the Manifesto. And William Ruckelshaus seems to the the poster boy for this decision but it seems to fall to Tricky Dick for the actual decision: bq. Again, we're ignoring authorial intention here. But who is really to blame? An EPA hearing at the time ruled that DDT wasn't demonstrably harmful, and so the fault seems to lie in a directive by Administrator William Ruckelshaus that simply ignored the ruling. But according to this story (via Glenn Reynolds), Ruckelshaus blames Nixon: And Nixon's excuse: bq. A few older Washington DC policy experts have suggested that some of his election campaign supporters were chemical companies that produced alternatives to DDT and so stood to gain handsomely by the DDT phase out. Others say that it is more likely that senior officials in his administration pressured Nixon into the decision given the potential votes he stood to lose in his native and very green state of California. I heard some interesting things regarding the old FREON that the reason the EPA pressed for its regulation was that it's patent was due to expire soon (this is true) and that some companies stood to make major money with patented alternatives... More digging is needed in this cess pit...

October 2022

Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
            1
2 3 4 5 6 7 8
9 10 11 12 13 14 15
16 17 18 19 20 21 22
23 24 25 26 27 28 29
30 31          

Environment and Climate
AccuWeather
Cliff Mass Weather Blog
Climate Depot
Ice Age Now
ICECAP
Jennifer Marohasy
Solar Cycle 24
Space Weather
Watts Up With That?


Science and Medicine
Junk Science
Life in the Fast Lane
Luboš Motl
Medgadget
Next Big Future
PhysOrg.com


Geek Stuff
Ars Technica
Boing Boing
Don Lancaster's Guru's Lair
Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories
FAIL Blog
Hack a Day
Kevin Kelly - Cool Tools
Neatorama
Slashdot: News for nerds
The Register
The Daily WTF


Comics
Achewood
The Argyle Sweater
Chip Bok
Broadside Cartoons
Day by Day
Dilbert
Medium Large
Michael Ramirez
Prickly City
Tundra
User Friendly
Vexarr
What The Duck
Wondermark
xkcd


NO WAI! WTF?¿?¿
Awkward Family Photos
Cake Wrecks
Not Always Right
Sober in a Nightclub
You Drive What?


Business and Economics
The Austrian Economists
Carpe Diem
Coyote Blog


Photography and Art
Digital Photography Review
DIYPhotography
James Gurney
Joe McNally's Blog
PetaPixel
photo.net
Shorpy
Strobist
The Online Photographer


Blogrolling
A Western Heart
AMCGLTD.COM
American Digest
The AnarchAngel
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler
Babalu Blog
Belmont Club
Bayou Renaissance Man
Classical Values
Cobb
Cold Fury
David Limbaugh
Defense Technology
Doug Ross @ Journal
Grouchy Old Cripple
Instapundit
iowahawk
Irons in the Fire
James Lileks
Lowering the Bar
Maggie's Farm
Marginal Revolution
Michael J. Totten
Mostly Cajun
Neanderpundit
neo-neocon
Power Line
ProfessorBainbridge.com
Questions and Observations
Rachel Lucas
Roger L. Simon
Samizdata.net
Sense of Events
Sound Politics
The Strata-Sphere
The Smallest Minority
The Volokh Conspiracy
Tim Blair
Velociworld
Weasel Zippers
WILLisms.com
Wizbang


Gone but not Forgotten...
A Coyote at the Dog Show
Bad Eagle
Steven DenBeste
democrats give conservatives indigestion
Allah
BigPictureSmallOffice
Cox and Forkum
The Diplomad
Priorities & Frivolities
Gut Rumbles
Mean Mr. Mustard 2.0
MegaPundit
Masamune
Neptunus Lex
Other Side of Kim
Publicola
Ramblings' Journal
Sgt. Stryker
shining full plate and a good broadsword
A Physicist's Perspective
The Daily Demarche
Wayne's Online Newsletter

About this Entry

This page contains a single entry by DaveH published on April 21, 2004 11:01 PM.

Manchester United Soccer game suicide bombing averted was the previous entry in this blog.

Horrible train accident in North Korea is the next entry in this blog.

Find recent content on the main index or look in the archives to find all content.

Monthly Archives

Pages

OpenID accepted here Learn more about OpenID
Powered by Movable Type 5.2.9