THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume XIII, Issue # 49, February 19, 2011
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
ENVIRONMENTALIST FRAUD & MANSLAUGHTER:
In the Name of Banning DDT, GEF Bureaucrats
Are Consigning Millions to Death from Malaria
By Paul K. Driessen
POLITICAL ENVIRONMENTALISM, THE ENVIRONMENTALIST MOVEMENT, & ANTI-DDT FANATICISM:
ENVIRONMENTALIST POLITICAL IDEOLOGY, DISINFORMATION, PROPAGANDA, & POLICY DEMANDS MOVING AT ALMOST
BREAKNECK SPEED ON THE MALARIA & PESTICIDE FRONT, WITH MILLIONS OF HUMAN LIVES AT STAKE -- A COMPLETELY
FRAUDULENT STUDY BEING USED BY THE ENVIRONMENTALISTS TO JUSTIFY A GLOBAL BAN ON DDT FOR DISEASE
CONTROL PURPOSES, A DRAMATIC REDUCTION IN THE USE OF OTHER PESTICIDES TO FIGHT MALARIA & OTHER
INSECT-BORNE DISEASES, & RELIANCE ON COMPLETELY INADEQUATE "ENVIRONMENT FRIENDLY" INTERVENTIONS
APPROVED BY ENVIRONMENTALIST IDEOLOGUES -- DELIBERATE MANSLAUGHTER, IN THE NAME OF PROTECTING HUMAN
HEALTH & THE ENVIRONMENT FROM A HOST OF SPECULATIVE, IMAGINARY, & DISPROVEN THREATS
FULL STORY:
Many chemotherapy drugs for treating cancer have highly unpleasant side effects – hair loss, vomiting, intense joint
pain, liver damage and fetal defects, to name just a few. But anyone trying to ban the drugs would be tarred, feathered
and run out of town. And rightly so.
The drugs’ benefits vastly outweigh their risks. They save lives. We need to use chemo drugs carefully, but we need
to use them.
The same commonsense reasoning should apply to the Third World equivalent of chemotherapy drugs: DDT and
other insecticides to combat malaria. Up to half a billion people are infected annually by this vicious disease, nearly a
million die, countless survivors are left with permanent brain damage, and 90% of this carnage is in sub-Saharan
Africa, the most impoverished region on Earth.
These chemicals don’t cure malaria – they prevent it. Used properly, they are effective, and safe. DDT is particularly
important. Sprayed once or twice a year on the inside walls of homes, DDT keeps 80% of mosquitoes from entering,
irritates those that do enter, so they leave without biting, and kills any that land. No other chemical, at any price, can
do this.
Even better, DDT has few adverse side effects – except minor, speculative, and imaginary “risks” that are trumpeted
on anti-pesticide websites. In the interest of saving lives, one would think eco-activists would tone down their “ban
DDT” disinformation. However, that is unlikely.
Anti-DDT fanaticism built the environmentalist movement, and gave it funding, power, and stature it never had before.
No matter how many people get sick and die because health agencies are pressured not to use DDT, or it is totally
banned, Environmental Defense, Sierra Club, Greenpeace, Pesticide Action Network, and allied activist groups will
never reform or recant.
Government agencies – including the US Environmental Protection Agency, National Institutes of Environmental
Health Sciences, and Agency for Toxic Substances and Diseases Registry – will likewise continue pouring hundreds
of millions of taxpayer dollars into anti-DDT research, in futile attempts to prove DDT causes some sort of meaningful
harm. And the malaria death toll will continue to mount.
Worse, they have now been joined by the United Nations Environment Program, the Global Environment Facility, and
even the World Health Organization Environmental Division – all of whom share the avowed goal of ending all DDT
production by 2017, and banning all use of DDT in disease control by 2020.
A recent GEF “study” demonstrates how far they are willing to go to achieve this goal, no matter how deadly it might
be. The study purported to prove DDT is no longer needed and can be replaced by “integrated and
environment-friendly” alternatives: for example, mosquito-repelling trees, and non-chemical control of breeding sites
and areas around homes that shelter insects.
The $14-million study claimed that these interventions resulted in an unprecedented “63% reduction in the number of
people with [malaria], without using DDT or any other type of pesticide.” However, as analyses by malaria and
insecticide experts Richard Tren and Dr. Donald Roberts clearly demonstrate (see: Research and Reports in
Tropical Medicine and AEI Outlooks), the study, conclusions, and policy recommendations are not merely
wrong. They are deliberately misleading and fraudulent.
GEF did its 2003-2008 study in Mexico and seven Central American countries – all of which had largely ceased using
DDT and other pesticides years before the GEF project. Instead of chemical sprays, these countries now employ huge
numbers of chloroquine and primaquine (CQ and PQ) pills to prevent and treat malaria: 2,566 pills per diagnosed case
in Mexico; 22,802 pills (!) in El Salvador; 50 to 1,319 pills per case in the other countries, according to 2004 health
records.
It was these powerful drugs, not the “environment-friendly” GEF interventions, that slashed malaria rates. Indeed, they
had begun to do so before GEF even arrived. This terribly inconvenient reality was further underscored by the fact that
malaria rates were the same in “study” areas and “control” areas, where GEF did nothing – and that the number of
malaria cases increased when the number of pills per case decreased. In other words, GEF could have gotten its same
results using one bed net or one larvae-eating fish.
GEF’s fraudulent claims were then compounded by its insistence that the results and conclusions are relevant to other
malaria-endemic regions. They are not. Malaria parasites in Latin American countries are Plasmodium vivax; in Africa
and Southeast Asia, they are the far more virulent P. falciparum.
CQ and PQ are effective in preventing and treating vivax; they rarely prevent or cure falciparum malaria. Moreover, the
eight Latin American countries have 140 million people. Sub-Saharan Africa has 800 million and a woeful medical and
transportation infrastructure; Southeast Asia has 600 million people. Both have infinitely more malaria. Getting adequate
medicines that work (far more expensive Artemisia-based ACT drugs) to 1.4 billion people would be a budgetary,
logistical, and medical impossibility.
But, apparently, none of these facts occurred to the bureaucrats who did this study. That’s hardly surprising, since the
project was designed and directed, not by disease control experts, but by the UNEP and radical environmentalist groups
– which also spent millions distributing and promoting the study and other anti-DDT propaganda all over the world,
ensuring that they received substantial media attention.
Anti-pesticide fanatics know this “study” is fraudulent. They just have a very high tolerance for how many malaria
cases, brain-damaged people, and dead babies are “acceptable” or “sustainable.” They just don’t care enough to bother
learning basic facts about malaria, CQ versus ACT, vivax versus falciparum. They need to get out of the malaria control
policy business and let medical professionals do their jobs.
(To learn more about stopping malaria, see Tren and Roberts’ book, The Excellent Powder; Dr. Rutledge Taylor’s
documentary film 3 Billion and Counting; and the website for Africa Fighting Malaria.)
The final report claims its authors submitted manuscripts to prominent peer-reviewed medical journals. However,
nothing was ever published. That suggests that they lied, and never submitted any manuscripts; or they did submit
papers, but the manuscripts were rejected as being shoddy, unprofessional, unscientific, or even on par with Andrew
Wakefield’s fraudulent vaccine-and-autism work.
To cap it all off, the bogus GEF project appears to have been conducted using funds diverted from already insufficient
malaria control budgets. The GEF, UNEP, Stockholm Convention Secretariat, and radical environmentalist groups are
using money intended for malaria control to launch anti-pesticide programs in countries plagued by malaria, and gain
control over public health policies, insecticides, and programs.
Overall, the GEF has spent over $800 million on efforts to eliminate DDT and other “persistent organic pollutants”
(POPs). It budgeted nearly $150 million in 2007 alone on its campaign to ban DDT production and use – but spent a
lousy $22 million researching alternatives to DDT for vector control.
Until an equally effective and long-lasting substitute for DDT is developed – one that repels, irritates and kills
mosquitoes – this vital weapon needs to remain in the disease control arsenal.
The GEF, UNEP, POPs Secretariat, and WHO need to withdraw the study; discipline the people who perpetrated this
fraud; retract World Health Assembly Resolution 50.13, calling for malaria-infested countries to slash their use of public
health insecticides; and issue a statement making it absolutely clear that this “study” was erroneous and deceptive,
and should not be considered in setting malaria policies.
Donors to the GEF and radical groups must be exposed. For activists and agencies to continue promoting this study or
demand that malaria-endemic countries stop using DDT and insecticides, and adopt bogus “eco-friendly” GEF
“solutions,” is gross medical malpractice – and deliberate manslaughter.
Malaria can be controlled, and even eradicated in many areas. We simply need to use every available weapon –
including DDT, pesticides, nets, window screens, drugs, and other interventions – in an orderly, coordinated, and
systematic manner; and ensure that mosquito infestations, disease outbreaks, malaria control successes and problems
are monitored and evaluated accurately and honestly.
If we do that – and end the anti-pesticide hysteria – we can get the job done.
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
Science, Ethics, & Human Health:
Human Health & Public Policy
Political Environmentalism Versus Human Progress & Prosperity:
Policy Issues Relating to Energy, Environment,
& Natural Resources
Paul K. Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow and the Congress of Racial
Equality, and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green Power - Black Death.
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THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
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Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
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