Why is Bill Gates even mentioned in this article? He's a wacko that "feels" DDT is the devil. This "evil drug" should be back on the market and available to any place that needs it.
There's more than a little madness to his method. But Bill Gates is anything but crazy to call attention to the rising scourge of malaria plaguing the under-developed world.
The Microsoft founder this week unleashed a swarm of mosquitoes on a stunned Technology, Entertainment and Design Conference in Long Beach, Calif. -- in order to call attention to the malaria problem.
"Malaria is spread by mosquitoes," Gates told the crowd before releasing the mosquitoes. "I brought some. Here I'll let them roam around. There is no reason only poor people should be infected."
In truth, the mosquitoes he let loose weren't carriers. But the point was made.
Gates lamented that more research money is spent on a cure for baldness -- perhaps because it's a rich man's ailment, he joked.
Indeed, "Malaria is a disease Westerners no longer have to think about," wrote New York Times editorial writer Tina Rosenberg in a landmark 2004 article. "Independent malariologists believe it kills two million people a year, mainly children under 5 and 90 percent of them in Africa."
Gates, perhaps the world's leading philanthropist, is funding research for a vaccine, while also pushing more use of mosquito nets (particularly around beds).
But Rosenberg's 2004 article was pointedly headlined "What the world needs now is DDT."
In March 2000, Rosenberg notes, one South African town saw 7,000 cases of malaria -- an excruciatingly painful and often fatal mosquito-borne fever. By March 2003, the same clinic had nine cases.
The difference? Targeted use of DDT.
That might outrage many Americans, who had it drummed into their heads that DDT was so dangerous as to have no redeeming value. But malaria, not DDT, has killed millions upon millions since the pesticide's banning in many countries.
"Yet what really merits outrage about DDT today," Rosenberg wrote, "is not that South Africa still uses it, as do about five other countries for routine malaria control and about 10 more for emergencies. It is that dozens more do not."
AIDS in Africa gets much of the attention today. But an African news agency reported that 60 percent of all illnesses in one African state were related to malaria, and about 25 percent of infant mortality and 30 percent of childhood deaths.
Many of those who recover have brain damage.
Hundreds of millions of people get malaria each year.
"During the rainy season in some parts of Africa," Rosenberg wrote, "entire villages of people lie in bed, shivering with fever, too weak to stand or eat. Many spend a good part of the year incapacitated, which cripples African economies.
"Yet DDT, the very insecticide that eradicated malaria in developed nations, has been essentially deactivated as a malaria-control tool today. The paradox is that sprayed in tiny quantities inside houses -- the only way anyone proposes to use it today -- DDT is most likely not harmful to people or the environment. Certainly, the possible harm from DDT is vastly outweighed by its ability to save children's lives.
"No one concerned about the environmental damage of DDT set out to kill African children. But various factors, chiefly the persistence of DDT's toxic image in the West and the disproportionate weight that American decisions carry worldwide, have conspired to make it essentially unavailable to most malarial nations."
How wrong, if so many people are suffering from our fear and ignorance.
Bill Gates should blow the lid off that too.
Comments
Why is Bill Gates even mentioned in this article? He's a wacko that "feels" DDT is the devil. This "evil drug" should be back on the market and available to any place that needs it.
Do Mosquitos have pheromones? Pheromone Traps have been used to erradicate the boll weevil and bring back King Cotton. Which had been in severe decline since the ban on DDT. Can a Mosquito Pheromone trap be used on mosquitos?
Great, A Billionaire Philanthropist is going to spread plagues to the Modern Countries of the world so they will foot the bill for 3rd world problems. Too bad he didn't get mugged when he stole the Idea for the Personal Computer from his college chums huh? It's amoot point anyway. Apple will overtake Microsoft in a few decades. Then maybe Gates will be just another geek with no morals.
DDT is long lasting and accumulates in the environment. It concentrates in fatty tissue including fish. DDT was linked to the decline of the eagle and other birds of prey in this country. Rachael Carson's book "Silent Spring" is the hallmark work of the environmental movement. Malaria is best addressed through coordinated public health projects not wholesale spraying of DDT on mosquito breeding waters. Spraying non-toxic oils that suffocate the mosquito larvae is one method of dealing with standing water that cannot be drained. Look at the fireant in Georgia. It does not causes human disease but is an invasive pest nonetheless. Myrex was sprayed over the entire state yet fireants persist. DDT would fail to fix the mosquito breeding problem, fail to prevent malaria, damage the environment, and contaminate the human food chain. If wholesale use use of DDT did not solve the problem, why do you think "targeted" use of the deadly pesticide would? From what rightwing, anti-environmental, anti-science think tank did you glean the stuff of this off the wall editorial, Augusta Chronicle editorial board? Don't tell me you were perusing old NY Times editorials and just happened across it.
No condors or no people....you decide.
That's what this editorial advocates, Cain. Targeted use of DDT is the answer as opposed to the wholesale broadcast spraying method of the past. Misuse of the product doesn't make the product at fault and removing the product that produces the best result certainly isn't the "environmental" way to go.
But in a poorly managed distribution system--think Third World African tribal villages with government supply trucks rolling through--targeted use of DDT is unlikely.
When I first lived in Indonesia a family member would spray the entire house with DDT before we retired for the evening. We climbed into beds that were totally covered by mosquito netting while smelling the pungent odor of DDT. None of us were ever affected negatively by DDT.
DDT(a pyrethroid)is a neurotoxicant that also has estrogen like and androgenergic properties. The main vector for malaria in Africa is the mosquito of the genus Anopheles gambiae. Unfortunately, there is increasing resistance to pyrethroids among this genus. There need to be less toxic, inexpensive methods of mosquito irradication than the spraying of DDT in homes (better nets,mosquito larvae eating fish, eliminating breeding environment, and they're studying a virus that may selectively attach the genus) especially since mosquito breeding doesn't occur in the home. If there was profit in anti-malarial drugs,(that is be able to sell it in the US for $30 a pill instead of poverty stricken areas) the pharmaceutical industry would be jumping all over next generation drugs.
You're right about that TechLover, money talks. The wealthier countries also had to deal with the mosquito and malaria problem. They did it with DDT, successfully. Then they decided is was icky. Again, using the chem properly is the answer. A minor change in the formula for the DDT deals with the resistance situation. Target use deals with the environmental issue.
mgr; That you know of. Folks smoke cigarettes all the time and show no immediate harmful effects. If you're daughter has pre-term labor, difficulty lactating, develops breast cancer, or your son develops larger breasts, has fertility problems(although it may decrease his chance for prostate cancer), think back to the spraying.
Tech, why don't you fund a non-profit drug company?
PT: Maybe that's one of the reasons the US has such a high cancer rate and so many people have infertility problems.
Targeted spraying of small amounts of DDT on individual residences has ENORMOUS benefits for malaria control. Yes, there will still be lots of mosquitoes around, because nobody is talking about soaking the entire forest in DDT. But those mosquitoes will not be in people's houses at night, biting them and passing along malaria. As one who has lived in regions other than North America, I can assure you that it is only the US government's prohibitions on using aid dollars to buy DDT, that keeps it from being use widely in those areas that most need it. If you ever saw somebody's 3-year-old die from malaria, you would punch Gates in the face for suggesting that mosquito netting is the answer... Consistent application of DDT is a barrier. Mosquito nets get holes. Let's drop the environmentalists, their Gap Kids-clad offspring, and their mosquito nets in Honduras or coastal Guyana with nothing more than what the locals have, and see if their attitudes toward DDT change sometime soon. "Silent Spring" was an unscientific, tug-at-the-heartstrings book that drew attention to a real problem that DOES NOT EXIST ANYMORE. People don't dance along behind the DDT truck anywhere in the world...
Scientist have sequenced the genomes of mosquito and parasite and numerous strategies are underway to control malaria. First is a number of vaccines are undergoing clinical trials and certain antibodies have been demonstrated to block infection. Mosquito ability to carry the parasite or the infectiousness of the parasite are being altered. Multistage immunity against malaria can be achieved by using viral vectors recombinant for merozoite surface protein-1. The vaccines should be available in the next five years. Actually mosquitos are a concern as carriers for a number of diseases so malaria is just the tip of the ice.
TechLover and Cain are wrong, DDT is a Chlorinated Hydrocarbon not a pyrethroid. Mosquitos that develop a resistance to DDT are still repelled by it reducing bites. "There never was any scientific evidence that DDT posed a risk to humans or wildlife. An EPA administrative law judge said as much after seven months and 9,000 pages of testimony about DDT in 1972. DDT wasn't responsible for the decline in bald eagle populations, didn't cause bird egg shell-thinning and didn't cause cancer in humans, the judge determined." "The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) now funds the indoor spraying of DDT in sub-Saharan Africa. Malaria kills more than one million Africans annually, mostly children under five and pregnant women." Go back to school Techlover and Cain, stop spreading lies and false information.
Remus...those 2 will NEVER admit being wrong.
Techlover? You've been called out.
Pheromone Traps did not erradicate the boll weevil they were detection devices in a over all Integrated Pest Management Plan.
Cultural practices for boll-weevil management include early planting, stimulating rapid plant growth and development, weed-management programs, using early-maturing varieties and stalk destruction after harvest to prevent overwintering. Infested fields determined by monitoring the traps are treated with malathion during the adult and diapause stages.
I don't know the why's and wherefore's of all this, but I do wish the neighbors with the pool would maintain it. I don't like mosquitoes and they seem to be around all year now. Hope the freeze cut some of their whiny little lives short.
Malaria, yellow fever, encephalitises, dengue, west nile, rift valley fever, etc. all carried by mosquitos. Gates is correct to bring up diseases people don't think are a threat each of which claims the lives of more than half a million people per year like: influenza, hepatitis, rotavirus, papillomavirus, malaria, HIV, tuberculosis, acute respiratory diseases, and diarrhea. Further there is a list of some 100 diseases that scientist predict could be easily "cured" within five years but they are rare so there is little interest nor funds to pursue these diseases. I predict emphatically malaria will be in check world-wide within ten years.
The obvious answer is tiny little mosquito condoms. Then give the mosquitoes the legal right of privacy so they can legalize abortion and perhaps keep the population in check. Gee-willikers Batman.
justthefacts, I'm a certified pesticide applicator in 5 different catagories with 25 years enforcing USDA, EPA, GDA and FIFRA laws and 2 years as a Vector Control contractor for the DOD in Afghanistan.
I did not call him out, I called him down!
Good Posits Uncle Remus.
He's is a she.....I think.
I wish the government would allow the use of DDT for standing water if the temperatures are 75 or above.
tech... The United States having fertility problems? Is that why this mom just had 8 of her 14 children?
Never use a pesticide that isn't labeled for a use.
Use Mosquito Dunks or Altosid to kill mosquito larva in standing water.These 2 products will not affect fish, birds, mammals or beneficial insects and last for about 30 days.
Why only 75 or above? Is this based on your scientific background....just like your expertise in Nuclear energy, willlistontownsc?
Willistontown....you once made the statement that Nuclear Power is dangerous, yet couldn't back up the statement with even ONE fact, so you really should keep your statements to yourself when they can so easily be refuted.
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