Tuesday, December 7, 2010
Is DDT Morally Right or Wrong?
Rachel Carson wrote a book called Silent Spring that details the relationship between man made chemical compounds and the environment. Through this book, much needed reform took place nationally as well as locally. It can even be said that Rachel Carson was a pioneer some 50 years before the modern day Green Movement. With these great changes, a new, unexpected issue arose in Africa. Every year between 350-500 million people die from Malaria with 90% of those being in Africa. Africa's moderate climate harbors a large constigency of the mosquito carriers.The most basic and effective treatment against this deadly disease is chemically treated netting, household and community wide insecticide spraying as well as periodic spraying. Should regulations be laxed in order to provide a more effective anti-malaria treatment?
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With DDT in heavy use, 4 million people died each year worldwide from malaria (1959-1960). When the U.S. banned DDT on crops in 1972, about 2 million people died annually from malaria. Today, fewer than 900,000 people die from malaria, worldwide.
ReplyDeleteDDT itself has no morals. It is morally wrong to tell fables about the powers of DDT, claiming it wipes out malaria, when the opposite is the case when we look at actual numbers.
Nets are more effective than DDT. DDT doesn't work in much of Africa, because the mosquitoes became resistant in the early 1960s, killing the WHO program to eradicate malaria, and a full half decade before the U.S. banned DDT. Is it your claim that the U.S. ban on DDT travels back in time?
By the way, the ban in the U.S. covered ONLY agricultural use. DDT manufacturing was then dedicated to export to Africa and Asia, for health campaigns. There never has been a shortage of DDT for anyone who wants to use it -- the U.S. cannot ban DDT use in other nations -- and even today, DDT is used where it is effective, under the provisions of the Persistent Organic Pollutants Treaty, which calls for the elimination of dangerous chemicals like DDT, but has a specific provision making it available to any government who wishe to use it to fight malaria.
Why would we relax regulations that are effective, and when their relaxation provides no benefits, but many drawbacks?