THE "FEELGOOD" DDT BAN: THE GREENS ARE NEARLY AS GENOCIDAL AS THE REDS

They're not as genocidal as socialists but did you know that greens/ecologists are responsible for 50 million preventable deaths?

YUP: THEY'RE "FEELGOOD" POLICY BANNING DDT HAS NO BENEFICIAL EFFECT EXCEPT TO MAKE THEM FEELGOOD ABOUT THEMSELVES FOR THE MISTAKEN BELIEF/DELUSION THAT THEY'RE DOING GOOD WHEN THEY REALLY AIN'T AT ALL.

• THIS IS A VERY VERY BASIC COMPONENT OF LEFTIST PSYCHOLOGY:

• WHETHER IT'S "PEACE MARCHES" OR KYOTO OR CARBON TRADING OR DRIVING A PRIUS - OR THE NEW PROPOSED CAFE STANDARDS:

• THEY FAVOR POLICIES AND DO THINGS WHICH HAVE NO POSITIVE EFFECT IN THE REAL WORLD EXCEPT TO MAKE THEM FEEL GOOD ABOUT THEMSELVES.

CASE IN POINT:

(BTW: NIC KRISTOF AGREES WITH THIS) WSJ EDITORIAL:

In 2006, after 25 years and 50 million preventable deaths, the World Health Organization reversed course and endorsed widespread use of the insecticide DDT to combat malaria.

So much for that.

Earlier this month, the U.N. agency quietly reverted to promoting less effective methods for attacking the disease.

The result is a victory for politics over public health, and millions of the world's poor will suffer as a result.

... Most malarial deaths occur in sub-Saharan Africa, where chloroquine once worked but started failing in the 1970s as the parasite developed resistance. Even if the drugs were still effective in Africa, they're expensive and thus impractical for one of the world's poorest regions. That's not an argument against chloroquine, bed nets or other interventions. But it is an argument for continuing to make DDT spraying a key part of any effort to eradicate malaria, which kills about a million people -- mainly children -- every year. Nearly all of this spraying is done indoors, by the way, to block mosquito nesting at night. It is not sprayed willy-nilly in jungle habitat.

It's no coincidence that WHO officials were joined by the head of the U.N. Environment Program to announce the new policy. There's no evidence that spraying DDT in the amounts necessary to kill dangerous mosquitoes imperils crops, animals or human health. But that didn't stop green groups like the Pesticide Action Network from urging the public to celebrate World Malaria Day last month by telling "the U.S. to protect children and families from malaria without spraying pesticides like DDT inside people's homes."

"We must take a position based on the science and the data," said WHO's malaria chief, Arata Kochi, in 2006. "One of the best tools we have against malaria is indoor residual spraying. Of the dozen or so insecticides WHO has approved as safe for house spraying, the most effective is DDT." Mr. Kochi was right then, even if other WHO officials are now bowing to pressure to pretend otherwise.

FACT: THE LEFT - BOTH GREENS AND REDS - HAVE KILLED MORE PEOPLE THAN ANYTHING IN HUMAN HISTORY - EXCEPT ISLAM.

UPDATE: FOR THE LAZY - WHO HAVE NEVER READ KRISTOF ON DDT AND WON'T GOOGLE IT UP THEMSELVES:

January 8, 2005

OP-ED COLUMNIST

It's Time to Spray DDT

If the U.S. wants to help people in tsunami-hit countries like Sri Lanka and Indonesia - not to mention other poor countries in Africa - there's one step that would cost us nothing and would save hundreds of thousands of lives.

It would be to allow DDT in malaria-ravaged countries.

I'm thrilled that we're pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into the relief effort, but the tsunami was only a blip in third-world mortality. Mosquitoes kill 20 times more people each year than the tsunami did, and in the long war between humans and mosquitoes it looks as if mosquitoes are winning.

One reason is that the U.S. and other rich countries are siding with the mosquitoes against the world's poor - by opposing the use of DDT.

"It's a colossal tragedy," says Donald Roberts, a professor of tropical public health at Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences. "And it's embroiled in environmental politics and incompetent bureaucracies."

In the 1950's, 60's and early 70's, DDT was used to reduce malaria around the world, even eliminating it in places like Taiwan. But then the growing recognition of the harm DDT can cause in the environment - threatening the extinction of the bald eagle, for example - led DDT to be banned in the West and stigmatized worldwide. Ever since, malaria has been on the rise.

The poor countries that were able to keep malaria in check tend to be the same few that continued to use DDT, like Ecuador.

Similarly, in Mexico, malaria rose and fell with the use of DDT.

South Africa brought back DDT in 2000, after a switch to other pesticides had led to a surge in malaria, and now the disease is under control again. The evidence is overwhelming: DDT saves lives.

But most Western aid agencies will not pay for anti-malarial programs that use DDT, and that pretty much ensures that DDT won't be used. Instead, the U.N. and Western donors encourage use of insecticide-treated bed nets and medicine to cure malaria.

Bed nets and medicines are critical tools in fighting malaria, but they're not enough.

The existing anti-malaria strategy is an underfinanced failure, with malaria probably killing 2 million or 3 million people each year.

DDT doesn't work everywhere. It wasn't nearly as effective in West African savannah as it was in southern Africa, and it's hard to apply in remote villages. And some countries, like Vietnam, have managed to curb malaria without DDT.

But overall, one of the best ways to protect people is to spray the inside of a hut, about once a year, with DDT. This uses tiny amounts of DDT - 450,000 people can be protected with the same amount that was applied in the 1960's to a single 1,000-acre American cotton farm.

Is it safe? DDT was sprayed in America in the 1950's as children played in the spray, and up to 80,000 tons a year were sprayed on American crops. There is some research suggesting that it could lead to premature births, but humans are far better off exposed to DDT than exposed to malaria.

I called the World Wildlife Fund, thinking I would get a fight. But Richard Liroff, its expert on toxins, said he could accept the use of DDT when necessary in anti-malaria programs.

"South Africa was right to use DDT," he said. "If the alternatives to DDT aren't working, as they weren't in South Africa, geez, you've got to use it. In South Africa it prevented tens of thousands of malaria cases and saved lots of lives."

At Greenpeace, Rick Hind noted reasons to be wary of DDT, but added: "If there's nothing else and it's going to save lives, we're all for it. Nobody's dogmatic about it."

So why do the U.N. and donor agencies, including the U.S. Agency for International Development, generally avoid financing DDT programs?

The main obstacle seems to be bureaucratic caution and inertia. President Bush should cut through that and lead an effort to fight malaria using all necessary tools - including DDT.

One of my most exhilarating moments with my children came when we were backpacking together and spotted a bald eagle. It was a tragedy that we nearly allowed DDT to wipe out such magnificent birds, and we should continue to ban DDT in the U.S.

But it's also tragic that our squeamishness about DDT is killing more people in poor countries, year in and year out, than even a once-in-a-century tsunami.

Malaria kills more people in Africa than aids, but aids gets the $.

Why!?

Because of politicS. The media is leftists and homophilic.

And using DDT doesn't make them feel good.

The best way to save the most lives from ALL HARM is to eradicate leftism - green, red - all of it.