For years, some
of us have argued that the 1972 ban on DDT, and the subsequent abandonment of
the pesticide across much of the world, was responsible for the resurgence of
malaria in areas where it was once nearly eradicated. We’ve lamented the death
toll created by the environmental hysteria and warned that the same thing might
happen again.
Now we get some
confirmation of our suspicions from none other than the Director-General of the
World Health Organization, Dr. Margaret Chan, describing the cause of the Zika outbreak in South America.
Above
all, the spread of Zika, the resurgence of dengue, and the emerging threat from
chikungunya are the price being paid for a massive policy failure that dropped
the ball on mosquito control in the 1970s.
“Dropped the
ball”? That’s a bit of an evasion, because it wasn’t exactly an accident. It
was policy.
Following the ban on DDT in the U.S., the WHO turned against the strategy of
fighting malaria by way of “vector control” (i.e., killing disease-carrying
mosquitos) using DDT. Like a lot of decisions that led to disaster, you can
find evidence of that policy mostly in negative form, by noticing attempts by
the authorities to disavow it.
‘Dropped the ball’ is a bit of an evasion, because it wasn’t exactly
an accident. It was policy.
So when the WHO officially accepted the limited use of DDT
10 years ago, The Washington Post noted: “The World Health Organization reversed a
30-year-old policy yesterday and declared its support for indoor use of the
pesticide DDT to control mosquitoes in regions where malaria is a major health
problem.” Go back 30 years from 2006, and you get 1976, which is precisely the
time when Dr. Chan says WHO “dropped the ball.” What an amazing coincidence.
Anthony Fauci of
the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases is a little blunter
in spelling out exactly how the mosquitos that carry malaria,
dengue, and now Zika were once eradicated.
Years
ago, in the fifties and the sixties, Brazil itself made a very aggressive
attempt to eliminate the Aedes aegypti mosquito. They did it successfully but
they did it in a way that would be almost non-feasible today — very heavy use
of DDT, very aggressive use going into homes, essentially, spraying in homes,
cleaning up areas, things that I think the general public would not be amenable
to accepting. So, it can be done. But historically it was done in a way that
might not be acceptable now.
It doesn’t take
much reading between the lines to see what Fauci is saying by omission. He doesn’t say that DDT is
“non-feasible” for reasons that are scientific, or economic, or medical. The
whole reason DDT was originally popular is precisely because it isn’t toxic.
No, the only reason it is “non-feasible” is because “the general public would
not be amenable.” And why wouldn’t it be amenable? Because of 50 years
of environmentalist propaganda telling everyone that DDT is some kind of
super-toxin that will destroy life on earth.
(No, really.
Rachel Carson ended “Silent Spring” by describing pesticides in particular and
technology in general as a “superhighway” luring us toward “disaster” while
touting her agenda, in typically understated environmentalist rhetoric, as “our
last, our only chance to reach a destination that assures the preservation of
our earth.”)
Why is Fauci
talking specifically about what happened in Brazil? Because Zika is now
established there, mosquito-borne. While the disease has little impact on
healthy adults, it can cause severe birth defects when contracted by expectant
mothers. In a few months, thousands of athletes and spectators will go to
Brazil from around the world for the Olympic games; then they will all go back
to their home countries. The 2016 Olympics is one giant potential disease
vector pointing everywhere, so you can see why the problem of mosquito control
takes on a certain urgency.
So why not just
admit that the hysteria whipped up over DDT was wrong? Because this was the
founding issue of the environmentalist movement. Rachel Carson’s “Silent
Spring” was the first book to convince the common man that “chemicals” are scary and that modern industry and
technology were going to destroy us. Banning DDT was the first triumph of the
environmentalist movement in using political pressure to override scientific
skepticism and impose its agenda by force.
To admit that it was wrong, and that its error cost
millions of lives, would be to admit that its noble cause was fatally flawed
from the beginning — and that maybe it’s wrong once again (and again) with its newest crusade. And that this, too, might
end up having a cost measured in human lives.
