It has been long established that chemical pollutants may accumulate within biota (biological material, including that which composes a human being, contaminate food and water sources as well as affect the fitness of an organism with a high load and those who depend on it for food. Scientists call this "bioaccumulation". As organisms interlinked in food chains and food webs in a world of eating and being eaten nourish and reproduce themselves, pollutants may become magnified in potency from one generation to another, making those who were not there when the pollutant was introduced to suffer the effects more. This has been called "biomagnification". We have seen it, for example, in the descendants of the victims of the nuclear pollution that befell Nagasaki and Hiroshima in Japan when the 2nd World War allies decided to use atomic bombs to subdue the excessively militaristic Japanese.

Way back in 1979 M.W Holgate saw pollution as "the introduction by man into the environment of substances or energy [including information] liable to cause hazards to human health, harm to living resources [apparently soil is also regarded as living] and ecological damage or interfere with legitimate uses of the environment [including the house environment]. We cannot deny that DDT fits this very well. In fact long ago the European Economic Community (EEC) placed DDT on what it called The Black List", which includes the most dangerous toxic substances. There is no evidence yet to show that the EEC has changed its stance towards DDT. The less dangerous substances were placed on the EEC Grey List, but definitely DDT is not on this list.

As for the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), long ago, almost simultaneously with EEC's creation of The Black List and The Grey List, it established a List of 129 chemicals, which it named "Priority Pollutants". These it considered dangerously poisonous. DDT is on this list together with other popular pesticides in Africa that include Aldrin, Dieldrin, Endrin Aldehyde, Endosulfan Sulphate, Toxaphene, Heptachlor and Heptachlor Epoxide. All these are called Polychlorinated Biphenyls or BCBs. They were first synthesized around 1880. They are characterised by their stability, and have found widespread use in industry as solvents, coolants and sealants particularly in the paint, print and electrical industries (where they were extensively used in transformers). They actually show complete stability (or recalcitrance) in the environment once introduced purposely or by accident.

DDT is extremely recalcitrant in the environment, taking 3-15 years to degrade. That is, it is not biodegradable, unlike the herbicide 2,4-D that was to be used (or was clandestinely used?) to wage the chemical warfare against water hyacinth and is biodegradable and, if applied at recommended field rates is removed from the environment over a period of 2-4 weeks.

Now, the ten million dollar question: where do we go from here with the DDT debate? Well, while it has been easy for Government to bull-dose even dangerous projects, often ill-conceived projects, we should not ignore why the EEC and USA where Pesticide Companies removed, will not and have not reintroduced DDT in their environments.

All human knowledge, experience and history is a depository of useful information that we can gain from. It pays if we are not the first ones to de-link the past dangerous performance of DDT from its most likely macabre performance today and tomorrow if reintroduced in Uganda. We have had enough embarrassment in development dynamics in general and the heath sector in particular as a result of failed white elephant projects.

The effects of DDT on animals (and we are animals too biologically speaking) are already well documented. We know that in the 1960s, DDT contributed to substantial reduction in populations of fish and bird carnivores. Even if we have little except circumstantial evidence concerning its effect on human beings, it is good to ask: if other beings made up of organic matter can and have been affected by DDT, how can man be the exception?

True, no immediate and drastic DDT effects on humans are known. Not even long-term effects, perhaps because it was abruptly withdrawn from the market and may be no one wanted to invest on long-term research on the compound. But there are warning signs which we should all see - the decision makers and those for whom decisions are being made without their participation. DDT and its breakdown products have been found to be abnormally high in the fat of hospital patients who have died from such causes as brain softening, cerebral haemorrhage, hypertension and certain types of cancer (Ron Elsdon, 1981, "Science, the Bible and the Environment", Inter-varsity Press).

Unfortunately, I think, we have no information about Ugandans of the other generation who may have been impacted by DDT this way in the other Century. Many are still around and I am one of them. Neither is there evidence that an attempt was made to gather long-term information that would have served as a foundation for our decision makers on Uganda becoming the first country to reintroduce DDT.

Let it not emerge that the push for DDT is not the work of multinational corporations dealing in pesticides, perhaps with the help of the World Bank. We have suffered a lot in the past by succumbing to similar pressures without any questioning. Consequently and continuously we have been used as guinea pigs and emerged as "the unimportant people" of the 21st Century. Do you remember the testing of a drug from France on our children towards the end of the 1980s or there about ostensibly to immunise them against poliomyelitis? Do you remember many dying or getting maimed as a result?

At least I have the example of an Old Boy of mine (University of Dar-es-Salaam), Dr. Gerald Mutumba of Botany Department whose son became deranged as a result of the impact of the drug but has never been compensated for the calamity by the Ministry of Health, which sanctioned the drug, the French Company that manufactured it or the World Bank or World Health Organisation (WHO) that funded the white elephant project. The family has suffered a lot. Those families which lost their children are suffering in anguish but no talk of compensation. And now in comes DDT once again! My God! For how long will Ugandans continue to be guinea pigs? Who will lead us in the crusade to recover our human dignity and be part of the respectable humanity of the 21st Century?

I am sure at this stage everyone wants to know my environmental viewpoint. Here it is. Forget the DDT option. It will not defeat the Anopheles mosquito and malaria like it didn't in the past.

Try the environmental means of manipulating the environment to deny the Anopheles female mosquito breeding sites. There is a tendency for female mosquito to enter houses between 6.30 and 7.00 pm. Use education to teach citizens about the value of locking windows and doors during this time. However, without proper housing, which is the case in Uganda today, the latter might be difficult to apply. But I may unwillingly accept sterilization of male mosquito sperms so that their attempts at mating result in reproductive failure.

The male mosquito, remember, has a right to mate as much as humans do! What about biodiversity? Natural dilemma of eating and being eaten! Finally the environment would require all of us to be there until Jesus comes back to save all God's Creation! Isn't this what God wanted it to be in the Garden of Aden: all his creation to be there under human stewardship?