News
Articles for December 2005
Select Month

Brazil Could Turn a Trade Victory Into Defeat  - MARY ANASTASIA O'GRADY
Mary Anastasia O'Grady writes of Brazil's tactics at the WTO and its history on TRIPS and AIDS drug prices, quoting the AFM and AEI paper on Brazil's AIDS treatment program.

ASTMH Presentations on DDT  -
Download the presentations made by Richard Tren & Katy French at the recent ASTMH session on DDT and IRS

AFM Media Release on USAID policy changes  -
USAID has announced signficant changes to its malaria control program. See AFM's media release and commentary here.

New Drug Mix Against Malaria Is Announced  - Don McNeil
Sanofi Aventis have now developed a single dose artemesinin-based combination therapy which spells good news for malaria patients.

Malaria initiative develops cheap pill treatments  - Maggie Fox
Couple the use of artemisinin-based drugs with an effective malaria control program using DDT and we could substantially reduce the number of people infected with malaria each year.

Carson's bridge to malaria  - Dimitri Vassilaros
Allegheny bridge has been renamed to honour Rachel Carson - author of "Silent Spring". This move is both unfortunate and inappropriate. Millions of people, mainly women and children, die each year beacuse of the junk science surrounding DDT.

Zimbabwe to commemorate Malaria Week  -
Zimbabwe will commemorate SADC Malaria week this week, more than two weeks after the start of the traditional malaria season...

Bukenya pleads for DDT use  - Vision Reporter
Vice-President Prof. Gilbert Bukenya has appealed to the international community to support Uganda’s fight to eradicate malaria, including the use of DDT against mosquitoes.

Stop the Rachel Carson Bridge  - Junk Science Action Alert!
The Allegheny County Council (Pennsylvania) will meet today (Dec. 6) to rename its Ninth Street Bridge in honor of Silent Spring author Rachel Carson whose junk science-fueled crusade against DDT has helped condemn tens of millions of the world's poor to death and sickness from malaria. Given the fact that millions of people in developing countries have died from malaria as a result of Carson's junk science on DDT, we think this move would be outrageous and unacceptable.

Tackling Malaria the DDT Way  - Dr. Matthias Offoboche
Dr. Matthias Offoboche, a former Deputy Governor of the old Cross Rivers State calls for Nigeria to start IRS with DDT in order to tackle malaria.

Doctors warn of misusing malaria drug  - Jessica Berman
Scientists are concerned that a new and effective anti-malaria drug has started to show signs of resistance in Africa. They are concerned about the misuse of the drug, artemisinin and what that could mean for the treatment of malaria.

Africa must engage directly in fight against malaria  - Wen Kilama
Until an effective vaccine is developed to prevent malaria, countries should adopt a well-managed IRS program using DDT. It has proven to be the most effective and least costly intervention available – it has the potential to save countless lives and prevent millions of unnecessary bouts of illness.

A Vital Weapon Against HIV/Aids  - C. Payne Lucas
The worldwide destruction brought on by HIV/Aids cannot be overcome by an after-the-fact crisis management approach. We need a war mindset. The pandemic calls for a multi-pronged attack, especially in Africa, where the havoc has been most disastrous and threatens to undo 50 years of hard-won progress in public health, education, and development ....

Fighting Malaria

There's an important new coalition in Washington, and it's designed not to stop the Miers nomination, but to stop malarial mosquitoes. It's a coalition that lives by the law of the jungle: Kill them before they kill you. The "Kill Malarial Mosquitoes Now" coalition insists, "We will fight furiously for every human life now hanging in the balance as a function of current, myopic, errant and unconscionable U.S. malaria control policies."

The KMMN coalition's story begins with big numbers, a little climatology and a bit of entomology. The numbers: Some 500 million cases of malaria occur worldwide every year, and 1 million people die, nine-tenths of them in Africa. The disease is the leading murderer of Africans under five -- it kills a young child every 30 seconds -- and survivors often suffer brain damage.

The climate fact is simple: Africa is a hot continent. That's relevant here because the process of transmitting malaria begins when a mosquito bites someone already infected and ingests the malarial parasite. Over a two-week period -- but one that goes faster when it's hot -- the parasite goes through a transformation called sporogony. Once it occurs, the mosquito can infect others. The curious part is that the life span of the mosquito is also two weeks, so in cool areas mosquitoes typically die just before they become infectious -- but in Africa they bite first, die later.

The entomology -- study of insects -- explains why Africa is hit harder by malaria than, say, India. It takes two human bites in a row -- one for the mosquito to ingest the parasite, the other two weeks later to infect another person -- for malaria to be transmitted. In India, the predominant mosquito type prefers to bite cattle -- but in Africa, mosquitoes almost always bite humans. The result is that malaria can be transmitted in Africa nine times more readily than in India.

The United States has been contributing about $200 million per year to Africa's war on malaria. Four months ago, President Bush promised an additional $1.2 billion over five years in U.S. anti-malaria funding. But last week, a coalition of 100 doctors, scientists and activists said that anti-malaria funds up to now have been misspent.

The KMMN coalition -- which includes eminent malaria experts and public health specialists, the former U.S. Navy surgeon general, the national chairman of the Congress of Racial Equality, a co-founder of Greenpeace, the president of the National Black Chamber of Commerce and the president of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons -- says most of the annual $200 million goes to advising African governments on how to combat malaria, not on actual combat.

The KMMN coalition says that none of that money goes for the most effective weapon: the insecticide DDT, which eradicated malaria in Europe and the United States more than half a century ago, but was banned in the United States in 1972 because of its supposed environmental effects. Soon, the World Health Organization and the U.S. Agency for International Development cut out DDT from its programs.

Author-physician Michael Crichton described the results of the DDT ban this way: "It has killed more people than Hitler." That's because trying to stop every human-stinging mosquito is a dead man's game. They will find a way in. And during the three decades since DDT disappeared from the disease-fighting weapon rack, we've learned that the insecticide does not thin birds' eggshells dangerously or cause cancer among humans. Infants nursing when there's been heavy DDT spraying may gain weight a little more slowly than others, but that's a lot better than dying from malaria.

And that's why the KMMN declaration arose last week. It responds to residual concerns about DDT's environmental effects by calling for its use only for indoor spraying and not for aerial or any other form of outdoor application. But that's the only proposed compromise: With malarial mosquitoes, it's kill or be killed.

Townhall.com

Download the Kill Malarial Mosquitoes Now declaration (pdf document)