The rotten fruit of junk science

Ed Iverson | 18 Apr 2023
Lahontan Valley News Fanatical environmentalists prevent impoverished nations from using the very technologies that developed countries employed to become rich, comfortable and free of disease.

So charges Paul Driessen, in his recent book, "Eco-Imperialism: Green Power, Black Death." He goes on to say, "Well-fed, affluent bureaucrats of the E.U., the U.N., the U.S., and any number of environmental protection groups force their unfounded radical views on developing nations.

"This is not another denunciation of the myth of global warming. Although as tempting a target as ever, we hurry on today. Driessen's book asserts that DDT is the only effective tool in the renewed battle against the killer disease, malaria. Furthermore, the link between DDT and thinning egg shells of eagles is quite tenuous.

Driessen agrees with Patrick Moore (founder of Greenpeace), who now concludes that environmentalists have become so entrenched in dogma and so committed to a vision of a world without people that they summarily ignore the suffering, famine, disease and death of millions.

According to the World Health Organization, malaria kills millions of people every year. The majority of these are pregnant women or children under 5 years of age. In his report "Emerging Infectious Diseases," WHO official Thomas C. Nchinda documented a recent upsurge of malaria.

In the last decade, the prevalence of malaria has escalated at an alarming rate, especially in Africa. WHO estimates 300 to 500 million cases each year cause 1.5 to 2.7 million deaths. Nchinda says that kids under 5 account for more than 90 percent of the deaths.

Here is a compelling image: the chairman of Malaria Foundation International says that the malaria epidemic "is like loading up seven Boeing 747 airliners with kids each day, then deliberately crashing them into Mt. Kilimanjaro."

DDT was the primary reason that rates of malaria around the world declined dramatically after World War II. Nearly 1 million Indians died from malaria in 1945, but DDT spraying reduced this to a few thousand by 1960. Enter Rachel Carson. The unfounded alarmism of which her book "Silent Spring" is representative worked to suppress DDT. Malaria is back with a vengeance.

Only countries such as Ecuador that have continued to use DDT have contained or reduced malaria.
Driessen's meticulously footnoted book proves that where DDT is used, malaria deaths plummet.

Where it is not used, they skyrocket. In South Africa, the most developed African nation, malaria was long held below 10,000 cases annually by the careful use of DDT. In 1996, environmentalist pressure bullied program directors into dumping DDT. An appalling epidemic ensued, amounting to almost 62,000 cases in 2000. One year after a hasty reintroduction of DDT, malaria cases plummeted by 80 percent. Next door in Mozambique (no DDT), malaria rates remain stratospheric.

Western officials, cuckolded by trendy environmentalism, promote "safe alternatives." There is Lariam, the leading malaria drug. It costs $8 for one pill, an enormous sum for poor countries that must somehow deal not only with malaria but also with water-borne diseases, AIDS and other health needs. Environmentalists demand a safe insecticide be used to replace DDT. That might be Propoxur. It is the only insecticide known to be remotely as effective as DDT. Problem? Propoxur costs 23 times as much as DDT. Paul Driessen concludes that only very rich countries can afford to be fussy about the unsubstantiated effect of DDT on raptors' reproduction.

I admire science. I spent an important part of my life teaching high school science. I detest the prostitution of science. When science is forced to support the ever-tightening grip of statist power, that is not science. That is junk science. When science is tortured and twisted in order to serve the purposes of arrogant eco-tyrants, that is not science. That is junk science. Science saves lives.

Junk science kills poor, defenseless kids. Haughty environmentalists don't care as long as their anti-human agenda isn't threatened. Called upon to serve the elitist ambitions of wealthy, angst-ridden busy-bodies, junk science destroys national economies, makes slaves out of free men and is deadly to millions of kids.

https://www.lahontanvalleynews.com/article/20070418/Opinion/104180028