On her Earth Day show, Oprah mentioned the banning of DDT as one of the successes of the Earth Day movement.
The banning of DDT is another example where our reflexes have been trained and our brains have been disengaged. To question the validity of the DDT ban has been conditioned to be a bad thing. We nod our heads in agreement that the ban is a good thing and go on with living our lives.
But, this Wall Street Journal editorial, DDT and Population Control, from today presents a different perspective.
Earth Day founder Gaylord Nelson, a U.S. Senator from Wisconsin, was a leading opponent of the insecticide DDT, which remains the cheapest and most effective way to combat malarial mosquitoes. Rachel Carson’s 1962 book, “Silent Spring,” misleadingly linked pesticides to cancer and is generally credited with popularizing environmental awareness.
Today, malaria still claims about one million lives every year—mostly women and children in sub-Saharan Africa. There’s no evidence that spraying the chemical inside homes in the amounts needed to combat the disease harms humans, animals or the environment. Yet DDT remains severely underutilized in the fight against malaria because the intellectual descendants of Senator Nelson continue to hold sway at the World Health Organization and other United Nations agencies.
So, to put this in terms that the Left may better understand, why is Oprah against something that can save 1 million lives a year? If it is true that DDT can save 1 million lives a year without causing harm, then why are we so closed minded to this? Perhaps its because we don’t see the faces of the those 1 million people a year that die from malaria.
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