Here's a question that High School science teachers might want to include in their next pop quiz: Which of the following megalomaniacs caused the greatest amount of death and destruction in the 20th Century?
A- Josef Stalin
B- Adolf Hitler
C- Pol Pot
D- Rachel Carson
Here's a hint. The lies and distortions of the criminal in question resulted in more death, disease, poverty and misery than the other three combined.
The correct answer is critical to the understanding of how environmental science has evolved in the last forty years. With all the media jabbering about Globalism in 2006 one very dramatic development seems to have been overlooked. Last Summer The World Health Organization (WHO) said "Never Mind" and lifted its thirty year ban on the pesticide DDT. I could say better late than never, but I've never been accused of being overly charitable. No single act has done more to keep half the world's population imprisoned in the grip of poverty than the DDT ban. No class of people have done more to extend the misery of those living in the developing world than American and Western European environmental elitists.
Rachel Carson, the Joan of Arc of environmentalism, along with her enthusiastic accomplices at CBS News, willfully misrepresented and distorted the facts in her 1962 bestseller and subsequent CBS documentary, The Silent Spring. In doing so, she provided the instruction manual for all the environmental zealots that followed: Begin with a premise (pesticides are evil) then distort or fabricate the data to support it. The Aububon Society, Greenpeace, Earth First and their cheerleaders have all followed the strategy to perfection, even to the point of stifling dissenting voices, as demonstrated by Senators Rockefeller and Snowe just last week.
For those of us living in the comfort and security of the Industrialized World the results have been negligible. For the forgotten and invisible hundreds of millions who live beyond our view, the consequences have not been so benign. Malaria, a preventable parasitic condition which had long been in decline, is now the leading cause of disease and premature death. Worse, its social effects have been exponential, placing a tight lid on economic development so that even those not afflicted are condemned to a continuing cycle of grinding poverty. Governments have been held hostage to WHO extortion. Thailand defied the DDT ban throughout the 1980s and early 1990s and malaria there virtually disappeared. Finally, they could could no longer resist as the flow of United Nations aid dried up and the incidence of malaria slowly but surely rose again.
So now, the WHO has taken their "Mulligan" and admitted that maybe they were wrong about DDT. Nice try guys. Tell the families of the dead that you're sorry. Tell the mothers who wake up every morning wondering if this is the day that they will have to decide which of their children survive until sunset that you tried your best. More importantly, convince the world that those who have been so wrong about so much for so long should now be trusted, again. How many more will die needlessly in the 21st Century if we blindly follow today's environmental elitists?
19 comments:
Rachel Carson? The world's worst megalomaniac? Now this is funny material. Why mention the facts you left out of your twisted piece when we can die of laughter.
Antimalarial drugs are designed to prevent or treat malaria. There are many of these drugs currently on the market. Here is a partial list.
Antimalarial drugs currently used for treatment
mefloquine (Lariam ®)
chloroquine
fansidar (pyrimethamine, sulfadoxine)
amodiaquine
quinine/quinidine
artemisinin/artemether/artesunate
atovaquone
lumefatrine
Antimalarial drugs currently used for prophylaxis
mefloquine
chloroquine
proguanil
pyrimethamine (daraprim)
doxycycline
hydroxychloroquine (Plaquenil)
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antimalarial_drug"
Dear anonymous (both),
I named Ms. Carson as one of many megalomaniacs, not the world's worst. For that title there are too many candidates to list. She is, however, the 20th Century's greatest mass murderer.
Which one of the compunds you've cited will prevent the infected insect from biting in the first place. Treatments for malaria can only reduce the symptoms. The parasite remains. And please explain to infected veterans from WW II, Korea and Viet Nam who took their quinine pills religiously how effective they are as a preventive. Not that I expect anything worthwhile from someone that cites Wikipedia as a reference.
Lastly, if there are so many available remedies, why did the WHO lift the DDT ban?
Don't jump into the deep end if you can't swim.
Had your column forwarded to me. Rachel Carson is the mother of the Environmental Protection Agency. By equating warnings of environmental poisoning to genocide, you make a common school boy mistake: that local effects on natural systems are immune from catastophic consequences. Mosquito nets cost less than DDT, and instead of poisoning rivers, they can catch fish. Rachel died from exposure to DDT while conducting her studies. Look up the statistics on birth defects.
great detective work: comparing rachel carson to joseph stalin.
to what great institution of higher learning do we owe your intellect?
Long before I arrived at an institution of higher learning, the NYC public education system, elementary level, taught me how to analyze data without bias, cite references, express my opninion and sign my name.
That same public education system also taught me how to spell Josef and write a coherent sentence.
To tmcarson,
I never said that local effects on natural systems cannot have catastropic consequences.
In this instance fear of local effects had worldwide catastrophic consequences: tens of millions of deaths and hundreds of millions of human beings struck with delibilitating diseases.
Yes, equating it with genocide is hyperbole, but those many millions are just as dead.
The WHO had been advocating mosquito nets for three decades. Even they had to admit they were mistaken.
I've used mosquito nets and I do a lot of fishing. Mosquito nets are not dual use technology.
Rachel Carson died in 1964 after a long struggle with breast cancer.
Apparently not "random musings."
Following article by Steve Jalsevac. Note: "Controlled indoor spraying" of DDT is now being allowed by the World Health Organization. Not the aerial spraying of Rachel Carson's time.
Otherwise, names and structure strangely familiar. Should give credit.
"Finally an End to Massive Genocide Caused by Environmental Extremists’ DDT Ban
Eugenics, population control likely cause of ignoring of millions of malaria deaths"
By Steve Jalsevac
Sept. 27, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – In his August 16, 2006 LifeSiteNews.com Special Report, Green Hands Dipped In Blood: The DDT Genocide, John Jalsevac exposed what may have been the worst crime of the 20th century, exceeding perhaps even the many millions of deaths caused by the Nazi’s or the horrific mass killings of Stalin or Mao Tse Tung.
The current cause celebre of AIDS has caused nowhere near the perhaps 80 million deaths that have resulted so far in large part from the 30 year ban on the use of DDT to prevent malaria.
Finally, recent news is that, despite still intense objections by environmental extremists, controlled indoor spraying of DDT is finally again being incorporated into the malaria control programs of such agencies as USAID and the World Health Organization (WHO).
In her article, Winning the War on Malaria, Ugandan Fiona Kobusingyer-Boynesin relates that “Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore, and hundreds of doctors, disease experts, religious leaders and human rights advocates signed a declaration, demanding that substantial money be spent on Artemisinin (ACT) drugs, insecticide-treated bednets and indoor spraying with DDT.” Their pleas, and those of others, have finally produced results.
Kobusingyer-Boynesin states that DDT has proven to be by far the best weapon against malaria. She reports it can reduce malaria by 75% in some areas and together with the use of new ACT drugs, South Africa, following a spraying and ACT drug program, has reduced its malaria rates by 95% in the past three years.
So, the huge question is why was DDT banned for the past 30 years when the ban so obviously led to many millions of deaths and horrible suffering for up to a billion mostly poor, third-world citizens? How can environmentalists, being aware of the overwhelming evidence that DDT spraying could have prevented most of that suffering, still so cruelly oppose rescinding the genocidal ban of the past 30 years?
In his article, Call for DDT Opponents to be Held Accountable for Millions of Preventable Malaria Deaths, Steven Milloy reveals that the ban was based on what he calls junk science, or in other words, scientific argument with little or no validity.
He begins by stating that “Rachel Carson kicked-off DDT hysteria with her pseudo-scientific 1962 book Silent Spring. Carson materially misrepresented DDT science in order to advance her anti-pesticide agenda.” Milloy then takes to task the Audubon Society, the Sierra Club, Environmental Defense, WHO and especially “then-Environmental Protection Agency administrator William Ruckelshaus who actually banned DDT after ignoring an EPA administrative law judge's ruling that there was no evidence indicating that DDT posed any sort of threat to human health or the environment.”
Milloy calls for accountability for the massive death and suffering. He states, “Much of this human catastrophe was preventable, so why did it happen? Who is responsible? Should the individuals and activist groups who caused the DDT ban be held accountable in some way?”
What Milloy does not answer in his current essay, however, deliberate junk science aside, is why have the environments have been so extremely insistent that DDT be banned regardless of the resulting catastrophic suffering and loss of life. That answer, carefully researched, is explained in John Jalsevac's 2005 Special Report.
The Report notes “one of the most revealing quotations related to the issue at hand is another by Charles Wurster, who was reported to have said in 1971, after it was pointed out to him by a reporter that the widespread usage of the pesticide DDT saved lives: “So what? People are the main cause of our problems. We have too many of them. We need to get rid of some of them…”’
And that brings us to the likely real reason for the devastation – an ingrained, obstinate and deadly eugenics and population control mentality among many of the leading environmentalists and world elite. A mentality that considers preserving a rain forest or a group of gorillas or a species of bird or insect above protecting the lives of poor, third world humans. Nothing else seems to explain the cold-hearted opposition to DDT and there is plenty of evidence to support such a conclusion as junkscience.com has also related in previous articles.
Between 1945 and 1965, DDT saved millions of lives around the world.
What it was not, of course, was a sustainable success. As Carson pointed out, patiently, DDT resistant mosquitoes will emerge and begin to dominate, by way of natural selection, given mass spraying. Which is of course what happened. The funding eventually ran out, the mass spraying itself ran into problems with the animals it was killing, and DDT resistant mosquitoes emerged. On the right, there is a sort of synergy between anti-darwinism and anti-Carsonism –the idea being that natural selection doesn’t exist. It does. So does extinction. It’s a jungle out there.
It was in this same period that Rachel Carson published "Silent Spring," taking aim at the environmental consequences of DDT. "The world has heard much of the triumphant war against disease through the control of insect vectors of infection," she wrote, "but it has heard little of the other side of the story--the defeats, the short-lived triumphs that now strongly support the alarming view that the insect enemy has been made actually stronger by our efforts." There had already been "warnings," she wrote, of the problems created by pesticides:
On Nissan Island in the South Pacific, for example, spraying had been carried on intensively during the Second World War, but was stopped when hostilities came to an end. Soon swarms of a malaria-carrying mosquito reinvaded the island. All of its predators had been killed off and there had not been time for new populations to become established. The way was therefore clear for a tremendous population explosion. Marshall Laird, who had described this incident, compares chemical control to a treadmill; once we have set foot on it we are unable to stop for fear of the consequences.”
It is for spotting that treadmill that Carson will be forever relevant, and forever of interest to any political intellectual. Which is why other intellectuals can be grudgingly praised by the owners, pervayers, and maintainers of the treadmill.
what's with this josef martini. is he commenting on his own blog? I'll bet he wins most of his arguments..with himself.
DDT was banned in The United States in 1972 because it has been strongly linked to increased breast cancer risk. The residue of DDT mimics estrogen and tends to be stored in fatty tissue which makes the breast a perfect storage place.
According to a study of 159 women reported in Occupational and Environmental Medicine, women with breast cancer are five times as likely to have DDT pesticide residues in their blood.
These residues of organochlorines (DDT), contain estrogens the female hormone that has been shown to contribute to higher risk of breast cancer.
The link between DDT and breast cancer adds to the growing body of evidence for an association between environmental estrogens and the rising incidence of breast cancer.
The authors base their findings on a study of 600 women referred to one hospital in Liége, Belgium for breast lumps between September 1999 and February 2000.
From this group, 159 women were diagnosed with breast cancer and subsequently admitted for the removal of the tumor or the whole breast. The women’s average age of the women who were found to have breast cancer was 54.
Before surgery or drug treatment, the women were tested for total levels of organocholorines (DDT) and hexachlorobenzene (HCB) in their blood.
This was done to ensure that the results would not be affected by weight changes brought about by chemotherapy and radiotherapy. Changes in weight result in altering the levels of fatty tissue where the residue of DDT accumulates.
While DDT was effectively banned for use as a pesticide in the US in 1972, it was used for almost 30 years. Residues from DDT can remain active in body tissues for up to 50 years.
The blood samples from the breast cancer group were compared with those taken from 250 healthy women, matched as closely as possible for age, menopausal status, reproductive history, and smoking habit.
The results showed significant differences between the two groups of women.
Those with breast cancer were more than five times as likely to have detectable levels of DDT (above 0.5 parts per billion) as the healthy women. The breast cancer group was also found to be more than nine times as likely to have detectable levels of HCB in their blood.
The highest levels detected were 20 parts per billion.
Some women’s breast tumors are sensitized to, and sustained by, estrogen, but DDT or HCB levels were no higher for the 102 women in this study who had estrogen sensitive breast cancer. Research has shown that DDT, and its major metabolite DDE, do have estrogenic properties.
But then, you already knew this.
Studies conducted by Harvard University and Mt. Sinai Medical School (published in the New Journal of Medicine) determined that there was no link.
And to anonymous:
Yes I respond to comments. Unlike many bloggers and message board moderators who delete all comments that do not agree with their solipsistic blatherings, I welcome thoughful and passionate discussion from readers who disagree.
Okay, but with only you and me commenting, you don't want to alienate me.
I'll take my chances.
Good. Then consider this. You called the environmentalist, Rachel Carson, a murderer. A mass murderer. Premeditated. Presumably not in the sense of the Catholic Church as an ajent of mass murder, but a murderer none the less.
Voltaire once said, "Those who can make you believe in absurdities can make you commit atrocities."
Agreed. Rachel Carson is NOT the only mass murderer in human history. And if you have quarrel with the Catholic Church as an ajent(?) of mass murder, I suggest you go argue with a Catholic.
It's interesting that when someone uses the common language of the Enviro-Left to illustrate their absurdities, they all get their panties twisted and cry "unfair".
And you're pretty sure you know what "murder" means? We'll forget the "mass" for now.
I whole-heartedly agree with you.
We were on our way to wiping out malaria and then Rachel Carson wrote her book.
Environmentalists give me the impression of being backward-looking people, wanting the "old days", afraid of progress.
Their desires always make me think of Ayn Rand's "Anthem". If they have their way we'll all be back to using candles to read by.
Carson isn't in the same league as the others, as she didn't forsee the consequences of her ideas. But the results of those ideas have been catastrophic. And mosquito nets and drugs are no substitute for preventative measures with pesticides. Even chemists and doctors are starting to come around to the notion that chemicals like DDT should be used in managed amounts. The benefits of killing malaria-carrying mosquitos in this manner far outweigh the costs, both in monetary and enivronmental measures.
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