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Nov. 20, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: How to make every second of your life come first
Caroline B. Glick: Whither American Jewry
Nov. 19, 2009
Binyamin L. Jolkovsky: Please Listen to this Godcast (5 minutes)
Jonathan Tobin: ADL Crosses the Line with Report Bashing Obama Critics
Nov. 18, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: What Judaism has to say about the secret of the Mona Lisa's smile
JWisdom.com: The (Jewish) Dating Game with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff (8 minutes)
Nov. 17, 2009
Steven Emerson: How Does the 4th Amendment Impact Terror Finance Investigations?
JWisdom.com: If Frank Sinatra married Edith Piaf with Rabbi Y.Y. Rubinstein (2 minutes) Life lessons from what would be regarded as the most inappropriate lyrics ever sung
Nov. 16, 2009
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir : When borrowing is stealing
JWisdom.com: Deconstructing faith with Rabbi Warren Goldstein (9 minutes)
Nov. 13, 2009
JWisdom.com Sarah's subjective reality with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 6 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick: Obama's failure, Netanyahu's opportunity
Nov. 12, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet By Marialisa Calta : A sweet sweet potato treat
JWisdom.com Does God get tired? with Rabbi Harvey Belovski ( 5 minutes)
Nov. 11, 2009
Rabbi Avi Shafran: Jews and money: When anti-Semitism isn't
JWisdom.com Marriages are not made in Heaven with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff (VERY fast 15 minutes)
Nov. 10, 2009
Michael Doyle: Author of book exposing CAIR ordered to remove supporting documents from Web
JWisdom.com If the creation so loudly shouts the existence of the Creator, why aren't more people believers? with Rabbi Naftali Brawer (9 minutes)
Nov. 9, 2009
Mark Steyn: Shooter exposes hole in U.S. terror strategy
JWisdom.com It's never too late to have a happy childhood with Sarah Chana Radcliffe (5 minutes)
Nov. 6, 2009
Rabbi Berel Wein: Choosing to hear
JWisdom.com Zero to 1/60th: How to Empower An Hour with Gavriel Aryeh Sande (7 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick The mullahs' big week
Suzanne Fields A Fallen Wall for Fallen Man
Nov. 5, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet: Three scrumptious -- but simple -- butternut squash dishes
JWisdom.com Hidden Hints: Unlocking Faith & Prayer with Rabbi Jay Yaacov Schwartz (10 minutes)
Nov. 4, 2009
Tom Hamburger and Kim Geiger: Should prayers be covered?
JWisdom.com When God played peacemaker With Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (5 minutes)
Nov. 3, 2009
Martin Peretz: Beware, Barack. Beware, Rahm. Beware, Axelrod
JWisdom.com Are you are closet idolater? With Sara Yoheved Rigler (10 minutes)
Nov. 2, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The Holocaust is now on Facebook
JWisdom.com Abraham's Strange Change With Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer (5 minutes)
Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review Dec. 8, 2006 / 17 Kislev, 5767

DDT and CO2: Let Us Now Praise Famous Chemicals

By Drs. Michael A. Glueck & Robert J. Cihak

The Medicine Men
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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | At long last, we're seeing light at the end of the tunnel vision on malaria that we've deplored in the past.


The United Nations and its World Health Organization (WHO) have endorsed a new (for the UN) policy of spraying the inside walls of homes with DDT (indoor residual spraying) to repel and kill malaria-carrying mosquitoes.


On September 15 this year, Dr. Arata Kochi, Director of the World Health Organization's Malaria Department spoke at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. In a press statement issued by the WHO, he said, "One of the best tools we have against malaria is indoor residual house spraying. Of the dozen insecticides WHO has approved as safe for house spraying, the most effective is DDT."


He implored us to "Help save African babies as you are helping to save the environment."


Dr Anarfi Asamoa-Baah, WHO Assistant Director-General for HIV/AIDS, TB and Malaria said, "The scientific and programmatic evidence clearly supports this reassessment. Indoor residual spraying is useful to quickly reduce the number of infections caused by malaria-carrying mosquitoes. IRS has proven to be just as cost effective as other malaria prevention measures, and DDT presents no health risk when used properly."


Admiral R. Timothy Ziemer, Coordinator of the President's Malaria Initiative, says "Because it is relatively inexpensive and very effective, USAID supports the spraying of homes with insecticides as a part of a balanced, comprehensive malaria prevention and treatment program."


Why did we stop using DDT in the first place? Once malaria was wiped out in the United States, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator, William Ruckelshaus, banned the use of DDT in the US in 1972; he did so against the advice of his own scientists and court judgments. Ruckelshaus used political criteria, not medical or scientific ones, in banning DDT.


Other US and foreign government officials followed his lead and prohibited their governments and agencies from supplying or paying for DDT use in other, poorer countries, despite the effectiveness of DDT in controlling malaria-carrying mosquitoes. Some of these officials required people in other countries to stop using DDT if they wanted funding, even for non-DDT projects.


These decisions amounted to a malarial death sentence for tens of millions of children, mostly in Africa. Malaria needlessly sickened hundreds of millions of others.


Why this waste of human life and potential?


We believe there is a "total lack of a sense of proportion about where we are in terms of the environment but also on non-environmental issues" in the words of environmentalist Bjorn Lomborg.


Real world decisions usually involved trade-offs among several or multiple possible benefits and risks. Comparing the possible risks of DDT (such as eggshell thinning in carnivorous, flesh-eating raptors and theoretical concerns about endocrine disruption in mammals) with the proven life-saving anti-malaria effects is a no-brainer, except for some birdbrains who can't get DDT off their minds.


The lack of proportion in analyzing DDT use is even worse than only looking at the bad effects of penicillin. Some few people suffer an extreme allergic reaction, anaphylaxis, and die when given penicillin. In addition, we might worry about penicillin killing may innocent germs just living out their own life cycles. Perhaps someday we'll see a "Ban Evil and Dangerous Penicillin, And Now" movement. "Whoa!" you might say, "Don't forget about all the human lives penicillin saves." Bingo. The anti-DDT brigades chose to ignore or at least demean the lives saved by DDT.


Some DDT opponents even believe "the earth, untouched by human hands is the ideal" and "Planet Earth could use another major human pandemic, and pronto!" according to Dr. Jay Richards of the Acton Institute.


Recent African publications are full of DDT good news. The "New Vision," of Uganda, features an article "New Form of DDT to Fight Malaria." In another article, it notes malaria "kills 320 Ugandans everyday." In Zimbabwe, a Herald headline reads "Anti-Malaria Drive Gets Boost" with new shipments of DDT to combat malaria.


Some former opponents now endorse DDT for indoor residual spraying. "Environmental Defense, which launched the anti-DDT campaign in the 1960s, now endorses the indoor use of DDT for malaria control, as does the Sierra Club and the Endangered Wildlife Trust" according to the WHO press statement.


As physicians trained in science, we see a similar lack of proportion in the global warming debates. The earth's climate has always fluctuated. Recent scientific analyses suggest that changes in climate precede changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) levels in cycles totally beyond human influence or control.


The proposals, including the Kyoto treaty, purporting to do something about CO2 levels will actually accomplish very little, even according to the proponents. The proposed measure will drastically reduce resources available to improve health and living conditions, especially for the world's poor. These reductions will dwarf any possible benefit from the current vain attempts to control climate change. Because of this politically-induced poverty, many people will needlessly suffer and die.


We hope the current professional (such as NASA scientist James Hansen) and amateur (such as Sen. Jay Rockefeller, Sen. Olympia Snowe, and former Sen. Al Gore) global warming worriers will soon find themselves floating away in the same boat with DDT opponents.


We also hope it doesn't take another 35 years to clear the good name of carbon dioxide, as it did with DDT. It's a matter of life and death.

Editor's Note: Robert J. Cihak wrote this week's column

Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.

Michael Arnold Glueck, M.D., is a multiple award winning writer who comments on medical-legal issues. Robert J. Cihak, M.D., is a Discovery Institute Senior Fellow and a past president of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons. Both JWR contributors are Harvard trained diagnostic radiologists. Comment by clicking here.

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