The residue of Silent Spring is still killing

Worried about Ebola?  Malaria will probably kill more while you’re reading this than the current Ebola epidemic.

“Published in 1962, Silent Spring used manipulated data and wildly exaggerated claims (sound familiar?) to push for a worldwide ban on the pesticide known as DDT – which is, to this day, the most effective weapon against malarial mosquitoes. The Environmental Protection Agency held extensive hearings after the uproar produced by this book… and these hearings concluded that DDT should not be banned. A few months after the hearings ended, EPA administrator William Ruckleshaus over-ruled his own agency and banned DDT anyway, in what he later admitted was a “political” decision. Threats to withhold American foreign aid swiftly spread the ban across the world.”  http://hotair.com/greenroom/archives/2010/02/16/the-green-death/

All methods of disease control eventually lose their effectiveness, so don’t send me progressive, liberal and greenie links,  but this was ripped out of the tool box of things that worked 50 years ago freeing Africans from a terrible scourge.  Millions have died or been crippled, and the victims are left with bed nets and local spraying of ponds and homes (and who knows what is in that brew). What works, really works quickly, is building hysteria over diseases that may not ever harm us, or not looking at all for the causes of the current illness sending children to the hospital coinciding with an unprecedented number of illegal immigrant children being spread around the country.

http://www.nature.com/news/ebola-outbreak-shuts-down-malaria-control-efforts-1.16029

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/26/malaria-deaths-ebola-diarrhea-pneumonia_n_5886652.html