October 24, 2007
Let them eat cake
Just saw a commercial for “Nothing But Nets,” a charity dedicated to eradicating malaria in the third world by buying mosquito nets.
Which strikes me as about as misguided and hopeless a cause as the human mind can dream up.
Now, let me be clear: Malaria is killing millions of people, which is doubly tragic, given that malaria had been darn near wiped out by the 1950s, the disease vanquished thanks to scientific research – and a marvelous insecticide, DDT.
However, the late Rachel Carson wrote “Silent Spring,” the 1960s version of Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth,” which is to say it was the product of soft-headed propaganda, not hard science.
Carson blamed DDT for causing severe damage to wildlife, attributing the decline in numbers of several species of birds to the allegedly eggshell-thinning side-effects of the insecticide.
There is no “scientific consenus” that Carson was right then (as there is no consensus that Gore is right now), and as a result of the resultant media-backed hysteria, fed by Carson receiving much undeserved publicity, the use of DDT was banned throughout much of the world.
The result?
An explosion in the incidence of malaria – and millions dead.
Fed up with First World moralizing, some Third World nations have had enough. Tired of burying children laid low by mosquito-borne diseases, they’ve started spraying DDT again, with immediate results: malaria-carrying bugs are dying – instead of kids.
That’s why charities like Nothing But Nets are so infuriating. While it provides an opportunity for the NBA’s players to feel good about themselves, it does nothing to fix the problem.
With a solution – a cure! – at hand, one we’ve known works for more than 50 years, and more than 30 years of needless deaths as a result of an unnecessary ban on DDT, I have only one question?
Why do those opposed to using DDT hate the children?
It’s the 21st-century update on Marie Antoinette’s “Let them eat cake.”
As far as the environmentalists are concerned, the people dying of preventable diseases in far away lands deserve “Nothing But Net.”
Posted by Mike Lief at October 24, 2007 09:51 PM
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