Over the 51 years since Rachel Carson’s poetic attack on
DDT in her “Silent Spring” novel, the chemical pesticide became the poster
child for the nascent environmental movement’s inchoate wrath. The victims:
millions of African and Asian children and pregnant women who succumbed to
malaria in the absence of DDT. (Note: the discoverer of DDT’s potent
insecticidal prowess, Dr. Paul Mueller, won the Nobel Prize in Medicine for his
discovery).
However, over the past decade, when the toll of malaria
seemed to be ever-increasing at a rate of one-million dead each year, and the
actual studies of DDT continued to show no evidence of harm to humans, animals
or the environment at small levels of exposure, most scientists free of
immersion in the anti-DDT fringe came around to accepting its highly effective
power against the death-dealing anopheles mosquito.
Why, even the New York Times granted its benefits
in fighting malaria in sub-Saharan Africa, appropriately around Christmas time
in 2002: “Fighting Malaria
with DDT”. .....To Read More.....
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