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Malaria, malaria control, and DDT
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wynsurfer



Joined: 24 Aug 2007
Posts: 940

PostPosted: Fri Sep 27, 2013 3:12 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

mac, Thanks for the fishin blues link! I saw Taj Mahal when I was 17, 44 years ago. I will never forget it. What a great artist. God bless
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mac



Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17742
Location: Berkeley, California

PostPosted: Fri Sep 27, 2013 4:54 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Slinky--one of the most dynamic performers ever. You are most welcome, good music deserves listeners. Pathetic posts deserve silence. For the life of me, I don't think that NW understands either the environment in general, or the battles over wind generation.
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nw30



Joined: 21 Dec 2008
Posts: 6485
Location: The eye of the universe, Cen. Cal. coast

PostPosted: Fri Sep 27, 2013 5:49 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

peeuno, yeah, maybe you're right, that eagle should get killed by a wind mill, after all he killed Bambi, what was I thinking.
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mac



Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17742
Location: Berkeley, California

PostPosted: Sat Sep 28, 2013 10:49 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

NW--you are just pathetic. Trolling on a site about DDT, and arguing--apparently from a Breitbart link--that enviros are killing eagles. Too bad you didn't show any discipline, or bother to read any articles other than the right wing slam. Here's the rest of the story. The take permit that was issued allowed 5 eagles over five years. In exchange for mitigation to existing PG & E transformers that are now killing substantially more eagles than that. The wildlife agencies, which are not pushovers, believe it will result in a greater overall survival of eagles.

You are comparing that to DDT, which represented an existential threat to more than just eagles. Is it that you don't understand math, or that you don't care?
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mac



Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17742
Location: Berkeley, California

PostPosted: Fri Oct 09, 2015 1:56 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Time to revive this thread:

Quote:
Researchers at Dundee University have discovered a new compound which could treat malaria while protecting people from the disease and preventing its spread, all in a single dose.
The compound, DDD107498, was developed by the university's Drug Discovery Unit and the Medicines for Malaria Venture.
Scientists said the "exciting" new drug could work well against parasites resistant to current treatments.
Details of the discovery have been published in the journal Nature.
The World Health Organisation reported 200 million clinical cases of malaria in 2013, with 584,000 people dying from the mosquito-borne disease, most of them pregnant women or children under five.
Concerns have been growing about strains of malaria which are resistant to current treatments, which have already appeared on the border between Myanmar and India.


It seems that investing in drug research, not Monsanto, is the best way to save lives.
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mac



Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17742
Location: Berkeley, California

PostPosted: Sat Jun 08, 2019 5:05 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

After mrgybe attacked my technical background, I poked around some of his claims about DDT. I then asked myself why this theme had recurred, and who was behind it. Earlier I posted the link to Steven Milloy, whose web site presents virtually the same material used by mrgybe. Milloy is described as having close ties to oil and tobacco companies and is a Fox news regular.

Gybe denies that there are efforts to seed fake news about chemicals and global warming into the media, or at least argues that we don’t know how much is spent. That is not an accident. If you look a little deeper into the recent promotion of DDT, you find a spurt of activity starting about 2000, backed by the Competitive Enterprise Institute and Africa Fighting Malaria. The latter sounds like a group out of Africa—but it is a lobbying NGO out of DC. The big names (it only spends money on staff salaries) are Richard Tren and Roger Bate. Bate is an economist for the American Enterprise Institute with deep ties to EXXON and big tobacco. Perhaps he has an alias and posts on social media?

Tren seems to run in the same circles, see Source Watch https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Richard_Tren

Perhaps he windsurfs?

The objective of these groups, according to environmental groups who have supported use of DDT for malaria control, is to discredit government science in general and particularly related to pesticides. In that light, it makes more sense that mrgybe started his screed with a frontal attack on environmentalists, pesticide regulation, and the first head of EPA. Whether he is part of team fake news, or just a dupe, he is here to amplify their lies.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2006/sep/26/comment.oil
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mac



Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17742
Location: Berkeley, California

PostPosted: Sat Jun 08, 2019 5:16 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Does Mr. Milloy windsurf?

https://www.salon.com/2008/05/15/steve_milloy_and_rachel_carson/
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mac



Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17742
Location: Berkeley, California

PostPosted: Mon Oct 26, 2020 9:55 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

More news about mrgybe’s favorite chemical. The LA Times chronicles massive disposal of DDT acid sludges offshore of the Palos Verdes peninsula by Montrose chemical. I worked with Robert Riseborough, one of those cited in the article, for many years. I prefer real science to mrgybe’s junk science.

https://www.latimes.com/projects/la-coast-ddt-dumping-ground/?utm_source=CalMatters+Newsletters&utm_campaign=99d41c04f4-WHATMATTERS_NEWSLETTER&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_faa7be558d-99d41c04f4-150242853&mc_cid=99d41c04f4&mc_eid=01229ec239
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mac



Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17742
Location: Berkeley, California

PostPosted: Fri Aug 19, 2022 8:55 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Since gybe is attacking Biden—and silent about Trump’s attempts to get the military to help him stay in office, I found the article about William MacAskill in the New Yorker pretty interesting. It cites the Against Malaria Foundation as one of the more effective altruism efforts, giving out millions of trated bed nets, and reducing the damages of malaria. Mrgybe had accused those who favored the ban on widespread use of DDT of being unconcerned about the poor and crippling efforts to fight malaria. He also dismissed the problems of bioaccumulation and pesticide resistance. So I poked around to see what pesticides are used, and what the impact of DDT restrictions is. So I found this on the CDC site.

Quote:
Net Materials and Insecticides

Nets may vary by size, shape, color, material, and/or insecticide treatment status. Most nets are made of polyester, polyethylene, or polypropylene.

Only two insecticides classes are approved for use on ITNs (pyrroles and pyrethroids). These insecticides have been shown to pose very low health risks to humans and other mammals, but are toxic to insects and kill them. Previously, nets had to be retreated every 6 to 12 months, or even more frequently if the nets were washed. Nets were retreated by simply dipping them in a mixture of water and insecticide and allowing them to dry in a shady place. The need for frequent retreatment was a major barrier to widespread use of ITNs in endemic countries. In addition, the additional cost of the insecticide and the lack of understanding its importance resulted in very low retreatment rates in most African countries.

Recent studies have suggested that the rise of pyrethroid resistance may undermine the effectiveness of nets. To help manage resistance, some net products incorporate piperonyl butoxide (PBO) along with a pyrethroid insecticide, but there is not yet evidence that this significantly improves ITN effectiveness in areas with high levels of pyrethroid resistance, and WHO currently does not consider nets that incorporate PBO to be tools for managing pyrethroid resistance.


Hm. They use pyrroles and pyrethroids, and pesticide resistance remains a problem. While I understand this doesn’t generate profits for mrgybe’s friends, or those who make DDT, I think we can again label his claims as “pants on fire” lies.
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mac



Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17742
Location: Berkeley, California

PostPosted: Mon Nov 07, 2022 1:45 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

When mrgybe began posting stories about DDT, I knew that something funny was up. Big oil and big tobacco were all in on the effort to rehabilitate the reputation of DDT. I don't know if gybe was in on the grift, or just believed what he wanted to believe, no matter the facts. Neither speaks well of his integrity. Now the story has been written.

Quote:
This story is adapted from How to Sell a Poison: The Rise, Fall, and Toxic Return of DDT, by Elena Conis.
BIRD LOVERS AND ornithologists had reason to celebrate at the dawn of the new millennium. Across the US, after decades of decline, birds were coming back. Osprey were building their teetering twiggy nests all across Long Island. Pelican populations had rebounded in Florida. The peregrine falcon had made such a remarkable return that it was removed from the endangered species list, and wildlife experts predicted that the bald eagle would soon follow.

Cover of How to Sell a Poison by Elena Conis
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At the same time, however, other birds were dying: crows, least bitterns, black-capped chickadees, mourning doves, mallard ducks, Canada geese, broad-winged hawks, great blue herons, and more. When West Nile virus appeared—for the second time—in New York in the spring of 2001, it spread from there to 10 states, killing thousands of birds and infecting dozens of people. When human cases appeared for the first time in Texas, they triggered panic and pesticide spraying. A writer old enough to remember said it all reminded him of 1949, when polio had devastated the city of San Angelo and the desperate city had saturated itself with the pesticide DDT.

“A bad dream was back,” he said.

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In no time at all, his words seemed prophetic, not because West Nile virus shut down cities as polio once had but because, all of a sudden, people all across the country began calling for the return of DDT, which had been banned back in 1972.

It’s time to bring back DDT, said a columnist in Washington, DC. Crank up production, if not for the people of New York, at least for the innocent children of the Third World, wrote a Colorado journalist. Thanks to DDT’s ban, which 1970s environmental groups had demanded, citing harms to wildlife, the environmental movement bore the blame not just for West Nile Virus but for millions dead worldwide from malaria, wrote a scholar named Roger Bate in the Los Angeles Times. In local papers from California to North Carolina, a former FDA official pointed out the irony that DDT was banned largely for toxicity to birds and now couldn’t be used to combat a mosquito-borne virus that was killing birds by the hundreds of thousands. Rachel Carson’s legacy, he wrote, was “lamentable.”

But most of that season’s op-ed writers had a connection to the chemical they didn’t disclose. The Washington writer was the executive director of TASSC, an organization devoted to “sound science”—and created by tobacco company Philip Morris and its PR firm several years earlier. The former FDA official was a TASSC partner. The Colorado journalist was executive director of a “journalism center” directly funded by Philip Morris. Bate, the “scholar,” had founded an organization called the European Science and Environment Forum—which was funded by Philip Morris and British American Tobacco, and whose founding description exactly matched that of TASSC.

DDT’s defenders, in short, were part of a campaign dreamed up by Bate, financed by tobacco companies, and designed to protect the global market for tobacco and cigarettes. Bate was a neoliberal think-tank leader with one objective: to advocate for free markets. The tobacco industry had a separate but related objective: to protect the cigarette market from encroaching regulation. They financed Bate’s operation because they were convinced it would serve their own. And DDT had a curious part to play in it all.


Attack science for profit. Next stop on the campaign was attacking the science on global warming.
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