DDT a problem of 30-50 years ago?

[Paul Cherubini]

Roger Kuhlman wrote:

> In the discussion of the trustworthiness and responsibility of the pesticide
> industry it was claimed that DDT was a mistake of 30 to 50 years ago. I
> thought I heard that DDT is stilled being marketed and sold in the Third
> World. If true, I would doubt this activity represents corporate
> responsibility.

According to entomology professor Gorden Edwards, DDT was a "mistake"
in the sense that "overuse harmed its efficacy -- and made it politically 
unpopular". But his website goes on to explain how 
DDT continues to be effective in Africa, India, Brazil, and
Mexico, where 69% of all reported cases of malaria occur even 
though mosquitoes are physiologically 
resistant to DDT (excluding Brazil). Edwards says this evidence "serves as
one indicator that repellency is very important in preventing indoor
transmission of malaria". Compared to the mosquito control chemicals
we use in the USA (Resmethrin, Sumithrin and Malathion) DDT is far
less expensive and hence can save many more lives.

Dr. Edwards & Steven Milloy go on to present evidence suggesting that
politics, not good science was behind the banning of DDT 
in the USA in 1972:
DDT" http://www.junkscience.com/ddtfaq.htm

"DDT WAS DEMAGOGUED OUT OF USE"

10.Rachel Carson sounded the initial alarm against DDT, but represented the
science of DDT erroneously in her 1962 book Silent Spring. Carson wrote
"Dr. DeWitt's now classic experiments [on quail and pheasants] have now
established the fact that exposure to DDT, even when doing no observable
harm to the birds, may seriously affect reproduction. Quail into whose diet
DDT was introduced throughout the breeding season survived and even
produced normal numbers of fertile eggs. But few of the eggs hatched."
DeWitt's 1956 article (in Journal of Agriculture and Food Chemistry)
actually yielded a very different conclusion. Quail were fed 200 parts per
million of DDT in all of their food throughout the breeding season. DeWitt
reports that 80% of their eggs hatched, compared with the "control"" birds
which hatched 83.9% of their eggs. Carson also omitted mention of
DeWitt's report that "control" pheasants hatched only 57 percent of their
eggs, while those that were fed high levels of DDT in all of their food for an
entire year hatched more than 80% of their eggs.

11.Population control advocates blamed DDT for increasing third world
population. In the 1960s, World Health Organization authorities believed
there was no alternative to the overpopulation problem but to assure than up
to 40 percent of the children in poor nations would die of malaria. As an
official of the Agency for International Development stated, "Rather dead
than alive and riotously reproducing." 

[Desowitz, RS. 1992. Malaria Capers, W.W. Norton & Company]

12.The environmental movement used DDT as a means to increase their power.
Charles Wurster, chief scientist for the Environmental Defense Fund,
commented, "If the environmentalists win on DDT, they will achieve a level
of authority they have never had before.. In a sense, much more is at stake
than DDT." 

[Seattle Times, October 5, 1969]

13.Science journals were biased against DDT. Philip Abelson, editor of
Science informed Dr. Thomas Jukes that Science would never publish any
article on DDT that was not antagonistic.

14.William Ruckelshaus, the administrator of the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency who made the ultimate decision to ban DDT in 1972,
was a member of the Environmental Defense Fund. Ruckelshaus solicited
donations for EDF on his personal stationery that read "EDF's scientists
blew the whistle on DDT by showing it to be a cancer hazard, and three
years later, when the dust had cleared, EDF had won."

15.But as an assistant attorney general, William Ruckelshaus stated on August
31, 1970 in a U.S. Court of Appeals that "DDT has an amazing an
exemplary record of safe use, does not cause a toxic response in man or
other animals, and is not harmful. Carcinogenic claims regarding DDT are
unproven speculation." But in a May 2, 1971 address to the Audubon
Society, Ruckelshaus stated, "As a member of the Society, myself, I was
highly suspicious of this compound, to put it mildly. But I was compelled
by the facts to temper my emotions ... because the best scientific evidence
available did not warrant such a precipitate action. However, we in the EPA
have streamlined our administrative procedures so we can now suspend
registration of DDT and the other persistent pesticides at any time during the
period of review." Ruckelshaus later explained his ambivalence by stating
that as assistant attorney general he was an advocate for the government,
but as head of the EPA he was "a maker of policy." 

[Barrons, 10 November 1975]

16.Environmental activists planned to defame scientists who defended DDT. In
an uncontradicted deposition in a federal lawsuit, Victor Yannacone, a
founder of the Environmental Defense Fund, testified that he attended a
meeting in which Roland Clement of the Audubon Society and officials of
the Environmental Defense Fund decided that University of
California-Berkeley professor and DDT-supporter Thomas H. Jukes was to
be muzzled by attacking his credibility. 

[21st Century, Spring 1992]

III. EPA hearings

DDT was banned by an EPA administrator who ignored the decision
of his own administrative law judge.

17.Extensive hearings on DDT before an EPA administrative law judge
occurred during 1971-1972. The EPA hearing examiner, Judge Edmund
Sweeney, concluded that "DDT is not a carcinogenic hazard to man... DDT
is not a mutagenic or teratogenic hazard to man... The use of DDT under the
regulations involved here do not have a deleterious effect on freshwater
fish, estuarine organisms, wild birds or other wildlife." 

[Sweeney, EM. 1972. EPA Hearing Examiner's recommendations and findings
concerning DDT hearings, April 25, 1972 (40 CFR 164.32, 113 pages). 
Summarized in Barrons (May 1, 1972) and Oregonian (April 26, 1972)]

18.Overruling the EPA hearing examiner, EPA administrator Ruckelshaus
banned DDT in 1972. Ruckelshaus never attended a single hour of the
seven months of EPA hearings on DDT. Ruckelshaus' aides reported he did
not even read the transcript of the EPA hearings on DDT. 

[Santa Ana Register, April 25, 1972]

19.After reversing the EPA hearing examiner's decision, Ruckelshaus refused
to release materials upon which his ban was based. Ruckelshaus rebuffed
USDA efforts to obtain those materials through the Freedom of Information
Act, claiming that they were just "internal memos." Scientists were
therefore prevented from refuting the false allegations in the Ruckelshaus'
"Opinion and Order on DDT."