| ■ DDT Endorsed by World Health Organization to Fight Malaria | 06.09.21 |
| DDT, the pesticide long banned in the United States, has received a limited endorsement from an unlikely source - the World Health Organization (WHO). In order to combat the growing scourge of malaria, which kills more than 800,000 African children annually, the health expert leading WHO's effort to combat malaria in Africa "unequivocally declared" that DDT should be used in small amounts on the inner walls of people's homes to kill the mosquitoes that carry the disease, according to the New York Times. WHO's Dr. Arata Kochi was joined at a news conference by Adm. R. Timothy Ziemer, representing the Bush administration's $1.2 billion anti-malaria project. The Times quotes Ziemer as saying that spraying with insecticides was a method "that must be deployed as robustly and strategically as possible." For almost 45 years, DDT's use as an insecticide has been questioned -- and sometimes banned -- after Rachel Carson's 1962 book "The Silent Spring" documented how massive sprating allowed DDT to enter the food chain and suggested it might be a cause for cancer and genetic damage. According to the Times, an international nonprofit group, Beyond Pesticides, distributed news releases on Friday opposing WHO's change in direction. Dependence on pesticides like DDT "causes greater long-tem problems than those that are being addressed in the short-term," the group said. ----- Yahoo / Health News |