DDT could literally save hundreds of millions; yet, the radical environmentalists, all of whom living happily in the developed West, have won in most developing parts of the world, causing genocide of unimaginable proportions. The debate is often cast in political overtones as radical environmentalists cast the pro-DDT crowd as part of some right-wing conspiracy to deforest the economic South and kill off its citizens with high rates of cancer. Those who oppose its use also counter that it is ineffectual, and so its detractors far outweigh its advantages. Meanwhile, the BBC, hardly a right-wing organ, calls DDT “One of the most powerful weapons in the war against malaria”. It goes on to say that malaria kills over a million people in Africa each year alone, most of whom are children.

Where is the hue and cry about the inherent racism of denying an entire continent the protections of DDT once malaria has for all intents and purposes been eradicated from the West? Could one reasonably infer this is more Margaret Sanger-style eugenics when such a disproportionate number of those killed by Malaria as a result are African, with an untold but reasonably great impact on the culture and future economic development?

One detractor offers this as one reason to oppose DDT, “Sadly, the fact of the matter in regards to the malaria epidemic is that the vast majority of its victims are children under age 5. These are not ‘productive’ members of society.” They go on: “It would be so easy if one could spray DDT over the continent of Africa and make the continent’s poverty and debts go away. You can’t. To suggest that you can is irresponsible and irrational, trademarks of conservative thinking.”

You read it here first: bleeding heart conservatives caring far too much about unproductive children. But the creepy rhetoric aside, the issue remains for the rest of decent humanity: is DDT effective or is it not?

And apparently the World Health Organization, hardly another bastion of right-wing thought, seems to think it is: in 2006 it reversed its three-decade long policy supporting the ban of DDT, because it not only is effective, it’s comparatively inexpensive: a winning combination for the pre-industrial South, with applications of the pesticide and repellent as cheap as $5 U.S.; that, according to another infamously conservative rag, the Washington Post. 

The best part is how radical environmentalists and compatriots reasoned banning it in the first place. For you see, DDT can cause cancer if consumed in great amounts by every 1000th laboratory rat, or some such. So, in theory, every so many people could develop cancer from exposure to high doses of DDT. It’s true. At least, that’s the meme that Rachel Carson got started in 1962. However,

Further investigation revealed that the foods fed to both mice groups were moldy and contained aflatoxin, a carcinogen.7  When the tests were repeated using noncontaminated foods, neither group developed tumors. In 1970 the National Academy of Sciences declared, “In little more than two decades, DDT has prevented 500 million human deaths due to malaria, that would otherwise have been inevitable.”

The National Academy of Sciences, surely another evil organ of the “Vast Right Wing Conspiracy”.

And how many lives do nets protect? Not many, and they aren’t as cheap or practical. Additionally, they only work if Africans stay indoors and don’t go out to use the toilet, bathe, or try to say, go to work and build their economies and lift themselves out of poverty:

Buying a bed net might make you – and the celebrities who endorse the bed net campaign – feel good about yourselves. But it also sends a powerful message to Africans about their place in the scheme of things: that is, at the bottom…

So, does the math make sense? Surprise, it doesn’t. If this were really a health-calculus, it would be simple: DDT saves more lives than no DDT, nets or not.

Ultimately, the debate exists at all because the hysterical environmental fringe flat-earthers have decided DDT endangers the environment. It doesn’t. They claim it is a “close relative of Agent Orange”, and from that we should infer its pernicious properties; however, they fail to provide any linkage to health concerns or anything that would outweigh the loss of life due to not using DDT, which is probably why South Africa has chosen to follow common sense and WHO guidelines by reinstituting its use. Simply because DDT is a close cousin of Agent Orange does not make it dangerous any more than the air we breathe is harmful because it contains oxygen, which alone is lethal.

Obviously, disease-ridden insects impact the human environment, and protecting that human environment, or the human right to life, if you wish, is our first responsibility. Even as some countries push “healthcare reform” following the narrative that healthcare, and by extension, therefore, the pursuit and availability of good resources for good health, it seems to reveal a rather unsavory underside that the real answer to the malaria problem in Africa is being deliberately ignored. For if healthcare is such a worldwide concern, shouldn’t that rising tide lift all boats? When will Barack Obama decide to become his half-brother’s keeper?

That now the industrial world has rid itself of malaria, and in so doing, wishes to outlaw what has proved so successful in allowing industrialization to occur in warmer climates, denying it to developing nations not based on science, but pure, politically-motivated mythology, is a crime. As rachelwaswrong.org rightly states, “Cultural myths often stand in the way of human progress—in some cases producing devastating consequences.” That a human being somehow has less value in one part of the world is beyond cruel, its consequences beyond devastating, and the value it ultimately places on the whole of human kind – as it can be no greater than its lowest common denominator – and the loss of so many who might have given the world so much, is catastrophic.