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April 27, 2005

A million deaths from malaria

TotheSource calls for a reform of how the US spends our money on malaria prevention and treatment. It argues that small amount of DDT could save many lives without causing environmental damage.

I'm not an expert in, well, anything, so I don't know how much DDT it takes to start screwing up the ecosystem, nor do I know how effective it is at preventing malaria when used in small amounts on house walls, as ToTheSource suggests. But wel over a million deaths a year — most of them children? And apparently the US aid agency, USAID, has not been forthright about how it spends our money.

(The article is not yet up on the ToTheSource site. Check the archive eventually, for "Silent Tsunami.") [Technorati tag: malaria]


Chris Locke has a disturbing bit of history on display at ChiefBloggingOfficer, discussing research into America's history of support of eugenics, including Margaret Sanger's belief in the "mass sterilization of so-called defectives."

Posted by D. Weinberger at April 27, 2005 10:42 AM


Comments

I have heard that mosquitoes play a crucial role in rice pollination. Is this for real? Can any body shed light on this?

Posted by: Aswath | April 27, 2005 01:52 PM


David, that DDT article being echoed is nonsense.

See
ttp://cgi.cse.unsw.edu.au/~lambert/cgi-bin/blog/science/DDT

Posted by: Seth Finkelstein | April 27, 2005 02:11 PM


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