ChristianKl comments on Open Thread, Jun. 15 - Jun. 21, 2015 - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (302)
Governments in subsaharan Africa don't use massive amounts of DDT, not because they are incompetent but because of Western pressure.
At least in Mozambique, it seems that DDT have met resistance both from the West and (parts of) local population.
This report from 2000 from BMJ (British Medical Journal) blames foreign donors, although it does not provide any references for its figures:
But environmental concerns are only a part of the whole picture, and, according to Mozambique's chief of infectious disease control, a smaller one.
DDT is used in indoor residual spraying (IRS) which, along with insecticide treated mosquito nets and Artemisinin Combination Therapies, is one of the three main interventions promoted by World Health Organization. But due to the fact that it has unaesthetic side effects and cannot be done everywhere, in some countries it became associated with social issues:
Some Westerners also pattern match it to social issues, and not only environmental ones.
I'm not sure I believe that. At least residual DDT seems to have done a good job killing bedbugs in the States, at least until it final completely "washed out" of the system a couple of years ago.
Also wikipedia is notoriously unreliable on any vaguely political topic, probably more so then well-known explicitly political topics. The latter attract enough attention that the NPOV policy is actually applied, whereas the former wind up getting "adopted" by some mind-killed administrator with an axe to grind.
Yes, and this is an evil comparable to the slave trade.
Can you provide any evidence that it is true?
I'm basing it on the large amount of harm that malaria does in Africa and by assuming that Western pressure on Africans to not use DDT has made this harm somewhat worse.
It is the existence of Western pressure for which I was asking for evidence.
From NYT's Kristof
From Wikipedia
Although others claim that this isn't true.
Your second quote starts with the clear statement that there is no ban and ends with the a death toll due to this non-existent ban. This should make you suspicious that something is very wrong.
It is certainly possible that there is pressure that goes beyond treaties. And Greenpeace certainly counts as Western pressure. But my experience tracking down such examples puts low prior that there was such a plant at all, let alone a protest.
Sigh. Wikipedia (emphasis mine):
And here's Greenpeace expressing a profound dislike of this particular factory.
As to Mexican DDT, more from Wikipedia:
Your new quote about Mexican DDT is exactly the opposite of your prior quote. Did the factory close because of falling Mexican demand (because of cheaper alternatives, to supply the context of your quote), or because of pressure from America? Again, why do I find it so easy to find Mexican DDT today in America?
Maybe the abandonment of DDT by rich Mexicans has destroyed economies of scale and thus raised the price to Belize. But that is a completely different matter.
No, I don't think so. "Lack of demand" is a nice non-committal phrase. Similarly you can say that a guy driven out of business because he wouldn't pay the mafia "closed because he didn't buy fire insurance". I don't know what happened to that factory, but closing due to lack of demand is consistent with US pressure to not use DDT.
I have no idea. Wikipedia says "India is the only country still manufacturing DDT", but that piece of data seems to be dating back to 2009. Maybe Mexico started again -- it's not a difficult chemical to manufacture.
I have looked for and never found any evidence for this. When pushed, a lot of people retreat to the unfalsifiable claim that it is secret pressure.
Africa does use lots of DDT. It used to use more, until mosquitoes developed resistance. Now it restricts it to the most useful applications in towns, especially residences and bednets.
Any? Really? Here is a result of a 10-second Google search (emphasis mine):
(source)
While the statements you have linked may or may not be correct, they may require double checking, since, according to themselves (p.9) and this, "21st Century Science and Technology" magazine is published by Lyndon LaRouche, whom I know very little about, but who seems to be regarded as a controversial figure. He is also on scientific advisory board of that magazine.
Yes, I understand that and tried to not quote the parts where all kinds of bombastic statements are being made, instead focusing on what seems to be simple claims of fact. I am not treating this source as entirely credible, but it was a basic counterpoint to the statement that "I have looked for and never found any evidence for this" (emphasis in the original).
Yes, I have seen such assertions before, but I have tried tracking down these "bans" and as far as I can tell, they are pure fabrications.
Are you saying that USAID did fund DDT spraying in the 80s and the 90s..? That large-scale efforts of the environmentalists to reduce usage of DDT had no effect at all?
I do not know in particular about USAID, though I have tracked down examples of false claim that organizations did not use DDT. It appears likely that they did use it.
I see no evidence of large-scale efforts by environmentalists to reduce usage of DDT outside of the west. I have not examined claims like the one you quoted above that environmentalists in the US affected Mexico and thus Belize, but it doesn't seem very plausible since it is easy to get Mexican DDT in America today