Bishop Hill A bloody truth or a big bloody truth
Sep 30, 2015 Greens 
George Monbiot is sounding off about the guys at the Breakthrough Institute today - it seems they are insufficiently green for the great man's liking and so they are to receive a tongue lashing.
2/3: One of #ecomodernism's authors has been spreading a great blood libel against the green movement. http://t.co/nwdrg7qO58 @mark_lynas
— GeorgeMonbiot (@GeorgeMonbiot) September 30, 2015
The "blood libel" in question is the idea that environmentalist pressure ended the use of indoor DDT spraying and hence led to millions of avoidable deaths from malaria in developing countries. Monbiot's case is set out here. He argues - correctly I think - that there was no worldwide ban on DDT. But he continues thus:
It may be true, in some places and at some times, that DDT has been hard to obtain for the purposes of disease control when it was believed to be the most effective option, though you have yet to show me hard evidence even that this is the case – which is a very different matter from a global ban. If it is true, however, I regret it.
So we see that there is a tacit acceptance that something was awry. Yet Monbiot continues by saying that it was "exaggerated and inaccurate" of Patrick Moore to say that the WHO discontinued its use. Yet if you refer to the announcement made by the WHO in 2006, when it announced that it was reintroducing indoor spraying of DDT, you read this:
Nearly thirty years after phasing out the widespread use of indoor spraying with DDT and other insecticides to control malaria, the World Health Organization (WHO) today announced that this intervention will once again play a major role in its efforts to fight the disease....WHO actively promoted indoor residual spraying for malaria control until the early 1980s when increased health and environmental concerns surrounding DDT caused the organization to stop promoting its use and to focus instead on other means of prevention. Extensive research and testing has since demonstrated that well-managed indoor residual spraying programmes using DDT pose no harm to wildlife or to humans.
In another section of his defence, Monbiot says - again correctly - that indoor spraying of DDT was not always the best option, citing malaria expert Allan Schapira. Yet Schapira is quite clear that availability of DDT was a serious issue, saying that its use has been "held hostage to misguided concerns for the environment" and that the WHO's malaria experts have "fought hard against pressure from various sides to ensure access in malaria-endemic countries to DDT".
So Monbiot appears to be engaging in what logicians refer to as "the fallacy of trivial objections". It seems beyond dispute that environmentalists' concerns led to a reduction in indoor spraying programmes and a consequent death toll. Whether there was or was not a ban is irrelevant. It's the same for the questions of whether the reduction in spraying was total or not is irrelevant too, or whether DDT was not always the best option. These are questions only of degree. We are not debating the distinction between a truth and a blood libel, but the distinction between a bloody truth and a big bloody truth.
Reader Comments (59)
Just for EternalOptimist :
http://kenethmiles.blogspot.co.uk/2004_02_01_kenethmiles_archive.html#107570569615970184
Omg
I'm being stalked by a weirdo from a different forum.
Is it national gobsh1te day today?
Free country. Kinda.
For the click-averse, the link is to a letter to the Australian from some professionals working in the field, after that organ repeated the 'millions died due to the ban on DDT' zombie myth, pointing out that the story is complex one not easily reduced to soundbites but DDT was never banned for domestic use as an insecticide.
In other words, Brand is wrong, Monbiot correct.
http://www.cei.org/PDFs/malaria.pdf
Ivan: "If the use of DDT had not been banned in the area of Papua New Guinea where I worked in the early 80s my daughter would be alive today rather than dead at 16 because of malaria.
"I have never seen a valid reason why the enviro-mental idiots even thought it would be a good idea unless they were thinking that malaria would help reduce the world population as they wanted in 'limits of growth'."
I'm so sorry about your daughter.
But I think you have a good point.
They wanted "limits to growth" only in particular places with particular populations. Their attitude was I'm-alright-Jack-pull-the-ladder-up once DDT had eliminated malaria in the U.S. I remember those documentaries in the '70's about how all the good medical care and modern science was creating "over-population" in poor brown people who were completely ignorant, supposedly, of the birds and the bees, and wouldn't limit the growth of their families to, well, I won't say "Rockefeller Standard" because the Rockefellers weren't exactly non-fecund, but maybe "American Middle Class Standard" where 2.3 children was considered ample.
I'm somewhat skeptical of the "resistance" line which seems to have come into being only since the "eggshells" line was discredited.
'Blood libel' seems to me to be an adult/upper-class version of 'E's dissin' me Mam', a cry I overheard frequently during playground altercations between children during the first decade of this century.
What absolutely amazes me when talk comes to DDT is total silence about its role during and after the Second World War. There is absolutely no word about the fact that American soldiers during the war and civilian refugees at war's end were all dusted with DDT. There is not a word about any ill effects that they suffered, especially no reports of anyone getting
cancer from DDT despite the fact that millions of people were involved. And why were they dusted? Very simple - Europe was full of lice by then. The Germans had built steam chambers that used heat to kill lice in the clothes or baggage of people who came from the east. But the lice still got through and DDT was the only thing that finally got them out of Europe. I regard the testimony against DDTnot just faulty but deliberately biased by irresponsible environmental activists. The millions of malaria deaths that came from the ban on DDT are in effect a crime against humanity which would not have happened except for the the work of these activists and their political allies.
Geronimo
You must use caution when extrapolating animal testing for carcinogens and mutagens.
Most animal positives are not human positives.
What absolutely amazes me when talk comes to DDT is total silence about its role during and after the Second World War. There is absolutely no word about the fact that American soldiers during the war and civilian refugees at war's end were all dusted with DDT. There is not a word about any ill effects that they suffered, especially no reports of anyone getting
cancer from DDT despite the fact that millions of people were involved. And why were they dusted? Very simple - Europe was full of lice by then. The Germans had built steam chambers that used heat to kill lice in the clothes or baggage of people who came from the east. But the lice still got through and DDT was the only thing that finally got them out of Europe. I regard the testimony against DDTnot just faulty but deliberately biased by irresponsible environmental activists. The millions of malaria deaths that came from the ban on DDT are in effect a crime against humanity which would not have happened except for the the work of these activists and their political allies.