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Citizens Electoral Council of Australia

Media Release Friday, 5 February 2016

Craig Isherwood‚ National Secretary
PO Box 376‚ COBURG‚ VIC 3058
Phone: 1800 636 432
Email: cec@cecaust.com.au
Website: http://cec.cecaust.com.au
 

Bring back DDT to eradicate Zika virus

As the World Health Organisation (WHO) on 1 February has declared the Zika virus a “Public Health Emergency of International Concern”, following a dramatic increase in cases of microcephaly (underdeveloped brains in babies) linked to the virus—4,000 since October 2015 in Brazil alone— it is time for Australia to resume production of DDT to eradicate any mosquitos potentially carrying the virus. The Aedes aegypti mosquito, the main transmitter of the Zika virus globally, is found in far north Queensland; this mosquito is also responsible for the spread of dengue fever worldwide.

Dr Cameron Webb, a mosquito-borne virus expert at the University of Sydney, says Aedes aegypti would play the most important role in the transmission of Zika if it arrived in Australia. On 26 January he wrote: “If we can get outbreaks of dengue, there is no reason we cannot, or won’t, get an outbreak of Zika in the future”, adding that “there is great potential that Aedes albopictus, better known as the Asian Tiger Mosquito, could become established in southern cities. As well as a vector of Zika virus, it can spread dengue and chikungunya viruses and be a significant nuisance-biting pest. Keeping this mosquito out of our cities is critical.”

Australia once extensively and successfully used DDT until it was banned here in 1987. Beginning in the 1940s, the insecticide application of DDT immediately brought down the world death toll from many insect-vectored diseases, especially malaria. There were spectacular, life-saving results around the globe. In 1946, before the use of DDT, Sri Lanka (then British Ceylon, population 6.657 million) had 2.8 million cases of malaria, and 12,500 deaths that year. After large-scale spraying against mosquitos began on the island nation, the number of malaria cases in 1963 fell to 17, with only one death! In the US state of Georgia, malaria, formerly widespread, was completely eliminated by 1950 after DDT spraying was introduced in 1945. Agriculture gains were also significant, as DDT was effective against plant bugs, beetles, ticks and other pests.

The environmentalist movement—launched by eugenicists and fascists—went into action to stop DDT dead. Prince Philip (who founded the World Wildlife Fund—WWF—along with former Nazi SS officer Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands and Eugenics Society President Sir Julian Huxley), infamous for desiring to be reincarnated as a deadly virus to reduce the world’s population, led the charge to ban DDT. In an interview with People magazine in 1981, Philip specifically referred to Sri Lanka when he denounced DDT: “I was in Sri Lanka recently, where a United Nations project set out in the late 1940s to eradicate malaria. It’s an island and it was therefore possible to destroy the mosquito carrying the disease. What people didn’t realise was that malaria was actually controlling the growth of the population. The consequence was that within about 20 years the population doubled.” This was no casual opinion: during a 1988 Royal Tour of Australia Prince Philip castigated scientists at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research in Melbourne for working on a malaria vaccine, which he said would just contribute to the “population explosion”. (Diversity and Discovery: The History of the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute 1965-1996, by Sir Gustav Nossal, 2007)

In 1972 the United States government’s Environmental Protection Agency head William Ruckelshaus banned the use of DDT, ignoring his own agency’s inquiry from a year earlier which found that the claims against DDT were untrue and ruled it should remain available for use. In 1976, the World Health Organisation issued an international ban, in the form of a recommendation against DDT. Though nations were still technically free to choose to use DDT, and even the US could still export DDT, manufacturers stopped making it, and it was hard to obtain. There were other impediments. For instance, the British Foreign Office and USAID (US Agency for International Development) cut off assistance to nations using DDT. In 1995, the UN Environment Programme started action for a global treaty against DDT and a list of other demonised chemicals, which culminated in the 2001 Stockholm Convention, formally calling for disuse of 12 chemicals (called POPs—“persistent organic pollutants”).

As a result, 70 million people needlessly died from malaria over the 1973-2014 period, according to WHO statistics. Today it is present in 97 nations. The 2013 world malaria death toll was an estimated 584,000, with a total number of cases in the range of nearly 200 million. Africa suffers 90 per cent of the deaths. Add to this, the deaths and suffering from dengue fever, chikungunya, West Nile Fever, and other mosquito- and insect-borne diseases, now spreading internationally. Zika is just the latest scourge.

The environmentalist scheme tagged DDT as a “pollutant” of the environment, and a carcinogen to people, animals and plants. The 1962 book Silent Spring by Rachel Carson became the rallying point for these charges. But Carson’s “science” was bogus. Dr Wayland Hayes performed tests for the US Public Health Service, feeding human volunteers up to 35 milligrams of DDT in their food every day for 18 months. (The average human intake of DDT in the United States at that time was about 0.03 mg per day, or 0.36 mg per year.) No adverse effects resulted, either at the time of the study, or during the next 10 years. Dr J. Gordon Edwards, a leading entomologist who died in 2004 at the ripe age of 85, swallowed a tablespoon of DDT on a regular basis to prove DDT’s lack of toxicity to vertebrate animals and people. Esquire magazine, in September 1971, pictured him ingesting a tablespoon of DDT to prove the point.

In 2006, the WHO lifted its ban on DDT after 30 years. However, no mobilisation has been organised for targeted use of DDT, or development and use of replacement chemicals where DDT resistance is present. Instead, a cynical, anti-chemical campaign has been under way for years, for donor nations and foundations to provide Africans with mosquito-repellent bed nets. This has lessened the statistics of mortality and morbidity, but still malaria is widespread, and a killer.

The reintroduction of DDT should also reduce the incidence of Ross River virus, the most common and widespread of mosquito-borne diseases that infect Australians. The overall benefits for better health and agriculture make a strong case for DDT.

Click here for a free copy of 21st Century Science & Technology magazine’s Fall 2002 feature on DDT.

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