Time Immortal

Africa Fighting Malaria writes in to let us know that today, April 25th, is an important day in the global struggle against malaria.

World Malaria Day is April 25, 2008. Africa Fighting Malaria is issuing a Call to Action to support indoor residual spraying, a highly effective, World Health Organization-approved method of malaria control…check out our interactive Africa map: http://fightingmalaria.org/issues.aspx?issue=14

Also check out our new video and support AFM’s fight against malaria! http://fightingmalaria.org/AFMInAction/

This blog supports indoor residual spraying, an anti-mosquito method which incorporates the use of DDT (how nice of the WHO to get their collective heads out from the depths of their bowels over that issue, albeit only after untold, unnecessary millions have died) and wishes AFM all the best of luck in garnering support in its fight against the spread of malaria.

Your good blogger, O Reader, encourages you to spread the word on your own site, if you have one, in support of this initiative.

Ed Darrell writes in yet again, which I think might have earned him the dubious distinction of being my most regular correspondent. Maybe I should buy a carbon offset offset in his name as a prize.

At any rate, Here’s my last response to him, just for a refresher, since it has been a couple weeks since I’ve picked up and run with this discussion.

Toxicity, of course, is not the issue with birds. The question is what does DDT or DDE do to reproduction.

The chemicals are endocrine disruptors. They act as estrogen and other endocrine hormones in the wild.

By focusing on the toxicity studies, you do the same thing Milloy does dishonestly (though I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt — you probably haven’t figured this out). Toxicity is not the problem. Unless the chemicals are toxic, and they aren’t to larger animals simply because size makes the difference, they accumulate in fat tissues. This accumulation lets the chemicals operate in the animal for the rest of its life.

It won’t kill the bird, but it will kill the chick in the bird’s egg. It will thin the shell of the egg, too, so that should the chick manage not to die from estrogen poisoning, the egg will crack prematurely, and the chick will die from prematurity.

DDT’s dangers are not toxicity to larger animals. The dangers are reproductive interruptions and cancer. And while DDT is not a “proven” carcinogen for humans, it is listed as a suspected human carcinogen by every cancer fighting agency on Earth. We know it causes cancer in other mammals, and frankly, there are no known mammal carcinogens that shouldn’t be suspected of causing cancer in humans.

But it’s not humans or the environment that DDT advocates care about — it’s making half-witty remarks against Rachel Carson, scientists, and environmentalists. Who cares how many kids are killed because of misuse of DDT, if we can score points on a blog?

Ed is, of course, bending the truth again, as is befitting a biased activist. But because I’m in a very good, and somewhat charitable, mood, I’ll entertain him for a while.

Let me re-state something I wrote previously:

First, in an analysis of DDT and its derivatives, the International Programme on Chemical Safety found that “DDT and its derivatives DDE and TDE have moderate to low toxicity to birds when given as an acute oral dose or in the diet.” Moreover, it was found that there “is no obvious pattern of relative toxicity between the three compounds. In some species it is DDT that is the most toxic, while in other species it is TDE.” (and remember: what toxicity exists is rated as “moderate to low”) The study does not specifically address eagles, however, noting that in the wild, “the most severely affected species of birds are raptors at the top of food chains. There is little direct laboratory data on toxicity to these birds.”

That should begin to paint us an interesting picture, O Reader, one which I will come back to later. There is “little laboratory data” on the toxicity of DDT and its byproducts to high-level predatory birds like eagles. And yet some people assert with terrifying certainty (when is science ever certain?) that DDT is the causitive factor in the bald eagle’s near brush with extinction.

The study goes on to note that whether or not DDT exposure affected hatchability of eggs (particularly due to eggshell thinning) varied greatly between bird species — some were succeptible to it, some were not. Care must be taken in looking at the results, however, because some of the test birds were also fed a low-calcium diet, which would also negatively impact eggshell thickness. This was specifically being tested for, as earlier studies (most notably by Joel Bitman of the United States Department of Agriculture, in 1969) had exposed the test birds not only to DDT or one of its derivatives, but had also fed them a low-calcium diet.

The reduction of calcium in the diet of test birds was found to be a significant factor in the outcome of the studies (which shouldn’t come as a surprise): “In contrast to the earlier studies, there was no effect of either DDT or DDE on shell thickness or egg weight when dietary calcium was higher. There was an increased incidence of egg breakage in birds fed DDT and DDE, but this was less pronounced than with the low calcium diets.”

Moreover, “Robson et al. (1976) studied the effects of DDE and DDT fed to Japanese quail in two different diets containing adequate or low calcium. DDT was fed at 100 mg/kg diet, whereas DDE was given at 0, 199, or 300 mg/kg diet, and the two calcium levels were 0.5% and 3%.

DDE at 300 mg/kg was detrimental to adult body weight, fertility, and survivability. There was no effect of either DDT or of DDE at up to 100 mg/kg diet on adult body weight, food consumption, egg production, egg weight, fertility, hatchability, cracking of eggs, or eggshell thickness. Low dietary calcium had the effect of reducing the thickness of eggshells, increasing the incidence of cracked shells and decreasing egg production and hatchability.” In other words, DDT and its derivatives (DDE is the most common — it is formed when DDT sheds a hydrogen cholride molecule) did not have at all the same effect on eggshell thickness in test birds as it was found to have in previous studies, because those studies had also involved feeding the birds a calcim-deficient diet, something they probably wouldn’t have been exposed to as frequently in the wild.

It’s not just the Bitman study that is thrown into doubt, either — researchers from the University of Alberta, writing to Nature Magazine, also question the findings of Wiemeyer and Porter’s work with American kestrels, pointing out that in the Wiemeyeer/Porter study, it was the control group of birds who had the thinnest eggshells. This was written in response to an article in Nature Magazine by Blus, Gish, Belisle and Prouty in 1972. The U of A researchers, in their letter, note that to “support their conclusions, the authors [Blus, Gish, Belisle and Prouty] state that concentrations of residues in the female determine shell thickness, a claim which is unreferenced, largely hypothetical, and without consideration of contradictory experimental evidence.”

Now, I’m not sure exactly how Ed jumped from reading the above, which I have excerpted directly from the article linked in the opening paragraph, to concluding that I chose only to focus on the toxicity of DDT and its derivatives whilst demonstrating utter neglect of the issue of the effect of those chemicals on avian reproduction. As the Reader can plainly see, the issue of egg cracking is directly discussed, and the studies I link to suggest that eggshell thickness varies not only in relation to DDT/DDE concentration, but to bird species as well — some birds seem succeptible, others do not. And indeed, the validity of the initial studies of eggshell thickness relative to DDT/DDE concentration are called into doubt because of the fact that the test birds were fed a low-calcium diet, which had a very obvious detrimental effect on eggshell thickness wholly apart from any DDT/DDE exposure.

(Tangentially, I wonder if Ed is as concerned about the estrogen imbalances and the effect they have on reproduction and offspring viability in human women, specifically in regard to birth control?)

Ed remarks that “while DDT is not a “proven” carcinogen for humans, it is listed as a suspected human carcinogen by every cancer fighting agency on Earth. We know it causes cancer in other mammals, and frankly, there are no known mammal carcinogens that shouldn’t be suspected of causing cancer in humans.” I admire his youthful idealism, of course, but he seems unable to accept the fact that cancer-fighting agencies could succumb to political pressures, or could act — on occasion — out of political, and then less than noble, motives. Yes, DDT is listed as a possible carcinogen in humans, and yet repeated studies have demonstrated no tangible connection between the development rates of various cancers and DDT/DDE exposure in humans. One would think that in the thirty or so years that we’ve been researching this matter, some kind of connection might have been demonstrated or observed…and yet, time and again, this is shown not to be the case.

Documented cases of people dying from DDT exposure are not exactly common either (in fact, they are rare); documented cases of people dying from malaria spread by resurgent mosquito populations as a result of the DDT ban are, unfortunately, very common, to the tune of (well) over a million per year.

Ed and I are both trying to framework our arguments, in part, around the issue of death tolls inflicted on real human beings. But whereas Ed is more repulsed by the fact that a chemical agent might cause cancer (although more and more studies seem to be showing no tangible link between DDT, or any of its derivatives, and cancer rates) in a few human beings, and in so doing kill them, I choose to be more repulsed by the fact that discontinuing the use of DDT was directly responsible for the re-increase in rates of malaria infections in many countries around the world, causing millions of deaths. Ed is chasing phantoms and decrying shadows; I prefer to deal with somewhat harsher and more concrete realities.

What’s really unfortunate, though, is that this whole discussion emerged out of nothing more than a throwaway comment I made in an article that was primarily focused on how the production of biofuel — another obsession of environmentalists — was forcing the prices of food staples, grains especially, to skyrocket world-wide.

A significant contributor to the problem - one estimate puts it at 30 per cent of the problem - is the growing reliance on biofuels, such as ethanol and biodiesel. Last year, 20 per cent of the U.S. corn crop was used to produce ethanol; this year, it is expected to reach as high as one-third.

Biofuels have been pursued as a way to cut greenhouse gas emissions while enabling the world to maintain its reliance on the internal combustion engine. In theory, they are carbon neutral because the carbon they produce when burned is offset by the amount they absorb while growing. But because of the carbon produced when they are harvested, refined and transported, the picture is not so rosy.

Further, ethanol is seen as desirable because it can locate fuel production in the Western world, rather than in countries seen as politically less reliable.

The result of this shift to biofuels can be catastrophic. In Mexico, for example, the shift in the use of maize to ethanol has been a major cause of the astronomical increase in the cost of a staple food.

That the world would sacrifice land needed for food production to produce more fuel for private transportation shows how crazy our addiction to fossil fuels has become. We would place the lives and well being of hundreds of millions of people in jeopardy in order to maintain our way of life.

If the price of bread triples in Canada, most of us will still be able to get by. Six dollars might seem a lot to pay for bread, admittedly, but most Canadians (not all, though) can still survive such an increase. Poor people in Canada, and the majority of the people living in poor and developing nations, however, cannot weather such steep food price increases. And out of a selfish desire to live the most “carbon neutral” lifestyle possible, the rich liberals of the West think nothing of how their thirst for biofuel forces starvation upon many in the third world.

Funnily, Ed didn’t seem to have any comment on that larger issue, preferring instead to sidetrack the discussion into a topic of a battle his side has already won, more or less — DDT. I wonder what Ed thinks about biofuels? He seems so passionate about protecting the environment, and at least feigns passion (he might be sincere, but of this I am less certain) where preventing the deaths of human beings is concerned. I honestly wonder if he advocates for the increased use of biofuels, even though such an increase would condemn many people world-wide to deeper poverty and/or starvation? After all, when the issue becomes — very directly — a tradeoff between comparatively minor environmental harm and a massive human death toll, Ed comes down in favour of a massive human death toll where DDT usage is concerned. Biofuel is another issue in which a very minor (if at all existant) environmental impact conflicts directly with the well-being and survivability of what could be millions of human beings. Why did Ed choose to sidetrack the discussion in the first place, and what is his stance on biofuel?

One is not inclined to be all that hopeful in one’s assumptions in this regard.

It took Ed Darrell a good half-dozen emails in which he has called Steven Milloy a liar to actually provide a concrete example within a piece of correspondence. The drought has now ended, however, and an example has been given.

Here, try this one; Milloy says:

6. “To only a few chemicals does man owe as great a debt as to DDT… In little more than two decades, DDT has prevented 500 million human deaths, due to malaria, that otherwise would have been inevitable.”

[National Academy of Sciences, Committee on Research in the Life Sciences of the Committee on Science and Public Policy. 1970. The Life Sciences; Recent Progress and Application to Human Affairs; The World of Biological Research; Requirements for the Future.]

Now, if you know anything about mathematics, that should get your hackles up. 500 million lives saved? Malaria kills about a million people a year by most estimates — that would be 500 years of deaths. It’s 250 years of deaths if we go for a doubling the usual death rate. Of course, DDT has been used for only 50 years. So Milloy is arguing that 10 million people a year die from malaria.

Obviously that figure is wrong. YOu can see it. Milloy knows it, too (since I sent him the math). But of course, he might rely on the NAS as a source — which he would, I’m sure, if he were an honorable man who gave a whit about the honor of a 14-year old Boy Scout — but
he doesn’t.

The publication is available on line. Sure enough, NAS goofed.

But you need to read the entire publication. Milloy presents it as the NAS agreeing with his view that Carson was in error. NAS takes the opposite position. They argue that Carson is right, and that she was right to urge more research to find a replacement for DDT, since,
in their estimation DDT use provided some value.

You can read my criticism, with citations, here: http://timpanogos.wordpress.com/2007/08/09/fisking-junk-
sciences-campaign-against-ddt-point-6/

NAS calls DDT “the poster child” of chemcials that are hazardous.

Is that Milloy’s point?

All one needs to do is pay atetntion to the headlines. Milloy ignores them. I ask that you be more honest than Milloy. He’s a lost cause in my book.

President Kennedy’s Council of Science Advisors reveiwed Carson’s findings, and they recommended to Kennedy that he act sooner rather than waiting as Carson had proposed, because the chemicals including DDT were more dangerous than Carson had alleged.

Why doesn’t Milloy mention that? I don’t know.

But I think you are duty bound to act more honorably than Milloy. Why don’t you mention it? Why don’t you mention the 1,000 studies that verify Carson’s claims, and refute Milloy’s?

I’ve given you the pointers. Check the citations — not just to see if they exist, but to see if they verify what Milloy says. Lazy academics is equal to academic fraud in this case. Don’t be lazy about it.

First, let’s be clear — malarial death rates are on the order of approximately 2.7 million a year, not the 1 million Ed notes above. Of course, that is still far short of the 10 million a year that would be necessary to achieve the 500 million saved that the NAS erroneously quoted.

And yes, Milloy does quote the NAS report as a source, and so makes mention of the 500 million. Within that limited scope, Milloy is indeed incorrect, but only insofar as he quoted another source that was incorrect. And the scope of the error is likewise narrow; the 500 million figure could be dismissed as hyperbole, and the fact that it is not an accurate number in no way argues against what would seem to be the concrete fact that DDT usage, in its day, did prevent millions of malaria-related deaths.

And here we have to ask, I think, what Steven Milloy’s true intent in posting the quotation from the National Academy of Sciences study was; was he intending to hold up the 500 million number as accurate, or was he merely citing one more study which asserted that yes, DDT usage in an anti-malarial role saves many lives? I’m a charitable guy; I tend to believe that the latter possibility is Milloy’s probable rationale.

Ed does correctly point out that the NAS ultimately did side with Rachel Carson’s conclusions about a rollback in DDT usage, and I’ve said before that even I’m not in favour of willy-nilly use the stuff. But here’s an interesting question: can people, even when they start out well, still get things wrong? Richard Dawkins argues in favour of the theory of evolution, and I think he does very well at it; strictly on the science, I agree with him. But Richard Dawkins ultimately draws out of that otherwise very excellent science a conclusion that God is just a delusion, and that organized Religion is a form of child abuse. Is he still right, despite the fact that his science is impeccable?

No, of course he is not. So what I wonder is this: the NAS acknowledged that DDT played a valuable role in combatting malaria, and that it was because DDT was so damnably effective at killing or driving away mosquitos that millions of malarial deaths were being prevented world-wide thanks to its use. But in the end, they sided with Rachel Carson and argued in favour of diminishing the use of DDT. Could they too have made the transition from right-minded to wrong-minded somewhere? It’s certainly possible, isn’t it?

And maybe Steven Milloy had no other intent in quoting the NAS source than to suggest exactly that. Or maybe he had very malicious reasons. Ed certainly attributes malice to Milloy’s actions. But then, Ed is himself biased.

The fact is, the NAS is, I don’t think, correct in calling DDT the “poster child” of hazardous chemicals, first and foremost because that sort of statement is rhetorical, not academic. Certainly, it is not a scientific statement. And as some of the articles of Milloy’s that I found sources for note, the claim that DDT is über-harmful seems more and more questionable, as several studies have now demonstrated no identifiable connection between DDT concentration in the body and rates of cancer development.

Ed claims that there are a thousand studies that confirm Carson’s claims. Personally, I don’t see them — certainly Ed doesn’t link to all of them (in fact, between the two incredibly lengthy articles of his that I have now linked to, he links to very few studies indeed). I’ve found, within half an hour, eight studies that suggest that DDT isn’t as harmful, to humans at least, as was previously thought. Given more time, is it possible that I might find a hundred such articles? Or a thousand?

Do I need to find more than one article, as long as the article I find is right?

I notice that Ed has dropped his unfair accusation that I edit emails (probably in the face of the threat of being exposed as a fraud yet again — and yet I am the passive-aggressive one?), and I’m going to admit to making one edit to the above message from him; I changed none of the spelling, but I did turn the provided URL for his blog post into a proper hyperlink. That required adding an ‘a’ tag; none of Ed’s original text has been deleted.

I notice that Ed’s article is supposed to be one in a series of entries fisking the DDT FAQ at Junk Science. I further notice that Ed hasn’t really addressed all that many of the points made in said FAQ, despite his stated goal of doing so, and despite the fact that it’s been half a year since he posted the article he provides a link to (above). What should this tell us, O Reader? Could it possibly be that Ed is being dishonest again and not admitting that some of Milloy’s points cannot be fisked, at least not by Ed Darrell?

So at this point, I turn it over to the reader. There’s been a fair bit of discussion on this blog about DDT over the last few days. We’re all intelligent people here; we can make our own decisions and draw our own conclusions.

What do you do, O Reader, when the discussion just isn’t going your way? Some people bow out gracefully, others concede a point or two, and others try and shift their angle of attack. Apparently, however, if you’re Ed Darrell, you abandon all pretense of rational discussion and fling a little mud.

Your nearly impossible to read comments box, your not posting remarks unedited by you, and your intransigence in repeatedly posting “citations”from the avoiwed liar Steven Milloy suggest this is not the place to carry on a discussion.

I had hoped you’d bother to read what I wrote, and follow my links, after I followed yours and was so sorely disappinted.

Milloy is a liar. You obviously have never bothered to try to track down his citations — they can’t be tracked. Those aren’t citations. They are primates flinging feces.

Alas.

If anyone has a question as to whether or not I post remarks unedited by me, I’ll be more than happy to provide the original emails that arrived in my inbox. I sometimes — very occasionally — correct spelling mistakes in what arrives, but only if the error is egregious and would serve only to embarrass the sender. But apart from those rare instances, what I display for the Reader in these postings is the unedited text of the original message that I receive. The only parts of the message which get redacted are the sender’s email address, IP address, and ISP information.

And as I say, I have backup copies of all the original emails to prove that with, which I can easily display upon request.

As to the complaint about the contact form being a bit hard to read — well, it’s not hard for me to read, and nobody else has yet complained. But the colour palette is a bit narrow, and for what it’s worth I’ve tracked down the relevant bits of CSS and made a few modifications — textarea and input backgrounds are now darker, and the text is the same gold colour as the hyperlinks.

There, that sets aside Ed’s form criticisms. Now, let’s look again at a more serious charge that he makes.

Just for fun, I went through the list of DDT factoids at Junk Science to see how easy it would be to verify some of the citations. Selecting citations at random, I tried to cross-reference them against Internet-available sources. Some of the older citations, I would have had to visit a library with a comprehensive database of old journals to obtain (and my ability to access the University of Alberta’s online journal services have been revoked due to my no longer being a student of that institution).

Others, however, were more easily tracked down. Here’s a handful of examples from the list of references that could be demonstrated as being accurate citations from works published in medical or scientific journals.

Citation: Bull World Health Organ 1998;76(1):11-6
Verified at: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9615492

Citation: J Am Mosq Control Assoc 1998 Dec;14(4):410-20
Verified at: http://lib.bioinfo.pl/pmid:10084135

Citation: Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry. 1989.Public Health Statement: DDT, DDE, and DDD
Verified at: http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/toxprofiles/phs35.html#bookmark05

Citation: Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 1999 Jun;8(6):525-32
Verified at: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10385143

Citation: Occup Environ Med 1998 Aug;55(8):522-7
Verified at: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9849538

Citation: National Toxicology Program, TR-131 Bioassays of DDT, TDE, and p,p’-DDE for Possible Carcinogenicity (CAS No. 50-29-3, CAS No. 72-54-8, CAS No. 72-55-9)
Verified at: http://ntp.niehs.nih.gov/index.cfm?objectid=0704C8A4 F52A BE78 5C81C16C5C1F14C9

Citation: N Engl J Med 1997;337:1253-8
Verified at: https://content.nejm.org/cgi/reprint/337/18/1253.pdf

Citation: BMJ 1997 Jul 12;315(7100):81-5
Verified at: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9240045

Now, all I’m doing by listing these here is demonstrating that it is Ed, currently, who can be shown conclusively to be a liar. Whether Steven Milloy is a liar or not is still up for discussion — certainly, Ed is convinced that Milloy is a liar of epic proportions, while I remain agnostic on the matter. But the above list demonstrates, conclusively, that Ed’s earlier statements (i.e. that no serious scientific publications have carried articles disputing Rachel Carson’s theories or the conclusions published in her book Silent Spring, and that Milloy’s citations can’t be tracked) are falsehoods.

To be clear: based on the above, it can be said now that Ed Darrel has been conclusively demonstrated to be a liar.

I have read a sampling of content at Ed’s site, and admittedly do enjoy some of his content (his commentary on Galileo — and the generally good relationship between the Church and science — is very reasonable, for example). And I would even go so far as to charitably suggest that he makes a convincing case for a multi-vectored solution to the problem of malaria; his advocacy for mosquito nets is, I think, important (even if mosquito nets are an incomplete solution, as anyone with sufficient backcountry camping experience should know), and both passive and active methods of preventing mosquitos from reaching humans will be necessary in eradicating malaria from the world.

To be completely fair, I’m no advocate for rampant use of any potentially toxic substance, but I do believe in using what works to solve a problem. DDT worked in many countries; we should still consider it a valid part of the arsenal of methods we should employ in our efforts to eradicate malaria world-wide, especially since many of the effects it supposedly has — on humans and on avian species — have since been cast into doubt*. That’s not to say that DDT is the only weapon we should use in our struggle against this disease. But neither should we disallow its use as we have — millions have died for that mistake.