3 ms·

Retro Report actually covered this the other week: https://www.retroreport.org/video/malaria-and-the-silent-spring/ https://www.retroreport.org/video/malaria-an

Retro Report actually covered this the other week: https://www.retroreport.org/video/malaria-and-the-silent-spring/ https://www.retroreport.org/video/malaria-and-the-silent-spr... No Rachel Carson didn't cause the deaths of millions. Malaria carrying mosquitos have become resistant to DDT, as she had predicted. She was advocating for using a diverse range of tactics to solve the problem, instead of one brute force approach.

candiodari 10y ago
Ok perhaps it should be put more accurately like this : millions of people died at 5-20 years old that would have died at 50, maybe even 65 years old. And the reverse is also true, if we hadn't outlawed DDT, when resistance occurs, a number of people would have died (at age 50) without it actually affording them protection. That number would have been smaller and of course those people would have had a life before they died from DDT side effects and complications. The thing about outlawing DDT that's "surely not related" is that it protected hundreds, maybe even thousands of western lives, and lives of the local very rich (mostly politicians, UN diplomats, ...) at the cost of millions of black children deaths, poor children. And, of course, environmentalists are still at it. You see, the only way you're ever going to protect against malaria in Africa is "vector control". Eradicating the mosquitoes in other words. How ? Well, by purposefully destroying their habitat. Anything that's a swamp, or swamp-like anywhere near human populations (that's almost everywhere), we dump in sand until it doesn't support that ecosystem anymore. Doing this is what's currently protecting tens of millions of lives yearly, and apparently it's bad. In the same manner, the (few) alternatives, like genetic modifications to eradicate the mosquitoes by inserting "termination genes" into male mosquitoes, are being fought by environmentalists as well.
- baron816 10y ago
  Please watch the video: https://www.retroreport.org/video/malaria-and-the-silent-spring/ https://www.retroreport.org/video/malaria-and-the-silent-spr...

candiodari 10y ago

Ok perhaps it should be put more accurately like this : millions of people died at 5-20 years old that would have died at 50, maybe even 65 years old. And the reverse is also true, if we hadn't outlawed DDT, when resistance occurs, a number of people would have died (at age 50) without it actually affording them protection. That number would have been smaller and of course those people would have had a life before they died from DDT side effects and complications. The thing about outlawing DDT that's "surely not related" is that it protected hundreds, maybe even thousands of western lives, and lives of the local very rich (mostly politicians, UN diplomats, ...) at the cost of millions of black children deaths, poor children. And, of course, environmentalists are still at it. You see, the only way you're ever going to protect against malaria in Africa is "vector control". Eradicating the mosquitoes in other words. How ? Well, by purposefully destroying their habitat. Anything that's a swamp, or swamp-like anywhere near human populations (that's almost everywhere), we dump in sand until it doesn't support that ecosystem anymore. Doing this is what's currently protecting tens of millions of lives yearly, and apparently it's bad. In the same manner, the (few) alternatives, like genetic modifications to eradicate the mosquitoes by inserting "termination genes" into male mosquitoes, are being fought by environmentalists as well.

baron816 10y ago
Please watch the video: https://www.retroreport.org/video/malaria-and-the-silent-spring/ https://www.retroreport.org/video/malaria-and-the-silent-spr...