6 ms·

A hundred years ago, Malaria in the United States was bad enough to warrant a dedicated government office (It was folded into the CDC after WW2). This turned i

A hundred years ago, Malaria in the United States was bad enough to warrant a dedicated government office (It was folded into the CDC after WW2). This turned into a major eradication program through the use of DDT in the 1940's and by the 1950's Malaria was effectively eliminated from the states through the decimation of the mosquito population. Mosquitoes have of course rebounded over time, but malaria has not. Mosquito release programs like this are now several decades old and have shown high efficacy with few environmental side effects where they have been tried. It is certainly more environmentally friendly than DDT. Meanwhile, the benefits are enormous and if done successfully in Africa could be directly measured in terms of human suffering.

js2 6y ago
Indeed, I just recently learned, this is why the CDC is in Atlanta: > On July 1, 1946 the Communicable Disease Center (CDC) opened its doors and occupied one floor of a small building in Atlanta. Its primary mission was simple yet highly challenging: prevent malaria from spreading across the nation. Armed with a budget of only $10 million and fewer than 400 employees, the agency’s early challenges included obtaining enough trucks, sprayers, and shovels necessary to wage war on mosquitoes. https://www.cdc.gov/about/history/index.html https://www.cdc.gov/about/history/index.html
- blnqr 6y ago
  If only the CDC would stick to work on communicable diseases
  - dan-robertson 6y ago
    Their mandate changed. They are not the centre for disease control and prevention and they act in accordance with their mandate as a public health agency
    - blnqr 6y ago
      Yes, I know. I have friends there who are fantastic, smart, committed civil servants working within their mandate and structure. I have a Master's in Public Policy from the Kennedy School, I'm not anti-government. But mission creep has hurt the CDC more than helped the nation. Public health is far too big a remit for any one agency.
    - Naracion 6y ago
      I know this is a typo, but it reverses the meaning so clarifying for future readers in case it's confusing: They are _now_ the centre for disease control and prevention
  - gvjddbnvdrbv 6y ago
    I'm confused I've never heard of it getting involved in anything else. What do you mean?
    - Broken_Hippo 6y ago
      Well, don't they do other things that involve health? Like drinking guidelines and dietary guidelines and cancer research/information and things of that sort? Still well within the realm of health and certainly affects communicable diseases (an unhealthy population is more prone to worse effects of disease).
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
    - mhb 6y ago
      Guns: https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/firearms/fastfact.html https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/firearms/fastfact.htm...
      - gvjddbnvdrbv 6y ago
        I would tend to agree that they have no place talking about guns.
        js2 6y ago
        Collecting gun-related injury and fatality data allows us to make evidence-based informed decisions about what types of legislation are likely to be effective to reduce harm. For example: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-05/the-3-gun-control-laws-that-work-best-in-the-u-s https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-05/the-3-gun...
        mhb 6y ago
        And that has nothing to do with Disease Control and is a clear demonstration of mission creep. The CDC has recently displayed its incompetence regarding its core function. Maybe it should master that before addressing other issues of society which are, at best, only tenuously in its purview.
  - Broken_Hippo 6y ago
    Why? What do they do that you oppose?
    - throwaway0a5e 6y ago
      Public health is precariously close to politics in a lot of cases and it casts shade on their mundane and universally appreciated work on topics more directly related to disease. That said, it'd kind of inevitable that they run a course like that because constantly doing good non-controversial work banks political capital and the politicians are gonna try to harness organizations like that for their own ends.
      - Broken_Hippo 6y ago
        So, because some folks make it political, we shouldn't get facts about things like the HPV vaccine or the effects of birth control methods? How, exactly, are folks (who are not versed in medicine) supposed to get this information from a trusted source?
jsinai 6y ago
Question, why was DDT never tried in Africa if it was so successful in Florida and also in Italy after WW2? Why don’t we use DDT today? I’m curious to know the answers and have better understanding of the complexity of what makes eradicating malaria in Africa in the 21st century more complex than it was in the 1940’s and 50’s in other parts of the world.
- notriddle 6y ago
  > why was DDT never tried in Africa It was used in Africa, at least in 2016. http://chm.pops.int/Implementation/DDT/DDTMeetings/DDTEG62016/tabid/5348/Default.aspx http://chm.pops.int/Implementation/DDT/DDTMeetings/DDTEG6201... > Why don’t we use DDT today? You mean for agriculture? Because using DDT for disease vector control was never internationally banned (only banned at the national level). It's banned in agriculture because it kills stuff other than the mosquitoes. In particular, its use is restricted by the "Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants". Persistent Organic Pollutants are pretty much as bad as they sound, and DDT is one.
- xyproto 6y ago
  Some of the people promoting DDT drank spoonfuls of it to prove how safe it was, but it turned out to be very toxic to nature. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gtcXXbuR244 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gtcXXbuR244 > DDT was less effective in tropical regions due to the continuous life cycle of mosquitoes and poor infrastructure. It was not applied at all in sub-Saharan Africa due to these perceived difficulties. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDT#Use_in_the_1940s_and_1950s https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDT#Use_in_the_1940s_and_195...
- gostsamo 6y ago
  It is devastating chemical, killing not only insects, but all kinds of other creatures. It is one of the reasons for the writing of "Silent Spring". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDT https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDT
- rmason 6y ago
  We don't use DDT today because of a book by Rachel Carson called Silent Spring. http://www.rachelcarson.org/SilentSpring.aspx http://www.rachelcarson.org/SilentSpring.aspx Despite the environmental damage of DDT the Africans wanted to wipe out malaria first but were not able to purchase it in the quantities needed. As late as 2004 leading newspapers editorialized that eradicating malaria in Africa outweighed the environmental damage https://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/11/magazine/what-the-world-needs-now-is-ddt.html https://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/11/magazine/what-the-world-n...

js2 6y ago

Indeed, I just recently learned, this is why the CDC is in Atlanta: > On July 1, 1946 the Communicable Disease Center (CDC) opened its doors and occupied one floor of a small building in Atlanta. Its primary mission was simple yet highly challenging: prevent malaria from spreading across the nation. Armed with a budget of only $10 million and fewer than 400 employees, the agency’s early challenges included obtaining enough trucks, sprayers, and shovels necessary to wage war on mosquitoes. https://www.cdc.gov/about/history/index.html https://www.cdc.gov/about/history/index.html

blnqr 6y ago
If only the CDC would stick to work on communicable diseases
- dan-robertson 6y ago
  Their mandate changed. They are not the centre for disease control and prevention and they act in accordance with their mandate as a public health agency
  - blnqr 6y ago
    Yes, I know. I have friends there who are fantastic, smart, committed civil servants working within their mandate and structure. I have a Master's in Public Policy from the Kennedy School, I'm not anti-government. But mission creep has hurt the CDC more than helped the nation. Public health is far too big a remit for any one agency.
  - Naracion 6y ago
    I know this is a typo, but it reverses the meaning so clarifying for future readers in case it's confusing: They are _now_ the centre for disease control and prevention
- gvjddbnvdrbv 6y ago
  I'm confused I've never heard of it getting involved in anything else. What do you mean?
  - Broken_Hippo 6y ago
    Well, don't they do other things that involve health? Like drinking guidelines and dietary guidelines and cancer research/information and things of that sort? Still well within the realm of health and certainly affects communicable diseases (an unhealthy population is more prone to worse effects of disease).
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  - mhb 6y ago
    Guns: https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/firearms/fastfact.html https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/firearms/fastfact.htm...
    - gvjddbnvdrbv 6y ago
      I would tend to agree that they have no place talking about guns.
      - js2 6y ago
        Collecting gun-related injury and fatality data allows us to make evidence-based informed decisions about what types of legislation are likely to be effective to reduce harm. For example: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-05/the-3-gun-control-laws-that-work-best-in-the-u-s https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-05/the-3-gun...
        mhb 6y ago
        And that has nothing to do with Disease Control and is a clear demonstration of mission creep. The CDC has recently displayed its incompetence regarding its core function. Maybe it should master that before addressing other issues of society which are, at best, only tenuously in its purview.
- Broken_Hippo 6y ago
  Why? What do they do that you oppose?
  - throwaway0a5e 6y ago
    Public health is precariously close to politics in a lot of cases and it casts shade on their mundane and universally appreciated work on topics more directly related to disease. That said, it'd kind of inevitable that they run a course like that because constantly doing good non-controversial work banks political capital and the politicians are gonna try to harness organizations like that for their own ends.
    - Broken_Hippo 6y ago
      So, because some folks make it political, we shouldn't get facts about things like the HPV vaccine or the effects of birth control methods? How, exactly, are folks (who are not versed in medicine) supposed to get this information from a trusted source?

jsinai 6y ago

Question, why was DDT never tried in Africa if it was so successful in Florida and also in Italy after WW2? Why don’t we use DDT today? I’m curious to know the answers and have better understanding of the complexity of what makes eradicating malaria in Africa in the 21st century more complex than it was in the 1940’s and 50’s in other parts of the world.

notriddle 6y ago
> why was DDT never tried in Africa It was used in Africa, at least in 2016. http://chm.pops.int/Implementation/DDT/DDTMeetings/DDTEG62016/tabid/5348/Default.aspx http://chm.pops.int/Implementation/DDT/DDTMeetings/DDTEG6201... > Why don’t we use DDT today? You mean for agriculture? Because using DDT for disease vector control was never internationally banned (only banned at the national level). It's banned in agriculture because it kills stuff other than the mosquitoes. In particular, its use is restricted by the "Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants". Persistent Organic Pollutants are pretty much as bad as they sound, and DDT is one.
xyproto 6y ago
Some of the people promoting DDT drank spoonfuls of it to prove how safe it was, but it turned out to be very toxic to nature. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gtcXXbuR244 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gtcXXbuR244 > DDT was less effective in tropical regions due to the continuous life cycle of mosquitoes and poor infrastructure. It was not applied at all in sub-Saharan Africa due to these perceived difficulties. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDT#Use_in_the_1940s_and_1950s https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDT#Use_in_the_1940s_and_195...
gostsamo 6y ago
It is devastating chemical, killing not only insects, but all kinds of other creatures. It is one of the reasons for the writing of "Silent Spring". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDT https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDT
rmason 6y ago
We don't use DDT today because of a book by Rachel Carson called Silent Spring. http://www.rachelcarson.org/SilentSpring.aspx http://www.rachelcarson.org/SilentSpring.aspx Despite the environmental damage of DDT the Africans wanted to wipe out malaria first but were not able to purchase it in the quantities needed. As late as 2004 leading newspapers editorialized that eradicating malaria in Africa outweighed the environmental damage https://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/11/magazine/what-the-world-needs-now-is-ddt.html https://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/11/magazine/what-the-world-n...