Comments on: Tuesday PSA: Your United Nations at Work!

By: Chris Arndt

Chris Arndt — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 19:32:18 +0000

Just about anything that could be safe is dangerous if used improperly. Examples include firearms, forks, shovels, automobiles, airplanes, and a free press.

If I kill someone with aspirin only a dope would go after the pain-killer people and not me…. yet DDT is off the market and politically dead.

When were green campaigns not shrill? My curriculum in the fifth grade 16 (or so) years ago included stuff about the dangers of overpopulatin nad that we should literally prevent pregnancies or the diaper-crappers will grow up to absorb my share of nature’s resources. Captain Planet tried to teach me that if Tony Stark or Henry Ford accidentally dumped a bin of trash in a yard while creating force fields and automobiles that it was an intentional act.

By: farsider

farsider — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 12:13:41 +0000

The UN is, on balance, not a force for good in the modern world. DDT is extremely safe for people and the environment if used properly and could save many lives and improve health in the developing world. With it, terrible diseases could be wiped out. We will regret it when tropical diseases get a foothold in the US. (I’m sure Scott can tell us about dengue fever, for example.) It is a sin that DDT is still banned.

P.S. In 60s and 70s comics didn’t Superman have his own flag at the UN?

By: Jon

Jon — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 20:16:38 +0000

The tone of the post-DDT-ban campaigns referred to in these links reminds me strongly of the abstinence-based campaigns against teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases (’Mosquitoes: just say No’). Unfortunately many green campaigns have now taken on the same shrill note of moral outrage.

By: Chris Arndt

Chris Arndt — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 17:19:48 +0000

Political rightist Henry I. Miller writes about DDT here – http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/miller200509090843.asp – I will take him on faith that he is accurate.

Another rightist – http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fpcomment/archive/2009/06/18/junk-science-week-ddt-banned-lifesaver.aspx

If these people are wrong then we (in the loosest sense as I had nothing to do with it) have done immense harm….

By: Mark

Mark — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 15:53:34 +0000

When we realized there were problems with the way we were using antibiotics, we didn’t ban antibiotics — just started trying to use them more wisely. Properly used, DDT also saved lives, not only from famine but also and especially from malaria carried by mosquitos. The DDT ban costs more lives than it saves. The enemy is us, indeed.

By: Sean Duggan

Sean Duggan — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 14:38:15 +0000

Actually, as best I understand, DDT isn’t that harmful to humans in incidental exposure like that. It’s sustained exposure that causes problems. The issue with DDT usage was more the fact that it was used as a broad-spectrum cure without regard to the problems that could cause. In some ways, it’s similar to what we’re facing with antibiotics use, or any other medicine that people regard as “harmless.” We have met the enemy and they are us.

By: RichterCa

RichterCa — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 13:32:28 +0000

I like that a) The US got a prop plane full of DDT to Iran in “a few days”, and that b) Nobody bothered to tell the Iranians that they would be spraying that day, probably causing almost as many deaths from direct contact with DDT as the famine would have caused.

By: Alberto

Alberto — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 04:13:47 +0000

We need to believe in a world where the “united nations” (be it the international organization or just the concept of the community of nation-states that went united) do help people all over.

I need to believe that that is our future.