The Results of Enviro-hype.

I was pleased today to see this article about Rachel Carson. She was the author of "Silent Spring" and an early environmental hero for her 'expose' on DDT, which led to its near-worldwide ban. However, what most people don't realize is that DDT was and is very effective at fighting malaria. Today, one million people per year die from this disease.

In the years before it lost the public's support in the mid-1960s, the Global Malaria Eradication Programme wiped out malaria in the American South, several Latin American countries, Taiwan, the Balkans, much of the Caribbean, sections of northern Africa and much of Australia and the South Pacific. Exposés like Carson's made the global campaign's methods increasingly unpopular and eventually brought to a halt the effort to end malaria on a global scale. The disease has since bounced back in many developing countries. In the mid-'90s, the only South American country that continued to use DDT, Ecuador, was also the only country to experience a significant decline in malaria. Many countries, like Uganda, remain hesitant to use DDT because European nations have threatened to refuse their agricultural exports if they do.

DDT use is beginning again in Africa, and this will undoubtedly save lives. This tale should serve as a caution to those who want to enact questionable environmental policies today (*cough* Algore *cough*).