© 2016 Michael Swickard, Ph.D. "It
is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere." Voltaire
The
way to deal with this epidemic is to kill all of the mosquitoes who spread the disease.
While it seems hard to kill all of the mosquitoes, we have almost done it once
before but politics gave the mosquitoes a chance to come back fully and kill
millions upon millions of people.
Several
years ago two researchers had an article in Forbes, "Rachel Carson's
Deadly Fantasies." This was published September 5, 2012. Dr. Henry Miller
and Gregory Conko wrote that Rachel Carson's book, "Silent Spring"
led to a worldwide ban on DDT use. Lacking DDT to kill mosquitoes is responsible
for the loss of tens of millions of human lives, mostly children in poor
tropical countries.
They
opine, "This remains one of the monumental human tragedies of the last century."
The
insecticide DDT (dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane) was first discovered in 1874
and in 1939 a Swiss Chemist found it had great insecticidal properties. It was
used in World War Two to control malaria and typhus. After the war the use of
DDT expanded.
The
discovery of DDT's usefulness won the Nobel Prize in Physiology/Medicine.
Mosquitoes were controlled to the point that in just a decade they were
seriously on the decline and therefore Malaria deaths were likewise on the
decline.
With
no valid data DDT was banned and still is banned due to a political book by
Rachel Carson in the 1960s. Malaria death returned and have stayed high. Mosquitoes
have brought many other maladies of encephalitis and West Nile virus to the
point that New Mexicans are injured or killed each year.
It
is a political campaign to keep DDT on the banned list when it has no known
harm to humans and the presumed harm to raptors could not be replicated from
Rachel Carson's book. Instead of telling people in New Mexico to put on
mosquito repellent and to stay indoors, our government should kill every mosquito.
Yes,
the environmental lobby will not stand for it, but we could try. I have lost
two friends to West Nile virus and have no patience for the environmental
people who condemn our most fragile populations to death and diseases. If they,
the environmentalists wish to die, so be it, but the great martyrs of our world
did not send women and children into the wilderness instead of going
themselves.
Every
death worldwide to malaria is an unnecessary death. Every death or illness from
mosquito born viruses is not necessary. Millions are dying unnecessarily each
year. Rachel Carson and her faulty research are responsible for millions of
deaths.
And
we are responsible for those deaths because even by the early 1970s it was
obvious to our scientists that the loss of DDT was far more harmful to human
lives that we had realized before the ban. At that point there should have been
an outpouring of information to reverse this ban. There wasn't because environmentalists
are rabid about their agenda.
In
the 1950s, while I was living in Japan, early in the mornings the DDT truck
would come down our street spraying the mosquitoes. We kids would often play in
the mist to no harm other than ants refused to crawl on us for several days.
Talking
the truth gets people attacked because the environmentalists are political not
scientific. If you join me in calling for the reintroduction of DDT all over
New Mexico to protect our elderly and children you will be attacked. But the
lives of our children are worth it.
I'm
all for setting up a Blue-Ribbon panel to investigate this controversy as long
as politicians stay out of the way. They know nothing and only react to
political causes. I always say to never use a political solution for a
non-political problem.
Mosquitoes
are killing our citizens. There should be no politics as to the cure. It's DDT.
Email: drswickard@comcast.net
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