Will CNN Bed Bug Infestation Cause MSM to Demand Lifting of DDT Ban?

Not that bedbugs are anything new. Though they were virtually eradicated from the United States at the end of World War II, thanks to the now-banned pesticide DDT, they started finding their way back about a decade ago.Continued...

Son, everything you've ever heard or read about DDT is a bunch of BULLSHIT...

DDT was blamed for the decline in the bald eagle population.


Bald eagles were reportedly threatened with extinction in 1921 -- 25 years before widespread use of DDT.

[Van Name, WG. 1921. Ecology 2:76]
Alaska paid over $100,000 in bounties for 115,000 bald eagles between 1917 and 1942.

[Anon. Science News Letter, July 3, 1943]
The bald eagle had vanished from New England by 1937.

[Bent, AC. 1937. Raptorial Birds of America. US National Museum Bull 167:321-349]
After 15 years of heavy and widespread usage of DDT, Audubon Society ornithologists counted 25 percent more eagles per observer in 1960 than during the pre-DDT 1941 bird census.

[Marvin, PH. 1964 Birds on the rise. Bull Entomol Soc Amer 10(3):184-186; Wurster, CF. 1969 Congressional Record S4599, May 5, 1969; Anon. 1942. The 42nd Annual Christmas Bird Census. Audubon Magazine 44:1-75 (Jan/Feb 1942; Cruickshank, AD (Editor). 1961. The 61st Annual Christmas Bird Census. Audubon Field Notes 15(2):84-300; White-Stevens, R.. 1972. Statistical analyses of Audubon Christmas Bird censuses. Letter to New York Times, August 15, 1972]
No significant correlation between DDE residues and shell thickness was reported in a large series of bald eagle eggs.

[Postupalsky, S. 1971. (DDE residues and shell thickness). Canadian Wildlife Service manuscript, April 8, 1971]
Thickness of eggshells from Florida, Maine and Wisconsin was found to not be correlated with DDT residues.

Data from Krantz, WC. 1970. Pesticides Monitoring Journal 4(3):136-140.
State Thickness (mm) DDE residue (ppm)
Florida 0.50 About 10
Maine 0.53 About 22
Wisconsin 0.55 About 4


U.S. Forest Service studies reported an increase in nesting bald eagle productivity (51 in 1964 to 107 in 1970).

[U.S. Forest Service (Milwaukee, WI). 1970. Annual Report on Bald Eagle Status]
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologists fed large doses of DDT to captive bald eagles for 112 days and concluded that "DDT residues encountered by eagles in the environment would not adversely affect eagles or their eggs."

[Stickel, L. 1966. Bald eagle-pesticide relationships. Trans 31st N Amer Wildlife Conference, pp.190-200]
Wildlife authorities attributed bald eagle population reductions to a "widespread loss of suitable habitat", but noted that "illegal shooting continues to be the leading cause of direct mortality in both adult and immature bald eagles."

[Anon.. 1978. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Endangered Species Tech Bull 3:8-9]
Every bald eagle found dead in the U.S., between 1961-1977 (266 birds) was analyzed by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologists who reported no adverse effects caused by DDT or its residues.

[Reichel, WL. 1969. (Pesticide residues in 45 bald eagles found dad in the U.S. 1964-1965). Pesticides Monitoring J 3(3)142-144; Belisle, AA. 1972. (Pesticide residues and PCBs and mercury, in bald eagles found dead in the U.S. 1969-1970). Pesticides Monitoring J 6(3): 133-138; Cromartie, E. 1974. (Organochlorine pesticides and PCBs in 37 bald eagles found dead in the U.S. 1971-1972). Pesticides Monitoring J 9:11-14; Coon, NC. 1970. (Causes of bald eagle mortality in the US 1960-1065). Journal of Wildlife Diseases 6:72-76]
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologists linked high intake of mercury from contaminated fish with eagle reproductive problems.

[Spann, JW, RG Heath, JF Kreitzer, LN Locke. 1972. (Lethal and reproductive effects of mercury on birds) Science 175:328- 331]
Shooting, power line electrocution, collisions in flight and poisoning from eating ducks containing lead shot were ranked by the National Wildlife Federation as late as 1984 as the leading causes of eagle deaths.

but that all-time mass murder trophy still went to a shit4brains idiot leftwing female yuppy on a crusade against DDT which cost the lives of something like 100,000,000 people :

While DDT has not been officially banned in Africa, its use is discouraged by limited production and cumbersome environmentalist-designed rules on use and handling.

Last year, one of our colleagues, his wife and their two children were diagnosed with malaria. In an instant, their lives were turned upside down. All other plans were postponed. The priority was getting better and staying alive.

For countless families in Nigeria and the rest of Africa, this horrible drama is repeated over and over, year after year. Over 300 million Africans get malaria annually, and up to one million of our children will die from it.

Meanwhile, in countries that no longer have malaria, environmentalists are celebrating the 100th birthday of Rachel Carson. Her book, Silent Spring, helped launch the environmental activist movement and led to a nearly worldwide ban on the insecticide DDT. Were she still alive, she could witness the countless family tragedies that this ban helped cause, and she would probably be appalled.

Malaria once killed thousands of Americans annually. It sent Jamestown colonists to early graves and - as late as the 1930s - reduced the industrial output of America's southern states by a third. Malarial mosquitoes also ruled over Europe for centuries. They decimated armies from the time of Alexander the Great to World War II.

But during that global war, dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane (DDT) was dusted on Allied soldiers and tents to prevent malaria. After the war, it stopped a European typhus epidemic. It then helped virtually eradicate malaria in the United States by 1952 and in Europe by 1961. It was also used - often carelessly and in excess - to protect crops against insects.

However, in the midst of these successes, Rachel Carson and the emerging environmental movement concluded that DDT was building up in wildlife, livestock and humans. They said it would result in devastating consequences. Instead of conducting objective, scientific studies to see if DDT was actually harmful, they mounted a worldwide campaign that ultimately caused DDT to be removed even from the malaria control arsenal.

For these Americans and Europeans, seeking this ban imposed no costs. Malaria was largely gone in their countries. When they visit Africa, they stay in five-star hotels, away from mosquitoes. They have bug sprays and medicines to prevent and treat disease. They rarely visit the hospitals or homes where people are suffering and dying or feel the pain of million of poor people whose cause they claim to champion.

Africa essentially became a sacrifice zone where environmental ideologies demand that only politically-correct tools like bed nets be used to prevent the disease that is still the biggest single killer of our children. It is a crime against humanity to ban DDT and leave over 300 million African mothers, fathers and children to suffer every year from acute malaria....

Even today, 65 years after it was first used in disease control, no other chemical works as well for as long or at a lower cost in stopping malaria and other mosquito-borne diseases than DDT. There is no proof that it is harmful to people or animals when used responsibly. That is why hundreds of physicians, clergy and human rights advocates have demanded that it be put back into the malaria control arsenal.

Finally, our health officials are listening. The World Health Organization and USAID are again supporting DDT for household spraying, and millions are benefiting.

South Africa's DDT household-spraying program cut malaria rates by 80 percent in 18 months with no harmful environmental effects. Mozambique, Zambia, Madagascar and Swaziland slashed their malaria rates by more than 75 percent within two years. The countries were then able to treat a much smaller number of seriously ill patients with new artemisinin-based drugs, and slashed malaria rates by over 90 percent in just three years!

Uganda has also been able to reduce the malarial burden from 30 percent to three percent in villages where houses were sprayed with Icon. Now it plans to use DDT as well because it costs less, keeps mosquitoes out of houses and remains effective much longer.

Despite these huge achievements, some people in Europe threaten agricultural bans and other sanctions against countries that use DDT to save lives. Aid agencies refuse to supply or support the use of DDT while promoting bed nets that don't get delivered and await vaccines that are still a decade away.

Environmental groups continue to tell lies about DDT and worry more about hypothetical health problems from the chemical than about the disease and death it can prevent.