Further, if you had read Bate’s piece in the Wall Street Journal before making personal attacks, you’d realize he echoed your words exactly:

“DDT is no panacea, but it has a far better track record on malaria control than any other intervention, and in most settings is also the most cost-effective. But lives are lost every day because of continued opposition to its use. Aid agencies must help overcome that opposition rather than support it. DDT will one day no longer be necessary, but that day remains a long way off.” http://www.aei.org/publications/pubID.27067,filter.economic/pub_detail.asp

The issue is not whether indoor residual spraying with DDT is safe and effective. The World Health Organization settled this: http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2006/pr50/en/index.html

The issue is that Uganda, a malaria endemic country, has been trying unsuccessfully for over a year to supplement its comprehensive malaria control program with indoor residual DDT spraying: http://allafrica.com/stories/200803100793.html

To your knowledge, how are environmentalist groups helping to support this public initiative?

DDT is no panacea. It can help, in a program of carefully-managed, integrated pest management, that must include improvements in health care and in the delivery of health care in affected nations, serious education campaigns to show people how to protect themselves against mosquitoes, such as by draining stagnant water close to homes, or by applying prophylactic screening wherever possible. Free distribution of bed nets seems to provides a dramatic improvement in efforts to reduce malaria infections (Bate doesn’t like that solution for some reason — perhaps because it’s effective? Who knows?). And careful research to determine what is the most effective pesticide to use in a given situation. DDT will not often be that pesticide.

But Mr. Bate seems to have a lot of stock in a DDT manufacturer. More DDT is his answer for everything, even though we know it’s ineffective in many places under many circumstances.

Blanket acceptance of biased, odd views, isn’t going to help. Slamming environmentalists, instead of embracing the help of groups like Environmental Defense, who have advocated limited use of DDT in Africa for years, doesn’t help.

As soon as Mr. Bate writes to Sen. Tom Coburn urging Coburn to spend money to fight malaria instead of wasting time slamming the memory of Rachel Carson, we’ll know we’ve turned the corner.

Less debate on the environmental impact of DDT, looks like. I understand that use is to be limited so as not to seep out and destroy third world ecologies but, really, we’ve never seen poor disposal of pesticides before? Particularly when money is to be saved? We seem to know that DDT is stored in fat tissue and we seem to know that the toxicity passes up the food-chain in wildlife. Do we seem to know that we don’t know enough yet and take another route until we do?

You’ll notice on this blog that I read quite widely and include opinions from a variety of fronts which I think are worthwhile to consider.

So, I’m happy if you want to start a conversation and provide specific, thoughtful counterpoints, but blanket dismissal of people is not a value I have.