22 Responses to “Bald eagle bounces back”

1. Ed Darrell Says:
   December 5th, 2007 at 1:15 pm

   Actually, eagle populations did decline during the DDT years, and for some time after. DDT was found to be damaging the eagles success in getting fledges to breeding age.

   In fact, almost everything Milloy says is 180 degrees different from the facts.

   Be very careful whenever you get your data from someone who advertises junk science. It probably is junk science.

2. Cao Says:
   December 6th, 2007 at 8:19 pm

   I noticed how you didn’t link to any of those ‘facts’ of yours, lol…while this post has plenty of them in it.

   While you SAY that Milloy is not telling the truth, it appears to me it is YOU that is lying. Prove what you’re saying or shut up.

   Give me links and real facts rather than opinion posted as facts, or be gone with you.

   LOL

   Lefties are such a riot with their serious opinions that are supposed to trump facts and truth…such utter foolishness…it’s too bad it’s so easy see through your transparent attempt at hyperbole and smear tactics.

   Here are green hypocrisy’s top 10 poster children for 2007.

   1. Al Gore’s Inconvenient Lifestyle.
   2. Google’s Sky Pig.
   3. RFK Jr. Tilts at Windmills.
   4. The U.N.’s ‘Bali High’.
   5. Nancy Nukes Nukes.
   6. Every home a Superfund site?
   7. Doesn’t everyone own a NASA scientist?
   8. Like a Virgin’s Carbon Footprint.
   9. The NBC Poppycock.
   10. California’s Hypocritenator.

   The one thing these honorees all have in common is that their real-life actions belie their carefully crafted green public images. If they don’t take their commitments seriously, why should we?

3. Ed Darrell Says:
   December 6th, 2007 at 10:43 pm

   You could have found my blog by clicking my name — are you seriously interested in facts? had you Googled eagles and DDT, you’d have a dozen or more articles in a flash. If you notice carefully, the only claims opposite the approximately 1,000 studies showing damage to the birds are claims from Milloy. He has no research to back his claims.

   But, here, have a few links:
   Milloy claims to have stuff from the Fish and Wildlife Service, but here’s the real stuff.

   Here’s a post that explains in great detail how Milloy misstates the position of the National Academy of Sciences. Apparently it never occurred to him that, though the book is out of print, they’d make the text available on-line. NAS’s position is about 180 degrees different from what Milloy claims.

   You’ll find at least a half-dozen posts about Milloy’s prevarications at that blog — do a search and see.

   Here’s a post from a few weeks ago from Tim Lambert, explaining the facts behind malaria campaigns in Africa. The facts, of course, are quite counter to Milloy’s claims.

   What claim of Milloy’s do you think is accurate? That would be easier to work from. Assume everything he says is wrong, and you’ll be closer to the facts.

   Pick one: Which one do you think is correct?

   I understand that they were golfing when they wrote down the first draft of “100 things you should know about DDT.” They were so used to lying . . . Milloy scored a hole in one. But he wrote down “zero” for the hole. That may be apocryphal.

4. Ed Darrell Says:
   December 6th, 2007 at 10:50 pm

   If you let go of your anger — why you’re angry at the planet, I can’t figure — if you let go of your anger for ten minutes, you might see that such lists do nothing to add to the store of knowledge humans have. Mean spirited lists, especially based in such error as those, make even the truthful charges sound false.

   Bitter than Al Gore won a Nobel? Nobody ever won a Nobel for being petty an mean. Your stabbing at him gets you no closer.

5. Cao Says:
   December 7th, 2007 at 7:01 am

   There is a lot of interesting scientific information here on Africa fighting Malaria.

   Bottom line is, I would suggest that if you’re going to leave comments here, that you stop attacking the messenger and debate with facts.

   That negates any negatives about Milloy or others. Follow the links and debunk the facts given, or, as I said, simply shut up.

   I am not in love with the planet; the planet is capable of taking care of itself because of the ingenius mechanisms that were designed to balance things like climate, which environmentalists seem to think is out of control. Soon, according to environmentalists, polar bears will have no more ice to live on, etc., etc.

   Looking closer at the arguments shows they are vacuous. Just one line item like this one quotes many sources:

   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]

   So if you’re going to debunk with facts, take each one of the above and tell me why these experts are wrong and show me the facts that discount the evidence.

   You have emotion-based arguments here, my dear fellow…take the emotion out of it. If this is about facts, (as you claim) then give me some facts; and refrain from emotion-based hyperbole and ad hominem.

6. Ed Darrell Says:
   December 7th, 2007 at 6:06 pm

   Well, there you go. If you trust Milloy’s odd claims about what the Audubon Society found about Eagles rather than the Audubon Society, there’s probably nothing not much I could do to get you to look at the facts.

   I gave you the link to the explanation of Milloy’s deception about the National Academy of Sciences. Did you look?

   Now, I’ll wager you didn’t bother to check any of those footnotes to the Milloy claim, did you.

   Here, look at this one: Milloy claims that DDT didn’t hurt birds — but when you check the actual source, you find Milloy cut the quote, at the point the researcher said ‘but all the birds died.’ Notice the comments, from other researchers vouching for Carson’s view over Milloy’s

7. Cao Says:
   December 7th, 2007 at 6:08 pm

   As I said, personal attacks will not be tolerated here.

   Debate the facts and dispense with the attack on Milloy.

   If your argument is that weak, then that explains why you’re taking this methodology with your twisted reasoning.

   Rachel Carlson, based on so much documentation it is unbelievable, lied in “Silent Spring”.

   This implication that DDT is horribly deadly is completely false. Human volunteers have ingested as much as 35 milligrams of it a day for nearly two years and suffered no adverse affects. Millions of people have lived with DDT intimately during the mosquito spray programs and nobody even got sick as a result. The National Academy of Sciences concluded in 1965 that “in a little more than two decades, DDT has prevented 500 million [human] deaths that would otherwise have been inevitable.” The World Health Organization stated that DDT had “killed more insects and saved more people than any other substance.” A leading British scientist pointed out that “If the pressure groups had succeeded, if there had been a world ban on DDT, then Rachel Carson and Silent Spring would now be killing more people in a single year than Hitler killed in his whole holocaust.”

   It is a travesty, therefore, if Rachel Carson’s all-out attack on DDT results in any programs lauding her efforts to ban DDT and other life-saving chemicals!

   J. Gordon Edwards, professor of entomology at San Jose State University in California, has taught biology and entomology there for 43 years. He is a long-time member of the Sierra Club and the Audubon Society and is a fellow of the California Academy of Sciences.

8. Cao Says:
   December 7th, 2007 at 6:50 pm

   One researcher, J. Bitman, showed that by feeding test birds DDT but also reduced calcium in the birds’ diet, they produced thinner shells, but when the calcium was restored, so was the eggshells’ thickness.

   “Unfortunately, the editor of Science refused to publish the result of that later research. Editor Philip Abelson already told Dr. Thomas Jukes of the University of California in Berkeley that Science would never publish anything that was not antagonistic toward DDT. Bitman therefore had to publish the results of his legitimate feeding experiments in an obscure specialty journal, and many readers of Science continued to believe that DDT would cause birds to lay thin-shelled eggs.”

   Edwards was a leading critic of the DDT ban, and testified in favor of the pesticide at the EPA hearings. His claims that DDT were harmless to humans were PROVEN when he himself by swallowed a spoonful of it in front of his students at the beginning of the academic year. He was in good health and died in 2004 at the age of 85.

   Rachel Carlson, in her 297 pages of Silent Spring, never mentioned the fact that DDT was responsible for saving tens of millions of lives–perhaps hundreds of millions. But I guess you don’t care about people; it’s the birds you care about, even though there is no evidence that DDT has any detrimental effect on them.

   DDT was used to eradicate marlaria in developed countries but then was banned before it could do the same in undeveloped countries. Africans then became the victims.

   In November 2004, Roy Innis, national chairman of the Congress of Racial Equality, sent a letter to President Bush including the following summary of facts:

   The United States and Europe eradicated malaria after WWII, using pesticides and other measures. But today, this vicious killer infects 300,000,000 people every year in developing countries-more than live in the entire United States. It kills as many as 2,000,000 every year - the population of Houston, Texas: another father, mother, or child every 15 seconds. Nearly 90 percent of these victimsa re in sub-Saharan Africa, and the vast majority are children and pregnant women. Since 1972, at least 50 million people have died from malaria. Heaven alone knows how many might have lived, if their countries had been able to control this mosquito-borne disease.”

   I’m sorry that you hate humanity so much that you’re willing to overlook the facts surrounding this unspeakable travesty toward Africans.

   The EPA ban applied only to the United States–why should it affect countries in the third world?

   Americans used DDT to rid themselves of malaria and then demonized it for everyone else.

9. Ed Darrell Says:
   December 7th, 2007 at 7:17 pm

   By the way, did you catch this citation?

   [Anon. Science News Letter, July 3, 1943]

   Since when does Science News publish anonymous letters? Want to wager on whether that source even exists?

10. Cao Says:
    December 7th, 2007 at 7:28 pm

    What a weird suspicious person you are in addition to waging ad hominem attacks against people who you disagree with.

    At least you could be honest about your malicious attacks rather than vicious about the substantive arguments others are putting forth on this.

    It’s actually getting harder to find people who still favor the DDT ban.

    Richard Liroff, the World Wildlife Fund:

    “If the alternatives to DDT aren’t working, as they weren’t in South Africa, geez, you’ve got to use it.”

    Greenpeace Rick Hind: “If there’s nothing else and it’s going to save lives, we’re all for it. Nobody’s dogmatic about it.”

    Nobody except you, apparently, Ed.

    Vice Admiral Dr. Harold M. Koenig, former surgeon general of the Navy, said this about the politics of the ban:

    “Poor public policies [prohibiting the use of DDT] are being implemented because it easier for politicans to go along with the noise coming from the hysterics rather than to learn the whole story and educate the general electorate that there are ways agents like DDT can be used safely.”

    The ban turned out to be ‘a colossal tragedy’-says Donald Roberts, professor at the Uniformed Services University of Health and Sciences in Bethesda, Maryland. “It’s embroiled in environmental politics and incompetent bureaucracies.” He told Frontpage Magazine: “DDT is the best insecticide we have today for controlling malaria. DDT is long acting, the alternatives are not. DDT is cheap, the alternatives are not. End of story.”

    Rachel Carson’s Ecological Genocide

    New York Times: It’s Time to Spray DDT

    NYT: What the World Needs Now Is DDT

11. Cao Says:
    December 7th, 2007 at 7:31 pm

    Your attitude is the same as the MSM (which is probably where you get all your news):

    Eagles Flourishing, But NBC Worries about Decline

    Let’s take a look at Van Helsing…he has a lot to say on this…lol
    
    Environmentalism Kills Africans

    Rachel Carson Tribute Nixed

    You need a reality check, I guess…not everybody is on that anti-DDT bandwagon anymore, including Greenpeace. LOL

    
    But they told us DDT was bad

    Anti-DDT Policies Are Deadly for Africa (This one is important: it’s from an African man whose family has contracted Malaria.)

    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.

    Look who’s ignoring science now

    As for your pointing out an anonymous source, I’m sure that nobody is posting anonymously anywhere …lol..you’re right it probably doesn’t exist just like the rest of what I’m citing here.

    Ignore all the evidence and focus on one anonymous source, and imagine that it doesn’t exist.

    That’s the ticket.

12. Ed Darrell Says:
    December 9th, 2007 at 6:56 pm

    You say Rachel Carson lied in Silent Spring?

    Prove it. The piece you cite says DDT is not incredibly acutely toxic to humans. That’s exactly what Carson said.

    What is the lie that you claim?

    Carson didn’t say DDT should be banned, nor did she say its chief dangers are to human health. Accusing false ad hominem, falsely, is one thing. Then you turn around and quote Steven Milloy’s lie . . . just amazing.

    Have you read Carson’s book? While we know the lie you claimed above is untrue — a hoax, and you probably didn’t realize you’d been hoaxed, not having read her book — I challenge you again: Specify something Carson actually wrote about in Silent Spring that is false.

    Carson provided 53 pages of references, citations to journal articles and scientists corroborating her claims — she claimed nothing that was not verified by experiment.

    Not a single paper she cites has ever been withdrawn by the journal. Not a single paper has ever been disputed by scientists with any data.

    So you tell me, where is the lie, and who is doing the lying?

13. Cao Says:
    December 9th, 2007 at 7:07 pm

    You’re funny,

    Are you reading the scientists I’m quoting, or are you cherry picking what you’re going to object to and ignoring everything else?

    Take it up with Lord Monckton, he’s one of the scientists I quoted.

    Take the time to read my responses and stop demanding things of me.

    I’m offering you proof, whether or not you accept it is another matter.

    :twisted::twisted::twisted::twisted:

    Or here. I’ll even go to the trouble to quote him once again since you seem to be so thick.
    
    Thirty-five years ago the world decided to ban DDT, the only effective agent against malaria. Result: 40 million deaths in poor countries. The World Health Organization lifted the DDT ban on Sept. 15 last year. It now recommends the use of DDT to control malaria. Dr. Arata Kochi of the WHO said that politics could no longer be allowed to stand in the way of the science and the data. Amen to that.

    Now let’s see. That’s the World Health Organization that lifted the DDT ban in September of last year…as a result of 40 million deaths as a result of Rachel Carson’s book which started this whole thing…and the Entomologist, J. Gordon Edwards, who ate a spoonful of DDT before he started class to prove that it’s harmless to people, was a professor of entomology (the study of bugs) at San Jose State University in California, and taught biology and entomology there for 43 years. He was a long-time member of the Sierra Club and the Audubon Society and is a fellow of the California Academy of Sciences. And he said this:

    This implication that DDT is horribly deadly is completely false.

    Does that mean she lied? Or maybe she was too stupid in her anti-human pro-environment attitude to know better, who knows?

    Human volunteers have ingested as much as 35 milligrams of it a day for nearly two years and suffered no adverse affects.

    Again, this is a scientist speaking, not an environmentalist. A scientist tests to see if a hypothesis is true. An environmentalist will do something like - try to remove chlorine from the periodic tables. That doesn’t make sense, but environmentalists aren’t about science.

    Millions of people have lived with DDT intimately during the mosquito spray programs and nobody even got sick as a result. The National Academy of Sciences concluded in 1965 that “in a little more than two decades, DDT has prevented 500 million [human] deaths that would otherwise have been inevitable.” The World Health Organization stated that DDT had “killed more insects and saved more people than any other substance.” A leading British scientist pointed out that “If the pressure groups had succeeded, if there had been a world ban on DDT, then Rachel Carson and Silent Spring would now be killing more people in a single year than Hitler killed in his whole holocaust.”

    It is a travesty, therefore, if Rachel Carson’s all-out attack on DDT results in any programs lauding her efforts to ban DDT and other life-saving chemicals!

    That’s Edwards talking, and in these matters, I usually defer to the experts.

    And this is a repeat of what I’ve already quoted. What I ask is that you read what is written rather than go on with your silliness.

    Her claim that it was harmful to people was false, based on J. Gordon Edwards’ eating a spoonful of DDT before class and living to the ripe old age of 85.

    Her claim that it hurt bird populations is false, in the face of flourishing Bald Eagle populations, and other experiments, as already noted above. Follow the links, old man.

    I don’t have to prove anything, the scientists have already done it, and the World Health Organization has reversed the 35-year-old ban.

14. Cao Says:
    December 9th, 2007 at 7:34 pm

    Oh and Ed, my dear. You didn’t take each expert and debunk it - you took one and alleged that it was anonymous and didn’t exist.

    That’s not debate, lol…

    You know, I just love it how some folks come into my comments section demanding that I follow their orders…leftists are like stormtroopers.

    This is my space, I don’t have to do squat.

    And judging from your blog, which you demanded that I visit, and what you’re writing in comments, I don’t value your opinion that much because it’s based on hysteria and not facts.

    You want to keep adoring Silent Spring and what’s written in there when science has made a reversal? And the World Health Organization has made a reversal? That’s fine. But stop going off on Milloy like he’s the sole reason for it.

    There are 600 scientists right now shut out of the Conference in Bali that demonstrate to me that environmentalists aren’t actually interested in science…they’re interested in politics and what will get them funding. And that makes it completely different animal.

    Spokesmen for Greenpeace and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), activist environmental groups that have led the effort to ban worldwide use of the pesticide DDT, admitted to the New York Times that DDT may be necessary and desirable after all.

    The January 8, 2005 New York Times essay by Nicholas Kristof is available online here. (registration required).

    Steve Milloy’s writing on malaria and DDT are available online here and here.

    The anti-DDT statements from World Wildlife Fund and Greenpeace are available online here and here.

    Medical scientists call DDT ban unethical

    More than 370 medical researchers, including three Noble laureates, in 57 countries are urging the United Nations not to implement a proposed worldwide ban on the use of DDT. They have signed an open letter to diplomats involved in ongoing treaty negotiations, being conducted under the auspices of the United Nations Environment Program, aimed at eliminating so-called persistent organic pollutants. At the very least, the scientists want to allow the pesticide to be sprayed on the inside walls of homes, a proven method for repelling mosquitoes that carry malaria.

    For more information on the Roll Back Malaria initiative and the malaria-DDT relationship, visit the Web site of the Malaria Foundation International The Open Letter to DDT Treaty Negotiators is available here and can be signed here.

15. HoosierArmyMom Says:
    December 9th, 2007 at 8:01 pm

    I am not a science buff, but I do think that reading through this post arduous and makeing me tired. I really think comming on here and making your point could be much more brief and helpful, if that is what is done. Here are the basic rules of debate that area high school kids adhere to . Maybe they will be helpful and bring clarity to this discusssion.

    Debate Rules and Suggestions:

    Advice on Debating with Others

    1. Avoid the use of “Never”.
    2. Avoid the use of “Always”.
    3. Refrain from saying you are wrong.
    4. You can say your idea is mistaken.
    5. Don’t disagree with obvious truths.
    6. Attack the idea not the person.
    7. Use “many” rather than “most”.
    8. Avoid exaggeration.
    9. Use “some” rather than “many”.
    10. The use of “often” allows for exceptions.
    11. The use of “generally” allows for exceptions.
    12. Quote sources and numbers.
    13. If it is just an opinion, admit it.
    14. Do not present opinion as facts.
    15. Smile when disagreeing.
    16. Stress the positive.
    17. You do not need to win every battle to win the war.
    18. Concede minor or trivial points.
    19. Avoid bickering, quarreling, and wrangling.
    20. Watch your tone of voice.
    21. Don’t win a debate and lose a friend.
    22. Keep your perspective - You’re just debating.

    You need to be very polite when disagreeing with someone in English, even someone you know quite well. With someone you know very well, you can disagree more directly.

16. Cao Says:
    December 9th, 2007 at 8:46 pm

    One or two more because I feel feisty:

    Michael Crighton from Environmentalism as a religion:

    I can tell you that DDT is not a carcinogen and did not cause birds to die and should never have been banned. I can tell you that the people who banned it knew that it wasn’t carcinogenic and banned it anyway. I can tell you that the DDT ban has caused the deaths of tens of millions of poor people, mostly children, whose deaths are directly attributable to a callous, technologically advanced western society that promoted the new cause of environmentalism by pushing a fantasy about a pesticide, and thus irrevocably harmed the third world. Banning DDT is one of the most disgraceful episodes in the twentieth century history of America. We knew better, and we did it anyway, and we let people around the world die and didn’t give a damn.

    And my buddy Luboš Motl from The Reference Frame:

    This decision to ban DDT, that has already killed tens of millions of people, as he argues (he’s referring to the article linked and partially quoted above), mostly followed from a testimony of a “hysterical woman” called Rachel Carson who was apparently the Goddess of the environmentalist religion and the mother of junk science related to health.

    Ms. Carson alleged that DDT was killing off all kinds of birds, especially seabirds, by causing eggshell thinning (thus the title of the book), and that it was a potent carcinogen in humans. She went on to predict that a cancer epidemic would hit practically 100% of the human population (probably based on a 1961 epidemic of liver cancer in trout that was later found to be caused by aflatoxin, a VERY potent NATURAL fungal toxin and carcinogen).

    Edward Wheeler, Ph.D in chemistry noted biochemist in the food chemistry, cancer research, and toxicology:

    In fact, DDT is not now and never was a carcinogen in humans, or even a cancer prone lab rat carcinogen. In contrast to its effect on bugs, it is remarkably non-toxic in humans, at least acutely. You can even drink the stuff and suffer no ill effects (no thanks anyway). Its indiscriminate spraying also, as a side effect, eliminated malaria in the U.S.

    Josie Glausiusz at DISCOVER Magazine:

    in more recent years, a conglomeration of critics from organizations as diverse as the conservative American Enterprise Institute and the civil rights group Congress of Racial Equality have charged that Carson overstated the dangers of DDT, that it is not a carcinogen, and that at moderate doses, it is not even harmful to birds. Above all, her opponents argue that the reduction in DDT use has led to a dramatic rise in mosquito-borne malaria cases in Africa and South America. Bring back DDT, they demand, and let it be sprayed on the inner walls of houses, where it would kill vectors of malaria and other insect-borne diseases like dengue and typhus.

    And there’s another disease - West Nile Virus that is now beginning to raise its ugly head here in the US. I think it would be a good idea to keep mosquitos at bay around the world instead of inviting more problems.

    I’m sure, Ed, that you’d prefer a world where there are 20 people on the planet and we all live in Teepees, but that’s not reality. What concerns me is that you don’t seem to care about 40 million people dying in undeveloped countries due to something that is 100% preventable.

17. Ed Darrell Says:
    December 10th, 2007 at 9:28 am

    Are you reading the scientists I’m quoting, or are you cherry picking what you’re going to object to and ignoring everything else?

    Take it up with Lord Monckton, he’s one of the scientists I quoted.

    Monckton is a pseudo scientist. Really, are you going to take the word of a man who lied about being a Member of the House of Lords, and claim him to be a scientist though he does no research? Does he even have science training?

    Yes, I’ve read that stuff. It’s obvious you haven’t read it seriously, or if you’ve ever seen it, you’ve not bothered to check the footnotes.

    You’re not reading the sources I give you, however.

    Is there anyone you can cites who is alive, and working in the area, and not a total crackpot?

18. Ed Darrell Says:
    December 10th, 2007 at 9:57 am

    Michael Crighton from Environmentalism as a religion:

    I can tell you that DDT is not a carcinogen and did not cause birds to die and should never have been banned. I can tell you that the people who banned it knew that it wasn’t carcinogenic and banned it anyway. I can tell you that the DDT ban has caused the deaths of tens of millions of poor people, mostly children, whose deaths are directly attributable to a callous, technologically advanced western society that promoted the new cause of environmentalism by pushing a fantasy about a pesticide, and thus irrevocably harmed the third world. Banning DDT is one of the most disgraceful episodes in the twentieth century history of America. We knew better, and we did it anyway, and we let people around the world die and didn’t give a damn.

    Though DDT is listed in all the toxicology documents as a known animal carcinogen, though every cancer-fighting organization in the world lists DDT as a probably carcinogen, though repeated studies tie DDT to liver cancer in exposed people and breast and reproductive system cancers in second-generation victims, Crichton says he “knows” DDT is not carcinogenic? There’s probably a Nobel prize on the line: Where is his evidence? What does he know that every cancer fighter on Earth does not know?

    Or, is Crichton overstating what he thinks he knows. I vote for the latter.

    Here’s the ACS list, which is based on reports you can track from their citations:
    http://www.cancer.org/docroot/PED/content/PED_1_3x_Known_and_Probable_Carcinogens.asp?sitearea=PED
    And see this report: http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/tfacts35.html#bookmark06

    Crichton “knows” that DDT didn’t harm birds, despite 1,000 studies showing it did, and not a single study denying the damage?
    Here’s one compilation from credible sources (you’ll likely deny):
    http://www.stanford.edu/group/stanfordbirds/text/essays/DDT_and_Birds.html
    Of course, if you’ve read the Discover Magazine piece I cited earlier, you know that.

    By the way, don’t try the bait and switch here. Much of the damage from DDT to birds comes in the second generation of the pesticide. DDT breaks down, generally within a year, to DDE and other products. Milloy and other pathology deniers sometimes claim DDT is safe, that it is really DDE that does the damage, as if we could spray DDT without having it break down into DDE.

    Accept full accountability here, no bait and switches, please.

    I’ve seen the line usually credited to Will Rogers: It ain’t what we don’t know that gets us into trouble; it’s what we know that ain’t so.

    Crichton “knows” DDT doesn’t kill birds, despite a thousand studies confirming DDT is very deadly to birds, especially in the reproductive cycles; Crichton “knows” that DDT is not carcinogenic despite every cancer group listing it as a probable human carcinogen and confirmed studies showing carcinogenicity in other mammals.

    What else does Crichton “know” that simply is not so?

    Crichton is a novelist with zero research experience in DDT, in ornithology, in malaria, or in much of anything else (he is an M.D., not a Ph.D.). If you’re going to argue from authority, please get an authority who has some real familiarity with the issue.

    Generally, on DDT and malaria, Crichton makes at least ten errors. Seem them here:
    http://timpanogos.wordpress.com/2007/10/28/michael-crichton-hysterical-for-ddt/

19. Cao Says:
    December 10th, 2007 at 7:04 pm

    Dear Ed. Since you can’t abide by the rules as stated by HAM, which are 8th grade debate team rules, none of your comments will be published from this point forward.

    You were warned.

    What you’re doing is attacking the sources rather than the evidence they present, because you’re incapable of debating those facts, I guess.

    VERY UNSCIENTIFIC.

    PS: Lord Monckton might be a ‘pseudoscientist’ but he’s in Bali, not you.

    From Lyndon Larouche:

    In November 2006, Lord Monckton issued a 40-page research paper on the fraud of global warming, titled “Apocalypse Cancelled”. In it, Monckton says: “Last week Gordon Brown and his chief economist both said global warming was the worst market failure ever. That loaded sound-bite suggests the climate change scare is less about saving the planet than, in Jacques Chirac’s chilling phrase, creating world government.”

    Lord Monckton also said that the environmentalist’s “precautionary principle” is killing people. He gives the example of the banning of DDT, noting that just this year, after 30 million people died of malaria; the World Health Organization has agreed to use DDT for indoor spraying. Lord Monckton also calls for the UK to start building–not merely designing, or having a ten-year planning inquiry about) 12 nuclear power stations.

    In 2005, the House of Lords started an inquiry into the science of global warming and the role of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and held hearings taking statements from scientists against global warming, like Dr. Paul Reiter and Richard Lindzen of MIT. The House of Lords also took testimony from Sir John Houghton.

    In July of 2005, the House of Lords issued its report, called “The Economics of Climate Change”.

    You say Monckton lied that he is in the house of Lords, but in fact, they changed the rules, which Monckton says is a “a bizarre constitutional abortion.” He is the Viscount Monckton of Brenchley. What are you?

    Clearly you’re not interested in debating the facts; you’re interested instead in discrediting your opponents….and pimping your blog. This is strange coming from someone who himself has no credentials to speak of.

20. Milton Fillmore’s bathtub: self-proclaimed “expert” on Rachel Carson and DDT « Cao2’s Weblog Says:
    December 13th, 2007 at 9:02 pm

    […] The guy in the bathtub is going to have to do better than this: We caught Caosblog repeating some bad stuff about Rachel Carson, and false, good stuff about DDT, and false claims that eagles were not endangered by DDT. We called ‘em on it. […]

21. Grizzly Groundswell » Milton Fillmore’s bathtub: self-proclaimed “expert” on Rachel Carson and DDT Says:
    December 13th, 2007 at 9:15 pm

    […] The guy in the bathtub is going to have to do better than this: We caught Caosblog repeating some bad stuff about Rachel Carson, and false, good stuff about DDT, and false claims that eagles were not endangered by DDT. We called ‘em on it. […]

22. Cao Says:
    December 13th, 2007 at 10:07 pm

    Erlich buys into and has written about the population explosion, which is a myth. He might be an entomologist, but as far as I’m concerned, he’s a politicized scientist.

    Unfortunately, bathtub boy, you can’t believe everything you read. You need to use critical thinking skills to determine fact from fiction. For example, the American Cancer Society is against the War in Iraq. It’s even been said that the WAR in Iraq causes cancer. Do you believe that, too? The American Society favors the 61-cent hike in the cigarette tax that would pay for S-chips. Do you think that’s an appropriate position for such an organization? LOL

    Carson predicted that a cancer epidemic would hit practically 100% of the human population (probably based on a 1961 epidemic of liver cancer in trout that was later found to be caused by aflatoxin, a VERY potent NATURAL fungal toxin and carcinogen).

    Edward Wheeler, Ph.D in chemistry noted biochemist in the food chemistry, cancer research, and toxicology:

    In fact, DDT is not now and never was a carcinogen in humans, or even a cancer prone lab rat carcinogen. In contrast to its effect on bugs, it is remarkably non-toxic in humans, at least acutely. You can even drink the stuff and suffer no ill effects (no thanks anyway). Its indiscriminate spraying also, as a side effect, eliminated malaria in the U.S.

    Another entomologist, J. Gordon Edward, wrote an entire article about the lies in Carson’s book, here in “The Lies of Rachel Carson”. He testified in front of the EPA on DDT, and ate spoonfuls of it in front of his classroom to prove how safe it is for people. He quotes numerous scientists, ornithologists and other experts on birds, in addition to other data.

    More here.

    Not afraid to put his mouth where his moxie was, Edwards took to swallowing a tablespoon of DDT on stage before every lecture on the subject. In September 1971, Esquire magazine pictured Edwards doing just that. The accompanying text explained that Edwards had “eaten 200 times the normal human intake of DDT.” He did not even consider this gesture risky. In the one year of 1959, for instance, unprotected workmen had applied 60,000 tons of DDT to the inside walls of 100 million houses. Neither the 130,000 workmen or the 535 million people living in the sprayed houses had experienced any adverse effects.
    
    A case study in scientific fraud

    Rachel Carson died of cancer in 1964 at the age of 57, yet Edwards, who ate over 200x the normal intake of DDT, did not, and died at the ripe old age of 84 of a heart attack while hiking up a mountain in 2004. How do you explain that?

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