I have now been threatened with a lawsuit in my comments section by the man in the bathtub. But in addition to legal threats, he doesn’t disappoint-he is being true and faithful to his authoritarian ideology and environmental religion; as the blind defender of the faith, he demands that I print a retraction, while calling me ‘dishonorable’.
Just because you say it, doesn’t mean it’s true. Let’s go back to the scientific theory that’s practiced today:
Source
There’s nothing ‘dishonorable’ about following the scientific method, which is what I’m attempting to do here. He’s following the way leftist environmental scientists in Bali do it, including censoring those that disagree, who follow the ‘actual’ method.
It would appear that now I find myself in a pissing match.
The man in the the bathtub objects took two things of all the things that I mentioned on this post about DDT. Putting the focus on these details detracts from Edwards eating DDT and his heavy exposure to it in Italy in 1944, in addition to experiments on birds that produced thin eggshells because of reduced calcium in the diet, and the Audubon bird counts which demonstrated no correlation between DDT and reduced bird populations, among numerous other important points.
This is a classic sleight of hand move which would provide entertainment for guests at a dinner party, but excuse me for not being amused.
The fellow at Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub focuses on two things. One, that the National Academy of Science didn’t say:
In little more than two decades DDT has prevented 500 million human deaths due to malaria that would have otherwise have been inevitable.
And the other, protesting my putting into print Dr. Charles Wurster’s infamous quote:
“People are the cause of all the problems. We have too many of them. We need to get rid of some of them, and this is as good a way as any.”
Let’s take the first claim, and do some comparisons with google-able numbers from organizations that ’should’ know.
This table from the Center for Disease Control guesstimates the historical numbers, claiming 3 million deaths in a year worldwide, but after DDT’s introduction, the numbers plummet. Taking the worst case scenario of 3 million a year, that’s only 60 million instead of 500 million. I can’t ascertain the source of these figures or figures that would allow me to construct my own graph, which in itself is somewhat interesting. Are these conservative estimates?
Yet, here, the estimates of children’s deaths in the period 2002-2003 from malaria seem considerably less:
In the three-year period, according to the World Health Organization, 2,559,000 children died from malaria (if my math is correct). If you took that number for one year, 853,000, and multiplied it by 20 years, you’d get 17,060,000, nowhere near the 500 million figure in the National Academy of Sciences quotation that he disputes, but this doesn’t include adults. And this is only the figures of children who’ve died. Of course the numbers do not stay linear, there is a curve, as implied by the table previous with the peculiar low figures. But since DDT’s banning there’s been a resurgence of malaria outbreaks and deaths…so is it possible that the 500 million figure was accurate?
According to the American Council of Science and Health, 300-500 million cases of malaria are reported each year.
That’s reported cases, not dead, if I understand it correctly. It’s reasonable to conclude that someone’s numbers are off, but whose?
I don’t see that there’s a problem with the math, or that the claim is even necessarily far-fetched. I suppose it depends on what organizations you throw your blind faith behind. I have a problem with all government agencies whose interest is to pump more government money into their budgets. When they were using DDT, it is conceivable that 500 million lives were saved during the 1950-1970 period, which we’ll see in a little bit.
But when you look at the second chart of children dying from malaria, the 500 million figure seems unlikely; it’s appears it’s probably closer to 60 million.
But that could just be appearance.
A drop of birth rates but a raise in malaria outbreaks and deaths in children? This doesn’t make sense. You’d think the numbers for the three-year period of 2000-2003 would be less any three-year perod within the decades between 1950 and 1970, yet the math and the charts don’t bear that out.
I’m sure there’s an explanation, but I’m challenged to find it.
Unfortunately, we’re talking about the history of a chemical that goes back to 1944 during WWII….some 56 years ago or so; before the internet. Yet, we still have a window as to what those numbers looked like because the American Council of Science and health cites these numbers:
Europe and North America have not harbored malarial mosquitoes since the 1940s. In one of the most miraculous public health developments in history, Greece saw malaria cases drop from 1-2 million cases a year to close to zero, also thanks to DDT. Meanwhile, in India, malaria deaths went from nearly a million in 1945 to only a few thousand in 1960. In what is now Sri Lanka, malaria cases went from 2,800,000 in 1948, before the introduction of DDT, down to 17 in 1964 — then, tragically, back up to 2,500,000 by 1969, five years after DDT use was discontinued there.
Yet sometimes we’re calling out reported cases, in others we’re talking deaths in the same paragraph, so it’s still unclear.
The numbers from that era would not logically correspond to the numbers from today. Here are the numbers from today reported on Malaria site:
Malaria has been known to mankind since millennia and probably human malaria evolved with the mankind. Today malaria affects more than 2400 million people, over 40% of the world’s population, in more than 100 countries in the tropics. Every year 300 million to 500 million people suffer from this disease and about 1.5 million to 3 million people die of malaria every year (85% of these occur in Africa), accounting for about 4-5% of all fatalities in the world. Malaria ranks third among the major infectious diseases in causing deaths. It is re-emerging as the # 1 Infectious Killer and it is the Number 1 Priority Tropical Disease of the World Health Organization.
Deaths account for about 5% of the people who contract the disease, but doesn’t account for diseases like yellow fever, dengue and others that are also insect-borne. The other point is, perhaps that 500 million was talking about lives saved, and not necessarily all due to malaria.
The Center for Disease Control’s figures show a sharp decline from a little over 3 million deaths on their graph in around 1935 before DDT, to about .4 million in 1970, then up to around 1 million or so again in 2000. Where do they get the 1.5-3 million death figure for modern times? Those figures don’t correspond or jibe, either.
Who’s lying? Where do they get their figures? Is there a definitive answer? If you look to the man in the bathtub there is, but I’m trying to think this through and not accept what’s being said by the alarmists on blind faith.
Conservative estimates are DDT had saved 100 million lives.
But wait: here’s another one-Malaria Map paints Stark Picture - Nature News
The number of malaria cases worldwide may be close to double that previously estimated, according to a new tally of the killer disease.
The study, which is one of the most comprehensive efforts to map the prevalence of malaria, shows that over half a billion people could have the disease.
That would mean 25 million in a year could die from it at .05 of 1/2 billion. 25 million a year x 20 years is 500 million. There’s your 500 million figure that bathtub boy claims is wrong.
So do we know positively what the numbers are? They could even be more devastating than the dismal picture already painted here. Perhaps he and/or the groups that post them want(s) to minimize the human toll that banning DDT has taken on third world poor people? It’s hard to tell the motivations of a moonbat.
Google the phrase and you’ll find numerous other blogs and articles using that same quote and citation from numerous articles as I’ve pointed out here….so I don’t owe anyone an apology, or a retraction.
This is a typical ploy of a leftist; a bullboy tactice. When they don’t like what you’re saying, do some semantic hairsplitting in order to find a detail to sue someone over to shut them up.
In the peer-reviewed scientific research cited in the report, DDT: A case study in scientific fraud, Edwards’ quote is a little bit longer and more complete than what I quoted:
In 1970 the National Academy of Sciences stated: “To only a few chemicals does man owe as great a debt as to DDT. In little more than two decades DDT has prevented 500 million human deaths due to malaria that would have otherwise have been inevitable.”
A 1996 statement from the National Academy of Sciences is reportedly this:
“MALARIA which had been eliminated or effectively suppressed in many parts of the world, is undergoing a resurgence. It is a public health problem today in more than 90 countries inhabited by some 2,400 million people — 40 percent of the world’s population. Malaria is estimated to cause up to 500 million clinical cases and 2.7 million deaths each year. Every 30 seconds, a child somewhere dies of malaria. The global effects of the disease threaten public health and productivity on a broad scale and impede the progress of many countries toward democracy and prosperity.”
Now we’re back to an odd number that doesn’t jibe with the charts again. We could debate these numbers for a long time. But let’s move on.
Now onto the allegation that Wurster didn’t make the remarks about there being too many people.
Supposedly we’re supposed to accept Dr. Wurster’s denials as proof that he didn’t make the remarks. This reminds me of John Kerry’s infamous “Christmas in Cambodia” and running guns for the Khmer Rouge.
This is the picture that emerges from the House Hearings on the Federal Pesticide Control Act of 1971 (Serial No 92-A). John Rarick is questioning Edward Lee Rogers, then chief council for the Environmental Defense Fund. Rogers was there to present an affidavit from Charles Wurster. (Wurster was identified as a volunteer scientist, not the chief scientist.) Here is part of the exchange (pages 266-267)
Mr. Rarick. Well, this would be then the same Dr. Wurster whom Mr. Yannacone, in a speech on May 20, 1970, at the Public Relations Luncheon Group of the Union League Club in New York, described at a press conference as having said this:
A reporter asked the same Dr. Wurster whether or not the use of DDT wouldn’t encourage further use of very toxic materials, including nerve gas derivatives, and he said, “probably.”
The Reporter then asked him if these organo phosphates did not have a long record of killing people. And Dr. Wurster said “so what? People are the cause of all the problems. We have too many of them. We need to get rid of some of them and this is as good a way as any.”
Is this the same Dr. Wurster that you are later to give us an affidavit from?
Mr. Rogers. I would say probably not. In fact, I would say very emphatically that I would doubt very much that it is the same Dr. Wurster. I think that perhaps it is a figment of someone’s imagination somewhere.
Mr. Rarick. Do you know John Yannacone?
Mr. Rogers. Yes, I do know Mr. Yannacone.
Mr. Rarick. He is one of the founders?
Mr. Rogers. He is no longer with the Environmental Defense Fund, for very good reasons.
Mr. Rarick. Would this be the same Dr. Wurster who said when asked the question, “Doctor, how do you square this killing of people with the mere loss of some birds?” And this very eminent, well-meaning scientist said:
It doesn’t really make a lot of difference because the organo phosphate acts locally and only kill (sic) farm workers and most of them are Mexicans and Negroes.
Would this be the same Dr. Wurster whose affidavit you promise to later supply us?
Mr. Rogers. I think this is a very serious matter, that you are bringing up here, and I do not know what the rules of the committee are, but we are allowing to be read into the record what is notorious hearsay, without the advantage of rebuttal or examination of the people who reportedly made these statements. If there is any procedure for expurging this in the record, I would ask that it be done.
The committee never questioned Yannacone. Instead of removing the comments from the record, they put a copy of the speech into their files. They did allow Wurster to submit a letter that was included in the transcripts (page 268):
I wish to deny all of the statements of Mr, Yannacone. His remarks about me, attributed to me, and about other trustees of EDF are purely fantasy and bear no resemblance to the truth. It was in part because Mr. Yannacone lost touch with reality that he was dismissed by EDF, and his remarks of May 1970 indicate that his inability to separate fact from fiction has accelerated.
I respectfully request that my denial of any truth to Mr. Yannacone’s remarks be made part of the record of these hearings.
None of the authors who have quoted Wurster’s alleged comments have indicated that he denied making the remarks.
But is a denial proof that he didn’t make them?
To my way of thinking, the EDF was caught with its pants down after Wurster’s remarks, Wurster was embarrassed by them and backpedaled. This type of thing is not unheard of, recalling “Christmas in Cambodia”, “I love my chinese assault rifle”, ‘my lucky cap’, and running guns for the Khmer Rouge….
Dr. Stan Monteith, M.D.:
In Remembering Silent Spring and Its Consequences, Professor J. Gordon Edwards quoted from a speech by Victor Yanconne, founder of the Environmental Defense Fund. In that talk, Mr. Yanconne related a story told to him by a reporter who had asked Dr. Charles Wurster, one of the major opponents of DDT, whether a ban on DDT wouldn’t actually result in far greater use of more toxic pesticides. Dr. Wurster is reported to have replied, “So what? People are the cause of all the problems. We have too many of them. We need to get rid of some of them and this is as good a way as any.”
Paul K. Driessen at Heartland also quoted the same:
Dr. Charles Wurster, former chief scientist for the Environmental Defense Fund, was once asked if he thought a ban on DDT might result in the use of more dangerous chemicals and more malaria cases in Sri Lanka. He replied, “Probably–so what? People are the cause of all the problems. We have too many of them. We need to get rid of some of them, and this is as good a way as any.”
His views are hardly atypical. According to Earthbound, a collection of essays on so-called environmental ethics, “Massive human diebacks would be good. It is our duty to cause them. It is our species’ duty, relative to the whole, to eliminate 90 percent of our numbers.”
Former National Park Service research biologist David Graber famously remarked, “We have become a plague upon ourselves and upon the Earth. Until such time as Homo sapiens should decide to rejoin nature, some of us can only hope for the right virus to come along.”
“If radical environmentalists were to invent a disease to bring human populations back to sanity, it would probably be something like AIDS,” reads a 1989 Earth First! newsletter. “It has the potential to end industrialism, which is the main force behind the environmental crisis.”
In Ben Johnson’s ‘57 Varieties of Radical Causes: Teresa Heinz Kerry’s Charitable Giving’ it’s pointed out that the EDF has greatly moderated its public stance since Dr. Wurster’s statement. I think it’s footnote #94. And points out that “Physicians for Social Responsibility” also endorses the DDT ban.
From Part II Shades of Green:
With forty years of hindsight, celebrating Rachel Carson’s misguided book seems the height of reactionary pig-headedness, a monument to never having to say your sorry. Its unproven scientific assertions led to the deaths of tens of millions. But then admitting as much might take away some of the self-righteous confidence of the Green cause. Hence Green radicals like Teresa Heinz Kerry have vested interest in pretending this history never happened.
The actual proponents of the DDT ban foresaw its consequences and, in a bizarre testament to their anti-human impulses, welcomed them. Dr. Charles Wurster, whose temporary request for a spraying ban in Long Island led to the EPA’s 1972 decision at the international level, was asked if this cessation might kill him. He replied, “Probably – so what? People are the cause of all the problems. We have too many of them. We need to get rid of some of them, and this is as good a way as any.”[13] Wurster was chief scientist of the Environmental Defense Fund,[14] one the top grant recipients from the Heinz Endowments; Teresa Heinz Kerry personally sits on the Fund’s board.
The people who are denying Wurster’s quote are also denying that DDT was ever banned.
So…because this is cited in more than one place, even in published booklets and books about the green environmentalist movement…I’m sorry, but I can’t retract, but I will provide additional notation.
I don’t understand what the objection is to pointing this out, anyway.
Now I’ve pointed out quite a list of defendants for the man in the bathtub to pursue in court or legal proceedings, so I hope he keeps me informed as to their progress. His including me along with people I hold in high esteem such as Dr. Edwards, Dr. Stan Monteith, M.D., Paul Driessen, Ben Johnson and David Horowitz, is an honor.
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The Toledo Blade: 
The FBI, which is overseeing the manhunt for Laurean, also released recent images of the fugitive. The photos show a tattoo of a phoenix rising from the ashes on the upper part of Laurean’s left arm, and what appears to be a human skull layered over another image on the upper part of his right arm.
