May 1997 Vol. XIV, No. 3

In 1945, the goal was eradication of malaria; the ambition was achieved in 36 of 143 countries by 1969. Then progress stopped, and the trend started to reverse.

In the 1990s, 40% of the world's population still lives1 in malarious countries, and 270 million people are infected. Malaria kills millions of people annually, and most of the victims are children. In Africa, 30% of childhood deaths are directly caused by this disease.

In 1997, the U.S. National Institutes of Health and other research organizations say that it's ``time to put malaria control on the global agenda'' (Nature 1997;386:535-541) due to impending catastrophe in Africa. The malaria parasite is growing resistant to almost all existing drugs, and most pharmaceutical houses have abandoned research on new ones. Vaccines are still on a ``roller coaster of hope,'' but so far seem to require adjuvants to work. The adjuvants may be too toxic to use in young children. Effectiveness of the vaccines may be of such short duration that they will be useful primarily to protect travellers. And in countries where people cannot even afford mosquito nets, expensive vaccines will be useless.

Malaria and other mosquito-borne diseases also threaten to spread to the temperate zone, including the U.S.A. In 1993, the CDC received reports of 1,275 cases of malaria in the U.S. and its territories, a 40% increase over 1992: 278 cases in U.S. military personnel, 453 in foreign civilians, 519 in U.S. civilians, and 25 unknown (MMWR 2/21/97). Two cases were believed to be locally acquired in New York City; these represented the seventh outbreak of locally acquired infection in the continental U.S. between 1989-1993. Dengue hemorrhagic fever, believed to be eradicated from the Western hemisphere 20 years ago, is now attacking thousands. Between 1989 and 1994, Latin America experienced a sixty-fold increase. The disease has been found just 10 miles south of the Rio Grande.

What accounts for this dramatic reversal? According to the Journal of the AMA (1996;275:217-223), ``climatic factors are considered the most important cause of epidemic outbreaks in nonendemic countries''! It is asserted that malaria ``generally extends to the 16° C winter isotherm, since parasite development does not occur below this temperature.'' The recommendation: study long-term climate change and ``address this problem in a concerted and timely fashion.''

However, as Ed Krug points out in Environment Betrayed, Oct/Nov 1996, settlers of Winona, Minnesota, during the Little Ice Age, usually came down with malaria. Peoria, Illinois, was inhabitable at one time only because of bluffs that the mosquitoes breeding near the river did not reach. Epidemics occurred in New England, New York, and New Jersey, though they were mild compared with the southern states, where 10% of the population was infected in 1939. Furthermore, a 2.0° C temperature rise by the year 2100, predicted by the global warming model, can hardly account for the dramatic increase in illness now.

Rather than theorizing, public health officials ought to acknowledge what it was that accounted for their previous success: As the CDC said in 1960, ``DDT provides the only safe, economically feasible eradication measure available today.''

This statement is still true─except that thanks to politically motivated action by the EPA, DDT is no longer available in much of the world. What should be of urgent interest to Americans, especially those near the southern border, is that Mexico plans to phase out DDT over the next 10 years. Since 1990, Mexico has used approximately 3,000 tons of DDT per year in anti-malaria campaigns.

There still is no substitute comparable to DDT in safety or cost-effectiveness. In the 1950s, it cost 17 cents to save a human life with this chemical. In fact, according to J. Gordon Edwards (who will speak at the San Diego meeting), there is no practical method of controlling mosquito larvae in the U.S. without violating provisions of the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, various wetlands regulations, the Endangered Species Act, or regulations prohibiting pesticide residues (21st Century, summer 1993).

The prospect of reviving DDT actually seems to be unmentionable, but some arguments against it are often alluded to, particularly the hypothetical cancer risk and mosquito resistance.

A study of workers at the Montrose Chemical Company, who accumulated 38 to 647 ppm of DDT and byproducts in their fatty tissues (cf. 5 to 6 ppm in the general population), revealed no cases of cancer in 10 to 20 years on the job in 1300 man-years of exposure─a statistically improbable event. In rat experiments, DDT appeared to counteract the carcinogenic effects of aflatoxin.

Some resistance to DDT did develop─in 1% of the territory in which eradication measures were being applied, probably because of agricultural use. This problem is not considered unmanageable by experts. And some pesticide-resistant strains gradually lose resistance in the absence of exposure (Belle Newsletter 3/96).

It is likely that the most powerful argument against DDT, in the minds of Green activists, is that it saves so many human lives. As Dr. Alexander King, head of the Malthusian Club of Rome, wrote: ``my chief quarrel with DDT in hindsight is that it greatly added to the population problem.''

The caption to the photograph of the African malaria patient pictured on p. 535 of the April 10, 1997, issue of Nature should possibly read: ``on the altar of sacrifice to earth goddess Gaia.''

While AMA publications may advocate global cooling to combat malaria, the side effects of the Framework Convention on Climate Change are finally becoming apparent to the food-producing industry. The climate treaty is ``methyl bromide multiplied 10 times.'' (Methyl bromide, covered by the Montreal Protocol, is used to fumigate stored grain, which otherwise will quickly rot.) The climate treaty, which affects fertilizers, diesel fuel, and trucking would limit the size of farms and require new farming methods (The Grower, Dec 1996). Other U.S. industries to be devastated include petroleum refining, chemicals, paper products, iron and steel, aluminum, and cement (National Center for Public Policy Research, 5/23/97).

I got turned off the environmental bandwagon when I was a speaker at the first Earth Day at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1970. I was teaching environmental geology, and I knew that the biggest environmental problems for the Hudson River were due to raw sewage. This was not mentioned at the meeting, only the industrial pollution, which was not visible. I realized that the new environmentalism was really a leftist attack on the system. I joined Dr. Tucker's National Council for Environmental Balance and was honored to meet Dr. J. Gordon Edwards. It was very lonesome, sort of like trying to push an avalanche uphill....

Now I think the Greens are increasingly frantic. It's like a race between the Luddites and our technologic civilization. If the Luddites win, one side effect will be massive destruction of the natural and human environment....

James R. Dunn, Averill Park, NY

It is clear that there are thousands of geophysicists who are adamantly opposed to the dishonorable manner in which this whole ``anthropogenic impact'' has been applied; actually, imposed, upon the world. Most of them tell me of the problem all of us have getting published in scientific journals, nearly all of which have become ``politically correct.'' Abstracts for scientific symposia may also be rejected....

Dr. Zbigniew Jawororski, of the University of Oslo, has shown that from the 1930s until the present, the global warmers have discarded data that did not fit their ``warming'' curve and have changed dates on data by as much as 83 years to fit their warming theory. They have consistently and deliberately misrepresented the life history in the atmosphere of CO₂ from fossil fuel, claiming 50-330 years instead of the easily determined lifetime of 5 years....

Col. Bob Stevenson, Del Mar, CA