Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

April 25 was World Malaria Day, reminding us of that wonderful magical chemical DDT, which conquers diseases transmitted by mosquitoes, fleas, and lice, from malaria to typhus, yellow fever, dengue, sleeping sickness, plague, encephalitis, and West Nile Virus. DDT kills a child every 12 seconds and 250 million adults every year; it’s genocide, said Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine’s Art Robinson, and President Bush could reverse it. A Wall Street Journal editorial has supported what Professor J. Gordon Edwards, specialist in DDT, professor of entomology, long suspected—the reason for environmentalists’ opposition to DDT. It decreases deaths, leading to overpopulation and therefore is bad for the environment. In World War I, typhus killed more soldiers than bullets. It was then discovered that DDT has insecticidal properties. It rapidly curbed malaria in the U.S. and Europe. Then came a gifted writer, Rachel Carson, whose best seller, Silent Spring , taught the U.S. that DDT...

Natalie Sirkin , in an eye opening column on DDT, points out the difference between pop-science and the real thing. Africa is awash with preventable diseases because false science, in obedience to Grisham's law, has driven out real science. Roger Bate is a South African who has devoted himself for decades to promoting the use of DDT in the battle with malaria in Africa . Bate in his November 5 Wall Street Journal piece, “Last Chance for DDT,” tells how the use of DDT is being undermined by environmentalists and organizations selling alternatives to DDT. Environmentalists are scaring undeveloped nations telling them that DDT causes cancer or birth defects (totally false). European Union officials are suggesting their crops would be boycotted. Within national donor agencies, teams are writing anti-malaria literature while running No-Spray programs. The U.N. is hurting. Mozambique has run a successful indoor residual spraying program, but the media ignore the news. DDT is a miracle . ...

An eye-opener from Natalie Sirkin that might well be titled "How Environmentalists Facilitated Malaria Among the Poor In Africa." The summer of 1971 brought the Sirkins and the gypsy-moth infestation to Sherman and Connecticut. Environmental organizations told us not to spray. In those days, we were all environmentalists. We held out till we could bear it no longer. A few days later, even they gave up. In those days we still could have had DDT. The EPA public hearing which lasted eight months was still in progress. Its decision by Hearing Examiner Sweeney would vindicate DDT completely, but soon after EPA William Ruckelshaus would overrule Sweeney’s decision. Science could help, said Ruckelshaus , but this was a political decision, which put him in charge. He and Rachel Carson were the sources for the bad on DDT. Rachel Carson , nine years earlier, had started it all. Her book started the environmental movement. Pesticides were the problem, especially DDT, and her book, Si...

With the help of Environmental Protection Agency’s Administrator, William Ruckelshaus, the media, and environmental organizations, DDT today is as rare as Mercurochrome. Article after article discusses the decades-long efforts to develop a malarial vaccine, mentioning the unsatisfactory measures in use, but omits the efficacious DDT—the greatest, the cheapest. Yet the manufacturers of DDT were among the first lawsuits targeted by the infant Environmental Defense Fund, then three guys and a clipboard. One of the three, Victor John Yannacone, Jr., spoke of those early days at the paper industry’s luncheon meeting on May 20, 1970. (We have a transcript.) Yannacone’s credentials : “I think I ought to disabuse you all, at the beginning, of some basic prejudices. . . . I have no undergraduate degree, and for those of you who wonder about my legal talents . . ., you ought to know that I have the lowest average of anybody who ever graduated in the entire history of Brooklyn Law School , which ...

The malaria epidemic is like loading up even Boeing 747 airliners each day, then deliberately crashing them into Mt. Kilimanjaro -- Dr. Wen Kilama When I heard about the attempts of Western countries and green groups to ban DDT while thousands were suffering from malaria I became almost speechless with anger. . . . It is revolting that the people wanting to ban DDT pretend that they somehow have people’s best interest at heart and are acting for the greater good. Green groups, governments, and donor agencies have assumed the moral high ground and yet their actions kill. -- Richard Tren In 1962, Rachel Carson’s book “Silent Spring” mortally wounded pesticides and particularly DDT. 1n 1972 William Ruckelshaus, head of the Environmental Protection Agency, administered the finishing blow by banning DDT. In foreign la...

1. 640,329 jobs “saved/created” in Connecticut’s 45th Congressional district. 2. U.S. has high Infant Mortality. 3. 45,000 died because they didn’t have health insurance. 4. U.S. is unhealthy, only 37th healthiest in the world. 5. Social Security Trust Fund, Medicare trust fund. 6. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi despises private insurers driven by profit. 7. Passive smoke, a killer but where are the bodies? 8. DDT, miracle that saves lives from malaria, banned. 1. 640,329 jobs created and saved? Bogus. House oversight subcommittee says $136 billion has been paid out from the $787-billion stimulus package, for jobs counted, double-counted, in nonexistent Congressional districts, including the 45th in Connecticut (we have five), 26th in Louisiana, 12th in Virginia and other imaginary places. An $890 shoe order, rated nine new jobs. An Alabama housing authority on a $540,071 project, rated 7,280 jobs but the Birmingham News only found 14. Where are the grants going? “Who knows, man, ...

The Statist urges Americans to view themselves through the lenses of those who resent and even hate them. He needs Americans to become less confident, . . . and to accept the status assigned to them by outsiders—as isolationists, invaders, occupiers, oppressors, and exploiters. The Statist wants Americans to see themselves as backward, foolishly holding to their quaint notions of individual liberty, private property, family, and faith, long diminished or jettisoned in other countries. . . . -- Mark R. Levin Mark Levin in his book, " Liberty and Tyranny, A Conservative Manifesto ," demonstrates the tyranny of Statists by their positions on current issues. According to Levin on his radio show, he wrote 98 percent of the book before Barack Obama became President. Obama’s name appears only twice, but his positions are apparent on many of the issues discussed. How does the Statist operate? He attacks the Founding Fathers as slaveholders, and he favors revolutions because they cle...

The Environmental Protection Agency has revoked a water permit for a mining project issued in 2007 by the Army Corps of Engineers. It blocks $250 million in investment and costs 250 jobs. It is in the coal-mining area of West Virginia and involves removal of a mountain top. EPA, as is its custom, says science required the revocation. Other firms wonder if their permits will be revoked. This revocation is in line with EPA’s regulatory excess and its anti-energy bias. EPA is among the most imperious of the regulatory agencies, arising from the vagueness of Congress’s laws and orders, and Congress’s having abrogated oversight of the regulatory process. But if Congress is reforming, there are ways to rein them in, according to The Wall Street Journal January. 14 editorial. One is to enact the “ Executive In Need Of Scrutiny (Reins) Act ,” proposed by Senators DeMint and Davis. Among these unelected agencies, scarcely a week goes by without EPA’s regulatory carcinogen witch-hunt to re...

Around the 1990s, some women who had developed breast cancer began wondering if there were some particular factor causing it. There were regional differences in the incidence of breast cancer. Certain areas were high risk: the Northeast, the San Francisco Bay area (even Sherman ’s Briggs Hill was added—briefly). Risk factors were upper–income women, older than 50, Jewish, never had children or had first child at a later age, an early age at menarche, menopause at a late age, used hormone-replacement therapy, with (poor) diets rich in fats, and a family history of breast cancer.. Those were known high-risk factors. However, they could not be used to predict which women would get breast cancer nor could they be used for prevention. To those high-risk factors, alarmists added environmental pollution, with air-pollution still another factor (but small if at all). Epidemiologist Geoffrey C. Kabat ’s new book, Hyping Health Risks, Environmental Hazards in Daily Life and the Science of...

Rightly or wrongly, Global Warming offers disaster for our planet. Countering it has become a consuming concern. Emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG) focus on carbon dioxide. “A reduction in carbon emissions has become an end in itself,” observes Bjorn Lomborg, whose Copenhagen Consensus found 36 better ways to accomplish the goal. Carbon dioxide is the by-product of fossil fuel, chiefly oil, which provides 85% of our energy. European attempts to decrease CO2 have failed while being extremely expensive. Nearly every European country has higher emissions today than when the Kyoto Protocol which started it was signed in 1997. Cap and Trade (C&T), a favored approach, is “the biggest income tax on industry yet devised,” in the opinion of Senator James Ihhofe (R, Oklahoma). Nevertheless some influential firms welcome it. “Cap” would put a lid on the emissions each plant can produce through “allowances” distributed by government or some other authority. “Trade” is to enable fir...

In the past 150 years (at least since Marx), the socialists have been very effectively destroying human freedom under humane and compassionate slogans, such as caring for man, ensuring social equality, and fostering social welfare. The environmentalists are doing the same under equally noble-minded slogans, expressing concern about nature more than about people (recall their radical motto “Earth First!”). In both cases, the slogans have been (and still are) just a smokescreen. In both cases, the movements have been (and are) completely about power . . . -- Vaclav Klaus, 2007 “Take no chances.” “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” “Better safe than sorry.” “Look before you leap.” These aphorisms are the common currency of the call for the precautionary principle. The precautionary principle holds that precautionary action should be taken to avoid irreparable harm to the environment and to human health. Even though scientific proof is lacking that harm has been caused o...

BPA, Bisphenol-A, is a chemical used in the manufacture of shatter-proof plastic in baby bottles and in resin coatings that protect canned food and vegetables. It is also used in eyeglass lenses, bike helmets, and electronic circuit boards. It is also present in dental fillings, CDs, Blackberries, cell phones, and medical devices. It is ubiquitous. But it “may” harm human development, says the Environmental Working Group, which has directed a campaign against it since 2007. EWG claimed that the CDC, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, found detectable levels of BPA in the urine of 93 % of Americans over the age of six. But virtually every chemical can be detected in urine and blood, according to Dr. Gilbert Ross, Medical Director of ACSH, the American Council of Science and Health. That does not mean that they are harmful, says the CDC. And the levels that leach into food or drink are so incredibly small that they can barely be measured. A study by the Harvard Sc...