One of the benefits that ought to arise from the existence of the blogosphere is that of fact-checking. False claims can be refuted quickly, and, we might hope, not repeated thereafter. Sadly it doesn’t seem to work out that way, as the following examples show.
Tim Blair points to yet another repetition of the “plastic turkey” story, this time in Pravda. Not surprisingly he’s frustrated by this.
Meanwhile, the claim that bans on the use of DDT in anti-malaria campaigns have cost millions of lives, has been repeated yet again, by Miranda Devine in the SMH, and Rafe Champion at Catallaxy.
So in the interests of accuracy and bipartisanship, let’s get the facts straight
* In his visit to Iraq in November 2003, Bush did not pose with a plastic turkey, as has been often claimed, but with a decorative, real “show turkey” not intended for eating. The “show turkeyâ€? is a routine part of the presentation for the soldiers eating in the mess hall, so there’s nothing surprising about the fact that Bush posed with one.
* DDT has never been banned in antimalarial use. The main reason for declining use of DDT as an antimalarial has been the development of resistance. Antimalarial uses have received specific exemptions from proposals to phase out DDT, until alternatives are developed. Bans on the use of DDT as an agricultural insecticide, promoted by Rachel Carson and others, have helped to slow the development of resistance, and therefore increased the effectiveness of DDT in antimalarial use ( links on this here
If Tim is willing to make the same points, maybe we’ll get somewhere on this (begins holding breath).
OK, I’m not really holding my breath, and I don’t suppose the SMH is going to apply the Google rule to lazy, sloppy and inaccurate work like Devine’s.
Devine scores just about all the points possible on this one, citing fiction writer Michael Crichton as a scientific authority, misrepresenting the easily checkable position of the WHO, and citing the ludicrous bookburners of Human Events.
More seriously, she recycles an unsourced and obviously fabricated quote imputed to Rachel Carson, that ”
We should seek not to eliminate malarial mosquitoes with pesticides,” wrote Carson, “but to find instead a reasonable accommodation between the insect hordes and ourselves
. It’s easy to find more unsourced versions of this quote at sites like Frontpage
However, a bit more searching reveals this quote (link is to a PDF file) from the end of Silent Spring
Through all these new, imaginative, and creative approaches to the problem of sharing our earth with other creatures there runs a constant theme, the awareness that we are dealing with life – with living populations and all their pressures and counter pressures, their surges and recessions. Only by taking account of such life forces and by cautiously seeking to guide them into channels favorable to ourselves can we hope to achieve a reasonable accommodation between the insect hordes and ourselves
Clearly we’re seeing the usual game of quote fabrication here, with the line about malarial mosquitos inserted into an unobjectionable statement of the desirability of what’s generally called integrated pest management as opposed to indiscriminate use of pesticides. Devine has been too lazy to check her third-hand or fourth-hand sources, and no doubt her editors won’t bother pulling her up.
No surprises here. But I’m a bit disappointed that Rafe Champion hasn’t bothered to correct his erroneous post, or to respond to comments pointing out his errors. Catallaxy generally holds to higher standards than this.
Update As Tim Lambert points out in comments, Devine has actually taken the critical step in the fabrication herself. Her apparent source, Keith Lockitch, doesn’t have quote marks around the first part of the statement, so he is passing it off as a paraphrase (though Carson never said anything about malarial mosquitoes in the relevant passage). Devine seems to be the one who added the quote marks.
Further update Miranda Devine has written to me, indicating that she will correct the spurious Carson quote, and saying that she took the quote from a republication of the Lockitch article in The Age, where it appeared as she quoted it. It’s therefore clear that she was not responsible for fabricating the quote, but merely reproduced it without checking.
Yet further update It was a mistake on my part to draw the conclusion that Miranda Devine was responsible for adding the quote marks, since I should have considered the possibility of an intermediate republication or reproduction of the quote. I apologise for this.
Final update (26/6) Devine’s column in today’s SMH includes the following:
Last week I inadvertently misquoted Rachel Carson by repeating a mistake from The Age of January 29. In an article by Keith Lockitch of the Ayn Rand Institute, Carson was quoted: “We should seek not to eliminate malarial mosquitoes with pesticides, but to find instead a reasonable accommodation between the insect hordes and ourselves.”
But in Lockitch’s original, published in FrontPage Magazine, the quote was part paraphrase: “We should seek, Carson wrote, not to eliminate malarial mosquitoes with pesticides, but to find instead, ‘a reasonable accommodation between the insect hordes and ourselves’. ” Apologies.
Absolutely final update (27/6) Tim Lambert points out that Lockitch’s article did not, as claimed by Devine, appear in The Age on January 29 or, as far as can be determined from the public archive[1], any other date in any Fairfax paper. The Factiva database reveals that the piece was in fact published, with the incorrect quotation marks, in a Murdoch paper, the Melbourne Herald-Sun, on January 13, 2005 (access restricted to subscribers). This further error on Devine’s part isn’t particularly important compared to the others noted in the main post above, but it does make this post by Tim Blair look a bit silly.
fn1. I don’t have access to the internal Fairfax library, but it seems unlikely that a piece already reprinted by the Murdoch press would be recycled by a Fairfax paper.
John Quiggin 
This from Andrew Sullivan.
“I guess it’s not crazy to come up with a list of the “ten most harmful books” of the last two centuries. But it’s not a sign of intellectual health. It implies that some ideas are worth suppressing for the harm they might do. To my mind, an argument or a book should be read with as open a mind as possible. Its errors or moral failings are better brought to light by exposure than buried. But some of today’s conservative intellectuals believe otherwise; and this list by “Human Events” contributors is a disturbing one, and a sign of increasing morbidity in conservative intellectual circles. Sure, it’s hard to dispute the evil power of hackish tracts like Mein Kampf or Mao’s Little Red Book. (I’m surprised the ‘Protocols of the Elders of Zion’ didn’t make the grade.) But Darwin and Nietzsche, two of the greatest minds in Western civilization, whose works still mesmerize and intrigue smart readers and whose ideas are subject to countless interpretations? And Mill and Keynes and Freud? Please. If I were a young conservative mind, the first thing I’d do is read these Indexed books and make my own mind up. It should be possible to be a conservative with a genuinely liberal approach to intellectual inquiry. And that excludes exclusion of ideas deemed “harmful.”
DDT use was effectively banned.
For agriculture not the closed space of a home. There is a difference between effective and total.
JF Beck, your source does not give any basis for your claim that DDT use was effectively banned. In fact, it makes repeated references to continued use in many countries.
Reasons for ceasing use of DDT have varied between countries. In the case of Sri Lanka, cited prominently in the article, the cessation of use in the 1960s (when it was still permitted in the US) was due mainly to resistance. More detail here
It may be that there are some cases when decisions to stop using DDT were mistaken. But that’s very different from what Devine and others have claimed.
Newspapers don’t apply the usual standards of factual support to op-ed writers. But that surely doesn’t mean they should tolerate the use of facts which are not true?
A writer should be dumped for that. And the rag should correct the errors of fact. After all, the reputation of the masthead is used to give the “fact” credibility.
That was the basis of the Chrenkov/WSJ fracas. Maybe Media Watch ought to have a look – and admit the blogosphere alerted them.
JQ, you shouldn’t use “accurate” and “bipartisan” together. Bipartisan either means both parties responding after the fact (like the UK wartime coalition) or getting together before the fact regardless of the merits (like the prewar British National Government, a coalition that just happened to be more right than the alternatives but only by coincidence).
In modern use, “bipartisan” is nearly tantamount to “stitch up” – see how the Australian Republican Movement wanted to use it as a means of suppressing debate, but luckily were thwarted (by republicans with more integrity, amongst others).
It’s worth observing that columnists on both sides of the political fence have been guilty of some pretty poor practice in this respect, though this obviously bogus quote is worse than anything I can recall seeing.
John,
I’m puzzled; do you think I’m in error for concealing the turkey’s decorative, not-for-eating nature? If so, please put your mind at rest. In my first post on Turkeygate (before the bird had even gained plastic status) I quoted the Washington Post:
President Bush’s Baghdad turkey was for looking, not for eating.
In my second post, also prior to the turkey’s plastication, I described the bird as “ornamental” and highlighted these words from someone of military background:
the “show turkey” is a routine part of the presentation for the soldiers eating in the mess hall.
Cheers,
As always, you hit the proverbial, biased, ‘good/bad news’ on the head, John
The difference between the press media which tends to be a duopoly in most cities, bar Brissie, and bloggers seems to be the fact that websites are inclined to be more multipartisan on many issues … There is plenty of evidence though that more bloggers are good guys doing bad things rather than the other way around bad guys doing the right thing. There are supposed to be some perfect journalists and even some bloggers, however, I am still to find them 😉
Unlike the time Before Blogs; or when blogs first started, fact-checking is now receiving sustained attention in the mainstream press and at websites like factcheck.org
Some errors can be classified as reckless others are just innocent, or unintentional mistakes … Some people with poles in their eyes will point at specks of other journalists of bloggers. Light is the best disinfectant in any culture …
i.e. How two incorrectly used punctuation marks can set off a firestorm of discussion and debate. Journalists versus bloggers: the difference is fact checking?;
Coda;-) Fact-czeching verb and usage
Ach, the other Tim, a master fact-czecher, has just undertaken a research into Sincerely Flattered Universe
.
“President Bush’s Baghdad turkey was for looking, not for eating.”
Pretty much sums up what’s been happening there so far.
Damn, yer good little tim. You should consider a job with a pop news mag. Hopefully though one not aligned with that pissy rag Newsweek.
It looks like Devine is the one that fabricated the quote. The version at Front Page doesn’t have quote marks around the first part of the statement, so the author is passing it off as a paraphrase. Devine seems to be the one who added the quote marks.
[…] 5
Miranda Devine spreads DDT hoax
Posted by Tim Lambert under DDT
John Quiggin catches Miranda Devine spreading the DDT Hoax in the Sun H […]
Tim B, I don’t suggest you concealed anything. I reproduced the info from the source you pointed to, which clearly shows, as you say, that the turkey was not plastic. I’ve added a further sentence including your point about the fact that the use of a “show turkey” is standard practice.
I’m confused. When Bush made his Thanksgiving “surprise visit”, how many show turkeys were there?
With regard to claims that DDT was “effectively banned”, Tim Lambert supplies the following useful link: http://www.treated-bednet.com/agro-chemical.htm.
The company reports selling DDT to the follwing countries for malaria control “in the past several years” : Madagascar, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Sudan, South Africa, Namibia, Solomon Island, Papua New Guinea, Algeria, Thailand and Myanmar”
So in addition to the blood libel about environmentalists committing a genocide greater than the Holocaust, we need to add charges off gross incompetence in their execution of the alleged “ban”.
I’ve been seeing references to turkeys pop up on Tim’s and other blogs for ages, but never really knew whether it was said to be real and turned out to be plastic, or plastic and turned out to be real. I just knew there was some private war going on somewhere about a turkey. But you know what? I really really didn’t care. I’d say average Jo and Joanne down my local pub don’t know or care either. But now that I know it was a ‘show turkey’, my life has taken a turn for the better.
Translation: fact checking is fine. I’m for it. But how do you define a fact? When is a fact deemed to have been ‘checked’. Is it possible much less necessary to fact check every minutae? Do journalists have deadlines? Do bloggers have lives?
while Rafe is blogging under my sanction I’m staying out of this except to say that from my perspective the debate over DDT is descending into complete hair-splittery, but the point that the value of the sort of pro-DDT hysteria promoted by the Rachel Carson haters is somewhat undermined by the resistance issue is an obvious and potent one.
I certainly think there is more at stake with the DDT issue than the turkey one. frankly i didn’t give a damned re the latter one way or another.
John,
It’s still not obvious what you’re aiming for here (at least to me). Do you mean for me to repeat your points about Miranda and Rafe so that “maybe we’ll get somewhere on this”? Are you asking me to post an item making identical claims as yours, in order to satisfy some Quiggin truth measure?
Reply privately via email if you’d prefer.
Cheers,
Tim
You have the general idea, Tim. If you want to quibble about DDT, I think it’s pretty clear that the quote Miranda has used is spurious, so you could just point that out if you wanted.
Or, you could start by correcting the fake quote on your own blog Tim Lambert pointed out.
Hair splitting, Jason? Rafe claimed that the World Bank has “up to date resisted the use of DDT in the control of malaria.” This isn’t true, they’ve been funding its use since 1947 and continue to do so. Refe should correct his post unless he wants to be thought like Tim Blair.
John,
I’ll get right on to it, just as soon as you mention the Sydney Morning Herald’s front-page misuse of a quote, the ABC’s repetition of a fake quote, Crikey’s refusal to run a bylined piece defending Miranda Devine after publishing three anonymous items attacking her, the Age’s failure to disclose a contributor’s financial connection to the subject on which she wrote, Alan Ramsey’s attempt to avoid shaming Gough Whitlam, a claim in The Age that the US jails dissidents, Phillip Adams’ borrowing habit, Media Watch’s dumb evasiveness, the ABC altering its own transcripts, Kevin Rudd’s inaccurate deputy sheriff statement, Mark Baker’s view that Asia would shun John Howard, Phillip Adams’ Napoleonic stupidity, Michael Gawenda’s clumsy reversal of survey data, Mike Carlton’s faulty research, Alan Ramsey’s bogus quote use, Margo Kingston’s bizarre defence of Paul McGeough …
That takes us back to March. There are one or two earlier items you might also look at running, but let’s get these up first, shall we?
Yours in fairness,
Tim
[…] en thee … Samizdat! Mmm … DDT … Yum! Thanks to John Quiggin and Tim Lambert, we have pointers to yet anot […]
Gee Tim, we’d better catch all the accused murderers, or else it wouldn’t be “fair” to put those already in custody on trial.
Face it Tim. Miranda Devine was caught red-handed falsifying a quote. Let’s be clear about this: Devine’s falsification wasn’t the product of laziness. Neither was it the product of recklessness. No, it arose from a deliberate design to traduce and to assassinate the reputation of a Rachel Carson, a person who can no longer defend herself or her own reputation. If Miranda Devine had any respect for her putative profession as an opinion shaper, she’d resign. But we all know that Miranda Devine will not resign, because the truth means nothing to Miranda Devine. Miranda Devine has no shame.
And yours is a theadbare rationalization for attempting to divert critical scrutiny away from Miranda Devine and her fellow smearers.
Are your tactics surprising? Of course not.
Yes John Q. How can little tim be expected to take responsibility for running a fake turkey of a quote on his blog if you won’t take responsibility for factchecking everyone else?
We’ve all heard of moving the goalposts but I don’t recall seeing the entire playing field shifted with quite such barefaced alacrity before.
Tim,
How about simply admitting explicitly here that DDT was not banned for malaria control purposes and is still used extensively for this in the developing world with the support of NGOs, donor governments and intenrational agencies?
We can’t expect others to meet a standard which we fail to meet ourselves.
Tim,
How about simply admitting explicitly here that DDT was not banned for malaria control purposes and is still used extensively for this in the developing world with the support of NGOs, donor governments and intenrational agencies?
We can’t expect others to meet a standard which we fail to meet ourselves.
Ian,
Why should I “admit” these things?
From the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs:
The EU continues to try to enforce, in this case through threat, the DDT ban.
As noted by an obviously brainwashed Ugandan MP:
Those much closer to the problem than we are perceive the ban.
Broaden your horizons boys.
Quite the ideological warrior aren’t you Tim? You must be very proud that your longwinded list of fakes, above, includes none perpetrated by your comrades at arms in the awful blog wars of our time. A terrific moral victory for you or proof of your one-eyedness, we’ll be the judge then will we?
Let’s see, the following counties have exemptions to use DDT as listed in Annex B of the Stockholm Convention: Algeria, Bangladesh, Brazil, Cameroon, China, Costa Rica, Comoros, Ivory Coast, Ecuador, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Iran, India, Kenya, Madagascar, Malawi, Morocco, Mozambique, Papua New Guinea, Korea, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Sudan, Swaziland, Togo, Uganda, Tanzania, Venezuala, Yemen, Zimbabwe, and Zambia. It is more than a little inaccurate to call this a ban.
The EU is perfectly entitled to caution Uganda about making sure that DDT does not contaminate its exports to the EU. If DDT is used according to the WHO’s guidelines this should not be a problem, but there is always a danger that some will be stolen and misused on crops.
Tim B. I’m agreeable to your suggestion. I already mentioned above that misuse of quotes is practised on both sides of the ideological fences.
So, I’ll post pointing out the bogus nature of the James Watt quote, and the SMH’s misrepresentation of Howard’s irony, and you can refute the Wurster and Carson misquotes. Agreed ?
You are so wrong Tim L. Beck has just cited an irrefutable source. A single Ugandan MP.
I look forward to Beckie boy acknowledging the same unrebuttable truthsaying powers of other MPs around the world – like say Gorgeous George Galloway?
Incidentally, speaking as somone who was really close to the problem, I grew up in a third world mossie-plagued and dengue and malaria-infested (I’ve had both and dengue is much worse by far) country at a time when DDT was being phased out because blokes in overalls and masks pumping clouds of stuff around the grounds of resort hotels freaked the tourists out. Classic market forces at work.
Since you ask, their tourism industry is doing just fine now, and malaria and dengue cases have fallen by 90% thanks to a cocktail of measures from public education campaigns to intelligent landscaping which dramatically reduced mossie breeding grounds, and none of which involved DDT.
Yes Nobby, you should give the Ugandans some advice on intelligent landscaping. I’m sure their ornamental garden pools are breeding lots of mozzies.
Numerous experts blame pressure from environmentalists for the effective banning of DDT and the consequent resurgence of malaria. The Malaria Foundation International clearly sees it that way. But, you guys know better. Good on ya.
Beck claims that the Malaria Foundation International says that DDT has been banned. But this is what they say in big red letters right at the top of their page on DDT:
Funny how Beck didn’t notice this.
Funny how Lambert hasn’t noticed that a de facto ban is not the same as a de jure ban. The MFI was one of the prime movers behind the campaign to prevent the de jure banning of DDT – thus the notice of of their successful campaign.
If Lambert takes the time to read around at MFI he will find references to the de facto ban – as in Roberts et al in Lambert’s beloved Lancet. I assume MFI has posted links to these sources because it is in basic agreement with their contents.
Nice try fact-check-boy.
Frankis writes:
You must be very proud that your longwinded list of fakes, above, includes none perpetrated by your comrades at arms in the awful blog wars of our time.
Longwinded? Hey, that’s only a few months’ worth. As for not targeting my comrades, I figure that John, Tim Dunlop, and other lefty bloggers can take care of errors from the right. And John writes:
I’ll post pointing out the bogus nature of the James Watt quote, and the SMH’s misrepresentation of Howard’s irony, and you can refute the Wurster and Carson misquotes.
The Wurster quote is already corrected. Re the Carson quote, let’s shoot for a correction in the SMH itself, and link to it when it appears. (I’ll get back to you, Professor, on the bogus quotes I’d prefer you to address. Possibly I’ll find some in the Fin Review.) John also writes:
this obviously bogus quote is worse than anything I can recall seeing.
Worse than anything? Please. Half the quote is genuine; half seems to be a wrongly-attributed paraphrasing. Is this worse than presenting quotes as from a radio interview when they were in fact lifted from old newspaper columns? Worse than twisting a whole sequence of quotes?
Incidentally, I’m still confused over why I was mentioned here in the first place, seeing as I didn’t make the assertions on DDT that John challenges. John’s stance — “If Tim is willing to make the same points, maybe we’ll get somewhere on this (begins holding breath)” — is a little rich; he’s ignored hundreds of leftoid errors, and in fact defended one of the left’s prime quote-offenders. It’s a bit late to begin posing as Mr Bipartisan.
Still, good for him to finally notice the plastic turkey lie. It’s only taken 18 months and dozens of repetitions. I’ll happily follow John’s example when next I’m fact-checking the right.
Still gallantly fightin’ yer corner little tim. Good on ya mate. And you put the Wurster quote in context. Kudos there.
But
“Incidentally, I’m still confused over why I was mentioned here in the first place,”
It’s bit late to be playing disingenuous now. If you’d raised that point at the start, well yes. But not now when you feel, seem, and look cornered.
I won’t concede the turkey, dammit, just because Mike Allen, Washington Post Staff Writer say so. It was plastic.
It’s good to see you have corrected the Wurster quote, Tim.
I criticised Philip Adams on the issue of misquotation here.
Tim, playing the medieval angel, persists in attempting to weigh the gravity of sins:
“[Miranda Devine’s falsifications] [w]orse than anything? Please. Half the quote is genuine; half seems to be a wrongly-attributed paraphrasing. Is this worse than presenting quotes as from a radio interview when they were in fact lifted from old newspaper columns? Worse than twisting a whole sequence of quotes?”
Tim accurately describes the nature of Miranda Devine’s lie. But, Tim busts himself attempting to minimise the gravity of Devine’s offence. Tim pretends that he can’t understand the fuss, that he doesn’t get it.
But really Tim does get it. Look at Tim’s use of the weasel word “wrongly”.
Now, what can “wrongly” mean?
1. Mistakenly, inadvertently.
2. Recklessly heedlessly.
3. Immorally, criminally, with malice aforethought.
Tim wants the world to think Option 1. He’s probably willing to cop a plea and live with Option 2.
But Tim, you really do know, don’t you? It’s Option 3. The fact is that Miranda Devine moved those quotation marks deliberately, knowingly and with malice aforethought.
Did Miranda Devine wrestle with her conscience before she did it? Possibly not, given her form as an habitual character assassin. But let’s give her the benefit of the doubt on that question.
Did Miranda Devine give any evidence of remorse after having been caught deliberately falsifying the record? We all know the answer to that question.
I thought that the gratuitous attack on Tim B because of Miranda Devine was a bit odd, but didn’t say so because it seemed at the time obvious. Clearly not.
Find it both interesting and informative that this site’s correspondents and others will dissect and attack the Tim Blair site but won’t lower themselves to front there.
The fact checking re Wurster is not one of those great moments in truthful reporting. It seems that when Yannacone is quoted on Wurster it should always be accompanied by the disclaimer from Wurster. After all that is the proof that it is not true, plus the fact that he said Yannacone is a weird person. So he said, but he said, but he said and so on?
The problem with pointing out the MLF’s statement that their efforts to stop a total ban in 2007 driven by the environmentalists was successful, is that they mounted their campaign because they believed that many would die if the ban was implemented. Thus if it has been achieved in part them from the MLF’s stance some will have died because of such actions. The evidence that the use of DDT has been curtailed is there. So if one thinks that the MLF put up a reputable and scientific case (rather than being a junk-science mob) and hence are worthy of notice then it has to be assumed that there have been deaths due to the restriction in the use of DDT.
As one of the Nobel laureates who supported the MLF was Peter Doherty, (signed open letter) JQ could do a fact check when he joins him in Adelaide in July and enlighten us all. Or would Peter Doherty now be one of the bad guys and hence both into junk-science and a misrepresenter of facts.
Ros, people don’t front at Tim Blair’s site because disagreement with Blair gets you banned from commenting there.
MFI clearly and unequivocally state that their campaign against a DDT ban was succesful. If there were some other restrictions on DDT that they felt were costing lives, then they would have said so.
Also from the MFI DDT page:
>
In other words, the MFI is NOT calling for widespread use of DDT or arguing for its use outside homes, rather is arguing that there should be a temporary continuation of spraying within houses (and presumably of the use of DDT-sprayed netting) in those areas where immunity has not yet developed and where alternatives are not feasible.
Which based on the MFI’s own words is exactly what they got.
From the same page:
The future public health uses of DDT are safeguarded by a “DDT exemption” written into the treaty. That exemption:
(1) restricts DDT use and production to disease vector control only (not agriculture);
(2) requires countries using DDT to follow WHO guidelines for disease vector control;
(3) requires countries to notify WHO if they use DDT;
(4) requires rich countries to pay the “agreed incremental costs” of more expensive alternatives to DDT (this is located elsewhere in the treaty); and
(5) encourages rich countries to support research and development of alternatives to DDT;
and having said this, what the treaty does NOT require is equally important:
(1) it does NOT require a country to notify WHO before it sprays DDT, so in an epidemic a country may spray first and report to WHO later;
(2) it does NOT require a country to obtain WHO’s approval at any time;
(3) it does NOT require poor countries to bear the added cost of alternatives to DDT;
(4) it does NOT set a deadline by which countries must stop using or producing DDT; and
(5) it does NOT restrict DDT use to malaria control, but allows for controlling any vector-borne disease.
The outcome of the treaty is arguably better than the status quo going into the negotiations over two years ago. For the first time, there is now an insecticide which is restricted to vector control only, meaning that the selection of resistant mosquitoes will be slower than before.
>
Dr Attaran goes on to say
“Also, there is a clear procedure that endemic countries may follow to use DDT, and having done so, they have the RIGHT at international law to use DDT, without pressure from the developed countries or international institutions who have in the past threatened them against doing so. “
Dr. Amir Attaran, who was Director, International Health Research, Harvard University – Centre for International Development and is a former WHO expert on malaria (was advisor to the WHO Action plan for the reduction of reliance on DDT in disease vector control,) who used to support the environmentalists’ call for using alternatives to DDT. And is now associate professor of both law and international population health at the University of Ottawa, associate fellow of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, London, and author of Delivering Essential Medicines: The Way Forward (Chatham House, 2004 He is also a board member Africa Fighting Malaria
And AFM’s view is clear
“The WHO has not been immune to such pressure. Indeed its practices and positions have strengthened this political, life threatening agenda
More specifically, we object to WHO exerting political and financial pressure to force malaria endemic countries to reduce or not begin use of DDT for malaria control�
And here lies the problem with the World Bank
“We do support the guidelines of WHO and the Stockholm Convention on persistent organic pollutants, urging countries to move towards the use of alternatives, and where according to those provisions, where it is absolutely essential and that’s about the only option they have. Then on an exceptional basis only, countries may elect to use DDT, but it’s under very stringent conditions that have to be agreed to by WHO, and again, it’s part of array of interventions.â€?
Dr Adeyi, Press briefing World Bank Global Plan of Action 25 April 2005-06-22
Greenpeace is accused, WWF, Sierra Club Pesticide Action Network, Norwegian Development Agency, the Swedish International Development Agency, the Swedish Aid Agency, and USAID.
And CORE is really happy. (2003)
“Placards carried by CORE demonstrators will read: Africans want better lives, Stop the eco manslaughter, DDT saves African lives, and Well-fed Greens – Starving Africans… Greenpeace is part of an international network of socialist, anti-development organizations located in all the capitals of the developed world and most developing nations,� said Niger Innis, National Spokesperson for CORE. “To serve its own ideological agenda, it wants to keep the Third World permanently mired in Third World poverty, disease and death. So far it has succeeded. We are here to tell these radicals that we aren’t going to stand for this anymore. And neither are the poor people of Africa, Asia and Latin America.�
Is it possible that some of those who complain are not junk-scientist RWDBs and at are at least partly right in arguing that there is a de-facto ban on DDT for malaria prevention. And that MLF might now suspect that the opposition has succeeded in finding another way to skin the cat.
“Africa Fights Malaria” is a front for South African mining companies that want to use DDT more broadly than permitted by current laws not because there’s a lack of alternatives but because the alternatives are marginally more expensive.
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Africa_Fighting_Malaria
Damn it, the internet keeps eating my posts.
On the evidence advanced in this thread – including specifically the company that sells DDT to a bunch of developing countries for malaria control – claims of a de facto ban strike me as simply unsupportable.
Without re-reading the thread, I certainly don’t remember any use of terms like RWDB to describe the supporters of the ban claim.
Any abuse that did go in that direction seems to me to be rather outweighed by regular claims that environmentalists are mass-murderers.
As for Doctor Attaran, while he has substantial scientific credentials he has also taken positions (such as opposing the production of generic anti-HIV drugs in South Africa) which would appear to place him on the extreme right,