DDT...a lifesaver thrown away

Gonz

Gonz

molṑn labé
Staff member
This is an example of why the left is so vilified in my world. One of hundreds of "absolutes", that when looked into, turn out to be utter lies.

If there is any one man who defined the word "environmentalist," it is the recently deceased J. Gordon Edwards. Edwards was an author, a park ranger, a legendary mountain climber, and an esteemed entomologist.

In 1962, when Rachel Carson published her breakthrough book on the environment, "Silent Spring," Edwards was delighted. The young scientist eagerly raced through the first several chapters, but as he did, his anticipation eroded into uneasiness: "I noticed many statements that I realized were false." Attracted by Carson's message, Edwards tried to overlook the misstatements or to rationalize them away, but increasingly he could not. "As I neared the middle of the book," he adds, "the feeling grew in my mind that Rachel Carson was really playing loose with the facts."

In 1962, however, Edwards was doing fieldwork in Wyoming. He was scarcely in a position, either through prestige or geography, to challenge Carson's book, one that Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas was hailing as "the most important chronicle of the century for the human race." As Edwards and others have argued, millions of people might be alive today – who aren't – if Carson had turned her talents to fiction or identified her work as such. For the one "poison" that truly provoked her literary rage was dichlorodiphenyl-trichloroethane or, as it is more commonly known and reviled, DDT.

Carson derived much of that power from her Gothic literary flair. The title of the book derives from an opening "fable" in which a "strange blight" has crept over an imagined American town, casting its "evil spell" and spreading a "strange stillness" across the land. Throughout the book, Carson uses words like "toxins," "contaminants," "hazards," "death-dealing materials," and the inevitable "poison" where others might use "chemical" or "insecticide." And she never lets up.

As Edwards and others have argued, millions of people might be alive today – who aren't – if Carson had turned her talents to fiction or identified her work as such. For the one "poison" that truly provoked her literary rage was dichlorodiphenyl-trichloroethane or, as it is more commonly known and reviled, DDT.

There, Edwards got the order to dust every soldier in his company with the DDT powder. For two weeks straight, he did just that, breathing the fog of white dust as he did so. Much to everyone's relief, the DDT worked, and the epidemic was checked. The surgeon general estimated that the DDT had saved the lives of 5,000 soldiers. After the war, inspired by this experience, Edwards went on to get his Ph.D. in entomology from Ohio State University and eventually headed out to San Jose State University where he taught medical entomology courses for more than 30 years.

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.

For the record, the research activities of this DDT-eating scientist finally caught up with him. Edwards died of a heart attack while climbing Divide Mountain at Glacier National Park, where he held the unofficial title as the patron saint of climbing. He was 84 years old.
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WND

Wanna stop many of man's latest "plagues"? Allow DDT to come back & stop the mosquito.
 
It won't happen so long as the deaths are tens of thousands of ooga-booga bushbabies. Let Rosie O'Donnels adopted kid get a scrape on the knee... watch the billions pour in for kneescrape eradication.
 
We who are 'right' know that the Liberal agenda
is on based on death. Witness the Soviet Union.

Besides, the millions that weren't saved by the use of DDT
are the type of people that the left wants killed anyway, Right?
 
At least post that you're not putting the complete quote of the note.
 
OK, that's only part of the story...the rest is where the link leads to, as every other time.
 
All I see is one person's word over another. The article says nothing about environmental studies and facts. Things which you insist on yourself when arguing with people. Who is going to offer up their child for DDT testing, you?

And why did you clip the parts about how DDT may or may not have affected birds? Because you don't care about things like Osprey at all, right? Because anyone who does must be a bleeding heart liberal, scum of the earth?

I'd love to see the studies on DDT that say it's perfectly safe. Seriously. Know where I can get that? :)
 
greenfreak said:
And why did you clip the parts about how DDT may or may not have affected birds? Because you don't care about things like Osprey at all, right? Because anyone who does must be a bleeding heart liberal, scum of the earth?

I'd love to see the studies on DDT that say it's perfectly safe. Seriously. Know where I can get that? :)
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Who pissed on your cornflakes? I'm a whole lot more enviro-whacko than oil baron but, as I point out, this was a typical agenda-driven panic. DDT is still the scourge of the earth because people find it easier to live in the past than to find hard data. I didn't include the bird parts because I included the link (and the fact that the bird part was also, in the end, DDT friendly).
 
greenfreak said:
Define hard data. Scientific research? Or a guy who swallows the stuff good enough for you?
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In defense of both of you...there was precious little research on either side of the issue, and, even now, too much emotion.

Speaking of emotion...when's your big day?
 
greenfreak said:
Define hard data. Scientific research? Or a guy who swallows the stuff good enough for you?
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It didn't take you long to find evidence that pointed towards my way of thinking. There's enough data to throw water all over the DDT fire. Although, as Gato points out, it's still too hot for a science to publish about.
 
Gato_Solo said:
Speaking of emotion...when's your big day?
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Not for another year at least. We haven't even found a place to have the reception yet. That's proving a little bit more difficult than I thought.

In defense of both of you...there was precious little research on either side of the issue, and, even now, too much emotion.
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That's the point I was trying to make, I don't see any "hard data" or "scientific research" that shows definitive evidence either way. The article Gonz posted is based on opinion, as was the book it seems. Regardless of what anyone wants to believe, it can't be proven either way.
 
greenfreak said:
it can't be proven either way.
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What can be proven is that DDT is a very effective
weapon against mosquitoes and malaria.

Tell you whut, if I thought Me or mine was going to get West Nile living here,
I'd sure as hell be thinking: "eggshells be dammed"!

Come to think of it.
How many millions of North Americans would like too
not be eaten alive every summer by them Godforsaken lil' beasts?

Hey DDT is a nasty chem but the nutcases are all saying
sunscreen causes men to turn into wimen's and gives wimens reproductive system rot.
Well at least we won't look like Abby's Av, huh?
 
greenfreak said:
Not for another year at least. We haven't even found a place to have the reception yet. That's proving a little bit more difficult than I thought.


That's the point I was trying to make, I don't see any "hard data" or "scientific research" that shows definitive evidence either way. The article Gonz posted is based on opinion, as was the book it seems. Regardless of what anyone wants to believe, it can't be proven either way.
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if you're not superstitious, and there's a Saturday that falls on a 13th, try it for that date. We had the easiest time finding a place. I think the places tend to not even offer those dates up.

Not that it worked out or anything, but I still don't think that it really had much to do with the 13th thing :lloyd:
 
Winky said:
What can be proven is that DDT is a very effective
weapon against mosquitoes and malaria.
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Yep, and don't you find it interesting that malaria kills more people in Africa than AIDS, yet you never hear about it. Not fashionable, I suppose.
 
Fashionable?
Certainly not.

Besides the CIA created AIDS to rid the earth of the homosexual scourge
or at least try to scare them into marriage LOLOLOLOL.

Malaria on the other hand is mother natures way of saying...
 
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