The question Ms. Carson was pursuing was whether DDT and its relatives affected bird reproduction. She didn’t focus only on hatching, but instead used the more rigorous and accurate accounting that looks at whether the birds fledge and survive their first year. On that basis, Edwards is dead wrong.

Yes, the hatch rates for a few of the grain-eating birds were nearly normal. However, the chicks that hatched, died. The DDT prevented them from getting out of the nest. When measuring damage to birds, dead chicks a week after hatching is more deadly than dead chicks unhatched, because they have consumed more of the parents’ time and effort in care.

Edwards carefully picks his nit, so that each bird he cites as having a near normal hatch is a grain-eating bird, not an insectivorous or carnivorous bird. Grain eaters would be least affected by DDT.

And the study showed that even the grain eaters suffered devastating chick deaths from DDT.

Edwards’ claims are not honestly presented. Carson was right.

DDT for indoor use has been legal constantly — it was allowed under the European bans, and US production of DDT for indoor use continued for years after DDT was banned for broadcast use. Those who call for “more DDT” are not calling for limited, indoor use as allowed by WHO since the 1950s, or as allowed specifically under the POPs Treaty. They are calling for broadcast spraying again — since that is the only thing that is outlawed.

Broadcast spraying was deadly in Africa, too. It kills food fish there, and lots of other animals. Africans stopped spraying in part because DDT was killing them. Recent studies show that expanding DDT use much beyond current levels could kill as many kids as would be saved from malaria — an even trade-off that is unacceptable.

In contrast. the Gates Foundation work has demonstrated that nets and medicines will reduce malaria damage. DDT was not found to be a significant factor in recent, successful anti-malaria efforts in several African nations.

When do we stop trying to poison the world’s poor with DDT? DDT has proven ineffective in beating malaria, and ineffective in helping the poor in any other way. When do the DDT nuts get off the dime and start helping us beat malaria?

See this post, also, for newest information on beating malaria — without DDT:
http://timpanogos.wordpress.com/2008/02/04/seattle-times-special-on-fighting-malaria/

Anyone who wants to check Rachel Carson’s description of the results of the DeWitt study can download the original paper as I did. What you will find is DeWitt’s findings are exactly as outlined by Dr. J. Gordon Edwards:

“Carson gives no indication of how many might be considered as “few eggs hatching.” Perhaps she thought that her readers would never see the rather obscure journal in which DeWitt’s results were published in 1956, the Journal of Agriculture and Food Chemistry. Otherwise, she surely would not have so badly misrepresented DeWitt’s results! The dosage he fed the quail was 100 parts per million in all their food every day, which was roughly 3,000 times the daily DDT intake of humans during the years of the greatest DDT use!

The quail did not just hatch “a few” of their eggs, as DeWitt’s data clearly reveal (Table 3). As the published data from DeWitt’s experiments show, the “controls” (those quail with no DDT) hatched 83.9 percent of their eggs, while the DDT-fed quail hatched 75 to 80 percent of theirs. I would not call an 80 percent hatch “few,” especially when the controls hatched only 83.9 percent of their eggs.”

Just download the report and see for yourself. It is available for a nominal fee online.

While blanket spraying of DDT, a pesticide that is highly persistent in the environment should be banned, interior spraying of DDT on the interior walls of houses to prevent malaria is recommended by the World Health Organization as safe to both humans and the environment. DDT remains the most effective method of preventing malaria ever discovered. According to the WHO, interior spraying with DDT “can reduce malaria transmission by up to 90%” For more information, you can visit the World Health Organization at:

http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2006/pr50/en/index.html

Bishop Desmond Tutu created a petition urging world leaders to adopt DDT to prevent malaria which was signed by over 3,000 scientists and humanitarians. It is time that we moved on from a debate about agricultural usage all of us would agree should be banned to a discussion of its use in the prevention of malaria where it’s use is safe and effective. From the WHO website, one can gain an appreciation of this problem and the monumental misery which is associated with this disease:

“Each year, more than 500 million people suffer from acute malaria, resulting in more than 1 million deaths. At least 86 percent of these deaths are in sub-Saharan Africa. Globally an estimated 3,000 children and infants die from malaria every day and 10,000 pregnant women die from malaria in Africa every year. Malaria disproportionately affects poor people, with almost 60 percent of malaria cases occurring among the poorest 20 percent of the world’s population.”

When do we start helping the world’s poor? When do we stop arguing about Silent Spring? For better or worse, we cannot change the past. What we can change is our choices and what we choose to do going forward.

I don’t have a blog or website.

Without claiming to have read through or researched all of Milloy’s claims, I can say that I don’t take him very seriously. He’s clearly cherry picking–such as with the section on birds that increased their population during the years in which DDT was used. Of course, some birds may have. But there’s also the question of whether these particular birds were exposed to DDT, something he never attempts to argue in that section.

Like a lot of other technologies, DDT was first greeted as a wonder and there are certainly ways that it helped–during World War II it cut down on typhus, no doubt (See Russell, War and Nature). But it also had limitations, limitations that were not known at first and then were consciously ignored by people with a vested interest in the chemical’s continued use. It seems to me obvious that its widespread use in agriculture caused a lot of harm, and provided very little gain. (see Dunlap, DDT). It probably still has a role to play in malaria control, but certainly not in blanket spraying-campaigns, which only make the problem worse by causing resistance.

In general, there was quite a lot of worry among wildlife biologists about the effect of pesticides on wildlife, worry that was grounded in research; this was often ignored by those in the agriculture community (as well as wildlife biologists who controlled vermin.) Carson came out of this background and shared with them basic views. Rudd, as I indicated above, also shared the same views. He differed somewhat in his emphases from Carson, but otherwise greatly admired her and her work.

And, how accurate is Milloy on any of the rest of his “100 things?”

Is DDT the most nearly miraculous chemical invention, and should we use a lot more of it in a lot more places?

Do you have a website, or a blog?

http://www.amazon.com/Fire-Ant-Wars-Science-Twentieth-Century/dp/0226079821/ref=ed_oe_p/102-2755850-0360952

I read through the fish and wildlife papers at the National Archives, such as they are, and also spoke with one of DeWitt’s collaborators, Walter Rosene. And, I interviewed Bob Rudd before he died. My characterization above is based on that.

It’s always neat to meet a piece of history :)

What Milloy has done is much worse that what Dan Rather did, and close to the level of deception of Jason Blair or Janet Cooke.

What’s Fox News going to do about it?

Oh, c’mon, you know the answer …

Raise his salary!

So far, on every claim I’ve checked from Milloy that might be interpreted as contrary to what Carson wrote, there is a similar chasm between his claim and reality. On every one.

This raises questions about Fox News, who should be editing his stuff for accuracy at least.

If the Washington Post caught one of their writers fabricating like that, the Post would fire the reporter. Same for the New York Times. CBS would fire an award winning anchor even though the story was right, if the evidence presented was wrong.

What Milloy has done is much worse that what Dan Rather did, and close to the level of deception of Jason Blair or Janet Cooke.

What’s Fox News going to do about it?

Nitpick: The sentence “But few of the eggs hatched.” is quoted and should also be highlighted.

Question: “Carson also omitted mention of DeWitt’s report that “control” pheasants hatched only 57 percent of their eggs, while those that were fed high levels of DDT in all of their food for an entire year hatched more than 80% of their eggs.” Is Milloy claiming that DDT improves bird health? What is he talking about here?

Ed Darrell has been working his way through Steve Milloy’s 100 things about DDT. See if you can spot what Milloy did in number 10. Here’s Milloy: [Rachel Carson wrote] “Quail into whose diet DDT was introduced throughout the breeding…