Ban of DDT did not cause a rise in malaria, or malaria deaths

Time to put that old canard to bed.

Malaria distribution was greatly reduced in the 20th century, reversing centuries of spreading. But malaria persisted into the 21st century. DDT helped reduce malaria, but the U.S. ban on DDT did not cause a rise in malaria infections or deaths. From a paper by Michael Palmer, M.D,. at Waterloo University. Palmer’s source, Peter Gething in Nature.

The U.S. ban on DDT in 1972 did not cause millions of unnecessary deaths to malaria. In fact, the worldwide death toll to malaria dropped for at least 18 years after the ban, plateaued for most of a decade, and dropped from 1999 to 2017. Malaria deaths fell dramatically, after the U.S. banned DDT from U.S. farms.

Not sure why Dr. Palmer wrote his essay in 2013, but he got most of the major sources and got most of the history accurately, His title, “The ban of DDT did not cause millions to die from malaria.”

It’s a good paper to bookmark, because it doesn’t always show up in Google searches in the U.S. — Waterloo being a university in Canada, in Waterloo, Ontario

www.science.uwaterloo.ca/~mpalmer/stuff/DDT-myth.pdf

[Update, January 2023: If that link does not work, try the trusty old Wayback Machine: https://web.archive.org/web/20200625073336/http://www.science.uwaterloo.ca/~mpalmer/stuff/DDT-myth.pdf]

[And if that link doesn’t work well, Michael Palmer DDT-myth. Where did Palmer land after Waterloo? It appears he ran off his rails, began complaining about the COVID-19 policies of Waterloo University, and was fired (or had his contract not renewed). Sometime in 2021? Not sure if he’s still active; regret his papers were deleted from Waterloo U’s site. Palmer’s paper on DDT is easily verifiable with sources he cites well.]