Malaria/DDT.

ITEM: New York Times editorial writer Tina Rosenberg's lengthy article entitled "What the World Needs Now Is DDT" appeared in the April 11, 2004 issue of The New York Times Magazine. She wrote: "Yet, what really merits outrage about DDT is not that South Africa still uses it, as do about five other countries for routine malaria control and about ten more for emergencies. It is that dozens more do not. Malaria is a disease Westerners no longer have to think about. Independent malariologists believe it kills two million people a year, mainly children under 5 and 90 percent of them in Africa.... Yet DDT, the very insecticide that eradicated malaria in developed nations, has been essentially deactivated as a malaria-control tool today.... It has been used on such a huge scale over the last 50 years that it is reasonable to think that if it had any serious effect on human health, we would know it by now.... But malaria kills Africans today. Those worrying about the arrogance of playing God should realize that we have forged an instrument of salvation, and we choose to hide it under our robes."

AHEAD OF THE CURVE: In our June 1, 1992 issue, THE NEW AMERICAN first reported that the banning of DDT had caused malaria cases to soar. In a July 2, 2001 cover story entitled "Environmental Genocide," we devoted major space to this resurging human tragedy. Even the latter article was almost three years before The New York Times Magazine informed its readers about the problem. Yet, while we can rejoice that this tragedy that is unnecessarily costing millions of deaths has made it into the pages of the Times, we fail to find any indictment of the United Nations for its role in the horror. Tina Rosenberg mentioned that, in May 2001, many nations "signed a treaty in Stockholm [that] banned 12 persistent pollutants ... but called for [DDT's] gradual phase-out." THE NEW AMERICAN not only informed readers that the killer of millions was malaria but that the Stockholm assemblage was actually "the United Nations Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (known as the POP Convention) [that] will give this murderous plague permanent protected status." We also noted that this UN Convention "signed by representatives of more than 100 nations in Stockholm on May 23rd [2001] ... is, in truth, a global death warrant for millions--and, potentially, hundreds of millions--of human beings." And we indicated that "the POP treaty grew out of several earlier agreements spawned at the 1992 UN Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, particularly the UN's eco-manifesto for total regimentation of the entire planet known as Agenda 21."

Also missing from Rosenberg's otherwise welcome focus on the destructive banning of DDT was any mention of the anti-people environmentalist mind-set that actually applauds radically cutting the world's population, in our article, we cited (among several examples) an interview with the late Jacques Cousteau appearing in the November 1991 UNESCO Courier, wherein the famed oceanographer called for a supposed need to "eliminate 350,000 people per day" to protect the planet.

ITEM: In her New York Times Magazine article noted above, Tina Rosenberg sharply criticized Rachel Carson's 1962 book Silent Spring. After demonstrating that the book's attack on DDT led to the substance being banned, she wrote: "Rachel Carson started the environmental movement [but] never mentioned the fact that by the time she was writing, DDT was responsible for saving tens of millions of lives, perhaps hundreds of millions.... Silent Spring is now killing African children because of its persistence in the public mind."

AHEAD OF THE CURVE: In the August 24, 1992 issue of THE NEW AMERICAN, we wrote: "In 1962, biologist Rachel Carson completed her best-selling book Silent Spring, which not only provoked widespread fear over the use of pesticides but is credited with having helped launch the modern-day environmental movement."

"As a consequence of the ensuing debate over DDT and other pesticides," we noted, "a House subcommittee released a report in 1965 stating that Silent Spring 'created an atmosphere of panic, foretold an impending disaster and barely mentioned the immensely useful role played by pesticides in the U.S. economy.' ... The actual facts notwithstanding, the firestorm of controversy Carson's book helped spark led to the banning of DDT in the U.S. and elsewhere with harmful consequences for man and the environment."