27 Replies to “QOTW”

  1. Thank you David. You are truly a wordsmith. (translated) I wish I had said that.

  2. Yup.And neither one will ever have to admit they effed up. Nut cases and their causes are the cause de jour,no matter how many they kill.

  3. Strangely enough;
    “Rachel Carson is to dead babies what Jenny McCarthy is to dead babies”

  7. So am I to assume that there are more birds at my place because of global warming or the reduced use of DDT?
    I sprayed the perimeter of our garden with Roundup last year. My wife phoned poison control on me. Was that a false alarm or cautionary realism?
    Life is much more complicated now. When I was a kid I used to shake DDT on our cauliflower crop to keep the earwigs away. So far I’m still ticking. Those damn scientist had to know that there would be a dumb kid that would do that!

  8. Google recently celebrated Rachel Louise Carson’s 107th birthday.Carson is to environmentalists what David Suzuki is to …er… well….environmentalists,although, unlike Carson, Suzuki is alive and well.
    Jenny McCarthy could very well be toxic.Years ago I saw her spread in Playboy,and shortly afterward parts of my body began to swell.
    Fortunately, ice packs saved my life.

  9. People who claim that Carson and her fans did not ‘ban’ DDT are technically accurate but quite disingenuous.
    Anti-DDT campaigns effectively shut off financial support to African countries and forced an end to DDT use. See below:
    “Although Uganda’s National Environmental Management Authority has approved DDT for malaria control, Western environmentalists continue to undermine our efforts and discourage G-8 governments from supporting us. The EU has acknowledged our right to use DDT, but some consumer and agricultural groups repeat myths and lies about the chemical. They should instead help us use it strictly to control malaria.
    Environmental leaders must join the 21st century, acknowledge the mistakes Carson made, and balance the hypothetical risks of DDT with the real and devastating consequences of malaria. Uganda has demonstrated that, with the proper support, we can conduct model indoor spraying programs and ensure that money is spent wisely, chemicals are handled properly, our program responds promptly to changing conditions, and malaria is brought under control.”

  10. Ninety-one percent of malaria cases (most of which are children) occur in Africa. If one were so inclined, one might suggest that the banning of DDT was a racist move or at least seen with indifference.

  11. Political Junkie – It’s surprising hw many of the ” Progressive ” stripe were downright racist intent on using abortion and eugenics to create, presumably a “better race “, and willing to allow people with treatable disease to die to keep the human population from growing. Charles Darwin, Woodrow Wilson, Margaret Sanger, HG Wells, Sidney Webb, Harold Laski, John Maynard Keynes, all favored either state directed ” breeding ” among humans, or allowing the” weak” to perish through medical neglect. Adolf Hitler’s views of a master race were not unique; among socialists they were the zeitgeist. The Left is a dead institution who view mankind as animals to be disposed of, in every sense of the word, as they see fit.

  12. From Wikipedia (Please note that the sources for this info are noted, so if you have a problem with them, feel free to look them up, don’t just go “pfft wikipedia”, because that’s just stupid.)
    DDT was never banned for anti-malarial use,[89] (its ban for agricultural use in the United States in 1972 did not apply outside the US or to anti-malaria spraying;[90] the international treaty that banned most uses of DDT and other organochlorine pesticides — the 2001 Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants — included an exemption for DDT for the use of malaria control until affordable substitutes could be found.[83]) Mass outdoor spraying of DDT was abandoned in poor countries subject to malaria, such as Sri Lanka, in the 1970s and 1980s, not because of government prohibitions, but because the DDT had lost its ability to kill the mosquitoes.[83] (Because of insects’ very short breeding cycle and large number of offspring, the most resistant insects that survive and pass on their genetic traits to their offspring replace the pesticide-slain insects relatively rapidly. Agricultural spraying of pesticides produces resistance to the pesticide in seven to ten years.[91])
    Consequently, some experts have argued that restrictions placed on the agricultural use of DDT have increased its effectiveness as a tool for battling malaria. According to pro-DDT advocate Amir Attaran the result of the 2004 Stockholm Convention banning DDT’s use in agriculture “is arguably better than the status quo … 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.”[92]
    ~
    So yeah… the comparison is a stupid one. Mostly because there is in fact science to back her up. DDT was in fact a huge threat to countless species around the world. Jenny McCarthy, on the other hand, has zero science to back up her claims. But hey… don’t let the truth get in the way of a good old fashioned rightwing circlejerk.
    http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/rachel-carson-silent-spring-1972-ddt-ban-birds-thrive/

  14. In 1996, South Africa ceased using DDT due to pressure from environmental groups. As a consequence, cases of malaria increased from 10,000 cases in 1995 to almost 65,000 cases in 2000. President Jacob Zuma states that “the cause of this increase was mainly due to the particular species that transmitted malaria, which was once eradicated with DDT, had reappeared and was resistant to other types of insecticides.” After deciding to reinstate the use of DDT, cases of malaria continue to decrease, and returned to 10,000 in 2001.
    Because of this progress, the World Health Organization changed its views on the use of DDT to control malaria, saying that South Africa’s program is “evidence that controlled indoor spraying of the insecticide was not only safe, but one of the best tools we have against the killer disease.”
    ACSH’s Dr. Gilbert Ross applauds this growing trend towards science-based public health for dealing with one of Africa’s most intractable problems, malaria. “The so-called ‘environmentalists’ whose dogma against DDT derives from the 50-year-old tome, ‘Silent Spring,’ have never lost a child to malaria, that’s for sure. Yet they have done their utmost to, in effect, kill a million Africans each year by denying them the use of the safest and most effective method to reduce that toll: DDT.”

  15. [83] (Because of insects’ very short breeding cycle and large number of offspring, the most resistant insects that survive and pass on their genetic traits to their offspring replace the pesticide-slain insects relatively rapidly. Agricultural spraying of pesticides produces resistance to the pesticide in seven to ten years.[91])
    So, after decades, why is DEET as a mosquito repellent still effective? Or is it…

  16. Sorry, John, but human well being trumps non-human welfare in the minds of the vast majority of people. In the end, if the choice is DDT deaths in animals vs. malaria deaths in humans, the animals should lose, every time.But environmentalists demanded the cessation of DDT use in the Third World and the politicians buckled. We are still waiting for those enviros who stood by as multitudes died from preventable malaria cases to admit their culpability. Or, at least they could advocate for the spraying campaigns that could reduce the rate of malaria infection.
    Spraying works, and is a major reason the southern US today suffers neither the yellow fever or malaria epidemics that occurred in the 1800’s.

  18. A friend of mine is an accomplished outdoorsman. Years ago, he noticed a mess of mushrooms that he knew to be edible growing in his next-door neighbor’s yard. Steve slipped over and picked enough for his supper. After the meal, a truly nasty case of diarrhea ensued. Being a very relaxed sort, he didn’t give his experience too much thought. A while later, he ran into the neighbor and asked him about the mushrooms. The guy said he didn’t like them in his yard so he had sprayed the entire patch with herbicide.

  19. in 1962, when a total of 80 million kilograms of the pesticide were used around the world. The National Academy of Sciences summarized the efficacy of DDT as follows:
    “To only a few chemicals does man owe as great a debt as to DDT. It is estimated that, in little more than two decades DDT has prevented 500 million human deaths, due to malaria, that would otherwise have been inevitable.”
    http://dwb.unl.edu/Teacher/NSF/C06/C06Links/www.altgreen.com.au/Chemicals/ddt.html

  20. John sounds like a guy who believes that Gore’s “Inconvenient Truth” is a documentary.
    By a court ruling, you can’t show it to school kids in the UK unless you specifically explain that it is a propaganda film not backed up by science.

  21. “To only a few chemicals does man owe as great a debt as to DDT. It is estimated that, in little more than two decades DDT has prevented 500 million human deaths, due to malaria, that would otherwise have been inevitable.”
    This is what upset the left so much.

  22. This is a dubious comparison. In truth it is an unfortunate conflation.
    If all here have the critical thinking skills to understand that global warming is bad science and that scientific disciplines in general are fraught with elitist enclaves with little genuine regard for truth over prestige, profit, or political expedience, then I fail to understand the majority position here.
    The MMR is a 3 live “attenuated” virus vaccine introduced in 1971 with the double dose introduced in 1989.
    Here is what has never been studied:
    Consistency/quality of attenuation.
    Immune competency prior to vaccination.
    Effects of variance in vaccine dissemination.
    Effects of thimerosal settling in vitro. (It settles in the vial.)
    Genetic risk group analysis relative to MMR
    Here is one of many studies suggesting strong correlation with direct evidence toward causation.
    http://www.whale.to/vaccine/yazbak1.html
    Autism is a spectrum disorder based on clinical evidence. There is no test. Others who fall in the same spectrum are diagnosed with Aspberger’s/PDD NOS/ADHD w-wo OCD.
    The criteria was adjusted in 2013. *
    1. There is no need to assault the body of a 18 month old child with 3 live viruses simultaneously.
    2. Inactivated or subunit immunizations should be researched and developed for all 3 viruses.
    3. There is no need to use thimerosal. No vaccine developed since 2001 has carried it.
    “People know what they do; frequently they know why they do what they do; but what they don’t know is what what they do does.”
    Michael Foucoult
    (indeed)
    A cornerstone of conservative thinking is making every effort to know what you are doing does.
    The MMR is bad medicine.

  23. Carson lied, but there are a few points to go over.
    First, let’s acknowledge that Carson was right about some of the harms that extensive modern pesticide use could and did cause. Carson was correct that the popular pesticide DDT did disrupt reproduction in some raptor species. It is also the case that insect pests over time do develop resistance to pesticides, making them eventually less useful in preventing the spread of insect-borne diseases and protecting crops. In fact, the first cases of evolving insect resistance were identified in California orchards in at the beginning of the 20th century, when species of scale insects became resistant to the primitive insecticides lime sulfur and hydrogen cyanide. By 1960, 137 species of insects had developed resistance to DDT. To preserve their usefulness, pesticides clearly needed to be more judiciously deployed.
    http://reason.com/archives/2012/09/26/silent-spring-turns-50-this-week
    Further, DDT caused thinning of egg shells of some bird species. Lead contamination may have played a role here. Given these problems and the existence of alternatives for controlling crop pests, it was entirely judicious to severely constrain DDT use. Banning it was however totally irrational and lead to lots of death.

  24. The only thing worse than the environmentalist trash is the anti-vaccine pseudo science.
    1. There is no need to assault the body of a 18 month old child with 3 live viruses simultaneously.
    WRONG. There is every need-to build up an immune state using WEAKENED viruses to prevent pathology upon re-infection.
    2. Inactivated or subunit immunizations should be researched and developed for all 3 viruses.3. There is no need to use thimerosal. No vaccine developed since 2001 has carried it.
    There is no more reason to fear thimerosal than there is to fear plastic. The thimerosal in vaccines is absolutely harmless and its alternatives are costly.
    The MMR could use some improvement but currently it is pretty effective and totally safe. Anyone who doesn’t vaccinate their children deserves a visit from The Ghost of Darwin.

  25. At 18 months there is substantial evidence that the immune system is not mature enough to build a competent immune defense, hence the second vaccination and MMR II designation.
    I believe I was thorough regarding attenuation, and still question the efficacy of the process given that the recipient can be considered immune compromised.
    These vaccines were developed in ’67 ’68 ‘and ’69; combined in ’71.
    That’s 43 years ago.
    I understand that you have no experience with autism or other PDD class syndromes. If that were the case you would see how the phrase “very tricky” comes off as trite and rather callous.
    The bold print fails to convince. As stated, thimerosal is not suspended in the serum and to date has not been adequately studied to assess its neurotoxicity. Even today the FDA uses guidelines for Methyl Mercury to equate safe levels for Ethyl Mercury a by product of thimerosal.
    The efficacy and safety of vaccines is what is at issue. The MMR is a hastily made conglomerate that was poorly studied. The timing and pace of inoculation are also at issue.
    “There is reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands, who from a weak constitution would formerly have succumbed to small-pox. Thus the weak members of civilised societies propagate their kind.” ..Darwin
    Darwin indeed. I don’t think he would subordinate the mental capacity of a healthy child.

  26. These vaccines were developed in ’67 ’68 ‘and ’69; combined in ’71.
    That’s 43 years ago.
    That’s a lie the vaccine has been updated and optimized more recently.
    At 18 months there is substantial evidence that the immune system is not mature enough to build a competent immune defense
    And there is no evidence that the MMR vaccine is dangerous.
    Thimerosal isn’t ‘suspended’ it’s dissolved in solution. It can only precipitate in very salty solutions. And it is still harmless in the quantities used.
    The efficacy and safety of vaccines is what is at issue.
    The safety issue is not an issue: there is no vaccine-autism link, period. The MMR vaccine could be more efficacious but it is still pretty good.

  27. That’s a lie the vaccine has been updated and optimized more recently.
    Yeah, they took out the thiomersal.
    And there is no evidence that the MMR vaccine is dangerous.
    All vaccines are associated with elevated risk. That’s why you get to sit in the office for 30 min. after inoculation. Anaphylactic reactions are best handled there.
    Thimerosal isn’t ‘suspended’ it’s dissolved in solution. It can only precipitate in very salty solutions.
    Thimerosal is a salt. The nature of this compound is determined by the strength of the magnetic field and the viscosity of the solvent. Furthermore the MMR requires reconstitution and has a shelf life of 8 hours per Merck
    From the FDA “In its report of October 1, 2001, the IOM’s Immunization Safety Review Committee concluded that the evidence was inadequate to either accept or reject a causal relationship between thimerosal exposure from childhood vaccines and the neurodevelopmental disorders of autism, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and speech or language delay.”
    Very simply, they took out the thimerosal. Great. Time to break up the MMR and work toward a new measles vaccine which will eliminate the documented risk of persistent live virus for the next generation.
    Your earlier argument of cost actually only goes to profitability.
    The MMR is a clear example of imprudent consolidation for expeditious profit.

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