Overview articles:

"Green" Dreams Kill People.  How many people have died, or will die, as a result of the Left's "green" fantasies?  To begin with, who has taken responsibility for the hundreds of thousands — maybe millions — of Africans who have died because of the Left's insane banning of DDT?  No one, of course.  Will there ever be an accounting?

The Top 50 Liberal Media Bias Examples.  [#4] DDT Ban:  The biggest example of the media coming to the aid of environmentalism is, of course, is the worldwide ban of DDT.  In 1962, a book titled Silent Spring written by American biologist Rachel Carson was published.  The media pushed Carson's work as settled science.  It later came to light that much of Carson's "evidence" was simply manufactured and the ban has been responsible for untold millions of deaths in places like Africa.  Still, the media continues to cite Carson's work as fact.

Mosquito Population Skyrockets Due to DDT Ban and Urbanization, Not Climate Change.  Mosquito populations have exploded in parts of the United States, but not because of global warming, according to a recent study published in Nature Communications.  The research indicates urbanization and the ban on the insecticide DDT are likely responsible for the surge in mosquito populations.  According to the researchers, some types of mosquitoes, including those that commonly spread diseases, have adapted to human-created habitat; urbanization has created fertile ground for mosquito populations to expand.  This doesn't augur well for city dwellers, who are already feeling the brunt of mosquito-borne tropical diseases such as chikungunya, dengue fever, West Nile virus, and Zika virus.  Tracking mosquito populations in California, New Jersey, and New York, the researchers found mosquito populations have increased as much as 1,000 percent over the past five decades.

DDT: A Case Study in Scientific Fraud.  The chemical compound that has saved more human lives than any other in history, DDT, was banned by order of one man, the head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).  Public pressure was generated by one popular book and sustained by faulty or fraudulent research.  Widely believed claims of carcinogenicity, toxicity to birds, anti-androgenic properties, and prolonged environmental persistence are false or grossly exaggerated.  The worldwide effect of the U.S. ban has been millions of preventable deaths.

DDT ban — not global warming — to blame for U.S. mosquito eruption:  Study.  The U.S. mosquito population is on the rise, but don't blame climate change.  Blame the ban on the insecticide DDT.  A study published this week in Nature Communications attributed the decay of DDT concentrations as well as urbanization to an increase in mosquitoes over the past 50 years.  "Mosquito populations have increased as much as tenfold, and mosquito communities have become two- to fourfold richer over the last five decades," the paper said.  "These increases are correlated with the decay in residual environmental DDT concentrations and growing human populations, but not with temperature."  The analysis, conducted by researchers from Rutgers, the University of California, Davis and the University of California, Santa Cruz, flies in the face of statements by environmental groups linking warmer temperatures to mosquito-borne ailments like the West Nile and Zika viruses.

A Young Person's Guide to the Greenhouse Effect.  How did it all it start?  It really started not long after the Second World War when Rachel Carson wrote a book called The Silent Spring.  She used that title to tell us that one year, when spring arrives, there may be no birds singing because they have all been killed by pollution.  People started to realize that the environment was very important and that Mankind could destroy it or stop it from working properly.  A wonderful new insecticide had been discovered during the War called DDT.  It was very cheap to make and very effective.  It was soon being used everywhere to kill malaria-carrying mosquitos and insects that ate farm crops.  Then scientists began to notice side effects.  Some wild birds had stopped breeding properly because small amounts of left-over chemicals from DDT in the food-chain made their eggshells too thin and the eggs broke before their chicks had hatched properly.  DDT chemicals were even found in birds in Antarctica tens of thousands of miles away from where it had been used.  At the same time people were also worried about nuclear weapons and the threat of nuclear war.  For the first time the idea of wiping out all humans or all life on Earth appeared to be a real possibility.

DDT: A Case Study in Scientific Fraud.  The chemical compound that has saved more human lives than any other in history, DDT, was banned by order of one man, the head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).  Public pressure was generated by one popular book and sustained by faulty or fraudulent research.  Widely believed claims of carcinogenicity, toxicity to birds, anti-androgenic properties, and prolonged environmental persistence are false or grossly exaggerated.  The worldwide effect of the U.S. ban has been millions of preventable deaths.

5 environmentalist ideas that have spectacularly backfired.  [#4] DDT: In 2000, 460 people died from malaria as part of a larger outbreak that shook South Africa.  In 2012, only 70 people died.  South Africa credits this health miracle to the use of a chemical that it had banned prior to 2000:  DDT.  There's no question that DDT, a highly potent and controversial insecticide, has had serious side effects.  It's been linked to environmental destruction and higher cancer rates.  When Rachel Carson published her book Silent Spring in 1962, awareness of DDT's downsides increased and in 1972 the United States enacted a prohibition on DDT, followed by many other countries.  But DDT was also a miracle drug when it came to curing malaria, and as a result of the environmentalist crusade against DDT, malaria rates skyrocketed.

Why Environmentalism Became Both a Religion and a Con Game.  This notion that people are parasites really got started in the 1960's.  A couple of highly promoted bad actors started this environmental heresy.  The first was Rachel Carson with her hysterical polemic about DDT and its purported harm to birds and other wild life.  Her ideas proved to be, at best, problematic, but millions of people have died as a consequence of the resulting international banning of DDT.

Timely news and commentary:

Bring back DDT !
Connecticut dad dies from rare mosquito-borne virus he caught in his own backyard — and cases are on the rise.  A Connecticut father died Monday — five years after he was bitten by an infected mosquito while clearing brush in his wooded backyard.  Richard Pawulski, 49, was killed from complications of Eastern equine encephalitis (EEE), a fatal disease that caused its first New York state death in nearly a decade last month — marking a startling resurgence that's left health officials baffled.  The mosquito-borne illness is a rare but "severe" disease that targets the brain, causing rapid physical deterioration and lifelong disabilities — if it doesn't kill you first.

DDT: A Case Study in Scientific Fraud.  The chemical compound that has saved more human lives than any other in history, DDT, was banned by order of one man, the head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).  Public pressure was generated by one popular book and sustained by faulty or fraudulent research.  Widely believed claims of carcinogenicity, toxicity to birds, anti-androgenic properties, and prolonged environmental persistence are false or grossly exaggerated.  The worldwide effect of the U.S. ban has been millions of preventable deaths. [...] DDT has been effective in controlling mankind's worst insect pests, including lice, fleas, and mosquitoes.  This was of enormous importance for human health because at least 80 percent of human infectious disease worldwide is arthropod borne.  Hundreds of millions have died from malaria, yellow fever, typhus, dengue, plague, encephalitis, leishmaniasis, filariasis, and many other diseases.  In the 14th century bubonic plague (transmitted by fleas) killed a fourth of the people in Europe and two-thirds of those in the British Isles.  Yellow fever killed millions before it was found to be transmitted by Aedes mosquitoes.  It infected British troops in the Louisiana Territory in 1741, killing 20,000 of the 27,000 soldiers.  In 1802, French troops arrived there but departed after 29,000 of the 33,000 soldiers died of yellow fever.  More than 100 epidemics of typhus ravaged civilizations in Europe and Asia, with mortality rates as high as 70 percent.  But by far the greatest killer has been malaria, transmitted by Anopheles mosquitoes.

Chemical giant Monsanto forced to pay out over $1.5 billion in Roundup verdict.  Three former users of Roundup weed killer have won more than $1.5 billion in a judgment against Monsanto, now a unit of Bayer AG, that a Missouri jury says must pay its victims for the glyphosate-based herbicide giving them cancer.  Jurors in state court in Jefferson City awarded James Draeger, Valerie Gunther and Dan Anderson a total of $61.1 million in actual damages along with another $500 million each in punitive damages over claims that using Roundup on their lawns and gardens caused them to develop non-Hodgkin lymphoma.  The suit is one of many in recent days in which juries have ruled against Monsanto over claims concerning the carcinogenic properties of its Roundup formula.  This latest suit is one of the largest to be handed down against a U.S.-based corporate defendant this year.

Somewhat related:
Why is malaria suddenly back in the U.S. after a 20-year hiatus?  It has been around two decades since the last localized cases of malaria were detected in the United States.  And now, suddenly, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is warning that the infectious disease is back, having recently reemerged in Florida and Texas.  We are told that four people in the Sunshine State and one person in the Lone Star State were recently treated for malaria, though the agency says the cases between the two states are unrelated.  So, where did this new outbreak of malaria come from, and how is the government planning to deal with it?  Since 1951, malaria has been considered eradicated from the U.S. Spraying operations involving DDT that commenced in 1947 are credited with ridding the country of this plague.  Prior to 1947, there were about 15,000 cases of malaria in the Southeast alone.  After the spraying operations, there were none to speak of, and most people ended up forgetting the word malaria entirely.  Fast-forward a number of decades and here we are once again dealing with malaria in America.  Had DDT not been banned in the 1970s, some say malaria could have been eradicated globally, but now it is back.

This stuff might be a real problem:
Kennedy is right — Atrazine and Gender Fluidity.  Atrazine is one of the most commonly used herbicides in the world, and is often used to control weeds in commercial crops.  It is also available on Amazon for home use.  Atrazine is applied to corn, sorghum and sugarcane as well as on turf, such as golf courses and residential lawns.  Atrazine is an endocrine disrupter, which is able both demasculinize (chemically castrate) and completely feminize adult male frogs as well as other aquatic life.  It has been documented to affect murine (mouse) reproductive systems.  That endocrine disruptors found in this herbicide will make its way into puddles, ponds, lakes, streams, rivers and even ocean is well proven.  That these herbicides are feminizing aquatic life is well proven.  That is well established in the scientific literature.

New Research Links Glyphosate to DNA Damage, Cancer and Oxidative Stress.  New research by top U.S. government scientists has found that people exposed to the widely used weed-killing chemical glyphosate have biomarkers in their urine linked to the development of cancer and other diseases.  The study, published last week in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, measured glyphosate levels in the urine of farmers and other study participants and determined that the presence of high levels of the pesticide was associated with signs of a reaction in the body called oxidative stress, a condition that causes damage to DNA.  Oxidative stress is considered by health experts as a key characteristic of carcinogens. [...] Glyphosate is the most heavily applied herbicide in history, both in the U.S. and globally.  One of the best-known glyphosate-based products is Monsanto's Roundup weedkiller.  Roundup has been used by farmers as well as consumers for more than 40 years.

Banning Modern Agriculture and High Crop Yields?  In just seven decades, America's conventional (non-organic) farmers increased per-acre corn yields by an incredible 500% — while using steadily less water, fuel, fertilizer and pesticides — feeding millions more people.  Among the many reasons for this miracle is their ability to control weeds that would otherwise steal moisture and nutrients from this vital food, animal feed and fuel (ethanol) crop.  Long-lasting herbicides don't just control weeds.  They also promote no-till farming, which helps farmers save costly tractor fuel and avoid breaking up soils — thereby reducing erosion, retaining soil moisture, safeguarding soil organisms, and locking carbon dioxide in the soil (reducing risks of "dangerous manmade climate change," some say).  In the United States, the second most widely used herbicide after glyphosate (Roundup) is atrazine, which is critical to controlling invasive and hard-to-kill weeds impervious to other herbicides.  Atrazine is used on 65 million acres of corn, sorghum and sugarcane.  That's equivalent to Colorado or Oregon, on croplands scattered across a dozen Midwestern states.  It's also used on millions of acres of golf courses, lawns and highway medians nationwide.

This stuff appears to be far worse than DDT:
MIT Senior Researcher Warns Glyphosate Is a Slow Kill.  A "systemic catastrophe" is senior researcher Dr. Stephanie Seneff's verdict on glyphosate, the active ingredient in the herbicide Roundup, warning that the chemical is a slow kill for humans and other lifeforms.  Seneff, a senior researcher from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has been studying this toxic chemical for around 10 years.  She believes that the pervasive use of glyphosate in the United States and around the world in agriculture is the reason behind the dramatic increase in autism, diabetes, cancer, allergies, as well as many other chronic conditions.  Glyphosate was first used in Roundup, a herbicide developed by Monsanto in 1974.  Upon its release, Monsanto marketed glyphosate as harmless to humans and other mammals.  The company reasoned that glyphosate kills weed by disrupting the shikimate pathway, which is not present in animals and therefore would not be harmful.  "However, this pathway is present in gut bacteria," Seneff wrote in her first study on glyphosate.

Bring Back DDT, and Science With It!.  The 1972 U.S. ban on DDT is responsible for a genocide 10 times larger than that for which we sent Nazis to the gallows at Nuremberg.  It is also responsible for a menticide which has already condemned one entire generation to a dark age of anti-science ignorance, and is now infecting a new one.  The lies and hysteria spread to defend the DDT ban are typical of the irrationalist, anti-science wave which has virtually destroyed rational forms of discourse in our society.  If you want to save science — and human lives — the fight to bring back DDT, now being championed by that very electable candidate for the Democratic Presidential nomination, Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr., had better be at the top of your agenda.  Sixty million people have died needlessly of malaria, since the imposition of the 1972 ban on DDT, and hundreds of millions more have suffered from this debilitating disease.

Pareto Speaks to Us About Environmentalism.  The emotional core of the belief [in global warming] is fear of modern technology.  Global warming is only the latest of a string of, doomsday scenarios, justified by dubious scientific claims, dating back as far as the 1940's. [...] These scares have in common the theme that modern technology is backfiring.  The scares play to and promote this emotional belief.  To many people, technology is an object of suspicion and fear.  There is romantic nostalgia for an idealized simpler time in the past.  For example, the organic food movement basically advocates growing food by restricting technology to that used prior to about 1930.  This is based on the idea that pesticides and synthetic fertilizer is harmful, a belief that is scientifically not supportable.  Plants don't care whether they get nitrogen from synthetic fertilizer or chicken manure.  Pesticides used to kill insects are not passed into the food product except in microscopic, harmless quantities.  The advocates of organic farming don't mention that half the world population would starve if their less productive farming schemes were universally adopted.

Financing Poverty, Malnutrition and Death — Part 2.  It's easy to farm organically in the wealthy EU and USA, where consumers can afford to demand much more expensive organic meats, eggs, fruits and vegetables.  It's much harder if you have to deal with the insects and crop diseases that plague African farmers on constant massive levels and locusts that bring true catastrophes every few decades — and then sell your meager crop yields to impoverished families.  That modern pesticides might save billions of dollars of crops every year and stop locusts before they can swarm by the tens of billions — or that bioengineered crops might feed more people, from less land, with less water, with greater resistance to insects, with less need for chemical pesticides (natural or manmade) — never seems to occur, or matter, to those who demand nothing but organic for Africa.

EPA Science Could Torpedo Roundup Lawsuits.  The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently issued a finding that could — and certainly should — undermine some of the most outrageous lawsuits and jury awards in American history.  Bolstered by San Francisco area juries that have given multi-multi-million-dollar awards to clients who claim glyphosate (the active ingredient in Roundup weedkiller) caused their cancer, jackpot justice lawyers have recruited some 20,000 additional "corporate victims" who hope to reap their own fortunes.

Who's Afraid of Roundup?  In May 2019, a California jury awarded $2 billion to a husband and wife who claimed that the weed-killer Roundup caused their non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.  The defendant in the suit was Bayer AG, which had recently acquired Monsanto, Roundup's manufacturer.  Crucial in determining the judgment was Alameda County Superior Court judge Winifred Smith's denial of a request by Bayer's lawyers to share with the jury the US Environmental Protection Agency's recent determination that the active ingredient in Roundup, glyphosate, is not carcinogenic and poses no risk to public health when used as directed.  "What is the relevance?" the judge is reported to have asked.  Instead, the judge allowed the plaintiffs' lawyers to base their case on the International Agency for Research on Cancer's (IARC) 2015 determination that glyphosate is a "probable carcinogen."  Deprived of the opportunity to hear any countervailing evidence, the jury found for the plaintiffs.

Bayer to Waste $5.6 Billion Trying to Appease Anti-Pesticide Activists.  Trial lawyers have managed to bamboozle three American juries so far into showering billions of dollars onto their suffering clients based on the scientifically bogus claim that exposure to Bayer's glyphosate (sold as Roundup here) weedkiller gave them cancer.  These jury awards are made despite the fact that the vast majority of the scientific literature and most of the world's regulatory agencies find that glyphosate is safe to use.  That includes the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Joint FAO/WHO Meeting on Pesticide Residues (JMPR).  And also the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and other regulatory agencies in Europe, Canada, Japan, Australia, and Korea have consistently reaffirmed that glyphosate does not cause cancer.

Kale rejoins the 'Dirty Dozen' list as one of the most contaminated with pesticides.  For the first time in a decade, kale, the popular green leaf cabbage adored by health enthusiasts worldwide, has rejoined the 'Dirty Dozen' list of fruits and vegetables with the most pesticide residues.  On Wednesday [3/20/2019], the Environmental Working Group released its annual Shopper's Guide to Pesticides in Produce, which analyzes Department of Agriculture test data to identify which supermarket produce have the most — and least — contamination.  Researchers said they were shocked that kale made the list this year.

Climate Science, Red in Tooth and Claw.  DDT was banned because it supposedly thinned birds' eggs and perhaps because some people screamed cancer.  But DDT is highly effective against mosquitos that cause malaria.  The World Health Organization finally lifted the ban on DDT because thousands of children were dying in Africa.  DDT will never be rehabilitated in the U.S. because the propaganda has been permanently imprinted in the minds of the populace.

The Biggest Junk Science of 2018.  [#6] Jury Finds That Glyphosate Caused Man's Lymphoma.  Glyphosate is one of the most widely used herbicides in the world, in part because it is highly effective at killing weeds while at the same time being less acutely toxic than table salt.  However, the chemical's ubiquity coupled with the fact that it was created by the much-maligned company Monsanto have made it a target of fearmongering and litigation.  In August, a California jury awarded $289 million to a man who claimed that the weedkiller caused his non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, though a judge later drastically reduced the punitive damages to $39 million.  The jury's conclusion is not in keeping with available scientific evidence, which has not found a link between glyphosate and cancer.

Toxic pesticides found at most illegal California pot farms.  Nine of every 10 illegal marijuana farms raided in California this year contained traces of powerful and potentially lethal pesticides that are poisoning wildlife and could endanger water supplies, researchers and federal authorities said Tuesday [8/28/2018].

Environmentalist Scare Stories — Never Mind!  The Sierra Club and "invertebrate-protecting" Xerces Society recently had their own Emily Litella moment, over an issue they both have been hyperventilating about for years: endangered bees.  For over half a decade, both organizations have been raising alarms about the imminent extinction of honeybees and, more recently, wild bees — allegedly due to the widespread use of neonicotinoid pesticides.  These are advanced-technology crop protection compounds, originally developed and registered as "reduced-risk" pesticides.  Applied mostly as seed treatments, neonicotinoids get taken up into the tissue of crop plants, where they control pests that feed on and destroy the crops, while minimizing insecticide exposure to animals, humans and beneficial species like bees.  But not according to the Sierra Club!  It campaigned incessantly for years on the claim that neonicotinoids would drive honeybees into extinction.

Landmark lawsuit claims Monsanto hid cancer danger of weedkiller for decades.  At the age of 46, DeWayne Johnson is not ready to die.  But with cancer spread through most of his body, doctors say he probably has just months to live.  Now Johnson, a husband and father of three in California, hopes to survive long enough to make Monsanto take the blame for his fate.  On 18 June, Johnson will become the first person to take to trial on allegations that it has spent decades hiding the cancer-causing dangers of its popular Roundup herbicide products — and his case has just received a major boost.  Last week Judge Curtis Karnow issued an order clearing the way for jurors to consider not just scientific evidence related to what caused Johnson's cancer, but allegations that Monsanto suppressed evidence of the risks of its weed killing products.  Karnow ruled that the trial will proceed and a jury would be allowed to consider possible punitive damages.

NYT Pesticide Exposé Only Exposes Foolish Reporting.  Earlier this year, the Environmental Protection Agency rejected a petition from two environmental activist groups to ban the longtime, widely-used pesticide chlorpyrifos.  Last week, the New York Times published an ostensible exposé on that decision by reporter Eric Lipton, but despite a lot of dark hints, the story exposes nothing new or noteworthy about the Trump Administration's decision.  The Environmental Protection Agency decision, announced by EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt last March, was wise, as I detail [elsewhere].  Nonetheless, Lipton maintains that emails the Times obtained via a Freedom of Information Act request show that the Trump EPA consulted with "the farm industry" in making this decision, as if that's a shocking revelation.

The Courts against Proposition 65.  Around 1.8 million tons of glyphosate has been used across the U.S. since 1974.  Such a commonly used chemical has obviously demanded a rigorous health and safety assessment.  It has repeatedly been certified as non-threatening to humans from regulatory bodies all over the world, including in the U.S., Europe, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan.  The controversy over the substance arose when IARC — a semi-autonomous branch of the World Health Organization (WHO) based in Lyon, France, which was recently slammed by House Science Committee members for its "manipulation of scientific data" and "shoddy work" — found it "probably carcinogenic" to humans.  Despite the fact that this remains the only major study to reach such a conclusion, IARC's ruling meant that glyphosate was automatically added to California's Proposition 65 list, a lengthy catalogue of supposed carcinogens.

Government Scientist Withheld Evidence Popular Herbicide Doesn't Cause Cancer.  The Reuters news agency uncovered evidence a study by a World Health Organization scientist concluding the popular herbicide Roundup is a probable carcinogen is wrong.  Reuters' investigation found the lead scientist involved in the research withheld key data indicating the weed killer is safe, as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and European Food Safety Authority concluded in the 1970s when they approved Roundup for use.  The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), a division of the World Health Organization, declared glyphosate (Roundup) a probable carcinogen in December 2015.  Since then, citing the IARC's findings as evidence, hundreds of plaintiffs have filed suit against Monsanto, Roundup's manufacturer, saying the company failed to warn them about the risks from Roundup or that it caused their cancers.

Another Left-Wing Science Scandal.  Glyphosate is the active ingredient in RoundUp, the most widely used herbicide in the world.  Glyphosate is a non-selective herbicide, meaning it will kill just about any plant.  Since it would kill the crop as well as the weeds, for quite a few years it couldn't be used over the top of an emerging crop.  Instead, its use was restricted to lower-value burndown situations, where weeds in a field would be killed prior to planting, or, e.g., to keep down weeds on railroad rights of way.

Three Charleston fire stations stressing caution to firefighters amid bedbug infestations.  Over the past three weeks, Charleston Fire Department officials across three stations relocated to shelters and tents due to multiple reports by firefighters of sightings and bites.  Firefighters from station 20 on Daniel Island have been relocated to Station 18 following three unsuccessful attempts to eradicate the building of the blood-sucking pests, the department said.

Anthropogenic Impacts on Mosquito Populations in North America Over the Past Century.  The recent emergence and spread of vector-borne viruses including Zika, chikungunya and dengue has raised concerns that climate change may cause mosquito vectors of these diseases to expand into more temperate regions.  However, the long-term impact of other anthropogenic factors on mosquito abundance and distributions is less studied.  Here, we show that anthropogenic chemical use (DDT; dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane) and increasing urbanization were the strongest drivers of changes in mosquito populations over the last eight decades in areas on both coasts of North America.  Mosquito populations have increased as much as tenfold, and mosquito communities have become two- to fourfold richer over the last five decades.  These increases are correlated with the decay in residual environmental DDT concentrations and growing human populations, but not with temperature.

Mosquito Population Skyrockets Due to Urbanization and DDT Ban, Not Climate Change.  Mosquito populations have exploded in parts of the United States, but not because of global warming, according to a recent study published in Nature Communications.  The research indicates urbanization and the ban on the insecticide DDT are likely responsible for the surge in mosquito populations.  According to the researchers, some types of mosquitoes, including those that commonly spread diseases, have adapted to human-created habitat; urbanization has created fertile ground for mosquito populations to expand.  This doesn't augur well for city dwellers, who are already feeling the brunt of mosquito-borne tropical diseases such as chikungunya, dengue fever, West Nile virus, and Zika virus.  Tracking mosquito populations in California, New Jersey, and New York, the researchers found mosquito populations have increased as much as 1000 percent over the past five decades.

Regulation of Monsanto's 'Roundup' Called Into Question.  The European Chemicals Agency on Wednesday said glyphosate, the key chemical in Monsanto Co.'s flagship herbicide, doesn't cause cancer, but the agricultural giant is facing new questions over the safety of the weedkiller. [...] Glyphosate, which Monsanto invented and has marketed since 1974 under the brand "Roundup," is the world's most widely used herbicide.  Its use proliferated with the advent of corn and soybeans genetically engineered to survive the spray.  It has been deployed to destroy everything from illegal coca crops in Colombia to weeds sprouting among railroad tracks.  Monsanto generated $3.5 billion in sales last year from its agricultural-productivity division, which largely reflects its Roundup business.

Bureaucrat Tells Trump How to Run EPA.  [William D.] Ruckelshaus, let it never be forgotten, was the EPA administrator responsible for probably the blackest moment in the institution's history: the man who banned DDT in the U.S. with consequences which resulted in millions of unnecessary deaths around the world from malaria.  Sure Ruckelshaus didn't deliberately murder all those people.  But the fact remains that DDT was — still is — one of the most effective killers of the malarial mosquito; and that by banning it in the U.S., Ruckelshaus helped create a knock-on regulatory effect which deprived the world of one its best defences against one of its biggest health problems.

Zika Emergency Crisis Due to Enviro Wackos.  Every time I read about another mosquito bred epidemic I am reminded of the time I met the late author Michael Crichton in 2005 when he was given the Sound Science Award by the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH). Based in Manhattan, the ACSH publishes enlightening books and pamphlets that are invaluable in sorting out hype and hysteria from bona fide scientific research.  It was Crichton's novel, "State of Fear" that provided me with information on the deadly results of the DDT ban in Africa, which has resulted in the deaths of millions of malaria victims.  I am amazed that there is still so much ignorance about the harm that junk science can render on a fearful nation.

The answer to Zika is obvious:  Bring back DDT.  The Zika virus outbreak makes it clearer than ever:  It's time to end the ban on DDT — a ban that was never sensible in the first place, but now is downright unjustifiable.  The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that Zika has infected nearly 300 pregnant women in the United States, putting their babies at risk for a devastating birth defect.  This summer, as many as 40 million Americans will visit regions where carrier mosquitoes thrive, including large swaths of the South.  There's also a moderate risk of Zika-carrying bugs in New York City, and parts of the city offer Zika mosquitoes the perfect conditions in which to thrive.

Cancer-stricken farmers sue Monsanto over Roundup.  Three cancer-stricken Nebraska farmers and an agronomist are suing Monsanto, alleging that the company misled consumers about the safety of Roundup, the most widely used herbicide around the globe.  The World Health Organization labeled glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup, as a likely carcinogen last year.  The four Nebraskans suing all have non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, one of the types of cancer glyphosate is most associated with, the Lincoln Journal-Star reports.

EPA immediately yanks study showing weed killer doesn't cause cancer.  Before jumping into this rather odd story, one quick question: is the EPA really the appropriate agency to oversee a study on whether or not some product causes cancer?  I mean, if the Center for Disease Control wants to be in the business of studying gun violence instead of the Department of Justice in general or the FBI in particular, I suppose it fits in with the "logic" of the federal government, but their main mission seems to be rather far afield from medical work.  We'll leave that mystery for another day and get on to the fact that the Environmental Protection Agency recently did, in fact, release a study which shows that glyphosate — the primary ingredient in general purpose week killers like Roundup — is not carcinogenic.

Mosquito-Borne Diseases.  Mosquitoes cause more human suffering than any other organism — over one million people worldwide die from mosquito-borne diseases every year.  Not only can mosquitoes carry diseases that afflict humans, they also transmit several diseases and parasites that dogs and horses are very susceptible to.  These include dog heartworm, West Nile virus (WNV) and Eastern equine encephalitis (EEE).  In addition, mosquito bites can cause severe skin irritation through an allergic reaction to the mosquito's saliva — this is what causes the red bump and itching.  Mosquito vectored diseases include protozoan diseases, i.e., malaria, filarial diseases such as dog heartworm, and viruses such as dengue, encephalitis and yellow fever. [...] Approximately 40% of the world's population is susceptible to malaria, mostly in the tropical and sub-tropical areas of the world.  It was by and large eradicated in the temperate area of the world during the 20th century with the advent of DDT and other organochlorine and organophosphate mosquito control insecticides.

Bed bugs are getting tougher 'skin,' scientists warn.  Using high-tech scanning equipment, scientists in Australia have discovered that in the battle between bed bugs and humans, some of the insects wield thicker exoskeletons, making them more resistant to insecticide.  Bed bugs are a source of itchy misery and expense for those whose homes are infested, and the number of such infestations have increased in a "dramatic" way since 2000, according to a new study in the journal PLOS ONE.

White House: $589 million to go to fight Zika virus.  Most of the $589 million would be devoted to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for research on the virus and Zika-related birth defects, as well as the creation of response teams to limit its spread.

The Editor says...
It would be far less expensive and more effective to remove the ban on DDT and/or temporarily prohibit two-way travel to Central and South America.

Let's hear it for DDT.  [Mosquitoes] are presently doing their egregious harm in a new, emphatic way in Brazil and more than 20 other Latin American countries and territories.  They are biting people and infecting them with a pathogen called Zika.  The virus has been around for decades but for the first time is believed to be causing a birth defect shrinking the skulls and damaging the brains of babies.  It may also cause a syndrome that paralyzes people and it has even sneaked into the United States.  [...] Time to use DDT maybe?  Absolutely.  As the scientist Robert Zubrin has noted, here is a pesticide that was used during World War II and later to kill mosquitoes and wipe out malaria and other diseases in the United States, Europe, Latin America and Asia, saving hundreds of millions of lives.  Mosquitoes, fighting back, managed to develop resistance to it in some areas, but then something more dramatic happened, giving them an enormous break.

This was completely avoidable:
Five star hotels 'infested' with bed bugs after major surge in blood-sucking insects across New York City.  Tourists visiting some of New York's most prestigious hotels have reported being bitten by bed bugs despite their five star surroundings.  Guests at the Waldorf Astoria and Marriott Marquis hotel are among those to have been affected by the infestation.  Reports of bed bugs in the city's hotels have jumped by 44 per cent over the past year.  According to the Bed Bug Registry, which lists reports of alleged incidents, there are almost 6,000 incidents in their databases relating to New York.

Obama asking Congress for $1.8 billion in emergency funding to combat Zika.  President Barack Obama is asking Congress for more than $1.8 billion in emergency funding to help fight the Zika virus.  In an announcement Monday [2/8/2016], the White House said the money would be used to expand mosquito control programs, speed development of a vaccine, develop diagnostic tests and improve support for low-income pregnant women.

The Editor says...
It would cost only a small fraction of that money to supply truckloads of DDT to South America, Central America, and the southern United States.  It is far better (and cheaper) to proactively kill every mosquito on the face of the earth than to try to repair the damage once the mosquitos spread some disease we've never heard of.

With Zika, Time to Bring Back DDT.  The Zika virus is spreading by mosquitos northward through Latin America, possibly correlated with birth defects such as microcephaly in infants.  Stories and photos of their abnormally small skulls are making headlines.  The World Health Organization reports that four million people could be infected by the end of 2016.  On Monday [2/1/2016], the WHO is meeting to decide how to address the crisis.  The international body should recommend that the ban on DDT should be reversed, in order to kill the mosquitoes that carry Zika and malaria, a protistan parasite that has no cure.  Zika is in the news, but it is dwarfed by malaria.  About 300 million to 600 million people suffer each year from malaria, and it kills about 1 million annually, 90 percent in sub-Saharan Africa.  We have the means to reduce Zika and malaria — and we are not using it.

Zika is latest mosquito-borne virus knocking on Texas' door.  Another mosquito-borne illness is rapidly spreading across South and Central America, one that may be linked to disturbing birth defects in Brazil.  The Zika virus is confirmed in cases from Brazil to Mexico, including one reported near Monterrey, less than 150 miles from the Texas border.  Puerto Rico just reported its first case in December.  State officials say they don't believe that the Zika virus, discovered in Uganda in 1947, is an immediate threat to Texas, but many questions remain unanswered.

Weeds will prevail in Maryland lawn care ban.  Few things are as precious to the stereotypical upper-middle-class suburbanite as their pristine green front lawns.  And those stereotypes have been proven true in Montgomery County, Maryland, where homeowners are in a tizzy over a proposal that would ban many common lawn treatments and pesticides like the well-known Scott's Miracle Grow and Monsanto's Round-Up.

Radical Environmentalism's Death Campaigns.  By denying people access to abundant, reliable, affordable electricity, modern fertilizers and biotech seeds, and especially DDT to prevent malaria and other insect-borne diseases, they are killing millions every year.  Many of my articles have documented this.  Now a new film written, self-financed and produced by Dr. D. Rutledge Taylor, MD graphically presents powerful new evidence of how the Audubon Society, Sierra Club, other predominantly white environmentalist pressure groups and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency conspired to hide and discredit scientific evidence, and wage a campaign of disinformation and outright lies, to ban the most effective weapon yet devised to prevent malaria and other vicious diseases.

This could have been avoided:
Virus-transmitting 'yellow fever' mosquitoes discovered in L.A. County.  A new aggressive daytime-biting mosquito capable of transmitting debilitating and possibly deadly viruses has been found in the Los Angeles region, officials announced Wednesday [10/15/2014].  Known as yellow fever mosquitoes, the insects were found Oct. 7 and 8 in Commerce and Pico Rivera, respectively, according to the Greater Los Angeles County Vector Control District.

Anti-Science Environmentalists Ban 'Neonic' Insecticides, Imperiling Global Health.  Two recent pesticide bans in the EU — one fully in effect, the other in the process of being phased in — could create massive new disincentives for further development in this area.  Both bans were politically motivated and instituted over the objection of independent scientists, and similar bans are now being pushed by activists in the U.S.  Should the EPA cave to political pressure, the long-term effect on global public health could be devastating.

The Editor says...
The way I see it, the EPA is applying political pressure, in order to prolong its existence.  They aren't about to "cave to political pressure."

Is the NYTimes reverting to the bad old days of DDT denial?  Over the 51 years since Rachel Carson's poetic attack on DDT in her "Silent Spring" novel, the chemical pesticide became the poster child for the nascent environmental movement's inchoate wrath.  The victims:  millions of African and Asian children and pregnant women who succumbed to malaria in the absence of DDT.  However, over the past decade, when the toll of malaria seemed to be ever-increasing at a rate of one-million dead each year, and the actual studies of DDT continued to show no evidence of harm to humans, animals or the environment at small levels of exposure, most scientists free of immersion in the anti-DDT fringe came around to accepting its highly effective power against the death-dealing anopheles mosquito.

Does Environmentalism Cause Amnesia?.  [Scroll down]  What does hurt people is bad public policy.  Exhibit A is the U.S. ethanol mandate — justified in part as a response to global warming — which diverted the corn crop to fuel production and sent global food prices soaring in 2008.  Exhibit B is the cult of organic farming and knee-jerk opposition to [genetically modified crops], which risk depriving farmers in poor countries of high-yield, nutrient-rich crops.  Exhibit C was the effort to ban DDT without adequate substitutes to stop the spread of malaria, which kills nearly 900,000 people, mostly children, in sub-Saharan Africa alone with each passing year.  The list goes on and on.

Bees, pesticides, more green lies.  [Scroll down]  Various neonicotinoids are widely used in Canada to protect its vast canola fields, and Canadian bee populations are thriving, notes science writer Jon Entine.  Varroa-free Australia is likewise one of the world's prime users of these pesticides, and its bee colonies are among the planet's healthiest.  By contrast, bee populations have been severely impacted by Varroa mites in areas of Switzerland where neonics are not used.  Multiple studies point to still other factors that explain why bees are struggling.  They include bees developing resistance to antibiotics, funguses like Nosema, multiple bee viruses and parasites, bacterial infections like foulbrood, exposure to commonly used organophosphates, bee habitat loss, and even long-term bee inbreeding and resultant lack of genetic diversity.

The Top 50 Liberal Media Bias Examples.  [#4]  DDT Ban:  The biggest example of the media coming to the aid of environmentalism is, of course, is the worldwide ban of DDT.  In 1962, a book titled Silent Spring written by American biologist Rachel Carson was published.  The media pushed Carson's work as settled science.  It later came to light that much of Carson's "evidence" was simply manufactured and the ban has been responsible for untold millions of deaths in places like Africa.  Still, the media continues to cite Carson's work as fact.

The EPA: The Worst Of Many Rogue Federal Agencies.  The political nature of the EPA became clear not long after President Nixon established it in 1970.  In 1972 the first administrator of the EPA, William Ruckelshaus, banned the insecticide DDT after his own hearing examiner concluded, on the basis of several hundred technical documents and testimony of 150 scientists, that DDT ought not to be banned.

Environmentalism and Human Sacrifice.  [There are] people who are more devoted to nature than to human life.  And who might such people be?  They are called environmentalists.  These are the people who coerced nations worldwide into banning DDT.  It is generally estimated this ban has led to the deaths of about 50 million human beings, overwhelmingly African children, from malaria.  DDT kills the mosquito that spreads malaria to human beings.  US News and World Report writer Carrie Lukas reported in 2010, "Fortunately, in September 2006, the World Health Organization announced a change in policy:  It now recommends DDT for indoor use to fight malaria.

Mosquito repellent Deet 'losing its effectiveness'.  The mosquito repellent Deet, which is widely used by holidaymakers and residents in warm climates, is losing its effectiveness, scientists say.

The Editor says...
Nobody makes such claims about DDT.  DDT kills mosquitoes, while Deet just diverts them to someone else.

War On Poverty As Senseless As War On Drugs.  Thanks to the ban on DDT, malaria has resurfaced and millions of Africans have died.  Within two years of restarting DDT programs, South Africa, Mozambique, Zambia, Madagascar, and Swaziland slashed their malaria rates by 75% or more.  Other countries want to launch similar programs, but they are facing opposition from Europe.  The E.U. is warning of possible agricultural export sanctions against Uganda, Kenya, and other countries that use DDT to save lives.  Now why on earth would the E.U. object to this life-saving measure for the African nations who rely greatly on their exports to Europe?

Genocide in Green.  [Scroll down]  In World War II, U.S. troops used to lather up with DDT.  Years ago, Dr. J. Gordon Edwards wrote:  "[In 1944,] I was ordered to dust every soldier in our company with [DDT].  For two weeks I dusted the insecticide on soldiers and civilians, breathing the fog of white dust for several hours each day.  The body lice were killed, and the DDT persisted long enough to kill young lice when they emerged from the eggs...  Fortunately, no human beings have ever been harmed by DDT."

More about the history of DDT:  In 1972, EPA Administrator William Ruckelshaus banned the use of DDT on the scientifically unsupported claim that it may cause cancer in humans.  By then, malaria was no longer a health issue in the US.  Using this claim, certain US government agencies and environmental nongovernment organizations (NGOs) demanded the banning of all use of DDT in other countries, including indoor spraying, as a condition for receiving US governmental aid.  In countries that did so, malaria rates soared, millions died, and hundreds of millions suffered from preventable malaria.

The Top Ten Unfounded Health Scares of 2010.  [#3] Atrazine:  While herbicides and other pesticides have long been a target for various radical environmental groups, there is still no evidence that atrazine poses any health risk when found in miniscule quantities in groundwater.  Its real benefits far exceed any of the hypothetical threats it poses.

And the most bedbug-infested U.S. city is ...  The exact cause is not known, but experts associate the resurgence with increased resistance of bed bugs to available pesticides, greater international and domestic travel, lack of knowledge regarding control of bed bugs due to their prolonged absence, and the continuing decline or elimination of effective pest control programs at state and local public health agencies.

"When U.S. Environmental Protection Agency chief William Ruckelshaus was about to announce his decision to ban DDT in June 1972, he confided to a friend, "There is no scientific basis for banning this chemical — this is a political decision."

"The EPA and environmentalists must be held accountable for their crime:  There was not a single human death from DDT usage; there have been untold thousands of deaths and millions of disease-stricken persons as a result of the DDT banning."

— FUSION magazine, November 1980, pages 52 and 56.   

This is an original compilation, Copyright © 2024 by Andrew K. Dart

EPA's cautious exposure assumptions often mean the agency sets standards based on risk levels that are tens, and sometimes hundreds, of thousands of times higher than actual risks.  University of Texas Professor Frank Cross reviewed studies on the topic in 1997, just after the new pesticide law was passed.  He found EPA's conservative risk estimates overstated pesticide exposure by as much as 99,000 to 463,000 times actual exposure levels.*

Google Honors Rachel Carson, Who Helped Cause the Death of up to 50 Million People.  Yesterday Google barely acknowledged Memorial Day, with a tiny little flag that contrasted sharply against the sea of flags on display on Bing's homepage.  But today is a holiday the Google people can get behind.  It's Rachel Carson's birthday.

Rachel Carson, environmentalism's answer to Pol Pot.  Yesterday would have been her 102nd birthday and I'm sorry I missed it, but my sharp-eyed fellow-traveller David Hinz at The Minority Report celebrated with a lively dance on the old fraud's grave. He doesn't mince his words:  Rachel Carson — poster girl of the international eco movement — was a "mass murderer" to rival Stalin and Pol Pot.  Was she really responsible for the deaths of as many as 50 million people?  That's just an estimate.  What we do know is that her landmark 1962 bestseller Silent Spring — the book that set a million and one green activists on the path of eco righteousness — was responsible for the worldwide ban on the insecticide DDT, the most effective preventative against the mosquitos which spread the world's deadliest disease, Malaria.  In this way countless millions of people, mostly Third World children, were condemned to death in the name of ecological correctness.