(I’m against using DDT as a pesticide, because of the large doses involved – bad for everyone – and because it means pests, including mosquitoes, build up resistance. Public health uses I’m fine with)

Liberals tend to value everyone as equal and have long observed that in order to preserve the environment people must be constrained in their activities. And since a liberal would never use DDT to protect himself from malaria, so follows an Other shouldn’t use DDT either.

The link which should be attached under my nom de post is a UN report to the GC on malaria. The relevant info is paragraphs 32-35.

It is fair to say that DDT is legal but discouraged, banned, and encouraged simultaneously – it depends on circumstances and what bit of the UN is doing the evaluation.

The Stockholm convention has a specific exemption for DDT for public health. So it is not banned in the sense of there being a law against it. You then claim that there is a de facto ban on it. That claim is refuted by showing that it is still used. So you turn around and say that that doesn’t prove that there isn’t a law against it. No it doesn’t, but we proved that already.

The argument that drugs are banned is also undercut by the fact that so many people use them.

That being said, I have to disagree w/ James. The problem is that when you are building a freeway, you’re talking about hundreds (or even thousands) of property owners. Having two options on the table just does not prevent single hold-outs from extracting unreasonable payment for their property.

So I think its clear that public use should include freeways, but b/c ‘fair value’ can not possibly be fair to all the people who’s property you are seizing, it should not include simple ‘public value’ or (alleged) city revenue. And the court should draw a line. Maybe the line should include some deferrence to the locals. But only some.

That AFM site talks about the usefullness of DDT in IRS programmes. That’s Indoor Residual Spraying.

And giving examples of countires that use DDT sort of undercuts your claim that it is banned.

However, some nations still effectively use DDT for malaria control. For example, Ecuador has increased its use of DDT since 1993 and has experienced the largest reduction of malaria rates in the world7. When South Africa removed DDT from its malaria control programme in 1996, one of the worst malaria epidemics in the country’s history followed. Only when South Africa reintroduced DDT in 2000 did it manage to bring the epidemic under control.

This is just the most recent case, it would easy to spend all day digging up examples of NGO’s, the UN, and Western powers pressuring malaria stricken third world countries to either not use DDT or restrict that use to indoors.

And why would you assume that just because DDT is banned, it wouldn’t be used (since it works)? Aren’t illegal drugs banned? Organizations (countries, NGO’s, the UN) retaliate against countries who use DDT in a way they don’t prescribe, which certainly is close enough to the definition of “banned” that argueing it is just playing on semantics.

Anyone who finds the wording of that sentence devilishly subtle should probably be working in the food service industry.

DDT is not banned, no matter what definition you use because it is still used in countries containing billions of people.

http://sadlyno.com/archives/001469.html

We need some expert help here. Come jump into the comments.

If you go to this wikipedia article, you’ll get a MUCH better sourced history of DDT that covers more than one relatively tiny land mass of Sri Lanka. The article explains that there was effectively a world ban on DDT in that countries were threatened with having their aid cut or faced sanctions if they continued DDT use which Western powers did not agree with.

According to the article, even in Africa where DDT was sometimes less effective, countries that reverted to 1950/60s style of mass spraying of DDT have lowered their rates of malaria much faster than those that don’t, giving strong evidence that DDT should be in wide spread use, not shot down by EU sanctions.

J F Beck over at Tim Lambert’s site points out that one of the definitions of ban is “Practical denunciation, prohibition, or outlawry, not formally pronounced, as that of society or public opinion.” According to the article, there certainly was, at least in one defintion of the word, a ban.

According to the article, even in Africa where DDT was sometimes less effective, countries that revert to 1950/60s style of mass spraying of DDT have much lower rates of malaria than those that don’t, giving strong evidence that DDT in wide spread use, not shot down by EU sanctions.

Once again Tim Lambert cherry picks a data point (Sri Lanka), grabs one or two references that back him up, and calls it a win. Too bad the uncontested Wikipedia article calls bullshit on him along while confirming the world wide move to pressure all countries to cease using DDT (aka a DDT “ban”).