DDT, tobacco and the parallel universe

Parallel universe is exactly the phrase I’ve been looking for. My interest is in global warming deniers, and one of my favourite sites is by an Ayn Rand libertarian. I think he’s become so used to rationalising Rand’s marginalisation by academe as a conspiracy that GW denial is just a different cart going down the same well-worn mental rut.

Anyway, I just wanted to say that, after a couple of years being appalled to my bones about the parallel universe climate sceptics have built up for themselves, I’m now officially impressed. In awe, really. This kind of self-denial takes an awful lot of work. The work of a lifetime, really.

If it didn’t have such depressing real-world consequences, I’d give them a round of applause.

This one has always interested me.

I mean, with global warming or second hand smoke, etc., there is always the outlier scientist to hang one’s hat on to create the illusion of doubt.

The malaria/DDT thing is just bizarre because its not even based on muddying science or the fog of opinion. It is simply stating a re-stating an obviously incorrect fact.

It is beginning to rank up there with “[Rotating feminist] claimed that all sex is rape!” Or “Saddam Hussein masterminded 9/11!”

I don’t think parallel universe-ism goes far enough here. Is “perpendicular universe” a phrase?

niliverse

The problem comes when they find a conveniently located parallel universe, and try to park in it diagonally.

Rich B., I’m sure that one can find *a* scientist to say just about anything. Many will even do it without payment, just because they’re believers, or perverse sh*ts (the latter like to call themselves ‘contrarians’).

With a bit of digging, one can probably find a scientist from an actual relevant field of study to say what’s desired, although it’s not necessary.

Given fat packets of cash, the job becomes easier. According to Wikipedia, Milloy has been a professional at this game since at least the early 1990’s. It’s a career.

The biggest advantage of doing this is that being proven wrong is virtually irrelevant. There’s always another client, another propaganda mill calling itself a ‘think tank’.
The media seems to regard having appeared in print as validation in and of itself; I don’t think that they even ask themselves about credibility, even if there’s a considerable track record.

It’s a Grand Unified Theory of Bullshit!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/carl-pope/whos-afraid-of-rachel-ca_b_49837.html

Gosh, ya think?

“The piles of documents released as a result of litigation against Phillip Morris and Exxon are gifts that keep on giving for those of us interested in the process by which the Republican parallel universe has been constructed.”

Wonder if Spock’s got a beard in GoP-prime?

I’m missing a couple of pieces of info….

So why did the WHO drop the anti-smoking thing in 1998?

Wasn’t it just two years ago the US allowed DDT to be used again?

Does DDT kill mosquitoes?

Do mosquitoes carry disease?

In small amounts is DDT safe for both humans and animals?

The fact that tobacco companies funded think tanks , such as CATO, and told them to ‘lie’ about DDT so they can discredit the WHO and then in turn no one will believe smoking is bad for you?

Not seeing how you are getting from point A to point B on this one.

I hate smoking – but ultimately smokers choose their fate, malaria victims not so much.

eudoxis, the WHO statement is result of Bate’s campaign. The DDT fetish is interfering with the fight against malaria.

I question the origins of this parallel universe. To take a crackpot religious ideology, a justifiably reviled but increasingly marginalized industry and a few scientists with the temerity to question the status quo and weave from these few spare threads a conspiracy with the power to undermine the environmental movement and our world health and environmental institutions takes an author with a first hand familiarity with parallel universes.

“and a major political party, until recently controlling all arms of government in the United States, backed up by a well-organised and vocal political movement”

…reduced to mere tools in the devious hands of cigarette salesmen and the proponents of crackpot religious theories.

qv, I think you should maybe actually read the documents. Whether or not you believe they actually could have that effect, they were certainly trying. Unless their own lawyers just made up some documents to introduce that would turn public opinion against them. And if you’d believe that, why not the conspiracy theory??

Making up your own facts seems a popular pastime recently.

Tim Lambert: “The DDT fetish is interfering with the fight against malaria.”

To the contrary, the increased focus on DDT has heightened political awareness of malaria. Any increase in public information about malaria, whether from the pro- or anti-DDT camp, is effective in putting malaria back on the western attention map where it has languished for so long.

“Global Malaria Control in the 21st Century
A Historic but Fleeting Opportunity

Richard G. A. Feachem, DScMed; Oliver J. Sabot, BA

JAMA. 2007;297:2281-2284.

There is today more attention to and financing for malaria control than at least the past 4 decades. Following the collapse of the global eradication campaign in the early 1970s, malaria control programs around the world dwindled as funding dried up, technical guidance became confused and at times contradictory, and much of the global community seemed ready to accept that malaria was an unavoidable fact of life in tropical regions.1 Gains that had been made in reducing the burden of the disease in Asia and Latin America eroded, while in sub-Saharan Africa, the already intolerable number of deaths began to increase as the primary means of defense, chloroquine, increasingly failed.2

Since the turn of the 21st century, however, there has been resurgence of focus on the burden of malaria and opportunities for its control. New tools such as long-lasting insecticide-treated nets3 and artemisinin-based combination therapies4 have proven highly effective in reducing morbidity and mortality, and there has been substantial investment in further innovation, from the discovery of a long-sought vaccine to the development of new treatments. Financing for malaria endemic countries to purchase and deploy these and other critical tools has increased dramatically with the advent of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria, and the US President’s Malaria Initiative, increasing 10-fold between 1998 and 2006.5-7 Unprecedented political attention has been devoted to the disease in both the global north and south.” More at JAMA.

#29

One of the hazards of navigating parallel universes is that sarcasm is often lost.

How did a DDT ban in the US affect DDT use in the rest of the world, James? And who is Pat Robison?

Silent Spring was largely factual – the only serious error was something Carson wrote about cancer. But the rest of the book has stood up very well over the last 45 years. I wrote my master’s thesis on Silent Spring, and I can tell you that Carson never advocated banning all pesticides. Her critique centered on how they were used, or rather abused. It would help your case if you actually read the book before offering your comment.

The ban in the US lead to a push for a world wide ban on DDT.

Perhaps we have a different understanding of factual errors. The base premis of Silent Spring was that the use of Chemicals would doom us all. 45 years later that premis has been proven (in the kindest possible terms) inaccurate. For specifics: Incorrect information relating to cancer & DDT, unsubstantiated relation of normal use to human liver and kidney failure, complete failure to account for the decline in bird population prior to the use of DDT, failure to account for additional contributing factors (calcium deficiency) to weak bird egg shells, questionable application of Audobon Society bird census findings, partial retraction of findings that DDT was the source of the thinning of eggshells*.

*Anderson DW, Hickey JJ, Risebrough RW, Hughes DF, Christensen RE. Significance of chlorinated hydrocarbon residues to breeding pelicans and cormorants. The Canadian Field-Naturalist

james:

“The new tools are not as effective as DDT and they cost significantly more.”

Oh, that gets even better. When scientists manage to develop _expensive_ and _ineffective_ tools against malaria, it’s all thanks to the great work of people who write books with made-up facts?

“Once the Institutions of Higher Learning started lumping political and scocial science with the hard sciences…”

No. This whole thing has _zilch_ to do with “Institutions of Higher Learning”. I don’t need a PhD in Rocket Science to see that neoconservatives hate not only “Institutions of Higher Learning”, but also the _whole_ _idea_ of the scientific method, the _whole_ _idea_ of rational, skeptical, empirical inquiry, and the _whole_ _idea_ of logical discourse. When people construct an entire “scientific” methodology based on ignore facts, make up facts, and make veiled references to Galileo, it’s clear that they simply have _no_ _interest_ in facts or logic.

the bloggers and commentators who’ve pushed the myth of the DDT ban have been the (presumably unwitting) dupes of an industry

That presumption is just far too charitable.

john – Malaria was erradicated in the US prior to 1972 (officially 1951). The question on the table was DDT use for third world nations, namely Africa. Since DDT is currently being brought forward for use in combating malaria, my ‘parrellel universe’ more closely matches reality than one you advocate.

heraldblog – In the case of Silent Spring you are aruging the possitive from the book (alternative methods of pest control) while I am arguing the negative (dangers of chemical pest control). The book prominently presents both ideas. Given that the book was advocation for the ban of certain chemicals and the inclusion of fable highlighting the negative, my interpertation is an accurate one.

bi – Social science, political science, etc key weakness is the inability to consistently reproduce real world results with anything close to the labratory accuracy demanded by the physical sciences (ie fail the scientific method). Think of it as the rotten apple princple. The physicial sciences, technical fields, etc. had developed a certain level of cache from being able to prove results. The other fields attempted to leverage this by requesting / demanding the consideration granted those in the provable fields. While this worked for a limited time, in general the result has been to consider all proclimations suspect. This represents a generic answer not a complete answer.