With the West Nile virus spreading throughout the US, the talk of pesiticide spraying and their repercussions is once again one of the talked about topics on the nightly news. Chemical pesticides are widely misunderstood in a large part because of misinformation on the part of the environmental movment.

DDT is one such misunderstood pesticide. It was first created in 1873, but was not until the late 1930's that it was first discovered as an effective pesticide. The discoverer of this fact, Paul Muller, was awarded the Nobel Prize in medicine and physiology.

DDT was, and is, incredibly effective in reducing the spread of malaria. Examples of the effectiveness of DDT - Madagascar saw a 90% decline in malaria incidents in just two annual sprayings of DDT. In 1948, Ceylon reported 3 million cases of malaria. By 1963, with the use of DDT, there were 17 cases. That is quite a drop. When DDT spraying had stopped, the cases rose to 4000 in 1967, 1 million in 1968, and 2.5 million in 1969. At this point, the government of Ceylon resumed spraying. It is a relief to see that a government cares more about the lives of it's citizens than what an environmental groups claims is best.

Early in the 20th century, the rate of population growth in third world countries was one percent. After the discovery of DDT, the rate of growth was between three and four percent. This is largely because of the effectiveness of DDT to kill malaria-carrying mosquitos in villages, and also allowed the expansion of food growing areas.

A primary reason for the anti-DDT movement was the book Silent Spring by Rachel Carson, published in 1962. Her claims that DDT was destroying human life were largely untrue. Studies have suggested that fish and bird life have been reduced by DDT, but the claim that DDT kills human beings is absolutely false. The claim that DDT can be found in the breast milk of mothers who have never been directly exposed to DDT is true. DDT has a half-life of eight years, meaning that it takes eight years for a body to remove half of it's concentration of DDT.

It should be pointed out that NO studies have shown that responsibly used DDT causes harm to humans being. In fact, DDT should be regarded as one of the major life saving chemicals in history. Millions upon millions of lives have been saved by the spraying of DDT. However, the environmental movement has blinded the general public to this fact and pushes inferior pesiticides, ones that do not stop the spread of malaria with the effectiveness of DDT.

I should point out that I think the environmental movement has helped our quality of life in many ways. Polution has been reduced and the quality of air and water is certainly better before there were any kinds of regulation. But I think that the movement goes too far many times, and this is one of them. In the cause of protecting the environment, they have spread misinformation and condemned many millions in third world countries to die.

A 1971 EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) commissioned a study to find the toxicity of DDT. The study found that responsibly used DDT had no deterious effects on humans. Yet it was banned. However, in 1972, a tussock moth infestation in the Pacific northwest was destroying the forests. The ban on DDT was temporarily lifted, and the moth infestation was wiped out. DDT's damage to the environment - none. The damage to the environment from the moths before the ban on DDT was lifted - 800,000 acres of forests were damaged.

In 1974, William Rucklehaus, the man who decided to ban DDT, admitted that the ban was enforced because “decisions by the government involving the use of toxic substances are political...[and] the ultimate judgement remains political." The World Health Organization followed the US lead and banned DDT, and millions have died because of this decision, one based on questionable science. And with the West Nile virus, a disease spread by mosquitos, a pest that is very effectively destroyed with the use of a readily available chemical that has been proven safe for use around humans, why do we still not use it?