Double Standards On Disease Control, Part 1
By Paul Driessen (05/20/05)
Anti-pesticide policies violate human rights and condemn millions to needless death.
Human rights issues continue to dominate the world stage.
Ending “degrading treatment" of terrorists, the death penalty for murderers, family violence against women and policies against indigenous languages top the list at the UN Human Rights Commission, European Court of Human Rights, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. The Euro Court alone has 78,000 rights cases on its docket.
This February, President Bush met with the heroic, real-life manager of “Hotel Rwanda.” He later went to Latvia, to recall the millions who died in wars, concentration camps, killing fields and genocidal conflicts over the past 65 years. Meanwhile, the US Congress and media devoted endless hours to the tragic plight of one woman, Terri Schiavo, and Cameron Diaz raved about how “awesome” it is to live in poverty.
But conspicuously absent from all these discussions is a fundamental human right: access to modern weapons – insecticides – that can effectively combat a disease that has killed over 50 million people since 1972.
Last year, malaria sent more African children to shallow graves than any other infectious disease – three times as many as HIV/AIDS, according to UNICEF. Year after year, this silent, vicious executioner infects 400 million people in sub-Saharan Africa, kills up to 2 million (half of them children), leaves tens of thousands with permanent brain damage, and costs the region $12 billion in lost economic production. It sickens 100 million more in Asian and Latin American nations.
“From colonial times until the 1940s, malaria was the American disease,” says Dr. Robert Desowitz, professor of tropical medicine at the University of North Carolina. At the dawn of the twentieth century, it thrived from New York to Florida, from North Carolina to California. Up to 7 million Americans were stricken by it every year until the mid-1920s, and 3,900 died in 1936. For centuries, it struck down people of all ages in England, Holland, Italy and other parts of Europe.
But by the early 1950s, it was gone, and all but forgotten. How was this possible?
We used DDT, window screens and other measures to gradually eradicate the malaria parasite from its human and insect hosts. Today, we still spray pesticides (mostly by airplanes) to control mosquitoes and the West Nile virus that some carry.
But we apply a vastly different standard when it comes to poor developing countries that are still wracked by malaria. Indeed, these human rights champions’ own institutions and allies – the European Union, World Health Organization, World Bank, U.S. Agency for International Development, UNICEF and dozens of ideological environmental groups like Greenpeace, Beyond Pesticides and the Natural Resource Defense Council – are at the forefront of lethal campaigns and policies. They prevent the most malaria-ridden nations from using the same insecticides that help make us disease-free, healthy and prosperous. For this, they are all but canonized by the “corporate social responsibility” and “sustainable development” industry.
These organizations will not support, advocate, fund or permit the use of pesticides in any anti-malaria programs. And amid all their interminable accusations and deliberations, the human rights champions never even mention this deadly human-rights abuse.
In February, the EU charge’ d’affaires to Uganda warned that the country’s export of fish, flowers and cereals to Europe could be disrupted if it used DDT to reduce a malaria epidemic that kills up to 100,000 Ugandans every year. “Guy Rijcken’s vile threat is an abuse of his authority and a serious human-rights violation,” said Congress of Racial Equality international affairs director Cyril Boynes, Jr. “No country faced with a health crisis of this magnitude should have wealthy, healthy Europeans telling it the lives of its citizens must come second” to conjectural health and environmental concerns.
Meanwhile, Canada gave Ethiopia US$1.5 million toward a “national implementation plan” to eliminate persistent organic pollutants, including DDT. This impoverished African nation grieves over nearly 150,000 malaria deaths a year (including 95,000 children) – meaning the value of this “inducement” to comply with the Stockholm Convention is US$10 per dead Ethiopian.
Prime Minister Paul Martin might have been “visibly shaken” by tsunami damage in Sri Lanka. But he seems little perturbed by policies that prolong the suffering and death from a readily preventable disease, in the name of addressing absurd fears that spraying DDT on African huts might somehow harm polar bears. This is particularly egregious in view of the fact that both Canada and the USA sprayed hundreds millions of pounds directly into the environment over a 20-period, primarily for agricultural and forest management purposes – with no harm to polar bears.
The United States is a global trendsetter in aid, health and environmental policy. Ending this human rights tragedy must begin at home.
USAID insists that DDT “would be considered” for malaria control programs, but only if a full environmental impact assessment demonstrates that DDT “is the only effective alternative” and “could be used safely” under strict WHO protocols (which reflect all these agencies’ exaggerated concern about pesticides). USAID says it cannot support pesticides that are banned in the United States, even in epidemic areas, and claims insecticide-treated nets are just as effective as DDT. Many infectious disease experts disagree.
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