Teen forced to continue chemo

[makattak]

I guess the WHO knows nothing about science, then:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6083944

[roo_ster]

Bait?

The only people who claim that Carson has blood on her hands know as much about as science as Rath does. DDT as panacea is woo too.

His snake oil is bogus.

My snake oil is the real deal.

Long live snake oil.

[makattak]

Also, I wasn't aware I was baiting anyone- I took one snake-oil salesman and compared him to another. (And murderous thugs).

If you'd like, we can start another thread debating her role in the deaths of millions. (Of course, as I recall, thread drift is a feature of APS)

[Iain]

I guess the WHO knows nothing about science, then:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6083944

Bait was asked because I've taken people on about this before. And because of the weak comparision that people might then be tempted to draw, such as jfruser does.

DDT isn't banned for anti-malaria uses anywhere except the US. Never has been. It has been used, where mosquitoes are susceptible, continuously. Indoor residual spraying, as part of integrated pest management. Such as bednets and other, often more effective, pesticides. The only surprise in the WHO's statement is that it issued a press release acknowledging the long status quo.

In the early 1960s, several developing countries had nearly wiped out malaria. After they stopped using DDT, malaria came raging back and other control methods have had only modest success.

I suspect they are referring to Sri Lanka, which is the posterboy of the 'Spray Everything in Sight with DDT' lot. But not all is at it seems. Yes, after massively reducing its malaria problems with DDT Sri Lanka did stop spraying in 1964 (up from neglible figures to about 2.5m cases per annum - bad).

Malaria reared its head and by 1972 they were spraying again, with DDT. Which worked to a point.

Sri Lanka went back to the spray guns, reducing malaria once more to 150,000 cases in 1972; but there the attack stalled. Anopheles culicifacies, completely susceptible to DDT when the spray stopped in 1964, was now found resistant presumably because of the use of DDT for crop protection in the interim. Within a couple of years, so many culicifacies survived that despite the spraying malaria spread in 1975 to more than 400,000 people.

- Gordon Harrison - Mosquitoes, Malaria and Man

DDT resistance? Say it isn't so.

Bug Girl - an entomologist blogger on Carson and DDT
http://membracid.wordpress.com/2007/06/07/ddt-junk-science-malaria-and-the-attack-on-rachel-carson/
http://membracid.wordpress.com/2007/06/13/ddt-malaria-insecticide-resistance/

“The truth is that DDT is neither superhero nor supervillain — it’s just a tool. And if entomologists have learned anything in the last half-century of dealing with the million-plus species of insects in the world, it’s that there is no such thing as an all-purpose weapon when it comes to pest management. DDT may be useful in controlling malaria in some places in Africa, but it’s essential to determine whether target populations are resistant; if they are, then no amount of DDT will be effective….

Overselling a chemical’s capacity to solve a problem can do irretrievable harm not only by raising false hopes but by delaying the use of more effective long-term methods. So let’s drop the hyperbole and overblown rhetoric — it’s not what Africa needs. What’s needed is a recognition of the problem’s complexity and a willingness to use every available weapon to fight disease in an informed and rational way.”

a quote from May Berenbaum which bug girl uses to wrap it up.

[Iain]

His snake oil is bogus.

My snake oil is the real deal.

Long live snake oil.

Yeah, that's exactly what is going on. There's a direct comparision between being pro-medicine and being anti-nonsense Steven Milloy lobbyist FUD. Actually, there isn't.

[MicroBalrog]

Orac has plenty to say about this too.

Orac is an evil, evil bastard in his own right.

[Iain]

Orac is an evil, evil bastard in his own right.

He is? I've perhaps wasted too much of my life reading him, and snickering at the snark.

[MicroBalrog]

He seems to think the solution to the woo is to ban the hell out of it, and that all even slightly unconventional measures (like, say, resveratrol or HGH) are equally evil, disturbing, and should be banned/destroyed.

[Iain]

He seems to think the solution to the woo is to ban the hell out of it, and that all even slightly unconventional measures (like, say, resveratrol or HGH) are equally evil, disturbing, and should be banned/destroyed.

Although I can't cite specific examples, from my general recollection that's fairly valid as a criticism of him. There's no doubt he knows his stuff, but there's nothing libertarian about him. With him and Goldacre it's fairly easy to extract the criticisms of woo from their solutions. Goldacre isn't so bad, his approach foiling to one of McKeith's claims to expertise, a membership of a society, was to get a membership of the same society in the name of his dead cat.

[Headless Thompson Gunner]

It amazes me that you managed to turn this into a debate on the media and their evil, evil anti-religious attitudes.

It isn't amazing at all if you understand the way the American mainstream media operates.

[MicroBalrog]

It isn't amazing at all if you understand the way the American mainstream media operates.

This is APS. It is already common knowledge for every single poster here that the media is corrupt and evil. Now, the nature of their evil can be a subject of discussion.

[Hawkmoon]

Either parents are responsible for decisions regarding their kids ... or they're not. The problem is, the .gov wants to have it both ways. So do the figgin' doctors.

There is documented evidence of people defeating cancer without conventional medicine, through prayer, meditation, faith ... and sometimes diet. There are also (obviously) innumerable people who have undergone conventional cancer therapy and died despite the best efforts of big medicine. Thus, it cannot be argued that alternative methods don't work, and it cannot be argued that conventional methods will work. All you're left with is a gamble ... either way. So what's at stake is who gets to roll the dice.

My view is that it should be left to the parents. ESPECIALLY when it's a case like this one, where the kid doesn't WANT the chemo anyway. Somebody mentioned in the first page of this thread that there's a "conflict of interest" because parents have to pay for expensive treatments. I view it the other way. I assume that parents make their decisions out of conscience, and choose what they believe is in the best interest of the child. If their religion or their philosophy doesn't accept conventional medicine ... they should not be forced to be subjected to it.

And, more importantly, if the doctors and the judge(s) overrule the parents and require the treatment ... then the damned doctors and judge(s) should just step up to the plate and pay for it, too.

[makattak]

Iain,

What you post may be true however:

With her book Silent Spring, Rachel Carson was one of the first people to suggest that DDT was creating widespread problems in the environment. Although there may have been problems with the widespread use of DDT in the environment and some expression of concern was warranted, many of Carson’s claims were highly suspect and her extreme rhetoric led to an overreaction in the other direction—policies to curb DDT use even where it was most needed for public health purposes.

At the time, a reviewer of Silent Spring in Science magazine (September 28, 1962, p. 1043) praised Carson for raising concerns about potential dangers associated with pesticide misuse, but the author expressed serious dismay with Carson’s extreme approach. The reviewer noted: “Just as it is important for us to be reminded of the dangers inherent in the use of new pesticides, so must our people be made aware the tremendous values to human welfare conferred by the new pesticides. No attempt is made by the author to portray the many positive benefits that society derives from the use of pesticides. No estimates are made of the countless lives that have been saved because of the destruction of insect vectors of disease.”

Because of the anti-DDT and anti-chemical hysteria engendered by the ideas in Silent Spring, DDT was eventually removed from the market under the Nixon Administration. Yet DDT was banned despite findings of an EPA panel that it was not a public health threat. Barron’s magazine (November 10, 1975, p. 3) reported on the topic in 1975: “In banning DDT, for farm uses, then-EPA director Ruckelshaus over-ruled the federal hearings examiner Edmund Sweeney. After seven months of hearings, during which 125 witnesses were called and 9,000 pages of testimony were submitted, Sweeney declared that the evidence indicated that DDT wasn’t a cancer hazard. He added that on balance, its usage did not create an unreasonable risk with its benefits…‘In my opinion,’ he said, ‘the evidence in this proceeding supports the conclusion that there is a present need for the essential uses of DDT.’” Similarly, Barron’s reported, the year before the ban, the National Communicable Disease Center of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare noted: “The safety record of for the use of DDT…is nothing short of phenomenal.”

The continued flow of misinformation about the public health impacts of DDT advanced by environmental activists along with the U.S. ban prompted public officials in other nations to stop using it and to even ban it in some places. In good measure, because of reduced use of DDT, malaria rates skyrocketed by the 1990s after having reached historic lows in the 1960s while DDT was in use. Roger Bate and Richard Tren note, for example, in Sri Lanka, which stopped using DDT in 1964, cases rose from a low of 17 to about half a million by 1969. Donald R. Roberts, MD, of the U.S. Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences and his colleagues note: “Although many factors contribute to increasing malaria, the strongest correlation is with decreasing number of houses sprayed with DDT.” A study of malaria in Latin America demonstrates a causal link between DDT spraying and malaria rates.

This study also shows that when global efforts to control malaria began to reduce emphasis on vector control (i.e., DDT), the malaria problem grew. The authors reported that “countries that discontinued their house-spray programs reported large increases in malaria rates. Countries that reported low or reduced HSRs also reported increased malaria. Only Ecuador reported increased use of DDT and greatly reduced malaria rates.”

Despite the devastating toll associated with reduced use of DDT, many government agencies and environmental activists have been reluctant to change their views. Even where DDT is allowed, government aid agencies—including some at the U.S. Agency for International Development—have denied funding to nations if they chose to use DDT. In 1990s, the United Nations Environment Program began work on the Convention of Persistent Organic Pollutants (known as the POPs Convention), which set in place bans on 12 chemicals, including DDT. However, during negotiations on this treaty, public health officials finally spoke out on the DDT issue, urging the governments to at least allow limited DDT use for malaria control. To that end, they signed an open letter urging POPs Treaty negotiators to include a public health exemption to the DDT ban. As a result, the final treaty allows for a temporary, limited exemption for DDT use for malaria control. But even with its limited, temporary exemption, the treaty regulations governing use make access more expensive.

From: http://rachelwaswrong.org/malaria-legacy/

Another factor to note:

One cannot blame Rachel Carson for things done in her name after her death. But she was undoubtedly wrong about DDT, and about a host of other issues. She was known to be wrong already in 1972, ten years after Silent Spring was first published, as the back cover of the 1972 Penguin Books version acknowledges. But in that year DDT was de-listed (and effectively banned) by the US Environmental Protection Agency, against the advice of the EPA’s own DDT hearing examiner, Judge Edmund Sweeney.

Manufacturing ceased in the US, and DDT became an icon of evil for the environmental movement. The eventual result was that good quality DDT became hard to acquire by malarial countries that had relied on it for disease control. In the ensuing years, aid agencies also discouraged it and all other insecticides for public health use. The consequence for hundreds of millions of poor people was painful, debilitating infection from malaria and other diseases. For tens of millions, it was permanent brain damage or death.

Carson is not to blame for environmental zealotry after she died in 1964. However, she epitomizes the movement itself – long on emotion, providing a few occasional kernels of truth, and rife with wild and usually unscientific manipulation of data.

From:  Roger Bate, Africa Fighting Malaria (http://www.eco-imperialism.com/content/article.php3?id=217)

Seems to me, her book was long on emotion and short on science and may have caused millions of unnecessary deaths because countries like the United States were no longer producing DDT. Seems the quintessential definition of a "snake oil salesman" to me.

[Iain]

What I post may be true however you completely and utterly reject it based on something you read on an attack site and a quote from a lobbyist working for an astroturf organisation enabling you to continue an outrageous slander.

Suggest you re-read what was posted.

[MicroBalrog]

d a quote from a lobbyist working for an astroturf organisation

That there is an ad hominem if I ever saw one.

[Mabs2]

...is it bad to say I don't know the proper answer to this?

It's impossible to have an answer to this question that will fit every situation.
Case by case basis.

[makattak]

What I post may be true however you completely and utterly reject it based on something you read on an attack site and a quote from a lobbyist working for an astroturf organisation enabling you to continue an outrageous slander.

Suggest you re-read what was posted.

And I suggest you actually read what was posted.

Your claim is that the DDT bans had no effect on the usage of DDT across the world.

Your next claim is that DDT wouldn't have worked on resistant vectors.

My post claims a correlation between decreased DDT use and increased malaria. Nothing in your post refutes that, it simply claims that DDT is but one tool.

I chose not to argue that because I saw no reason to claim DDT was the one and only solution to malaria. I however, wondered how your data compared to the statistics in the two articles.

I granted your information as I have already read it. DDT isn't a magic bullet. It is another tool in the fight.

It seems strange, though, that a book with exaggerations and faulty science is defended so vehemently.

Also, since you have no desire to consider anything coming from an opposing point of view, I find it odd that you want me to consider your articles.

[roo_ster]

Also, since you have no desire to consider anything coming from an opposing point of view, I find it odd that you want me to consider your articles.

That is understandable, given that I don't consider passages in the Koran that contradict the Bible to have validity.

[Balog]

And to be fair Iain has had this conversation before.

[makattak]

And to be fair Iain has had this conversation before.

As I stated, I was unaware of that and did not intend to bring it up a debate already hashed out.

My point that her book is not but snake oil is uncontested, I note.