Armed Polite Society
Main Forums => The Roundtable => Topic started by: Manedwolf on February 05, 2009, 11:12:34 AM
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Jobs just shows off shiny things. Gates hurts people with Vista, and then sends mosquitoes at them. :lol:
Bill Gates Unleashes Swarm of Mosquitoes on Crowd
Thursday , February 05, 2009
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Microsoft founder turned philanthropist Bill Gates released a glass full of mosquitoes at an elite technology conference to make a point about the deadly disease malaria.
"Malaria is spread by mosquitoes," Gates said while opening a jar onstage at the Technology, Entertainment, Design Conference — a gathering known to attract technology kings, politicians, and Hollywood stars.
"I brought some. Here I'll let them roam around. There is no reason only poor people should be infected."
First reported on social networking site Twitter, Facebook's Senior Platform Manager Dave Morin blogged, "Bill Gates just released mosquitos into the audience at TED."
Gates then waited a minute or so before assuring the audience the freed insects were malaria-free.
The unusual presentation on malaria prevention was confirmed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation's media office. A spokesman said the insects released were not carrying malaria.
Gates retired as head of Microsoft last year to focus more on his foundation. One of its key projects is ending malaria and it has spent millions on fighting the disease.
The philanthropist has been pushing to reduce malaria deaths through the nonprofit. In September, Gates announced that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation would provide $168.7 million to the PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative to help develop a vaccine for the deadly disease.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,488348,00.html (http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,488348,00.html)
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I can vouch for the fact that the mosquitos Gates released are malaria free.
The jar with the yellow fever mosquitos is the one missing from the lab. :D
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I would have picked something else for my 1000th thread.
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The blogs are already full of jokes about Gates just releasing more bugs, and the founder of eBay posted, as he fled, "That's it, I'm not sitting up front anymore."
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(https://armedpolitesociety.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.regjeringen.no%2Fpages%2F2039888%2FHFIG%2Ffig2-2.jpg&hash=2a0e65f500c15b8e2828af8c642dbe2e73123489)
DDT is why we have no US malaria anymore
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And the elimination of DDT is why we have bedbugs once again!
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So how long before Gates goes into isolation and stops cutting his hair and fingernails?
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Wanna bet he used plenty of insect repellent beforehand? :lol:
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And the elimination of DDT is why we have bedbugs once again!
And millions of Africans have died...
I'm not trying to create moral equivalency of inten through sheer body count, but it's worth noting that "Silent Spring" has killed more people than "Mein Kampf" ever did...
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And millions of Africans have died...
I'm not trying to create moral equivalency of inten through sheer body count, but it's worth noting that "Silent Spring" has killed more people than "Mein Kampf" ever did...
Dude, I'm sure you know better than that.
DDT propaganda is not a useful source of information. Especially Milloy's nonsense. And this is another 'try to beat environmentalists with a stick' topic that we have been through before.
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Are you claiming DDT isn't an effectove way to combat malaria, or are you claiming Silent Spring wasn't laughable propaganda? Both are fairly absurd.
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Are you claiming DDT isn't an effectove way to combat malaria, or are you claiming Silent Spring wasn't laughable propaganda? Both are fairly absurd.
DDT is a perfectly effective way of dealing with malaria, and it is still used for controlling malaria. The problem with DDT was always large scale agricultural spraying and the (documented) deleterious effects on wildlife.
Never read Silent Spring, but the so-called ban on DDT that has killed millions, supposedly as a result of Carson's book, is nonsense. DDT is still used for homes in Africa - where it is still effective, because pesticides are a selection factor, and resistance has developed.
On the subject of resistance - http://pct.texterity.com/pct/200707/?pg=50 - that casts significant doubt on the bedbug idea. Also - are there no other pesticides available? Did banning DDT (in the US only) effectively ban all other means of bedbug control? Or is that claim just hyperbole?
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Dude, I'm sure you know better than that.
DDT propaganda is not a useful source of information. Especially Milloy's nonsense. And this is another 'try to beat environmentalists with a stick' topic that we have been through before.
I'm not saying there weren't problems with DDT, if anything it's buildup in the ecosystem was due to how cheap and safe (for people) it generally was. But the anti-DDT propaganda is just as bad. A rational response to educate on it's use, and how little DDT was actually needed to reduce disease carrying mosquito populations would have been a great cake-n-eat it too solution.
Instead we did get a blanket ban for awhile, newer organophosphate pesticides the third world can't afford, which are more toxic, and more carcinogenic. Which is also convenient for the chemical industry because just like pharma, there's no profit in cheap generic compounds with expired patents. (Google Hydrogene and FDA sometime)
How convenient. I also seem to recall a similar pattern with CFC's and the ozone hole suddenly nobody seems to be concerned with in lieu of global warming. (MMGW Fervor which is reaching it's peak just as we might be in the midst of a long-term solar minimum, but you can't push leftisim, carbon caps, or anti-capitalist rhetoric on the sun...)
Or how it's clear Heart Disease, Diabetes, and cancer are killing way more Americans than AIDS does... And even the African numbers are beginning to blunt...
People don't have to be organic chemists, climatologists, oncologists, or epidemiologists to detect the larger pattern of waves of quasi politico-scieintific hysteria that always seem to benifit one particular ideological outlook.
Pro DDT propaganda kills birds. Anti DDT proaganda kills babies. Sorry, it just is.
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DDT is still used. For residual spraying where it is still effective.
The ban was US only and because of massive agricultural use. Doesn't just kill birds, large scale use was damaging water life.
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Other bans followed world-wide:
In the 1970s and 1980s, agricultural use of DDT was banned in most developed countries. DDT was first banned in Hungary in 1968, then in Norway and Sweden in 1970 and the US in 1972, but was not banned in the United Kingdom until 1984. The use of DDT in vector control has not been banned, but it has been largely replaced by less persistent alternative insecticides.
The Stockholm Convention, which entered into force in 2004, outlawed several persistent organic pollutants, and restricted the use of DDT to vector control. The Convention was signed by 98 countries and is endorsed by most environmental groups.
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Also, how many African countries had local plants making DDT, or did they buy it in the first world where it was getting banned left and right?
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Other bans followed world-wide:
None of those countries are poor or have malaria issues. And again, it says explicitly 'agricultural use'. That came from wiki. If you note, wiki also says that DDT is still permitted for use in the US under certain circumstances, such as control of bubonic plague vectors.
Of the 98 - none of those are prohibited from using DDT as vector control.
It has always been about large scale agricultural spraying.
DDT is also still being manufactured in the US, for export, for residual spraying use.
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.
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Hoping that Agent Orange makes a comeback too.
Agent Orange wasn't insanely unhealthy for people. Not good stuff, but nothing compared to the polychlorinated dibenzodioxins (aka, dioxin) with which Agent Orange was contaminated. Dioxin was a by-product contaminate that was left in the end product from the production of dichlorophenoxyacetic acid and trichlorophenoxyacetic acid.
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"I brought some. Here I'll let them roam around. There is no reason only poor people should be infected."
I was thinking about tackling the wrong-ism of that. I'm not sure I want to do that by myself. Shall we make it a group effort?
I'll start: If it's true that only the poor are infected, then there must be a reason only poor people should be infected.
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I was thinking about tackling the wrong-ism of that. I'm not sure I want to do that by myself. Shall we make it a group effort?
I'll start: If it's true that only the poor are infected, then there must be a reason only poor people should be infected.
Yeah, Bill has stolen quite a few rhetorical bases, there.
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You know, BGates made a valid point by this.
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What a gross, immature thing to do.
How much did he pay for them, did he hire an entomologist to grow them or did an
employee go collect them? how did he certify they had no communicable diseases?
Are there people who are allergic to mosquito's?
If it happened to me I would find a way to retaliate with bed bugs
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I suspect they thought about the stunt fairly thoroughly. Not all mosquito species feed on blood, and in those species that do, only the females do (I believe I am correct in saying, could be wrong)
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Some people are horribly allergic to mosquito bites. Also, "fire in a crowded theater".
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You know, BGates made a valid point by this.
Yes, if by "valid point" you mean "megalomaniac demonstrating his personality defects in public."
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Almost started a new thread - found an interesting blog.
http://membracid.wordpress.com/2009/02/06/bill-gates-malaria-and-mosquitoes/
Sadly, it only takes a few comments on the TED page until the “bring back DDT” drivel appears. Sigh.
If you actually watch the complete talk, you see that Malaria was NEVER eradicated in the equatorial areas, with or without DDT. As I have said many, many times, malaria is a complicated problem, and no single chemical will be the solution.
http://membracid.wordpress.com/2007/06/13/ddt-malaria-insecticide-resistance/
Cross resistance
This isn’t a mechanism of resistance, per se, but an unfortunate consequence. Sure, we can nuke mosquitoes with DDT. But we risk losing our chance to control insects with other pesticides if we overdo it with DDT.
In a recent study (3), malarial mosquitoes selected for DDT resistance also developed very high levels of cross-resistance to other pesticides–including malathion, permethrin, and bendiocarb. (Malathion is commonly sprayed in the US for mosquitoes.)
Unfortunately, the kdr trait confers cross-resistance to both the rapid paralytic and lethal actions of all known pyrethroids, as well as the pyrethrins and DDT(2). Most alarming, in field tests where the kdr resistance to DDT is present, the ability of pyrethroid-impregnated bed nets to prevent biting at night was compromised (”major loss of efficacy”).
http://membracid.wordpress.com/2009/02/05/new-research-on-bedbug-insecticide-resistance/ -
The conclusion of the paper:
“This evidence suggests that the two mutations are likely the major resistance-causing mutations in the deltamethrin-resistant NY-BB through a knockdown-type nerve insensitivity mechanism.”
AND:
“Because DDT has been used indiscriminately to control many insect pest species including bed bug, the widespread and frequent use of DDT is likely to have predisposed bed bug populations to pyrethroid resistance through the neuronal insensitivity mechanism.“
So, what does this new information tell us?
- DDT will be utterly useless against bed bugs, so people should stop asking for it.
- We’re going to need a lot more research on ways to kill bedbugs other than just poisoning them with the usual pesticide suspects.
- In cities where there are active bed bug populations, insecticide choice for resistance management will be very important in urban entomology.
- Bedbugs are not going to go away, and you should probably be getting a little paranoid.
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- Bedbugs are not going to go away, and you should probably be getting a little paranoid.
Why not?
Thousands of species go extinct every year, why can't bedbugs?
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Some people are horribly allergic to mosquito bites. Also, "fire in a crowded theater".
Sounds like a case of justifiable use of lethal force, to me..... =D
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Dude, I'm sure you know better than that.
DDT propaganda is not a useful source of information. Especially Milloy's nonsense. And this is another 'try to beat environmentalists with a stick' topic that we have been through before.
What he posted is stone cold fact - even Rucklehous, the guy that banned it here ni the US, admitted it was pure politics, no science....
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Why not?
Thousands of species go extinct every year, why can't bedbugs?
bed bugs are just horrible, I stayed in a hotel once that had them, the only way to not get bitten was to use a fogger or 2 or 3 every other day and to spray the bed every night.
When I moved out, everything got washed twice
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heres one of the last projects I created for Natty Geo:
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2007/07/malaria/malaria-video-interactive
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What he posted is stone cold fact - even Rucklehous, the guy that banned it here ni the US, admitted it was pure politics, no science....
What was 'stone cold fact' - the claim that DDT was banned and that this has led to the deaths of millions? That was the claim I was responding to, and I think I've provided enough to at least call that claim into question.
I'll state it again - DDT is not banned, is still used as Harold's presentation above shows.
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What was 'stone cold fact' - the claim that DDT was banned and that this has led to the deaths of millions? That was the claim I was responding to, and I think I've provided enough to at least call that claim into question.
I'll state it again - DDT is not banned, is still used as Harold's presentation above shows.
It is banned in the US.
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It is banned in the US.
There are exceptions to that ban, and ban was enacted to deal with the major impacts large scale DDT use was having. If you still had a malaria problem and its use was banned for indoor spraying, then you'd have a point re: malaria. That's not relevant to the deaths of millions of Africans.
Or apparently the bed bug scourge either.
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Actually, would'nt large-scale spraying have a powerful impact on mosquito habitat?
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Actually, would'nt large-scale spraying have a powerful impact on mosquito habitat?
Only where mosquitoes are still susceptible. What Carson seems to have been warning against really was the unknown impacts of mass pesticide use, DDT being the notable pesticide at the time. She pointed out known impacts such as large scale damage to water life, but also strange cases where certain bugs were more susceptible and died in greater numbers than their prey, meaning that although their prey took a significant hit they ultimately returned in larger numbers. An unknown effect.
Also, as noted above there is the concept of cross resistance. Large scale use of DDT has caused mosquitoes to become resistant to other pesticides too. India has apparently largely abandoned DDT use as malaria vector control because it has ceased to be effective. People try and use Sri Lanka as an example of the DDT 'ban':
For example, in Sri Lanka, the program reduced cases from about 3 million per year before spraying to just 29 in 1964. Thereafter the program was halted to save money, and malaria rebounded to 600,000 cases in 1968 and the first quarter of 1969. The country resumed DDT spraying, but it was largely ineffective because mosquitoes had acquired resistance to the chemical in the interim, presumably because of its continued use in agriculture. The program was forced to switch to malathion, which though more expensive, proved effective.[17]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDT (a wiki link, but it has a reference there to a book I have seen referred to before on the Sri Lanka case)
The problem seems to be twofold - one is that DDT is claimed to be a panacea when scientists say that it is not, even its use for indoor spraying is questioned over its effectiveness. Also that Carson is blamed as the originator of the modern enviromentalist movement, and so attacks upon her (and thus DDT 'bans') are often shrill and unscientific (see the claims that she is worse than Hitler).