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Health Minister Jim Muhwezi of Uganda points out that as many as 2 million to 3 million people may die because of DDT. But not because DDT is bad, but because Americans’ fear of it has deprived much of the world of the DDT that could have saved them.

How did this happen? Well, 50 years ago, Americans sprayed tons of DDT everywhere. Farmers used it to repel bugs, and health officials used it to fight mosquitoes that carry malaria. Nobody worried much about chemicals then.

Today DDT is rarely used. America’s demonization of it caused others to shun it. The U.S. government does spend your tax dollars fighting malaria in Africa, but it will not spend a penny on DDT.

The result has been a huge resurgence of malaria. More than 50 people million have died, mostly children.

“If it’s DDT, it must be awful. And that’s fine if you’re a rich, white environmentalist,” says Amir Attaran, a scientist leading a campaign urging the use of DDT to fight malaria. “It’s not so fine if you’re a poor black kid who’s about to lose his life to malaria.”
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One million to three million people dead annually, 200 million to 300 chronically ill from malaria, because governments won’t allow the use of the pesticide DDT to kill mosquitoes that carry the disease.
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Although there was some questionable evidence that DDT, in large quantities, caused thinning of the shells of the eggs of some bird species (this is still being debated in the scientific community), there was not then — nor now — one scintilla of scientific proof that DDT had caused a single human death or a single human cancer.
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But DDT became a cause celèbre for environmental organizations, and their relentless campaigns have been a major influence in it being banned in the U.S. and many other countries.

They could afford to be holier-than-thou; malaria had been eliminated in the U.S. prior to DDT being outlawed. But for much of the rest of the world — especially Third World nations — the loss of DDT saw the number of malaria cases begin skyrocketing. And deaths.
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