Hysterical and Irrational Opposition to Science

When I was growing up on the farm in 1960, the average farmer could feed an average of 26 people. Thanks to the miracle of scientific advances, today the average farmer can feed 155 people—a six-fold increase in only one generation using less land, less energy, less water and fewer emissions. Many other proud achievements in technology have eased the hunger pains of countless millions of people in nations around the globe.

Yet there are those who seek to ban the use of pesticides, fertilizers, and genetic engineering—and return to the “good old days” when all produce was organic, and subsistence farming practices were the norm throughout most of the world.

Over 50 years ago, those who wanted to ban pesticides ignored the fact that DDT saved over 5 million lives and prevented serious illnesses for over a 100 million more. In India, it cut the malarial death rate from about 1 million annually to less than 2,000.

Then, under pressure from environmentalists, it was banned in 1972 for political reasons by William Ruckelshaus, the administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), who reportedly did not even attend any of the many hearings during which DDT was determined to be safe. The months of hearings and evidence was detailed in a report by Roger Bate titled “The Rise, Fall, Rise and Imminent Fall of DDT”. (American Enterprise Institute Short Publication, no 14, November 2007).

Despite months of hearings that examined the scientific evidence in detail and determined DDT to be safe, environmentalists were responsible for getting DDT restricted. Consequently, millions of people have suffered and died, most of them young children – many still do. The World Health Organization (WHO) reports that …

“Each year, more than 500 million people suffer from acute malaria, resulting in more than 1 million deaths. At least 86 percent of these deaths are in sub-Saharan Africa. Globally an estimated 3,000 children and infants die from malaria every day and 10,000 pregnant women die from malaria in Africa every year. Malaria disproportionately affects poor people, with almost 60 percent of malaria cases occurring among the poorest 20 percent of the world’s population.”?https://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2006/pr50/en/

The WHO now approves the indoor use of DDT for controlling malaria. Perhaps science will win in the end; however, hysterical and irrational opposition from the environmentalists remains intense, and we all suffer as a result.

The story of DDT is a perfect example of how science can save lives when?allowed to do so.?