U.S. Should Support Efforts To Include DDT in African Malaria Control Strategies, Opinion Piece Says

The U.S. should support efforts to include the pesticide DDT in malaria control strategies in Africa because fears concerning the pesticide are "irrational" and "utterly detached from reality," Steven Milloy, an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute, writes in a FoxNews.com opinion piece. DDT has "never been credibly linked with cancer or non-cancer health effects in humans" and the pesticide has not had a negative effect on some animal populations, Milloy writes. He adds that DDT was banned in the U.S. and limited in many African countries "because of politics, not science." Other malaria prevention and treatment technologies, such as insecticide-treated nets and some malaria drugs, are not "very effective," and there is "little prospect" of developing a safe and effective vaccine in the next 10 years, Milloy says. Therefore, Congress should pass legislation reforming USAID policy to allow insecticides like DDT to be "added to the arsenal for fighting malaria," Milloy writes. He concludes that the $1.2 million President Bush has pledged to fight malaria in Africa over the next five years should not be "wast[ed] ... on ineffective bed nets and anti-malaria drugs," but should be used to finance malaria control strategies that include the use of DDT (Milloy, FoxNews.com, 10/27).