Steven Milloy's Malaria Clock



DDT Backlash Continues

Ever since the World Health Organization reve...sk in later life...

As of June 2007, Milloy's clock stands at more than 94 million dead, 90% of whom are said to have been expectant mothers and children under five years of age. "Infanticide on this scale appears without parallel in human history," writes Milloy. "This is not ecology. This is not conservation. This is genocide."

Responding to an opinion column relying on Milloy's arguments, parasitologists Alan Lymbery and Andrew Thompson wrote, in 2004:

The use of DDT...is not banned for public health use in most areas of the world where malaria is endemic. Indeed, DDT was recently exempted from a proposed worldwide ban on organophosphate [sic] chemicals. One of the important factors in declining use of DDT was decreasing effectiveness and greater costs because of the development of resistance in mosquitoes. Resistance was largely caused by the indiscriminate, widespread use of DDT to control agricultural pests in the tropics. To blame a reduction in DDT usage for the death of 10-30 million people from malaria is not just simple-minded, it is demonstrably wrong.