Nobody in his hut, including his seven children, sleeps under a net at night. Instead, Mr. Ndefi has taken his family’s supply of anti-malaria nets and sewn them together into a gigantic sieve that he uses to drag the bottom of the swamp ponds, sweeping up all sorts of life: baby catfish, banded tilapia, tiny mouthbrooders, orange fish eggs, water bugs and the occasional green frog....
[T]he unsparing mesh, with holes smaller than mosquitoes, traps much more life than traditional fishing nets do. Scientists say that could imperil already stressed fish populations, a critical food source for millions of the world’s poorest people.
January 24, 2015
For the annals of unintended consequences.
Mosquito nets — "widely considered a magic bullet against malaria" — used to fish:
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21 comments:
The fruits of poverty. If environmentalists wanted to do something for the environment they would try to make it so people had the luxury of taking care of the environment rather than having to scrape the bottoms of rivers to survive.
Yeah, diversion to fishing was a problem with bed nets pointed out years ago by advocates of residential DDT. Not that anyone paid any attention to them.
I'm sure he wouldn't have chosen such a net to catch fish with, but it's what he had. I have become a big fan of coming alongside people and asking what they need, rather than telling them what they lack. I wonder what he would have chosen to spend $50 on. Better nets?
Whereas DDT make environmentalists heads explode.
The fruits of science gossip. Like the gossip that led to the cancellation of DDT. Because #blacklives don't matter as much as much as St. Gaia.
Pretty good idea given the circumstances.
except a weak solution of DDT did more good than nets. Too bad, like so many narratives of leftist activists, Silent Spring wasn't as accurate as purported
Let them eat Rachel Carson.
DDT is the magic bullet for malaria.
Rachel carson is probably responsible for more deaths than Hitler.
Gahrie said...
Rachel carson is probably responsible for more deaths than Hitler.
You fucking rwnjs and your "results," do you not know that it's doing the right thing that really matters?
You can imagine how they put the free condoms to use.
The answer is DDT
Its Bush's fault
@ Michael K
DDT made wild bird egg shells so brittle they exploded and their populations nosedived.
DDT & Bird Populationsj
KKK Kraaska
Ah, we invoke Paul Erlich and Rachel Carson!! One way to stop that pesky population bomb is to kill all the little people with Malaria.
There are many reasons why the malaria eradication campaign failed, but a major contributory factor was the advent of DDT
resistance in the malaria vectors
"The boy is Ignorance, and the girl, Want. Fear the girl, but fear the boy, more." C. Dickens, 'A Christmas Carol"
Bring back DDT.
Kraska - RC's research was somewhat sloppy and her conclusions largely unsupported. See the following for a start.
http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/articles/summ02/Carson.html
https://skepteco.wordpress.com/2014/04/26/rachel-carson-ddt-and-the-greens/
Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he will put additional stress on a fragile ecosystem.
1) Africa is made up of many sovereign countries with differing policies on insecticides.
2) In the specific country discussed, Zambia, DDT has been used since 2000
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3167838/
It also is used in several other countries in the region, including South Africa.
WHO endorsed DDT for malaria prevention in 2006. The Stockholm Convention, a United Nations treaty which sought to eliminate use of pesticides including DDT, made an exception specifically for controlling malaria. The same was true in the US in the 1972 DDT ban -- an exemption for public health.
3) Mosquitoes have been developing resistance to DDT since at least 1960
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2555352/
4) To hell with the birds -- DDT isn't great for humans. DDT in the US was used mostly outdoors, so relatively little got accumulated in human bodies. In contrast, in Zambia it is sprayed directly on indoor walls and nets. For those invoking Ehrlich, note that men in DDT-sprayed homes have low semen volume and sperm counts. Women's gametes aren't affected, but fatty tissues and thus breast milk are.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2737010/
Given the development of pesticide alternatives to DDT, albeit ones with their own human health concerns, I'm puzzled as to why conservatives are fixated on DDT as THE magic bullet against malaria. Is there some way in which it is so much better than pyrethroids? Or is it just a lot easier to spell?
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