[ExI] bees again

Sat Mar 19 23:55:24 UTC 2016

On Thu, Mar 17, 2016  William Flynn Wallace <foozler83 at gmail.com> wrote:

> 
> Just got a Sierra Club letter advising that there is a bill in Congress to
> stop using neonicotinoids (supplied by Bayer - coating of soy and corn
> seeds) which kill bees.
>

The Sierra Club
's advice on what substances to ban has not been very good, they
pushed hard to ban DDT but they ignored the

consequences.

In the 1940s in Sri Lanka they had 2.8 million cases of malaria a year,
then they stared to use DDT to kill mosquitoes and by 1965 there were only
17 cases, but then DDT was banned and just 5 years later there were 500,000
cases. In 1953 in India 800,000 people die
d
from malaria, that same year they started to use DDT and by

1966 NOBODY died from malaria in India. In 1955
t
he World Health Organization

concluded

that the complete elimination of malaria
by using DDT 
was feasible
,
but then DDT was banned and in
1
976 they gave up on
the idea of 
eradicating malaria

. Today malaria kills 880,000 people

, mostly children, EACH YEAR.

I like birds and I'm sorry DDT makes the shell on their eggs thin, but I
like kids too.

No doubt some will say
that by now there must be a
 better way to get rid of mosquitoes than DDT and it's true there
is
, genetic drive implemented
with
 CRISPR
 technology, but I expect even more ferocious opposition of CRISPR than
DDT from environmental groups drumming up fears of 50 foot long mosquitoes
like something from a 1950s monster movie. And so next year yet another
880,000 people will die, but bird eggs will have thick shells and I must
admit there is not a single
50 foot long mosquito
 in sight.

 John K Clark
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