A strange controversy

I follow some of the discussion of the DDT ban myth, often carried out on Deltoid.[1] The controversy is interesting for the lack of apparent motive for those who spread the myth. Nobody makes or stands to make huge profits manufacturing or using DDT; those who spread the DDT ban myth are not shills for some DDT industry in the way the global warming denial crowd are shills for the energy industry. The best theory I've encountered is that this is an effort to discredit the environmental movement in general, encouraged by factions threatened by environmentalism in other ways (like the energy industry, of course).

I mention this now because Lambert's recent attack on a spreader of the DDT ban myth mentions one example of stupidity so breathtaking I can't help but share it with others. Apparently, this J F Beck fellow that Lambert is criticizing believes that it isn't abusive to call someone a "toady." He even defends this claim when challenged on it, saying on one occasion that "toady" means "sycophant" (which isn't abusive?) and later just sticking to his guns and insisting it isn't abusive without explanation. Even some of his supporters seem confused by his determination on this point.

[1] For those who are unfamiliar, here's the short version. The myth is that some sort of global DDT ban has been responsible for millions of deaths due to malaria caused by mosquitoes which could have been killed by DDT. In fact, there has never been a global ban on DDT use. Anti-malaria policy is a complicated area in which mistakes have certainly been made, but it is well established that mosquitoes can develop DDT resistance. Such anti-DDT efforts as there have been have primarily sought to ban its use in agriculture, and efforts to prevent such use probably helped make use of DDT against malaria more successful by slowing the development of DDT resistance in the mosquitoes. Even if the efforts to cut down on DDT use did reduce its use for anti-malarial purposes as well (a point which is hotly debated; read Lambert's blog for lots of discussion and links), the resistance issue makes it quite unclear whether using DDT more aggressively would have saved any more people at all, or whether instead any benefits would have been offset by hastening the development of DDT resistance in the mosquitoes.

Comments

[Ed Darrell]

I think it's more accurate to talk about Beck's attack on Lambert. Lambert is defending himself. He's defending well, too, as you note.

[Ed Darrell]

I think it's more accurate to talk about Beck's attack on Lambert. Lambert is defending himself. He's defending well, too, as you note.

[Aaron Boyden]

Good point, I could have phrased that better.

[bellatrys.livejournal.com]

I realize this is an older post, but I just chanced across your blog via Echidne's and I would like to mention that there *is* a fiscal component to the pro-indiscriminate-DDT-usage movement, in addition to the rhetorical function it serves of providing a weapon of "Liberal Hypocrisy Towards The Third World" and "Humanity Hating Ecologists" - this is in fact the first thing that ever clued me into the existence of "astroturf" long before I had any means of doing anything about it, when I was still a nearly-completely-owned theocon youth.

See, although my family were conservative "prolife" Catholics, they were also converts and very much into the arts and sciences. (Yes, such folks exist! Nowadays they tend to call themselves "Crunchy Cons" but this was before then.) So we had the Geographic and Smithsonian around the house along with The Wanderer and the National Catholic Register, and Silent Spring, too - and every week we watched PBS nature documentaries - so I grew up knowing all about how DDT harmed songbirds and nearly wiped out the peregrine falcons and the efforts to bring them back, and being pro-organic-farming and against pollution, and never knew these were heresies within the greater movement until I came across an early pro-DDT rant in the Register which made the outrageous claim that there was no evidence at all that DDT harmed birds, as well as that familiar saw about how if liberals *really* cared about poor people in other countries they wouldn't be opposed to spraying it around.

And I wondered why anyone would claim something so obviously counterfactual, and began to wonder what *else* might be erroneous in our movement's own media...the beginning of a long journey away from trusting the authorities I was raised to accept unquestioningly started *there*.

But it wasn't until I hit the infamous "Environmentalists Killed The Space Shuttle" essay and discovered WND and began digging into who was *paying* for this agitprop that I finally found out why that apparently out-of-nowhere rant in favor of DDT had been inserted into all our pro-Latin-Mass, anti-Hollywood, anti-contraception propaganda: it had been by someone who was an Olin Chair at some university.

And Olin could sell a lot more DDT again, if people didn't get upset at the loss of songbirds and raptors...

So yeah, there is a follow-the-money aspect to it, which I thought you might find interesting. Hired oracles tell their paymasters what they want the polis to believe.