Bringing Back DDT

In February of this year, Microsoft creator Bill Gates opened a jar of mosquitoes during the Technology, Entertainment and Design Conference. He did this to demonstrate how much of a concern malaria is for several regions of the world.

Bill Gates and many others support the idea of reintroducing DDT as an effected tool to fight against malaria. Him and other scientists believe that spending mere cents on spraying houses would be more cost effective than supplying $10 dollar mosquito nets to everyone in an area impacted by malaria. They also believe that killing the insect using DDT is better than just preventing them from biting by using a net.

The stigma around the use of DDT dates back to the 1950’s. Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT) was discovered during World War II by the Swiss chemist Paul Hermann Müller of Geigy Pharmaceutical. He awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1948 for his discovery of the high efficiency of DDT as a contact poison against insects.

During WWII, DDT was used to control the spread of Typhus. In the 1945, it began to be used to fight against the spread of malaria. In 1955, the World Health Organization initiated a program to eradicate malaria worldwide, its main weapon being DDT. The attempt was semi-successful. It eradicated malaria in Taiwan, much of the Caribbean, the Balkans, parts of northern Africa, the northern region of Australia, and a large swath of the South Pacific and dramatically reducing mortality in Sri Lanka and India.

Soon after this program started, scientists began to notice certain side-effects of DDT. Birth defects and cancer-related cases began to steadily rise in the regions of the world where the drug was being heavily used. It was discovered that the pesticide was leaching into water supplies, remaining in the ecosystem for long periods of time.

In the 1970’s DDT was banned from being used in almost every region of the world. In the areas where malaria was suppressed but not successfully eradicated, the mosquito population and impact of the disease has returned with a vengeance.

DDT is without a question the most successful tool used to date in the attempt to eradicate malaria from the planet. Bill Gates and other supporters encourage the return of DDT, because they are convinced that if spraying is done in small amount in and around the home, water supplies will stand low risk of contamination and millions of lives will be saved as a result.

This data was compiled using data found at www.who.org and www.cnn.com