Mann's 1.8 million Malaria grant – "where do we ask for a refund'?

Oil that has entered wetlands may never be able to be removed:
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iyCzi7JFE0-cRyBdBUMmDC6Zm9GgD9FS2VR00

The fact that Mann is involved in investigating the impact of warming on malaria just goes to show that he is not a scientist, but an advocate. He not only has no expertise in this area, but anyone who thinks that malaria will be spread by warming has to be ignorant of several important facts, or deliberately hiding them.
You know, malaria was endemic all the way up to the Canadian border in the US during the Little Ice Age. These days you have to cross the Rio Grande to find a lot of case of malaria. Did the Earth cool? No, America got rich. And when (if?) the developing world does so, BY BURNING FOSSIL FUELS, they will eradicate malaria too.
In fact, malaria plagued Siberia up until the ’50s.

Australia tends to be hotter than New Zealand. It’s interesting that mortality in NZ is higher than Australia in July (i.e. winter) while mortality in Australia is higher in February, when it’s a bit too hot.

In the annals of planets are always changing, Jupiter loses a major atmospheric cloud belt:
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2010/20may_loststripe/
As to the malaria study being science, it is laughable as the changes in malaria itself through selection as it evolves will greatly outweigh any changes due to warming, if in fact there are any.

timetochoseagain:
A point of clarification: According to Fischer’s excellent recent biography of the 17th Century French explorer, Champlain suffered from malaria as did many of the early French settlers. This suggests that malaria was prevalent north of the Canadian border.

Thank you Anthony and Goks. The truth will out. You both deserve to split Penn State’s $1.8 million for doing their work for them. Frankly, the grant should have gone to you guys in the first place.
Warmer Is Better – Fight the Ice.

Mann made Malaria. MMM.

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200506/ldselect/ldeconaf/12/12we21.htm
Professor Paul Reiter, the world recognised expert on vector borne diseases at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, says it all in the above paper.

Reminds me of this excellent submission
Memorandum by Professor Paul Reiter, Institut Pasteur; Paris
Select Committee on Economic Affairs Written Evidence
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200506/ldselect/ldeconaf/12/12we21.htm
SUMMARY

41. The natural history of mosquito-borne diseases is complex, and the interplay of climate, ecology, mosquito biology, and many other factors defies simplistic analysis. The recent resurgence of many of these diseases is a major cause for concern, but it is facile to attribute this resurgence to climate change, or to use models based on temperature to "predict" future prevalence. In my opinion, the IPCC has done a disservice to society by relying on "experts" who have little or no knowledge of the subject, and allowing them to make authoritative pronouncements that are not based on sound science. In truth, the principal determinants of transmission of malaria and many other mosquito-borne diseases are politics, economics and human activities. A creative and organized application of resources is urgently required to control these diseases, regardless of future climate change.

31 March 2005

Tom – Paul Reiter said all that in Great Global Warming Swindle and was castigated by the warmists at the time.

Let’s make it easy for our American friend – do you remember The Little House on The Prairie? The whole annoying family went down with “Fever ‘n’ Ague” or as we would call it Malaria.
Controlling malaria is all about controlling mosquitos. A degree here or there makes no difference if you don’t get bitten by an infected mossie.

Everyting for the new international order.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/22/AR2010052201586.html

If you want to eradicate malaria, use DDT. End of story.

The Mann Scam rolls on.
That he is allowed to stay on the Gravy Train is just an extension of the one of the greatest periods of scientific fraud in history.
I am almost feeling sorry for this dufus thinking he can bluff his career back on track after what he has done. His series of quick & dirty promotions is bad enough – he knows he’s been “chosen”, but he has gone along with the scam.
He better start learning to ask people if they’d like fries with that order because his academic career is a toilet just waiting to be flushed.
This latest scam means he now has his two hands on the toilet handle.
Flush Mikey, flush.

Here’s my 2 cents worth.

From Shakespeare to Defoe: Malaria in England in the Little Ice Age
“Until the second half of the 20th century, malaria was endemic and widespread in many temperate regions, with major epidemics as far north as the Arctic Circle. From 1564 to the 1730s—the coldest period of the Little Ice Age—malaria was an important cause of illness and death in several parts of England. Transmission began to decline only in the 19th century, when the present warming trend was well under way.”source

“Endemic malaria was declining in western Europe from the 18th century onwards, but in the 19th century it was still common in the north and north-east of Europe.
…
A total of 1,803 persons died of malaria in the western parts of Finland and in the south-western archipelago during the years 1751–1773”source

“Malaria in Russia in the 20th century”
“In 1946-1948 there were 1500-2000 cases of malaria per 10,000 of the population in the territories of the former USSR, including the Moscow region. Following the introduction of DDT for malaria control in 1945 the number of cases in the USSR was markedly reduced. In 1960 the Ministry of Public Health of the USSR announced the start of a campaign to eradicate malaria from the country….
Of the three species of malarial parasites recorded in Russia, Plasmodium vivax has always been and remains the most widely distributed. However, disease caused by the tropical Plasmodium falciparum was also present, with rare epidemics recorded in central and northern Russia and with serious foci in the Volga Region (Bruce-Chwatt & de Zulueta, 1980). source

“In fact, the most catastrophic epidemic on record anywhere in the world occurred in the Soviet Union in the 1920s, with a peak incidence of 13 million cases per year, and 600,000 deaths. Transmission was high in many parts of Siberia, and there were 30,000 cases and 10,000 deaths due to falciparum infection (the most deadly malaria parasite) in Archangel, close to the Arctic circle.” source

See also this 1900 – 2002 Malaria Map
It’s much worse than we thought!!! :o)

Hmmm…yet another gate?

How could malaria be tied to AGW? Malaria was once prevalent in England, and one of the biggest outbreaks occurred in Russia. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9803EFDE113FE432A25753C2A9649C946095D6CF
Mosquitos aren’t solely a tropical insect. They swarm over the tundra every year.

I live in a country where malaria is like drinking water. IMHO it’s not always the mosquitos that are the problem but often people who have malaria and don’t seek medical treatment due to poverty or lack of education. If they harbour the parasite for long enough then the mosquitos are only too happy to bite and pass the parasite onto someone who doesn’t have it yet. There are course other factors which I accept (nets, sprays, removal of standing water etc.).

DDT ban is the SOLE responsible agent for the spread of malaria in Southern Africa.
It is something that should be screamed at the enviromentalist lobby every time they open their mouths. They have DIRECTLY caused the deaths of millions of people, it makes any putative damage by CAGW appear irrelevent.
The DDT ban should be THE text book example of what NOT to do

One of the largest outbreaks of malaria was in the Arctic circle in Siberia. Riddle me that Batman.

Although Dr. Indur Goklany’s presentation is illuminating, it would be more so if each slide had an obvious text block that in effect subtly screams “The point of this slide is ….”
Not having attended “Gok’s” presentation, only reading this post, I can discern the point of most but not all the slides, making it a risky proposition if I forward or link to it. Apologies for pointing out what is ‘obvious’ is not when viewed by other eyes.
Otherwise, loved the slide showing the death rates vs month peaking during cold winter months. The 180-degree out-of-phase nature of the southern hemisphere death rate is “killer” (pun intended 😉

Greg: correction on my part, I meant to repeat:
“Transmission was high in many parts of Siberia, and there were 30,000 cases and 10,000 deaths due to falciparum infection (the most deadly malaria parasite) in Archangel, close to the Arctic circle.”

Thank you, Anthony, for posting this. However, I have to apologize to you, your (and my) readers and audience. My slide presentation on the Heartland website does not match what I used at the talk itself. Also, I had some errors in the slide show that I must correct.
First, I mislabeled the malaria figure up above. The caption should say: “Top: left, mid-19th century; right, 1945. Bottom: left, 1977; right, 2007.” Second, due to transcription errors, I had understated the potential deaths and disease estimates from biofuel production by quite a lot. [“It’s worse than I said.”] The corrected slides are available at my website here.
With respect to malaria, I should note that there is a great set of illustrations in the original Nature paper by Gething et al. that set all this off. They are a lot easier on the eyes and have far greater resolution than my malaria slide. Gething et al. also touch on issues raised by Greg Leisner (at May 22, 2010 at 2:13 pm) and Mike (May 22, 2010 at 2:04 pm).
According to Gething et al., endemic/stable malaria is likely to have covered 58% of the world’s land surface around 1900 but only 30% by 2007. P. falciparum malaria, the deadliest of the 4 types of malaria, is today (2007) restricted largely to the tropics. Equally important, within its currently reduced range, its prevalence has decreased, with endemicity falling by one or more classes in over two-thirds of the current range of stable transmission.
They also note that:

“of the 66 million km2 of the Earth’s surface thought to have sustained stable/endemic malaria in 1900, 12%, 18% and 57% had exhibited proportional decreases in the reproductive number of up to one, between one and two, and greater than two orders of magnitude, respectively; 11% had shown no evidence of change; and 2% had shown evidence of an increase in the reproductive number by 2007.”
… “[D]espite warming global temperatures, the combined natural and anthropogenic forces acting on the disease throughout the twentieth century have resulted in the great majority of locations undergoing a net reduction in transmission between one and three orders of magnitude larger than the maximum future increases proposed
under temperature-based climate change scenarios.”

This is consistent with what’s in my book, The Precautionary Principle, in which I note that in the early 1940s, malaria used to kill over 3 million people annually. Today the global figure is about 1 million even though the population has almost tripled.
For a long time (well over a decade) many (including myself) have been saying that while malaria might be sensitive to climate/weather, it is far more sensitive to poverty and economic development – which is why it’s called a disease of poverty! This is not rocket science. Even railway engineers and more pedestrian scientists should be able to get it.

I’m confused why a warming world would lead to more malaria (more mosquitos). Where I live the cool wet weather seems to benefit their numbers and when its hot and dry – no mosquitos.

What an utter nonsense, till 1905 we had Malaria in Germany.

Maybe the AG’s shouldn’t go after hobnobs and pseudo scientist like Mann et al but instead hunt down the complete derange people who keep signing over the public funds to ’em.

Malaria is not so wide-spread as it was in the 19th Century? Despite increases in average global temperatures – whatever they may be – and nasty, nasty air pollution in the form of soot and carbon dioxide? How did that happen? Three letters: D D T. Period. End of story. Why is malaria still extent where it is today? The ban – official or unofficial, formal or unformal, it was banned – on use of DDT in those parts of the world, backed up by a withholding of aid funds of one sort or another. Want to see malaria disappear? Get rid of the bans on the use of DDT and start selling it around the world, with the same proper old-fashioned instructions and warnings from 50 years ago. Guess what? No malaria. Easy, simple, direct. Even cheap.

Man…I was just calming down for the weekend when I read this. In this I feel confident – I know MUCH more about malaria (and other infectious diseases) than Michael Mann will ever learn in his lifetime. DDT has proven to be the single most effective intervention for the control of malaria. Bed netting, repellants and antimalarial drugs are far less effective by comparison. Bed netting is only effective when you’re in bed. Agents like DEET repel mosquitoes but do so by masking the CO2 signature mosquitoes are attracted to. I grew up in Michigan. Believe me, if there is one square inch of exposed skin not covered by a recent application of DEET a mosquito (the size of a cat) will find it. Drugs are quite marginal in effectiveness. Plasmodia are eukaryotic organisms (i.e. they look like us to drugs). Hence it is hard to find a drug that it hard on them and not also hard on us. Killing bacteria is child’s play by comparison. They also have this damnable ability to mutate into drug resistant forms. Don’t misunderstand – I’m a “bugs and drugs” guy by profession and the drugs have been a godsend. But on a wide scale DDT does more for more people for a lot less (and with fewer side effects).
OK…anyone with a 6th grade, Jethro Bodine education should know that temperature has little to do with mosquitoes (although apparently altitude does). Walk around in the woods up in Minnesota at dusk in the summer and see if you don’t come back a pint low. Other commenters have pointed this out. Almost the entire USA and southern Canada, southern Europe, Russia, Asia and South America was malarious 100 years ago. We still have mosquitoes in the US, why don’t we have malaria? Because we broke the chain. We still have mosquitoes but they’re not infected with Plasmodia. It’s interesting, once iradicated, malaria tends to stay iradicated.
Given enough DDT, chloroquin, bed nets and political will we could make malaria disappear much like we did small pox. Climate and the Earth’s temperature have nothing to do with it.

Fraud! Again and again.

Excerpted from: Smokey on May 22, 2010 at 5:53 pm

…[the ARGO site is very frustrating to navigate. They seem to be making it intentionally difficult to find the information you’re looking for].

Which is of course completely unrelated to the Argo data tending to show a general cooling of the oceans, depending on who does the analyses and how they do them, as opposed to an Unequivocal Continuous Warming that matches the CO2 rise. Indeed, it is robustly unrelated.

To ease Dr. Mann’s busy workload, I make the following suggestions:
Develop a new robusted statistical technique.
Declare GW will lead to runaway malaria outbreaks.
Declare man to be the source of GW.
Present your beliefs in the form of a hockey stick.
Write a report that says it’s “worse than we thought.”
Pocket the money.
Request additional money.

You guys are all wrong, you are letting historical facts and common sense get in the way of “good science”.
AGW is unprecedented, therefore the medieval ice age did not exist, nor did the little ice age. Any evidence for is just conspiracy talk and bad science.
And here you go again, letting your facts dictate to us scientists what we know to be true and this discussion is over because we know all. AGW causes everything, geez, everyone knows that, and anything bad that happens is because of humans. There is no outside influence on the environment other then us, so please take your “conspiracy” beliefs on malaria and keep them to yourselves. You are misleading the public and should be jailed for war crimes. It is high treason to doubt the great and powerful “Mann”. Malaria was caused in Russia because of local weather patterns that turned it into a tropical jungle for 20 years, everyone knows that…Geez.

This whole thing is so corrupt. Mann gets his hands on almost $2 million.
If this was anyone or anything else, these same people would be screaming their heads off.

It is my impression that Dr. Mann is key to this study not because of his subject expertise but his other qualities:
1 he has skill in formatting information to persuade a broad audience
2 he knows the ropes and has the connections to draw government funding
3 he has name recognition and will guarentee media coverage of the results
4 his study results will be assured to show a causal relationship
5 government will get what it is paying for

Wait a sec…
I think we should support this study.
The more I think about it, the more I am all for it.
Global warming = increased malaria epidemics.
Of course we don’t know for sure… the facts are uncertain. But then too, billions could die if epidemics became wide spread, so the stakes are high. It may be too late for CO2 mitigation, there may be enough warming in place already to trigger the epidemic at any point, so we need to act fast it is urgent.
Facts uncertain, stakes high, matters urgent, clearly we need to DDT the whole planet starting tomorrow afternoon and kill every mosquito in existance. Yes there will be harm caused by DDT through disposal of spray cans if nothing else, but were talking billions of lives here!
Seriously, this might work. I live in a mosquito dense city that went goofy for a while and refused to spray for them out of concern for the environment. I’m not talking cat size mosquitos like Dr Dave (excellent post BTW, very informative) complains about in Michigan. I’m talking the little ones drag dead deer off the highway and hide them in the bush for fear that the big mosquitos will take it away from them. A few dead crows and a few confirmed cases of West Nile virus…
Ahh… the sweet sound of the malethion truck coming down my street.
Wish I’d kept some of those crows. Coulda stuck ’em in the freezer and hauled them out again “when needed”

Thanks for this information, Anthony! Infectious disease and public health are my bailiwick.
I’ve heard this malaria story over & over for years, not to mention increased plague (proliferation of rodent hosts of the pathogen Y. pestis), yellow fever etc., etc.
The primary weapon to fight this stuff is wealth, pure & simple. If money is unnecessarily diverted from valid public health causes to this will o’ the wisp, just-around-the-corner, “just wait, any day now” climate change nonsense, the effects on humanity and public health will be far worse because, no matter how much cash is thrown at the problem, climate shall change one way or the other.
One thing that the AGW crowd absolutely REFUSE to acknowledge is that agriculture will most likely boom with higher carbon dioxide levels. Even my colleagues at the University of Illinois admit that (albeit quietly, and only to one another….IL will do rather well in a warmer, higher CO2 environment).
The more nonsense these folks spout, the more ridiculous and desperate they appear. I used to be more sympathetic to their arguments, but I’ve since been turned against. Time for some real science to be brought to bear, WUWT has been a great starting point!

Does Dr. Golanky explain that bump in the data from Cyprus in July and August?

Are we progressing to a point in the list of The World’s Greatest Scams where Piltdown Man will be joined by Meltdown Mann?

OT but CNN has posted a live video stream from an underwater camera of the BP oil leak. I would think it fascinating if I had any clue what those pieces and thingies all are, how big they are, what they are for… can anyone help? The leaking oil I already spotted on my own itz the other stuff I need help on…
http://www.cnn.com/video/flashLive/live.html?stream=stream2&hpt=T1

http://www.bp.com/liveassets/bp_internet/globalbp/globalbp_uk_english/homepage/STAGING/local_assets/bp_homepage/html/rov_stream.html
The CNN link went dead but the BP link is up and running.

Please be careful with claims of what DDT can do. I am in absolute agreement with the premise that malaria warming correlation is for the most part BS ( heat impacts infection rates – allowing malaria to overwinter in the mosquito population rather than simply in infected individuals-but warmth does not control the geographical presence of malaria).
Much harm was done by the ideological reaction against DDT use to the malaria eradication efforts (aid was often restricted to non DDT initiatives ) in the 3rd world and harm continues to be done. However the widespread use of DDT on cotton and other crops before the malaria eradication effort was completed in the 3rd world allowed many Anopholes mosquito populations to develop DDT resistance. DDT can no longer be expected to do what it once did. (and DDT while critical was not the only element in the West’s eradication effort)Despite this fact that there are still areas where DDT is essential -especially tin regions where pyrethrin insecticide resistance has developed .
I plead with all who read this site – do not prolong the scourge of malaria by overstating what DDT is now able to do. DDT is a vital tool-it is critical in some areas-but it is no longer a silver bullet worldwide- that time has passed. Malaria kills nearly a million people a year- mostly children under the age of 5. These children are not statistics they had names and they were loved by the families that lost them. The right, the left, AGWers, skeptics have no right to use these children as ideological fodder.
The eradication of malaria is complicated by counterfeit drugs, lack of knowledge, false claims (my plea is not to add to this), ideology, poverty, failed governments, lack of public health infrastructure and the International will to eradicate this disease. Do not add to this list!
The ultimate eradication of malaria given our current conditions may rely on the hopes for a vaccine. (Getting close- hope hope)In the interim- insecticides will continue to be a critical component in controlling malaria in addition to treatment of infected individuals and pesticide treated bed nets.
Malaria- like climate is complex- please do not simplify the hurdles to its eradication.

Phil. says:
May 22, 2010 at 6:39 pm “In this case that happens to be Mike Mann but don’t think for one minute that is Mann’s 1.8 million malaria grant, it’s Thomas’s (it suits those who dislike Mann to think so though). Most of the money will go on grad students and post-docs.”
Phil- there should be no malaria in a future world- warm or cold. PERIOD. If you care about getting rid of malaria- put your money in vaccine research, bed nets, insecticide spraying, treatment and public health infrastructure. Studying how many more malaria cases there may or may not be diverts the vital public attention from the eradication efforts. It is an admission of failure and there is no justifiable reason to fail. I find studies such as this one unethical and immoral at best. Malaria and the suffering it causes is being used to advance academic careers and an agenda.
Perhaps a few pictures of the children who have died- or will suffer life long cognitive impairment as a result of this disease will show what this $1.8 million could have accomplished. I could give a damn about the needs of the post docs- let them work on a cure.

Precinct 201 says:
“Pride in our country and about saving lives and helping the poor. Indeed, throughout the entire world where his actions would give hope to the sick and needy.”
You are absolutely correct- no country has contributed more to malaria control than the US. Early efforts were led by the Rockerfeller Foundation, later by the CDC and USAID. You are correct Bush re-focused efforts on malaria control in Africa and backed it up with tax payer dollars. (Bill Gates is also due some kudos). There is much more work to be done but the US has every reason to be proud of its efforts to date.

The Mann made malaria connection once again display how effective opportunistic buzz-words are in an academic context of prospecting. Surf the trends using politically correct lingo and your odds to trike gold improve tremendously.

I had the honor to sit with Indur Goklany during our lunch with President Klaus in Washington DC in 2007, too.
The grant is disgraceful but I’ve read that it’s been decided in 2009, before ClimateGate, so it may be less shocking than indicated by the bare news here.
Does anyone know Oscar Whitman? Is he the legal husband of Michael Mann?

On Richard Black’s BBC blog, his latest AGW sales piece uses news about Craig Vetter’s “synthetic life” DNA experiments to suggest that this may have some application in geoengineering to save us. Black used a phrase to describe one of his imagined microbes that seems to relate to those paying for the work of Mann’s et al : a “CO2-sucker.”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/richardblack/2010/05/playing_god_with_the_climate.html

Hope everyone has seen this. Mann’s day is coming.
http://www.climatechangefraud.com/politics-propaganda/6988-cuccinelli-says-uva-research-probe-is-about-fraud

jorgekafkazar says:
May 22, 2010 at 2:54 pm
Brad says: “Oil that has entered wetlands may never be able to be removed:
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iyCzi7JFE0-cRyBdBUMmDC6Zm9GgD9FS2VR00”
Don’t worry, Brad; it’s an AP article. There’s very little chance that it will turn out to be true.
—–
Indeed. As I recall, about a week after Climategate broke, AP did a review of the emails which concluded: move along, nothing to see here.

—
Greg Leisner had written:

“In short, malaria incidence is due to many factors. Climate is the major one since it is the best single explanatory factor for incidences of malaria. To not quantify the effect of climate on malaria and dengue would be an act ideological foolishness.”

There’s a but more to it than just climate, as another poster had observed, but it’s more, too, than whether or not Plasmodium falciparum malaria (the big killer of the four Plasmodium species commonly infecting humans, and the one most prevalent in sub-Saharan Africa) spreads, takes hold, and cannot be extirpated.
There are patient factors affecting malarial virulence, including both the development and persistence of immunity to the parasites and histological factors such as the presence of sickle-cell trait and and alpha-thalassemia prevalent among the host population.
Genetic hemoglobinopathies which are much more common in sub-Saharan Africa than elsewhere conduce to lower total mortality in P. falciparum infections (though the pathogen does, indeed, kill its millions every year), which increases the total number of immune patients in any such population and in turn increases the pool of hosts – estimated at 300 to 500 million worldwide – whose participation in the parasite’s reproductive cycle raises the possibility of mosquito-borne transmission to uninfected people.
In the words of Mackinnon and Read, “Immunity Selects for Higher Virulence.”
Incidentally, another population in which a genetic hemoglobinopathy is commonly observed – alpha-thalassemia – is that of southern Italy, il Mezzogiorno, where malaria was epidemic up until the 20th Century. I’ve got that hemoglobinopathy myself. Like Hemoglobin S (sickle trait) being a disorder preconditioning the sufferer to improved survival in areas where malaria and African trypanosomiasis (“sleeping sickness”) are prevalent, I strongly suspect selection pressures having resulted in thalassemia minor showing up so commonly among those of us who descend from the impoverished provinces south of the Po River Valley.
Ancestors who weren’t so “blessed” tended not to survive as readily to reproductive age.
As in most matters of epidemiological concern, there’s a helluva lot more to malaria than most people understand. Best if Matthew Thomas were to get an expert on tropical diseases as one of his co-investigators, no?
—

My wife is from a developing country, an island state in the sub-tropical zone.
When I courted her there many years ago, the place hadno malaria problem, s it had been eradicated in the 1950s and 1960s. Planes landing were sprayed with insect killer before anyone got off.
However, malaria has returned are chloroquine tables are a must for visitors.
I know its only anecdotal, but I would certainly need to know more before I would accept Goklany’s maps. My understanding was that emergence of mosquitos resistant to insecticidal sprays has been the root cause of the resurgence of malaria.

Italy had indigenously generated malaria until 1969, and was the last European country to have this problem. Malaria was not wiped out, despite a series of concerted government programs to eradicate the disease dating back to 1900 — including draining swamps, afforestation, education and social programs, and anti-malarial drugs — until the government finally embraced the use of DDT.
Is there any link between the final eradication of malaria in Europe (Italy being the last European country to harbour the disease) and the EPA’s denunciation of DDT within a few years afterwards? If malaria had remained a threat in North America and Europe could the environmentalists have gained any popular or official support against DDT?

Couldn’t we just use DDT? Ever since that lie has been exposed and been thoroughly debunked. In 2006, WHO once again allowed DDT to be used. So why not just put DDT back into production. The only reason DDT was banned was to keep people from living in the woods.
And as a side benefit, the million or so African children under the age of 5 that are killed yearly, would live. There have now been over 35 million deaths since DDT was banned. Let’s try humans first.

As to the Greenland rising comments, the entire Great Lakes region is still rebounding from all the ice that was sitting on it in the last ice age, and even if Greenland is rising, that is not predictive of the future.
I am still of the theory that most warming is sun caused, and the low sunspot cycle will pretty much take care of it.

tty (May 23, 2010 at 2:07 am) says DDT is not a panacea. True, but then if we insisted on only panaceas for treating disease, virtually all diseases would go untreated.
The real issue is whether there are situations where DDT is not only effective but cost-effective, considering its benefits and any undesired consequences . A discussion of DDT and malaria is available in my book on the Precautionary Principle, with an older version gratis in Applying the Precautionary Principle to DDT. Fact of the matter is that in many situations, indoor residual spraying with DDT is among the most, if not the most, cost-effective solution. Of course, this is not universally true.
One of the strongest pieces of evidence of the efficacy and utility of DDT as a malaria control agent is contained in graphs available in Barnes et al. (2005) in PLoS Medicine and The Rise, Fall, Rise, and Imminent Fall of DDT by Roger Bate. These figures ,which are both based on South African experience in KwaZulu, show how, among other things, malaria cases and deaths in that region went up when DDT was replaced with pyrethroids, and then fell again when DDT was brought back.
Does this mean that DDT is forever? Not necessarily, but while it is cost-effective, let’s use it. It allows us to buy time, get wealthier, improve public health services and, of course, save lives

To think of the things that these scientists could be doing instead of this petty infighting. I blame climate change for wasting our time solving real problems.

If the prohibition on DDT continues YOU will enjoy, again, Malaria and Dengue.
Congratulations Saint Al Gore!, be praised for ever your sanctity!

People have stated that Mikey Mann’s socio-economic edicts for the world cannot control climate, but it appears Mikey Mann can “make it rain” to the tune of $1.8 mill.

Malaria kills millions of people. DDT may kill a few and damge some. Use the DDT. Climate has very little to do with malaria. Yes, it is associated with hot countries but in the past it has been prevalent in Northern Europe. Good housing and the drainage of stagnant water helps. How someone like Mann can a grant to study this is beyond belief. No background in Epidimiology; exposed as a fraudster in climate science. Whose taxes are paying for this? Do you live in a democracy or what?

I recall reading many years ago that Prof Reiter (of the Pasteur Institute in Paris) who is a specialist in Maleria was highly critical of the 2001 IPCC report stating that the report exagerated the possible increase in Malaria with climate change. His view was that Maleria was not a tropical disease and as many posters have noted, it was prevalent in Northern latitudes in the recent historical past. I seem to recall that Professor Reiter may even have been on the committee but resigned due to the biased nature of the 2001 report. Some readers may recall that when the House of Lords carried out some enquiry into climate change, the House of Lords particularly noted Professor Reiter’s comment and found that the 2001 report could not be justified in these parts.

—
Indur M. Goklany takes note of:
“…figures, which are both based on South African experience in KwaZulu, [that] show how, among other things, malaria cases and deaths in that region went up when DDT was replaced with pyrethroids, and then fell again when DDT was brought back.”
The pyrethrins and pyrethroids figure large in the medical management of lice infestations (pediculosis), and treatment options have been trending away from lindane to permethrin applications for the past couple of decades owing to the potential for neurotoxicities with lindane use.
I would draw the readers’ attention to the fact that DDT use within residential spaces for the suppression of malaria vectors has unintended additional beneficiary effects.
First, it suppresses other insect vectors of infectious diseases. Anybody out there familiar with the devastating effects of typhus in Italy during World War II, and the almost astonishingly effective address of that deadly disease through the widespread application of DDT “louse powder”?
Second, DDT applied in residential areas reduces the damages done by insects exploiting humans’ storage of foodstuffs, which are considerable in and of themselves. Ants in the pantry and cockroaches in the wainscoting in a temperate climate are nothing compared to what happens to foods not hermetically sealed in a tropical area.
The pyrethroids are nowhere near as effective in these secondary functions, and are themselves to certain extents hazardous to humans when employed to suppress the mosquito vectors of the Plasmodium pathogen species.
As others have observed, there is no panacea. Attacking the vectors with insecticides is helpful. Recognizing that patient factors such as large populations of immune hosts with subclinical and/or nonfatal P. falciparum infections creates a reservoir of incubators for the pathogen is perhaps more important.
Like it or not, in sub-Saharan Africa in particular, there are genetic factors (such as various of the genetic hemoglobinopathies) which are conducive to the maintenance of a humongous population of human malaria carriers. Only barrier methods – bed netting, better housing with “bug-proof” screens – can mitigate the reproduction of the Plasmodium species by denying their vectors access to both infected hosts and new breeding grounds for the parasite.
Malaria is, in fact, a kind of racial curse. In terms of pathogen fitness, a sort of “modus vivendi” has been achieved between the Plasmodium species (including the murderous P. falciparum) and the authochthonous population of sub-Saharan Africa in particular.
This must be recognized. It is not only necessary to re-institute the widespread use of DDT and similarly effective insecticides but also to confront the people whose skin color it is not politically correct to mention that they’ve got to stop sleeping without protection against mosquitoes.
They are – genetically, intrinsically, inescapably – a helluva big part of their own collective problem with malaria.
And now I’ll accept my share of that $1.8 million dollars being funneled into Dr. Mann’s pockets. I think I can make better use of it than he can, and I’m certainly more deserving of it.
—

You’ll want to check this post out:
http://climateprogress.org/2010/05/23/climate-change-and-malaria/
REPLY: Certainly predictable, Romm can’t handle anything that might deflect away from his alarmism, so he labels everyone else incompetent and himself as the sole hero who can see the truth. The chorus of climate crickets there sound the same too. -A

The people who keep repeating that more AGW –> more mosquitoes —> more malaria haven’t been paying attention to the U.S. and Canada since the 1950’s. We haven’t lost any significant numbers of mosquitos over that period, but we did kill off the ones carrying the disease. The ones that fly around and play mini-dracula now don’t carry the disease. So, it seems clear that if we use DDT to kill the mosquitoes until malaria goes away anywhere in the world where there is malaria, just as we did in North America back 50 or so years ago, then it doesn’t matter how many new mosquitoes are born “because of man-caused global warming” or any other reason: they won’t transmit malaria because it will be gone. Why is there so much credence placed in the output of computer models which, first of all, is not data but guesses and second of all contradict the observable genuine data? Would I believe in such foolishness if I had a PhD in some sort of alleged “science”? Why do so many folks believe in computer outputs instead of their own eyes, memories and reason? Why are so many of those folks in charge??

—
Ike writes about:

:The people who keep repeating that more AGW –> more mosquitoes —> more malaria haven’t been paying attention to the U.S. and Canada since the 1950′s. We haven’t lost any significant numbers of mosquitos over that period, but we did kill off the ones carrying the disease. The ones that fly around and play mini-dracula now don’t carry the disease.”

Again and again and again, it must be borne in mind that the experience of “the U.S. and Canada since the 1950′s” as well as in southern Italy since about 1969 has demonstrated that it is host population factors that are key to malaria control.
The fact of the matter is that the “significant numbers of mosquitoes” still observed (indeed, take note of those mosquito-borne viral encephalitides about which we have heard so much in recent decades) do not figure as prominently in the prevalence of Plasmodium-caused diseases as does the reduction in the number of humans participating in the Plasmodium species’ orgies of reproduction.
Reduce the number of people with subclinical and subacute malaria infections in any given region, and you hammer down the Plasmodium pathogens to the point at which they cannot maintain their presence in that region.
That’s what the happenings in “the U.S. and Canada since the 1950′s” tells us about this disease. Not one goddam thing else really needs to be known about it, “climate change” included.
—

I too find Joe Romm to be a bit self-important at times. But, the point of his post is that malaria alarmism was never justified. He reviews several studies and the IPCC report to back up his claim. He does believe the potential changes in the range of malaria due to climate change should be of concern and continued study – this would be true whether climate change was natural or man-made. Anthony and Rich Matarese dismiss Romm’s post as alarmist, when it is the opposite.
And can we not call each other fascist? I get edited for using the d-word here!
REPLY: It’s hard to see past his style for the message, perhaps I’m guilty of not reading deeply enough, but from my perspective it looks like many other essays he has written. Note that he bashes Revkin at the end, where Revkin points out exactly what you say: “The alarm was not justified”.
– Anthony

re; malaria in north America and northern Europe
It didn’t become common in these places until there was a fair number of people traveling trade routes back and forth to the tropical endemic regions. An infected human can bring it to a temperate climate in the summer when the mosquitos are active enough to spread it. The winter generally kills it off and more infected travelers have to bring it back. Less virulent strains P.vivax and P.malariae do better in temperate climates. It’s suspected those species can enter a dormant phase in humans, which is probably genetically connected to the lower virulence, and emerge to spread again when the weather warms up enough for mosquitos to start biting. They all reproduce in their sexual phase in the gut of an adult mosquito so if it’s too cold for adult mosquitos it’s too cold for Plasmodium. Mosquitos generally don’t overwinter as adults in cold climates although it’s possible in some protected niches like deep inside big hollow logs. The typical route is mosquito eggs that lie dormant through the winter at the bottoms of ponds that don’t completely freeze.
So it’s not impossible for P.falciparum to survive northern winters but a combination of factors makes it far more difficult than in the tropics and hence it wasn’t so difficult to eradicate in colder climates with a modest artificial effort to make it even more difficult.

Here’s some good news on the world’s public health front:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/24/health/24child.html?src=me
“Death rates in children under 5 are dropping in many countries at a surprisingly fast pace, according to a new report based on data from 187 countries from 1970 to 2010.”
Okay…so, if this is happening in a supposed “warming” world, shouldn’t more warmth equal less mortality?
The number one factor in reduction of morbidity/mortality is wealth, and a carbon-control scheme robs wealth and diverts funds from legitimate public health uses including conventional malaria control, nutrition and vaccination.
Putting the brakes on fossil energy usage at this point in human history, without a clearly superior/cost-effective alternative, would be no less than criminal.

@ CRS, Dr.P.H.
I don’t think any of the “alarmists” have said major health impacts from AGW were happening now. There is no reason to suppose a linear dependence.
I agree with your second point to a degree. But, if AGW is real and reduces world GDP (the Stern report estimated a 20% drop: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stern_Review), then doing nothing would have a “criminal” impact on the world’s poor. Most discussions about GHG emissions reductions call for no reductions and allow for continued growth in third world GHG emissions and for developed countries to start reducing GHG emissions quickly – there is debate over what role big semi-developed countries like China and India should play. Now, I don’t claim to know if Stern is right, but both sides claim they want what is best so neither is morally criminal. We need to be able to look at the problem as one one balancing different risks. It is possible that the world’s leading scientific bodies are closer to the truth than the few skeptical researchers and a community of bloggers. Suppose there is a 30% chance the “warmists” are right. Shouldn’t we under take some modest mitigating actions? What if it is 50% or 70%?

On the WHO maps of Malaria, in 1945 the disease was endemic in Archangelsk, Northern Russia, on the shore of the Sea of Barents. From Wikipedia, this cities’ yearly average temp is high 4.8C, low -2.7C.
The eradication of malaria from Western countries has nothing to do with temperature or climate. Warmer temperatures will not bring back malaria.

—
Writes RACookPE1978 of this deponent:
“(Later, you use words to the effect that ‘humans are primarily the vector’ …)”
Nah. I think you mistook my quote of Dave Springer as having been something I’d said.
For a human being to be considered a vector of infectious disease, there has to be human-to-human transmission as one of the primary modes of contagion. Venereal diseases (now called by the politically correct term “sexually transmitted diseases”) are infectious disorders in which human beings are the vectors. I’m not likely ever to characterize humans as anything but hosts and patients when it comes to a discussion of malaria.
Barring transmittal by way of blood products transfusions – which can and has happened – human-to-human contagion of malaria is not a problem.
When Gorgas was going after yellow fever, he was addressing a flavivirus pathogen – a bug quite different from the Plasmodium species – which in the wild cycles through sylvan primates as a host reservoir. In urban outbreaks (such as the Philadelphia epidemic of 1793), the yellow fever pathogen finds its hosting among human populations.
While there are some zoonotic Plasmodium species which can “cross over” to infect humans, to the best of my knowledge the four species responsible for human malaria (falciparum, ovale, vivax, and malariae) are not reservoir’d among any animal species, either domestic or feral. I came across a pretty good slidekit on parasitology and zoonoses online, and you’re welcome to dig into it.
A check on the CDC Web site supports this contention that there are no non-human critters who play the same role in the life cycles of the four pathogenic species of Plasmodium that we do. Admittedly, I took my first formal courses in parasitology and infectious diseases some thirty-mumble years ago, and I’ve been out of the U.S. Public Health Service not much less time than that, but this ain’t rocket science.
Hm. I wonder if I can get CME credit for participation on this thread.
—

—
Dave Springer complains: “I didn’t find any discussion of sickle cell providing resistance to African sleeping sickness in the article you linked and a quick google didn’t reveal any other mention of a link either.
Sorry. I recall a lecturer in parasitology having discussed the perception that sickle trait (Hemoglobin AS) conferring improved survival in cases where a human was infected with Trypanosoma brucei rhodesiense, but that was back in the ’70s, and African trypanosomiasis is, for most of us stay-at-home American “primary care providers” a real zebra. I haven’t so much as seen a freshly-caught T. brucei of either principal subspecies under a microscope in more than three decades.
Went scrambling for my antique Parasitology textbook, but no luck. I think my daughter (now with three kids of her own) copped it to press flowers back when she was in grammar school.
With regard to multi-drug resistant organisms (MDRO’s), the most recent CDC guidelines were released in 2010, and the IDSA guys are planning their guidelines on the subject for release in the Fall of this year.
The notion of reserving certain antibiotics for drug-resistant strains of particular pathogens is not novel, but getting people to agree on what they should hold back is tough. In my personal experience, there are considerations other than prevailing patterns of resistance that have to be appreciated, particularly relative toxicities, individual patient allergies and other sensitivities, and drug-drug interactions.
I confess that most of my interest in non-bacterial infectious diseases over the past couple of decades has been focused on HIV-1 and Hepatitis C virus (HCV), which is where the diagnostic and therapeutic juggling act gets really hairy.
Hm. I’d like to see the AGW fraudsters find some kind of causative link between atmospheric carbon dioxide levels and patients whose livers get fried by that goddam flavivirus.
—

—
Mike McMillan writes about “Puddle control” and reminds me of my free-ranging rural childhood, during which time we were turned out-of-doors in clement weather with admonitions to return home when full dark overtook us, and no expectations of adult supervision or protection of any kind whatsoever.
My poor grandchildren – courtesy of my MSM-blighted adult offspring and their equally neurotic spousen – are helpless hothouse plants by comparison.
Part of our routine, self-acknowledge duties while roaming farms and fields and woods was to obliterate or otherwise deny mosquitoes access to standing water. No matter what else we were doing, without discussion or demurrer, we overturned tin cans, flipped old tires, filled in puddles, inverted wheelbarrows, covered rain barrels, and otherwise addressed these potential skeeter breeders.
Nobody told us to do this as a matter of “community service.” We had been educated in school about how the little bloodsuckers reproduce, and we were informed that if people could add puddle-plotzing to the ongoing DDT-spraying campaigns (the roads were regularly occupied by trucks misting the countryside), we could reduce their pestiferous impositions upon our own persons, and it was entirely out of self-interest that we treated incipient mosquito nurseries to extirpation.
The woods and fields were our domain and free-time habitation, the places where we could go to get away from the goddam grown-ups, and we took fierce proprietary interest in those sylvan and sandpit waste patches not yet bulldozed by the real estate developers.
I find that children today don’t have that “My place” attitude toward the out-of-doors, almost certainly because their parents never leave the kids to hellangone alone. With no sense of their own power, they have no real sense of responsibility, and thus today’s children – not one friggin’ bit motivated by the Teachers’ Union ex-Education majors in the government gulags – do not participate in “Puddle control” and do not grow up to become adults with any appreciation of the functions of participatory citizenship.
Ain’t that the way Barry Soetoro and all his little ACORN elves want it to be?
—

Greg Leisner says:
A larger factor than climate change increases “incidence” of malaria in Africa – a population explosion….duh.
http://allafrica.com/stories/200804100908.html
Where a World Bank official is being interviewed:
Africa’s population is growing at twice the rate of other regions. In the following interview, John May, a demographer at the World Bank, discusses the effects of population growth on Africa’s development agenda and what the Bank ….
Also, AGWers hammered into my head for decades that there will be no significant change in temp in the tropical regions – it will all be in the temperate and polar regions. In the last few years, I have had to keep reminding them of this!!

Several years ago the town of Greensburg Kansas ws hit by a tornado. The town of well under 2,000 population lost 12-13 people. When Obama ran for office, he commented on 10,000 died. This is very rare.
Most times the death can’t exceed the number of population. If population grows, the figures we use should be rates per 100,000. If there was an area that lost millions, the expected rate would fall because a reduced number of places to infect.

It’s very nearly $1.9 million, actually: $1,884,991 to be precise.
That’s just the tip of the iceberg. Look how much Michael Mann and his cronies have been screwing out of the US taxpayer since 1996 for climate related projects – here’s the list for which Mann has had his nose in the trough:
Development of a Northern Hemisphere Gridded Precipitation Dataset Spanning the Past Half Millennium for Analyzing Interannual and Longer-Term Variability in the Monsoons,
$250,000
Quantifying the influence of environmental temperature on transmission of vector-borne diseases,
$1,884,991
Toward Improved Projections of the Climate Response to Anthropogenic Forcing: Combining Paleoclimate Proxy and Instrumental Observations with an Earth System Model,
$541,184
A Framework for Probabilistic Projections of Energy-Relevant Streamflow Indices,
$330,000
AMS Industry/Government Graduate Fellowship,
$23,000
Climate Change Collective Learning and Observatory Network in Ghana, $759,928
Analysis and testing of proxy-based climate reconstructions,
$459,000
Constraining the Tropical Pacific’s Role in Low-Frequency Climate Change of the Last Millennium,
$68,065
Acquisition of high-performance computing cluster for the Penn State Earth System Science Center (ESSC),
$100,000
Decadal Variability in the Tropical Indo-Pacific: Integrating Paleo & Coupled Model Results,
$102,000
Reconstruction and Analysis of Patterns of Climate Variability Over the Last One to Two Millennia,
$315,000
Remote Observations of Ice Sheet Surface Temperature: Toward Multi-Proxy Reconstruction of Antarctic Climate Variability,
$133,000
Paleoclimatic Reconstructions of the Arctic Oscillation,
$14,400
Global Multidecadal-to-Century-Scale Oscillations During the Last 1000 years, $20,775
Resolving the Scale-wise Sensitivities in the Dynamical Coupling Between Climate and the Biosphere,
$214,700
Advancing predictive models of marine sediment transport,
$20,775
Multiproxy Climate Reconstruction: Extension in Space and Time, and Model/Data Intercomparison,
$381,647
The changing seasons? Detecting and understanding climatic change,
$266,235
Patterns of Organized Climatic Variability: Spatio-Temporal Analysis of Globally Distributed Climate Proxy Records and Long-term Model Integrations,
$270,000
Investigation of Patterns of Organized Large-Scale Climatic Variability During the Last Millennium,
$78,000

Hi temperatures are certainly no encouragement to malaria since one of the highest death rates due to malaria is from one of the coldest places on earth, Russia’s Siberia.
There have been some instances though where African nations that have withstood political pressure and had the guts to start spraying DDT again have seen drastic decreases in Malaria. Surprisingly enough there have been no plants dying, no birds dropping, only bird droppings, and mortality rates have decreased.
It would almost seem that the “bug” which is responsible for Malaria actually does better in cooler climes than warmer, which would seem to fly in the face of long held believes to the opposite.

Has anyone read the Mann grant?

(Anthony/Mods, would you please be so kind as to snip this guy’s garbage?
Rich Matarese says:
May 24, 2010 at 12:08 am
–
CRS, Dr.P.H. extols yet another one of Barry Soetoro’s apparatchiki and his “drop your pants, bend over, and pray for Vaseline, ’cause we’re gonna screw you!” presentations.
Nah. I ain’t buyin’ that line of crap, either.
etc. etc.
——-
I included Holdren’s slides not as a show of support for the administration, but as a demonstration of the crazy stuff being promoted at the highest levels! This mope doesn’t seem to get it.
Thanks, Chuck the contributor)

—
Dr. Dave writes of northern New Mexico, where “…we have hanta virus and even more interestingly, Santa Fe county is one of the few places on the planet where plague is still endemic. ”
Well, console yourself, colleague. At least the federal DHHS doesn’t list your corner of the country as one of the loci of Hansen’s disease.
I draw attention to Dr. Dave‘s observation that “We’re high (about 7,000 feet) and dry (and very cold in the winter). On the bright side we have almost no mosquitoes.”
That gives me to remember a pattern of housing distribution in Sicily and the campagna of the southern part of the Italian peninsula, where villages and other clusters of domiciles are to be seen perched atop the higher hills, distant from fields and even vineyards to an extent that getting to and from these places of labor (and hauling fuel, food, and other things to home and hearth) was rendered miserably difficult.
When I’d asked about that as a boy, I’d been told that arable land was in such short supply that the frugal peasants wouldn’t think about planting houses where they could instead plant garden truck or cash crops. Later I learned better.
Mosquitoes and malaria, of course. As Dr. Dave observes, skeeters don’t “do” higher altitudes all that well. Till the soil in the lower areas, and get the hell out of there when darkness falls.
—

In New Jersey – where the mosquito is said to grow to sizes suitable for requiring the filing of flight plans – a backpacker had reclined in his tent to sleep and had been awakened by two skeeters conversing just outside.
“So do we eat him here,” said one, “or do we haul him back to the pond?”
“Are you nuts?” replied the other. “We bring him back to the pond, and the big guys will take him away from us!”

—

—
Ah, now CRS, Dr.P.H. speaks plainly. It’s my “crass and unnecessary use of vulgar sexual innuendo” to which he takes exception.
Well, fu…. Whoops! Make that “schtupp” me. Is it just the commonplace Anglo-Saxonisms that offend this fellow, or is it the concept of copulation (even the non-fecundative sodomistic insults figuratively imposed upon the private citizen by “The Malevolent Jobholder” of civil government) at which CRS, Dr.P.H. takes umbrage?
I did examine Dr. Holdren’s presentation, though. That’s why I ain’t buyin’ that crap. That he is one of Barry Soetoro’s “made men” I have no doubt, for he would not be present in the Obama Administration as yet another slurpker-at-the-public-trough were he not himself well equipped with a set of Oval Office intern knee-pads and a willingness to “serve” our Mombasa Messiah with his every intake of breath.
Ooh. Perhaps yet another “crass and unnecessary use of vulgar sexual innuendo” there, eh? Ah, well. As the late Murray Rothbard once replied when he was asked how he managed to write so eloquently in condemnation of Keynesian economics and the evils of dirigiste government:

“Hatred is my muse.”

—

Warming doesn’t trigger an increase in Malaria until we reach a fast approaching tipping point. It’s worse than we thought.
Run for your lives!

Rich Matarese says:
May 24, 2010 at 12:08 am
“…Before I see another cent expended on AGW “research,” how about a few bucks spent in getting us a copy of Barry’s long-form printed-on-paper signed-and-embossed official State of Hawaii birth certificate, okay?…”
__________________________________________________________________________
Just pray that some where in the 50 states they manage to seat the wrong grand jury.
“….. As an independent grand jury, you also have the right to initiate your own investigations on evidence presented to you, and to indict anyone if you feel they are guilty of wrongdoing, including those government employees and elected officials who are not upholding an oath of public office….” http://www.fija.org/docs/JG_on_the_grand_jury.pdf
Now if we can just get the majority of US citizens educated….. I have a whole list of politicians and bureaucrats that should be up on charges.
See this for an example:
http://www.marlerblog.com/2009/07/articles/lawyer-oped/one-e-coli-o157h7-outbreak-i-think-i-could-have-prevented/
http://njcfil.com/b/pdf/stansTestimony.pdf
The USDA essentially called Painter a liar. The Union (meat and poultry inspectors AFGE) sued:
“…The lawsuit, filed April 8 on behalf of the meat and poultry inspectors AFGE represents, seeks to halt USDA’s implementation of a rule that in effect deregulates the critical post-mortem inspection of meat and poultry carcasses and instead relies on an industry “honor system.”…”
http://www.afge.org/Index.cfm?page=USDA
History of the whole situation: http://www.r-calfusa.com/BSE/050512-Exhibit7-LawReviewMcgarity.pdf
Our food safety “scares” mirror what is happening with CAGW. It is a politically manipulated circus called the international HACCP regs. The regs were implemented in 1996 per WTO directive, unfortunately the “collateral damage” with food is people become ill and/or die. The media scares then allows Congress to pass “food safety bills” that impose stringent regs on farmers while continuing HACCP (corporate self-inspection) The blame for food contamination is passed to the farmer and the large corporations get a “get out of jail free card”
The USDA is just one of the “corporate revolving door” bureaucracies that needs a major house cleaning complete with jail sentences.

All this talk of mosquitoes brings this song to mind:
BZZZZzzzzz