Robert Mann wrote:

> It [DDT] is not banned in some poor countries.  The BBC
> just had a  World Service doco on the continuing use of
> DDT, featuring a US asst secy of  state for environmental
> affairs who hoped a complete ban would be achieved.

Yes, Robert,  according to the Science News article,
http://www.sciencenews.org/20000701/bob2.asp

"Some wealthier nations have demanded that poorer countries
ban DDT as a condition for receiving foreign aid."

> DDT and its derivatives such as DDE are very persistent in the
> environment, and concentrate up food-chains causing real harm.
> See Ehrlich, Ehrlich & Holdren 'Ecoscience' for details.   To go
> on using DDT in such circumstances is just another sordid
> item in the recent history of Mammon-worship.

The Lancet, a respected British medical journal published
two articles in July 2000 that made a surprising and passionate case
for DDT.

In the second Lancet article, titled "How Toxic Is DDT?"
A.G. Smith of Leicester University, United Kingdom, states
DDT is safer than many other chemical insecticides. Even in
DDT-sprayers and occupants of DDT-sprayed households,
Smith notes, "associated toxicity has not been found." His
conclusion: "The effects [of DDT] on human beings at likely
exposure levels seem to be very slight."

"Whatever [adverse] effects on the environment there may have
been resulted from intensive over-utilization of DDT in agriculture,
not from malaria control. The theoretical environmental benefits
of banning DDT were not, and are not, worth the very real,
deadly toll in human life and suffering."

"Hundreds of doctors and public health experts, including three
Nobel Prize winners, recently petitioned the United Nations not to
ban DDT for house spraying in malarious regions."

As The Lancet editorial puts it, "Whose health is being protected?
The answer seems to be that the health of people in poorer
countries is being put at a very real risk to protect the citizens
of wealthier countries from a theoretical risk."

Paul Cherubini