Monday, August 02, 2010

FOR SALE: DDT

The last post on this site mentioned New York Post columnist Andrea Peyser's pitch to sell DDT to America; it got taken off the market because it was dangerous, and was killing the Bald Eagle.
So no surprise that a guest columnist in the same paper is pitching the same product.
He too does it on the back of bedbugs - saying that yes bedbugs are a problem, and the city may not be doing enough about it, but there are many more people suffering from malaria.
Oh how philanthropic it all seems! How the devil appears as an angel of light.
Years ago, when I lived in London, I was a member of ALMA - the Angola-London-Mozambique-Association. We would hear the likes of WHO worker Louis da Gama who spent lots of time in these countries, and unlike Paul Driessen, who writes of bedbugs and malaria today, da Gama did not want to sell billions of people tons of DDT.
If the pesticide companies were so in earnest to treat malaria, they would put money into production of other products. Selling DDT to people sucks. But there are people who well nukes, explosives, child pornography, and, yes, DDT.
The US has a law against it for good reasons. As it has laws against selling nukes, explosives and child pornography.
But getting back to bedbugs. Driessen asserts that they do not kill. Maybe not. After all, they travel from person to person sucking blood. And they are prone to mutate, mainly against pesticides. DDT might only make them stronger.
On bugoutter.com there has been complaint that the Post does not take note of people calling and emailing about a problem building in New York that has up to 2 million bedbugs - with one person collecting 3600 in three months. So let's not think the Post gives a damn about New Yorkers - it is now basically telling them to stop complaining there are worse things.
But what about the livelihood of millions of New Yorkers? If bedbugs don't kill, having no income does. Bedbugs kill the tourism industry, but Driessen does not seem intelligent enough to mention that. He does not have bedbugs, and I bet he does not use DDT either.
I invite him and the Post to look at the problem realistically, and go to the buildings New Yorkers are now calling the Ground Zero of bedbugs.
And of course, I invite them to do an article on hemp too, but that would take a miracle. The paper likes to sell other things that are harmful.
By the way, no surprise that the article under Driessen's was titled "The Building Case for Bombing Iran."
Someone's got to sell those nukes, explosives and child pornography, even if they are illegal many places....
And of course, a few tons of DDT.


5 comments:

Bug said...

Those Post reporters are looking more and more like idiots.

Riverwind said...

The making of weapons or poisons is against the "right livelihood" in the 8 fold path in buddhism. Just my 2 cents

Bug said...

Check out www.bedbugregistry.com and of course
www.bugoutter.blogspot.com
These creatures are coming at us hard and fast, it looks like every hotel in Manhattan has them...

Bug said...

Check out www.bedbugregistry.com and of course
www.bugoutter.blogspot.com
These creatures are coming at us hard and fast, it looks like every hotel in Manhattan has them...

Mark Ski said...

The whole problem with the bugs is that chemical companies are giving people false hope and selling more and more sprays; anyone can see that these don't work. The more ineffective they are, the more people buy them. Meanwhile, the bugs multiply.
The Post is an especially disgusting paper and Andrea Peyser ad Driessen are nothing but chemical salespeople....
A paper ought to focus on how NOT to use chemicals.