Thu 22 Dec 2005
After seeing yet another ignorant column about how banning DDT killed millions and millions and millions of people. I’ve been inspired to create DDT Ban Myth Bingo to make reading these stupid articles more interesting. Just tick the box when they use the bogus argument next to it. Get four in a row and win! If you get to the end and you haven’t got four in row, you still have a chance to win—there’s one box you can tick if they don’t mention DDT resistance by mosquitoes.
I’ve also included links to refutations of each argument. And if you liked this game, you can also play Global Warming Skeptic Bingo.
December 22nd, 2005 at 8:32 am
Bingo for the whole family
Tim Lambert hast the perfect bingo game for the holidays, Christmas, that gay and festive period we call December: After seeing yet another ignorant column about how banning DDT killed millions and millions and millions of people. Ive been inspired…
December 22nd, 2005 at 8:35 am
This is just further evidence that the denizens of the right-wing blogosphere read only each other. It’s an orgy of mutual plagiarism. Or maybe they change the words just enough to make it research.
The alternative is that they’re liars who know the well-documented truth (they could read Deltoid) but prefer to capitalize on the ignorance of their readers. This explanation may actually be better than the first.
December 22nd, 2005 at 10:14 am
I look forward to Lancet survey bingo. Thanks!
December 22nd, 2005 at 1:29 pm
But is the left any better?
Putting the case for free trade on a left-wing blog will tend to get much the same reaction as supporting Kyoto or the Lancet study on Tim Blair’s site.
One worrying consequence of the web is that genuine dialog is disappearing in favor of people coccooning themselves in a comfortable shroud of blogs and sites that support their pre-existing prejudices.
December 22nd, 2005 at 2:15 pm
We have a winner
www.jpands.org/vol9no3/ed…
December 22nd, 2005 at 2:48 pm
In Argentina, as all other countries in South, Central and North America DDT is strictly prohibited under severe penalties by the law. So you are LYING when claiming “there is no de facto ban”. The exception is Ecuador who has never given up spraying DDT and saving human lives, alas, at the cost of valuable mosquito lives.
I have been exploring and traveling the Amazon since 1971 and I know what I am talking about. I am a field scientist not an armchair scientist in air conditioned labs.
At this moment, environmentalists are prosecuting health and agriculture officials in Córdoba, Argentina, because they discovered that a cargo of 12 tons of DDT had been stored for 30 years without telling the people it was stored there and “could” have contaminated the neighbors.
Could, may, might, perhaps, are words always accompanying green and fake alarms. Then, why has not mosquitoes developed resistance in Ecuador after 32 years of Ecuador refusing to give up DDT spraying, and 53 years since they started using it? You should provide a scientific answer.
Our Argentinean Foundation for a Scientific Ecology (FAEC) was consulted by the two federal judges that dealt with the DDT storage case and sent our report to be studied by the scientific team formed with members from our National University at Córdoba, and from the Ministry of Public Health. Then compared the accusations made by the environmentalists and studied their claims and references.
A remark that one of the judges said to me after their ruling was: ”These greens are not only crazy, but I would prosecute them for criminal activities if you pressed charges.”
Your weblog is perhaps the more “science-killing” and misinforming site I have ever seen. Keep up your work. It gives skeptics plenty food and ammunition to fight green neurosis and paranoia.
Eduardo Ferreyra
President of FAEC
Argentinean Foundation for a Scientific Ecology
December 22nd, 2005 at 2:50 pm
“http://www.jpands.org/vol9no3/edwards.pdf”
“Upon reading this article, I prepared a 34-page list of frauds published in U.S. scientific journals and sent it to the editor of Science. Although he responded courteously, he evidently did not wish to publicize this.”
The mind boggles.
December 22nd, 2005 at 2:53 pm
“In Argentina, as all other countries in South, Central and North America DDT is strictly prohibited under severe penalties by the law. So you are LYING when claiming “there is no de facto ban”. The exception is Ecuador who has never given up spraying DDT”
If having a “ban” involves some countries using DDT, I can’t imagine how you might tell the difference when the “ban” was lifted.
December 22nd, 2005 at 2:53 pm
”These greens are not only crazy, but I would prosecute them for criminal activities if you pressed charges.”
Do you not feel it your duty to protect the populace by pressing suit?
December 22nd, 2005 at 3:34 pm
We are studying the “false denounce” by the environmental NGO and building our case. False denounces have a 3 to 6 years jail term.
Perhaps that way they will learn to stick to the scientific truth. But I doubt it. They will play the role of “martyrs”.
In this case it did cost a huge amount of money to the state to deal with the case. Scarce money that would have been better used in real health problems –as spraying DDT for fighting against the Mazza-Chagas disease transmited by the “tripanosoma crucis” carried by “vinchucas”.
The disease is endemic in half Argentina (and most parts of Latin America, of course), and millions are disabled at an early age by a swollen, hypertrophyied heart and cardiac troubles.
December 22nd, 2005 at 5:21 pm
Can we look forward to Fumento bingo in the future?
December 22nd, 2005 at 6:30 pm
“We are studying the “false denounce” by the environmental NGO and building our case. False denounces have a 3 to 6 years jail term.”
Then why do some countries decide to spray with DDT?
In my neighborhood, there seems to be a de facto ban on minivans, as there is only one household that has a minivan, even though the manufacturers assure us that all households could benefit from buying one. Clearly, the false statements of the manufacturers of Honda Civics and Toyota Camrys have enforced this de facto ban.
December 22nd, 2005 at 7:44 pm
Eduardo says “why has not mosquitoes developed resistance in Ecuador”. Umm, they have. (Anopheles albimanus is the malaria vector in Ecuador.)
December 22nd, 2005 at 9:44 pm
Eduardo, a few questions:
First, is the “Argentinan Federation for a Scientific Ecology” that you represent the saem one that runs this website:
mitosyfraudes.8k.com/ENGL…
It appears to have quite a lot of global warming sceptic articles and material on gun control on it which I would guess that most visitors to this site regard as fallacious. The “About Us” section also suggests that you are not a “field scientist” in any relevant sense; you have a degree in Aeronautic and Mechanical Engineering, but your main career appears to be the management of your family’s limestone factory and “technical translations” for a power station consortium. Your travels in the Amazon do not appear to have been for scientific research purposes; as far as I can tell, you took a “jungle survival course” in Brazil and have half-built an adventure tourism lodge in Bolivia.
mitosyfraudes.8k.com/Abou…
Furthermore you don’t appear to be all that well informed about DDT spraying in Ecuador. I’m guessing that your information comes from this article:
www.cdc.gov/ncidod/eid/vo…
which probably deserves its own square on the bingo card, as it is the source of the quotation “Ecuador, which has increased use of DDT since 1993, is the only country reporting a large reduction (61%) in malaria rates”.
Which was true at the time the article was written (1997); however in 1998, El Nino happened and by 1999 malaria cases had risen from 16,000 to 81,000. It took a further four years to bring malaria cases down to 29,595 (2004) and this was achieved largely under the auspices of the World Bank’s “Roll Back Malaria” program which emphasised nets over DDT spraying.
lnweb18.worldbank.org/ESS…
I am in any case unsure why an Argentinean would want to emulate Ecuador’s malaria strategy; Ecuador has 19% of its population living in susceptible areas versus 0.6% for Argentina (a difference of 31 times) and a parasitic incidence rate of 12/1000 versus 0.5/1000 for Argentina (a difference of 24 times). Argentina also has a GDP per capital about 3.5 times that of Ecuador, so the cost tradeoff is also likely to be substantially different.
December 23rd, 2005 at 6:52 am
Having a bit of medical knowledge and not wanting to waste much time here, bed nets work. Is being retarded like being high all the time?
December 23rd, 2005 at 10:30 am
The problem with bed nets is that you can’t live inside one 24 hours a day. DDT spraying inside houses prevents mosquitoes from going inside, and killing those females that sit on the walls.
I spent a month back in 1980 in jivaría wichimi, Ecuador, along with emerit professor Cesar Miranda, (Córdoba National University) studying jivaro artistic expressions and music. We did it on behalf of Córdoba University and our work and research is in Córdoba Anthropological society, an institution founded in 1982 with Prof. Miranda and I among other founding members.
No, my knowledge of DDT in Ecuador and Brazil doesn’t come from the article you mentioned (thanks for the link, I didn’t know about it) but by having lived there and spoken with people in the health services.
Yes, my Jungle survival course in Brazil was in February 1971, and allowed me to keep traveling and surviving in the jungle (doing field research) with less risks than ignorant persons would have. I returned to a more tranquile life in 1997.
Argentina didn’t have too much trouble with malaria since 1950, but lately due to mosquitoes transmission we had in our city of Córdoba 9 lethal cases of encephalitis, some cases of dengue and the usual proportion of newly infected with Chagas-Mazza. DDT could have prevented that –with no harm to the people or the environment.
I was trying to get the Georghiou, G. P., A. Lagunes-Tejeda. 1991 The Occurrence of Resistance to Pesticides in Arthropods: An Index of Cases reported through 1989. but it seem I was unable to get it. Some websites ask for a membership I have not. I read many other studies but the resistance they talk about is a cross resistance with pyretroids and 1) don’t give a percentage of resistance and 2) are not too clear on the area that resistance covers. It means, they don’t say if DDT does not kill mosquitoes AT ALL, or if there are some mosquitoes immune and the vast majority dies.
Inmunity is not a inherited trait. It is aquired by single specimens that do not transmit their immunity down to their offspring.
But, as usual, there are two libraries on this issue. I am on one side, you are on the other. We’ll never arrive to an agreement or a consensus on this matter. Why lose our time?
December 23rd, 2005 at 1:05 pm
Eduardo says:
Oh lord. Are you a Creationist as well, Eduardo?
December 23rd, 2005 at 1:43 pm
Eduardo, inherited immunity is a real phenomena - if it weren’t you’d simply have to wait for a single mosquito lifespan and you could restart spraying.
This is not a matter of opinion on which we can “agree to disagree” it’s a well-documented objective fact.
December 23rd, 2005 at 1:52 pm
That’s a 4 by 4 grid there, Tim. Bingo is played with a 5 by 5 grid.
How do you expect us to take your arguments on DDT, global warming, and gun control seriously when you don’t know how to play Bingo? I think you owe all of your readers an apology.
December 23rd, 2005 at 1:53 pm
My God, your global warming skeptic bingo card makes the very same mistake! You, sir, are an embarrassment to your continent.
December 23rd, 2005 at 3:39 pm
Eduardo is simply Lamarckian.
December 23rd, 2005 at 4:10 pm
“Inmunity is not a inherited trait. It is aquired by single specimens that do not transmit their immunity down to their offspring.”
Clunk (sound of jaw hitting floor)
December 23rd, 2005 at 4:12 pm
“Inmunity is not a inherited trait. It is aquired by single specimens that do not transmit their immunity down to their offspring.”
Although I suppose that if that were true, it would certainly make spraying wildly with DDT much more reasonable.
December 23rd, 2005 at 6:27 pm
“if that were true, it would certainly make spraying wildly with DDT much more reasonable”
Yes, and make GM crops pointless, our problems with antibiotic resistant bacteria non-existent, and the distribution - or even existence - of life on the Earth totally inexplicable.
Given that Eduardo has pretty much blown his own head off, not just shot himself in the foot, I think “why lose our time?” is a pretty good conclusion.
December 24th, 2005 at 3:55 am
Some (not all) human immunity to malaria is acquired, not genetic, which is probably what confused Eduardo.
I’ve never heard that said of insects - I don’t think their immune systems work like that.
December 24th, 2005 at 4:38 am
[…] DDT Ban Myth Bingo […]
December 24th, 2005 at 6:27 am
Ian Gould says: “Eduardo, inherited immunity is a real phenomena - if it weren’t you’d simply have to wait for a single mosquito lifespan and you could restart spraying.
This is not a matter of opinion on which we can “agree to disagree” it’s a well-documented objective fact.”
In your library it is. Not in ours. You have been having a good laugh, and that’s nice. it sounds like howling monkey’s laugh when they see human people walking through the jungle. I have heard it –you were sitting in the branches.
Why mosquitoes are not immune to DDT in South Africa, why are they still dying by billions in Ecuador, in spite of everything your green library claim? How haven’t them developed resistance in China?. Come on, give the world a break! Keep laughing, green howling monkeys!
Hi, Bob, still laughing?
December 24th, 2005 at 7:20 am
My “green library” is called “Google” go type in “insecticide resistance” and educate yourself.
December 25th, 2005 at 2:01 am
Sure Ian, Google is a fantastic source of good material and lots of trash too. Depends on what you believe –or want to believe.
I will apologize for all this discussion because I enjoy poking at wasps nests, as this Tim Lambert wasp nest. I will give an end to my contribution to the discussion clarifying and mending some statements I did just for poking at the wasp nest.
According to well known late entomologist Prof. J. Gordon Edwards (a devil for the greens):
What’s inherited is the ability to produce enzymes — not a resistance to any specific chemical, ability that was not induced by the chemical. When an insect gets in contact with an insecticide it either dies immediately or, in some very few cases, it survives. It did survived because the insect was by sheer chance producing an enzyme that happened to break down the chemicals –and not because that chemical triggered the ability to produce the enzyme.
If a mosquito with a gene for the enzyme that detoxifies DDT mates with another mosquito possessing the same gene, their offspring are likely to inherit that gene. There are offspring that will not inherit the gene and the resistance, others will have the gene and the resistance. What we (or researchers) have to do yet is quantify the percentage on inherited resistance.
Unfortunately, DDT was so inexpensive that it was also used in the fields near the houses harboring malaria victims. As a result, resistance to DDT did develop among some populations of Anopheles mosquitoes and other insecticides had to be used for any further mosquito control. This was not a huge problem: ln 1970, the director general of the World Health Organization wrote,:
Of the 107 malarious countries, 62 reported resistance in populations of one or more Anopheles species to one or more common insecticides but, as usual, percentage of mosquito population resistant to insecticides was not given.
Finally, DDT was not banned because there were reports of resistance by mosquitoes. It was banned because an inhuman campaign against it started by the Green Lobby and followed by the Club of Rome, NRDC, EDF, Sierra Club, Audubon Society, etc.
In my humble opinion, it was an unforgivable crime against mankind that makes Hitler’s Holocaust look as a baby play. I know that greens are sleeping better knowing how many people they have “eradicated” from the world.
December 25th, 2005 at 2:12 am
Eduardo, your claims have already been debunked in the links on the bingo table. DDT isn’t banned, resistance is a serious problem, for instance, it’s the reason why Sri Lanka abandoned DDT spraying.
December 25th, 2005 at 5:00 am
That was really funny! I had no idea that there was a Brazilian John Stossel who was so easy to debunk. Thanks for the giggle.
December 25th, 2005 at 8:10 am
The post from Eduardo Ferreyra illustrates once again that a (very) little knowledge is a dangerous thing.
December 25th, 2005 at 11:07 am
I find it wonderful that someone can, with a straight face, claim that “resistance” isn’t inherited. just the ability to produce the enzyme that produces resistance.
December 25th, 2005 at 11:16 am
I don’t see how the enzymatic breakdown of DDT is different from a resistance. More misquitoes have it, the break down the DDT and don’t die. Whereas with a resistance (I guess) the misquitoes ignore the DDT and don’t die. Either way they don’t die. The reasoning seems a little specious to me. For a ‘famous’ professor to turn to semantics seems a little desperate.
December 26th, 2005 at 3:23 am
DDT has historically had two very different uses- crop protection and protection of humans from malaria. Crop protection involves massive spraying of fields, leading to persistent DDT in soil and water, destruction of useful insects, and interference with the reproductive systems of birds. This is what Rachel Carson wrote about in Silent Spring, and it’s what led to the banning of DDT. It’s also what leads to immunity in mosquitoes, because after mass spraying virtually all mosquitoes are exposed to the DDT and only immune individuals (male and female) survive to reproduce.
DDT to protect people from malaria is a very different and much more limited use. DDT can be applied to the walls of dwellings to protect inhabitants. Very small amounts of DDT are necessary- trivial amounts compared to the amounts used in crop protection.
Because Anopheles mosquitoes bite primarily in the evening and at night (when most people are indoors), application to interiors is highly effective at reducing incidence of malaria. Because indoor application affects only females (males are not attracted to mammals and do not come indoors), the likelihood that immunity will be passed down is greatly reduced. (No effort is made to eradicate the mosquitoes, only to kill those that come into human habitations.) Because DDT applied indoors is not washed into waterways and soils, it has no adverse affects on wildlife.
The linked “ignorant column” (by Stossel) urges that DDT be permitted for indoor use. “It’s sprayed on walls, and one spraying will keep mosquitoes at bay for half a year,” he writes. This is apparently what Eduardo Ferrayra is suggesting, as well.
Tim Lambert or anyone else, care to explain why indoor DDT use on the walls of dwellings should be banned? You can call me all the names you want, but eventually please try to get around to the substantive argument.
Reduction of m
December 26th, 2005 at 8:23 am
Read the previous threads on the topic - Tim’s position is essentially identical to yours.
The reason Tim blogs about DDT isn’t to advocate a ban on in-house spraying - it’s to combat the claims by the right that “Rachel Carson has killed more people than Hitler”.
Since you mention Eduardo, take a look at this quote:
Given your support for restricting the broad-field use of DDT (not to mention your acceptance that DDT resistance is genetically transmitted), Eduardo would undoubtedly count you as one of the Green mass murderers.
December 26th, 2005 at 4:29 pm
Eduardo claims that the late Gordon Edwards was “a devil for the greens”, yet with Edwards’ bold proclamations that DDT didn’t cause eggshell thinning I’d sooner have called him the village idiot.
December 26th, 2005 at 5:45 pm
“Tim Lambert or anyone else, care to explain why indoor DDT use on the walls of dwellings should be banned?”
I will: it isn’t. It’s agricultural use that’s banned.
Care to explain why, given the above discussion of DDT resistance, the use of DDT for agriculture (in which a single plantation typically uses more DDT than the entire country uses for disease prevention) should NOT be banned?
Care to explain why a nonexistent ban on DDT for disease prevention generates vast reams of outrage, while agricultural overuse that led to the loss of effectiveness of DDT in Asian countries never generated a peep?
December 26th, 2005 at 11:36 pm
Z
That’s easy. green zealots at NGO’s effectively banned DDT, which has killed millions of people.
It was banned int the 1970’s/.
I wonder if Lambert treat’s his students like he behaves on this website. It resembles a alligator swamp.
Man there is a lot of guys on this site who never got the dance with the pretty girls. Everyone is so angry!!!!
December 27th, 2005 at 6:45 am
Yeah, because spreading false claims of genocide is a sure indicator of a happy and well-balanced individual.
December 27th, 2005 at 7:39 am
Eduardo Ferreyra wrote,
But it’s not clear that you understand the role of selective pressure, and how it relates to spraying. Furthermore, your statement that
indicates you have no understanding of even fairly simple biology.
December 27th, 2005 at 8:23 am
Eduardo
Don’t waste your breath. This isn’t a site allowing for discussion. It’s a misinformation site with angry men. The term in English is blowhard see line 40 for a good example.
December 27th, 2005 at 10:41 am
“green zealots at NGO’s effectively banned DDT, which has killed millions of people.
It was banned int the 1970’s/.”
Well, that certainly explains why a company that sells it lists a dozen countries as satisfied customers. I repeat, if this constitutes a ban, how will we know when the ban is ended? Or is this like the state of perpetual war, too useful for environmentalist-bashing to be allowed to have an end?
December 27th, 2005 at 10:54 am
“Don’t waste your breath. This isn’t a site allowing for discussion. It’s a misinformation site with angry men. The term in English is blowhard see line 40 for a good example.”
818 other blowhard sites where angry men refuse to discuss their misinformation concerning the so-called heritability of pesticide resistance:
www.google.com/search?sou…
UCONN IPM: Integrated Pest Management:Greenhouse:Insecticide …
Insecticide resistance is the inherited ability of an individual insect to survive exposure to a concentration of insecticide that is lethal to other …
www.hort.uconn.edu/ipm/gr… - 23k - Cached - Similar pages
[PDF] Insecticide resistance gene transmission by insecticide …
File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat - View as HTML
ticularly important if resistance is inherited as a dom-. inant trait, which is the case for … izes a new environment, insecticide resistance problems …
www.umanitoba.ca/institutes/naturalresources/ pdf/insecticideresistance.pdf - Similar pages
[PDF] Microsoft PowerPoint - 104 Okoye
File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat - View as HTML
Necessity of incorporating insecticide resistance. management strategies into formal
… resistance inherited as an incompletely. dominant phenotype. …
arjournals.annualreviews…. doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.en.36.010191.000245 - Similar pages
[PDF] BIOCHEMICAL GENETICS OF INSECTICIDE RESISTANCE
File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat
INSECTICIDE RESISTANCE. 187. mally high levels in resistant strains. All are inherited as if controlled by simple. semidominant genes, even when they appear …
arjournals.annualreviews…. doi/pdf/10.1146/annurev.en.21.010176.001143 - Similar pages
[ More results from arjournals.annualreviews…. ]
INSECTICIDE RESISTANCE ENHANCES MALE REPRODUCTIVE SUCCESS IN A BEETLE
Selection for insecticide resistance is generally accompanied by pleiotropic …
As malathion-specific resistance is inherited as a Mendelian character, …
evol.allenpress.com/…/?… issn=0014-3820&volume=056&issue=12&page=2435 - Similar pages
Monogenic inheritance of cyclodiene insecticide resistance in …
Monogenic inheritance of cyclodiene insecticide resistance in … Genetic crossing studies show that endrin resistance is inherited as a single, autosomal, …
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entr… db=PubMed&list_uids=3755403&dopt=Abstract - Similar pages
Testing Anopheles albimanus for genetic linkage of insecticide …
Resistant and susceptible alleles at the two loci were inherited independently,
… Insecticide Resistance/genetics Linkage (Genetics)* Propoxur* Substances …
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entr… db=PubMed&list_uids=2133012&dopt=Abstract - Similar pages
[ More results from www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov ]
UNL’s AgBiosafety for Educators
The development of insecticide resistance among pest populations can best be …
that the resistance is inherited as a functionally recessive trait (ie, …
agbiosafety.unl.edu/resis… - 22k - Cached - Similar pages
New Resistance Mechanism in Helicoverpa armigera Threatens …
… has led to both insecticide resistance and environmental problems (10). …
The extra enzyme activity in the “silver selected” strain was inherited …
aem.asm.org/cgi/content/f… - Similar pages
AEM — Sayyed et al. 66 (4): 1509
… is autosomally inherited and partially to completely recessive (13, 18, 52).
… The successful management of insecticide resistance will depend on a …
aem.asm.org/cgi/content/f… - Similar pages
[ More results from aem.asm.org ]
Resistant Pest Management Newsletter Principles of Insecticide Resistance Management … We know the simple Mendelian explanation for how resistance is inherited; however despite this being the …
whalonlab.msu.edu/rpmnews… vol.6no.2/reviews/rpmreviews.htm - 21k - Cached - Similar pages
December 27th, 2005 at 1:41 pm
Eduardo, given that english is not your first language, I beleive you are entitled to a certain degree of latitude in your use of language.
I am also attempting to avoid descending to personal abuse (yo uand Lambast seem to be happy to monopolise that particular debating tactic.)
I am perfectly aware of the significance of selective pressure.
I know that immunity is usually nto complete and that if you remove exposure to DDT for several generations of the pest, immunity will tend to becoem less prevalent in the pest population because it is energetically demanding.
I have, in fact, written about this very phenomenon in several of the previous threads on DDt on this site.
None of this has any bearing on your original statement in Message 16:
“Inmunity is not a inherited trait. It is aquired by single specimens that do not transmit their immunity down to their offspring.”
Is immunity an inherited trait, yes or no?
December 27th, 2005 at 6:54 pm
Given lambast’s poor grasp of English grammar and vocabulary, I think Eduardo has acquired a sock puppet.
I hope it isn’t a hereditary condition.
[lambast is indeed a sock puppet, but not Eduardo. lambast is really Joe Cambria. Tim]
December 28th, 2005 at 8:38 am
I think it unlkely that Eduardo has aquired a sockpuppet. He has been posting on www.sciforums.com for several years under the name “Edufer”, generally on DDT and global warming and related topics. I can recall no evidence there that he used sockpuppets, and see no need for him to have one here.
December 29th, 2005 at 2:13 am
“I gather this response to a direct question means there are no more bombshells regarding the science of genetics to be forthcoming from your direction?”
I’m having trouble interpreting this as a definite yes or no to the question regarding your belief in the nonheritability of insecticide resistance.
January 1st, 2006 at 9:31 pm
Re 60.
Happy New Year Jack
I am a newcomer to this issue but have found a lot of quite of detailed and relevant information on Tim’s blog.
Your posting lacks data, references or arguments. (However, it is strong on personal abuse).
Maybe you would like to describe which claims and where they have been shown to be a crock.
Thanks
January 1st, 2006 at 10:34 pm
Hi Mark,
Happy New Year to you too.
It appears Mr Tim didn’t take kindly to being compared to Lamarck and Lysenko and deleted my post! Long live free speech! I was only having a little dig and not meaning to be abusive.
Cheers
John
January 1st, 2006 at 10:49 pm
I would still be interested to know which claims about resistance have been shown to be crock. Presumably you are not denying that mosquitos can develop resistance to insecticides including DDT.
Cheers
January 3rd, 2006 at 10:15 pm
Re #53.
It is acceptable to restrict posts? It depends on your weblog policy. As long as you make it explicit and apply it consistently then I reckon that is OK.
Tim’s policy includes:
“There is one rule that I ask commenters to follow — please do not make personal attacks on other commenters”
Jack’s original post was a (fairly mild) personal attack on Tim (who is a commenter as will as the log owner). In fact that was all it was. As I said above, it included no data, arguments or references.
I have not, of course, seen your deleted posts!
Cheers
January 4th, 2006 at 4:52 am
“According to well known late entomologist Prof. J. Gordon Edwards (a devil for the greens):”
Edwards is kind of obfuscating his definition of resistance, much the same as declaring that feeding is not inherited behavior; rather, we inherit a tendency to stuff organic substances into a hole in our bodies, where we have the inherited ability to produce enzymes which degrade them into subcomponents which can enter our bloodstream and provide organic substances without which we would die. What we (or researchers) have to do yet is quantify the percentage on inherited feeding.
And Eduardo has essentially been taken in by this obfuscation, I’m afraid, and taken it beyond what Edwards is actually saying (which as I state above, is not much). On top of that, however, Edwards makes a ridiculous omission for an entomologist or any other PhD in the biological sciences where he states:
“If a single mosquito happened to be “resistant” to DDT, it might not die, but it was highly unlikely that it would encounter another resistant one, and especially not one of the opposite sex.”
Here he appears to be stating that since such mutants would rarely become heterozygous, they wouldn’t show up as phenotypic resistance. An innocent would thus be led to ignore the possibility of a dominant mutation to resistance which Edwards has, on purpose or not, managed not to address, pro or con. In fact, some resistance mutations are dominant, some are recessive.
(from my post 44:
[PDF] BIOCHEMICAL GENETICS OF INSECTICIDE RESISTANCE
File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat
INSECTICIDE RESISTANCE. 187. mally high levels in resistant strains. All are inherited as if controlled by simple. semidominant genes, even when they appear …
arjournals.annualreviews…. doi/pdf/10.1146/annurev.en.21.010176.001143 -)
It’s not too hard to imagine the mechanism; a mutation which actively produces a product is usually dominant. We see in resistance to antibiotics, antitumor drugs, etc., for instance, that if a mutant cell possesses an enzyme which actively degrades the harmful chemical or exports it from the cell, this mutation will be dominant or partially dominant. Only mutations which result in the lack of an enzyme or other property typically constitute recessive mutations. If that’s not intuitively obvious to anyone, there’s not enough space here to explain it at freshman level, but please check out a basic genetics book.
Meanwhile, background re Edwards:
www.new-cue.org/quetchenb…
which concludes with:
“One of the reasons I chose to focus on Edwards is that his conclusions have become a basis on which other, apparently more reasonable (and some less reasonable as well) critics have built their more recent work. When I entered “Carson,” “DeWitt,” and “DDT” into Google, for example, ten of the first twelve items listed were versions of Edwards’s attack on Carson’s research. His statements on
bird populations have also become standard fare, and his comparison of Carson to Hitler paved the way for critics like columnist Thomas Sowell, who claims that Carson has “probably been responsible for more deaths of human beings than anybody without an army.” Despite his lack of care and his unscientific intemperance, Edwards provides scientific cover for ideologically-driven writers who seek to discredit an “environmental saint” and environmentalism in general. This doesn’t mean that Carson’s forty year old conclusions should not be questioned, or that international aid organizations and environmental groups are as responsive to the needs of third-world countries as they should be, but it does indicate that the current crop of Carson criticism says as much—maybe more–about American domestic politics as it does about the battle against malaria.”
January 4th, 2006 at 4:55 am
“rarely become heterozygous”
Here I appear to be making a ridiculous error for any PhD in the biological sciences by substituting heterozygous for homozygous.
I therefore hereby impugn my own sexuality.
January 4th, 2006 at 11:13 am
Ol’ J Gordon is quite the piece of work. Web of Science shows a total output of about four outraged letters to various refereed journals. Nothing on Pub Med or Google Scholar. (there are lots of OTHER JG Edwards and tons of J Edwards, but the ones that publish didn’t work at San Jose State)
So why didn’t the Journal of American Association of Physicians and Surgeons show up on Web of Science?….As I said we have a winner here, possibly the first right wing scientific astroturf organization (1943). You could google it
www.aapsonline.org/
These guys invented aluminum foil hats.
January 10th, 2006 at 4:10 pm
[…] So, would a score card for rouges be appropriate? Perhaps a good starting point would be Tim Lambert’s bingos on global warming and DDT. Another good starting point would be Talk Origins. […]
May 27th, 2007 at 3:29 am
[…] timlambert.org/2005/12/dd… […]