malaria

The Truth about AIDS in Africa

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Are most cases of HIV/AIDS in Africa really misdiagnosed endemic diseases?

The Claims: HIV/AIDS from unsafe heterosexual contact is rampant in Africa. Many children are left as orphans because both parents have died from AIDS.

The Truth:  While HIV/AIDS is undoubtedly present in Africa and other destitute areas, there are problems with its reported transmission, diagnosis and treatment.  HIV infections in the developed world occurs almost exclusively among homosexual males and IV drug users who share needles with infected people, and heterosexual transmission is rare.  In Africa, half of those diagnosed with HIV and HIV/AIDS are heterosexual women, so there must be other mitigating circumstances.  It is possible that actual infections are acquired through non-sterile injections in contraceptive clinics.  This could help to explain why HIV in Africa is diagnosed equally among men and heterosexual women.  It is very likely that HIV and HIV/AIDS are over diagnosed in Africa and other poverty stricken areas of the world with or without actual HIV testing.  Many cases of AIDS in Africa may have little or no connection to the HIV virus or indiscriminate sexual practices.  Those that are malnourished or have chronic diseases such as TB or malaria naturally have compromised immune systems, i.e. Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, AIDS, from these conditions without carrying the actual Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV).

Because of poor healthcare facilities and abilities, HIV/AIDS may be diagnosed based on symptoms without HIV testing in many rural and isolated areas.  In other areas, where actual testing for HIV antibodies is done, a high incidence of false positives is likely to occur.  This is due to the poor specificity of the test and reaction with antibodies from other diseases and conditions.  Most of those diagnosed with HIV/AIDS, whether tested or untested for HIV, have been assumed to have full blown HIV/AIDS through disparate symptoms recognized by the UN WHO including fever, headache, rash, sore throat, swollen lymph nodes, weight loss, chronic diarrhea or cough, all of which can be caused by many common parasites or infectious diseases as well as severe illnesses such as malaria and tuberculosis (TB). UN WHO has named TB as a leading indicator of HIV/AIDS and lists TB as causing 2/3 of HIV/AIDS deaths. HIV/AIDS itself does not cause death; it opens the way for other diseases that kill people. Reporting TB deaths as HIV/AIDS deaths without confirmation of HIV bolsters the statistics, as does reporting orphans as AIDS orphans.  At this time it is impossible to know how prevalent over diagnosis is in Africa and other poor areas.

Over diagnosis of HIV and HIV/AIDS, when promoted by the international media, paints a picture of Africa that packs a triple whammy for AIDS advocates and international population control governmental and nongovernmental organizations. First, it excuses high death rates and failure to treat endemic diseases; secondly, it incentivizes HIV/AIDS research funding in developed countries by falsely declaring AIDS a heterosexual pandemic; thirdly it has the potential for vindicating population control programs in the minds of potential donors by creating a false picture of rampant immorality and promiscuity. As a bonus, it also encourages the use of condoms that furthers population control agendas.

HIV facts and questions:

HIV causes AIDS: Unlike those who deny that HIV causes AIDS or that it even exists, I do not deny that HIV causes AIDS or that HIV exists. I do question some of the current statistics, testing and treatment options.  Because it is politically incorrect to question the UN WHO recommended practices and conclusions, those who question the status quo will undoubtedly be accused of denialism by AIDS advocates in order to conflate, confuse, discredit and silence anyone daring to question the efficacy of the current testing and treatment methods, even when it might lead to better understanding and improved protocols.

Non-HIV AIDS:  TB, Malaria, dysentery and other serious chronic diseases cause a more common form of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, AIDS, that has no connection to HIV/AIDS or sexually indiscriminate behavior.   It is well known that anyone who is chronically ill and/ or malnourished naturally has a compromised immune system.  Other opportunistic diseases are easily acquired by persons whose immune systems are compromised. By labeling these non-HIV AIDS cases as HIV/AIDS, it can be an excuse for not treating the underlying conditions.

Unfortunately, for USAID, UN WHO and activist NGOs or agencies that provide aid to poor countries, because their emphasis is on required or coerced population control and not on treating disease, many clinics do not have the basic medicines, equipment or facilities to treat endemic diseases, but have store rooms filled with birth control drugs, condoms and other birth control and abortion materials and equipment. This is a human tragedy and a crime against humanity that must be stopped. It is unconscionable that Western aid not be heavily weighted toward supplying medicines and equipment for prevention and treatment of endemic diseases.

Recommendation: In both HIV/AIDS and non-HIV AIDS, treatment should always begin with addressing the presenting diseases and malnutrition. Once the patient is stabilized then HIV/AIDS treatment can begin, but only after further confirmation of the original diagnosis of HIV/AIDS.  HIV/AIDS treatment drugs further compromise the immune system so that treatment of weakened, disease ravaged patients and those with non-HIV AIDS using these drugs may do more harm than good.

International aid organizations should be encouraged or required to reverse their decades old practice of oversupplying population control materials and under-supplying needed medicines, facilities, equipment and supplies to treat endemic diseases.

Demographic Shift: HIV/AIDS in developed countries is confined almost exclusively among homosexual men and IV drug users who share needles with HIV infected people. The expected pandemic in developed countries never materialized. According to official statistics, Sub-Saharan Africa accounts for 2/3 of the HIV incidence in the world, with Southern Africa, (South Africa and Botswana), accounting for most of that. 15 to 25% of the South African population has been diagnosed with HIV or HIV/AIDS. More than half of the HIV positive people in South Africa are heterosexual women. Heterosexual contact is blamed for causing the spread of HIV, but in other countries heterosexual transmission is very rare. Unless the HIV virus has mutated, this theory of frequent heterosexual transmission cannot be valid and other mitigating factors must be considered.

Shared needles as a possible source:  One theory is that the reuse of hypodermic needles for injected birth control drugs is responsible for the spread of HIV, and, if true, could account for the higher incidence in women in Africa and other poor countries where injected birth control is required or advocated.  Injectable birth control drugs such as Depo Provera that must be reinjected every 3 months are sometimes administered in a clinic, but more often the drug and the syringes are given to patients for administration at home.  Because viruses do not live very long on surfaces outside the body, HIV could not be transferred unless an HIV infected person has used the needle just prior to reuse by a second person for birth control. This could only happen in a clinic where multiple women are injected one after another without proper sterilization of needles.

How are these in-home administered reused needles causing HIV/AIDS without an immediate HIV contamination source in each case? It is more likely that in-home injections with improperly sterilized needles would transfer opportunistic bacterial infections such as staph and strep.  The whole idea of giving hypodermic syringes to uneducated people is ludicrous; it is the worst of the birth control methods, and the best way to spread more disease and misery.  Poor women with little or no concept of microbial infective agents are unlikely to discard or destroy needles even if the package instructions say to discard after use.

Recommendation:  If this form of birth control must be injected every 3 months, it should only be done by a professional in a clinic with properly sterilized or disposable needles.  If birth control is desired, a better alternative would be insertion of an IUD, Intrauterine Device, which does not require regular follow up treatments.

Could Depo-Provera make women more susceptible to HIV infection? According to this theory, the active ingredient in Depo-Provera, (Depo-medroxyprogesterone acetate, aka DMPA), may chemically predispose at risk women to acquiring HIV through sexual contact with infected men, through thinning of vaginal epithelial cells and immunosuppression. Three recent meta-studies[1] show a statistically significant link between use of the drug and incidence of HIV in at risk women. The link to HIV transmission was not established statistically for use of either oral contraceptives or another injectable contraceptive drug, NET-EN, (norethisterone enanthate), in these studies.

Clinical Diagnosis without HIV testing: In rural poor areas of Africa HIV/AIDS may be diagnosed without HIV testing by the clinical indicators listed by WHO such as fever, headache, rash, sore throat, swollen lymph nodes, weight loss, chronic diarrhea or cough. These symptoms may also be caused by endemic diseases such as TB, malaria and other insect borne diseases, dysentery and other water borne diseases, parasites and malnutrition. WHO considers TB to be a leading indicator of HIV/AIDS. Some people diagnosed without HIV testing may instead have non-HIV AIDS caused by these endemic diseases.

Diagnosis with HIV testing: Clinical HIV tests detect antibodies to the virus, not the virus itself. HIV tests have a high incidence of false positives, so that retesting and other confirmation are needed after a positive test result. False positives of HIV testing may be the result of non-HIV AIDS caused by other diseases and pregnancy because the HIV tests are non-specific and may detect antibodies to other diseases or conditions.

Causes of False Positives:  HIV testing is not specific to HIV and is prone to false positives. It tests for antibodies to HIV, not the virus itself, but can also detect other antibodies present in chronic diseases or those acquired over a lifetime.  There are over 65 documented causes of false positives including TB, malaria, leprosy, hepatitis, Q fever, influenza or colds, herpes simplex, leishmaniosis, and Epstein Barr virus.  Pregnancy or prior pregnancies are among factors that can cause false positives due to presence of HLA (human leukocyte antigen). Is it time to question whether HIV testing, without thorough validation, is valid in parts of Africa where the population is routinely exposed to numerous diseases that leave a heavy load of antibodies in their blood?

Validation needed for HIV positives:  False positives are common so that, according to manufacturers’ instructions, positive tests must be retested in duplicate and then by another method to verify results, e.g. ELISA twice then Western Blot.  ELISA, Enzyme Linked ImmunoSorbent Assay, uses an antigen for the (in this case HIV) antibody bound to a solid surface and an enzyme that causes a color change when the target antibody attaches itself to the antigen.  Western Blot actually separates, by gel electrophoresis, each component in a mixture of antibodies bound to specific antigens. Medical testing protocols vary from country to country, so that the same test may be interpreted as positive or negative depending on the protocol. For example, UK does not use the Western Blot verification of duplicate ELISA tests, and different countries require from one to four Western Blot markers to verify and confirm a positive result.

South Africa uses duplicate ELISA only to verify positive HIV tests, resulting in 15-25% of the population testing positive, 60% of which are heterosexual women. South Africa also has a high rate of drug treatment for prevention of mother to child HIV transmission, which may mean that most HIV tests are conducted at gynecological clinics and obstetric hospitals on pregnant women. This is a problem since pregnancy is known to cause false positives. The incidence of HIV and AIDS in most of the other countries in Africa, and indeed the world, ranges from 0.1 to 5.0 percent of the population. South Africa’s 15 – 25% incidence needs a closer look. The fact that over half of these are heterosexual women is also problematic as described above.

Recommendation:  South Africans and Botswanans when first diagnosed with HIV or HIV/AIDS need to be retested using a more stringent verification protocol in the future. Unfortunately, the drugs used for treating HIV can cause false negatives, so retesting those already receiving therapy may be useless or at lease confusing.

Opportunistic Diseases: When people sicken and die with HIV/AIDS, it is not the HIV that kills them; it is other opportunistic infections that are able to invade and thrive because HIV has crippled the immune system. TB is the leading cause of death in Africa, with or without HIV/AIDS. A diagnosis of HIV/AIDS can be an excuse not to treat underlying endemic diseases.

Treatment Options:  HIV treatment drugs suppress the immune system further than the disease itself. Wouldn’t it make sense to treat the opportunistic diseases and malnutrition more aggressively first before suppressing the immune system further with AIDS treatment drugs?  In some areas of Africa, TB and HIV are treated simultaneously, which is a step in the right direction.

Orphans from AIDS? AIDS orphans are defined as anyone 15 years or younger who has lost, depending on the country, their mother, one parent or both parents to “AIDS related diseases.” South Africa includes people up to 18 years old.  WHO estimates that 70% of “AIDS orphans” have one living parent.  TB is the leading cause of death in Africa and the leading clinical indicator of the presence of AIDS.  Since many people in Africa live very short lives, with or without AIDS, how is this any different from the pattern of the past where lifespans are short and teenagers often are orphaned?

 

[1] References cited in Population Research Institute newsletter article: “While Admitting Risks, WHO Continues to Recommend Injectable Contraceptives for Women at High Risk of Contracting HIV” by Jonathan Abbamonte, April 20, 2017 as follows:

Brind J, Condly SJ, Mosher SW, Morse AR, Kimball J. Risk of HIV Infection in Depot-Medroxyprogesterone Acetate (DMPA) Users: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis. Issues Law Med 2015; 30(2): 129-39.

Morrison CS, Chen PL, Kwok C, Baeten JM, Brown J, Crook AM, et al. Hormonal contraception and the risk of HIV acquisition: an individual participant data meta-analysis. PLoS Med 2015; 12(1): e1001778.

Ralph LJ, McCoy SI, Shiu K, Padian N. Hormonal contraceptive use and women’s risk of HIV acquisition: a meta-analysis of observational studies. Lancet Infect Dis. 2015; 15(2): 181-9.

Séralini pseudoscience syndicate: Lessons learned from decade-long assault on biotechnology orchestrated by French geneticist — Genetic Literacy Project

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A MUST READ to sort fact from emotionally driven fiction.

via Séralini pseudoscience syndicate: Lessons learned from decade-long assault on biotechnology orchestrated by French geneticist — Genetic Literacy Project

Scientists react to republished Séralini GMO maize rat study — Genetic Literacy Project

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The GLP posts a collection of the responses from scientists worldwide to the republication of a controversial animal study on GM corn and herbicide that had been retracted.

via Scientists react to republished Séralini GMO maize rat study — Genetic Literacy Project

Anti-humanism, Environmentalism and the Overpopulation Myth

kaykiser

Control: Communism, Environmentalism and the Overpopulation Myth.    

 

The roots of environmentalism go back to the eighteenth century in the form of the overpopulation myth of Malthusianism, which was all about limiting the human population to prevent a predicted Malthusian Catastrophe, i.e. mass starvation, and for genetic purity, especially among supposedly genetically inferior groups e.g. certain races, cultures and the chronically poor. This is based on the progressive beliefs in materialism, (i.e. there is no spiritual side, only the material we can see and touch), and humanism, (i e. man is the measure of everything and determines morals to suit his circumstances).  From these progressive philosophies grew socialism, communism, fascism, the eugenics[1] movement and environmentalism, all of which are about control of the masses by an elite few, and all are basically anti-human, anti-development and anti-freedom.

In 1798 Thomas Malthus published An Essay on the Principles of Population[2]  in which he predicted future starvation based on the assumption that the rate of population growth would far surpass the growth rate of food supplies. Using this, he proposed draconian measures to “fix” an assumed overpopulation problem at a time when world population was below one billion.  Malthus made two major erroneous assumptions:

  1. Genetic inferiority and enhanced fertility of less accomplished peoples
  2. No improvement in crop yields per acre.

He assumed that the only way to grow more food was to increase the number of acres under cultivation, which limited the total “carrying capacity” of any region and indeed the world. We now know that yields have improved by orders of magnitude through things such as introduction of more prolific, disease resistant plant varieties and high yield hybrids, nitrogen and mineral fertilization, mechanization and control of insect and rodent pests. Nor did he foresee the natural reduction of family size that usually occurs when people are raised beyond near-starvation subsistence, and when diseases are controlled so that high childhood mortality is reduced.

Using these false assumptions as a “reason,” he advocated government measures to reduce population growth rates among the poor such as regulating marriage, educating for moral abstinence, as well as birth control and sterilization. However, he opposed nutritional relief and improved hospital access that would have reduced infant mortality and extended life spans among the poor.  In his opinion, helping the poor only made the supposed overpopulation problem worse.  He extended this same philosophy to Africa where he observed that the Tsetse fly and Malaria helped to keep human population numbers and lifespans low, which he saw as a good thing.

This same upside down philosophy persists today among progressives who only typically want to manage the poor while keeping them poor.  Malthus was pushing evolution and eugenics long before Charles Darwin[3] and Frances Galton[4].   In The Descent of Man, Charles Darwin assumed that the superior races (white Europeans) would eventually cause the extinction of the inferior races (black and brown). Francis Galton coined the term eugenics for a theory about improving the human race through selective breeding and exclusion from reproduction of supposedly genetically inferior groups.

“At some future period, not very distant as measured in centuries, the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace the savage races throughout the world.

—Charles Darwin, Descent of Man

Because genetic inferiority of certain races, cultures and the poor has largely been rejected by more enlightened geneticists and the public in general, (but apparently not for powerful population control supporters), along with vastly improved food production rates, environmentalism is the latest cause celebre to cover brutal inhumanity to man in the form of forced or coerced population control in places like China, lndia and Africa.  The shift from eugenics or racial purity to environmentalism is based on the false assumption that the world is overpopulated, resulting in harm to the environment.  This makes environmentalism and population control a perfect match and a good fit for the progressive elite seeking control.

Is it true that the world overpopulated? Only if agriculture had remained as it was in the eighteenth century.  However, the advances in crop yields are more than enough to feed the world.  There is more than enough food for all.  The reason for starvation and poor nutrition is usually political mismanagement or worse, such as well-meaning environmental and population control philanthropic societies, NGOs, UN and local governments intentionally keeping the poorest in their disease ridden squalor without adequate infrastructure to provide for basic needs in order to control the people.  A healthy and educated population is much harder for a dictator to control and thereby remain in power.

The best way to stabilize population, if that is the goal, is to raise the standard of living by providing employment, transportation, electricity, medical care, education, clean water and adequate food. It is a well known fact that family size is naturally reduced when living standards are improved beyond the point where excess children are needed to insure replacement of those lost in early childhood to disease and malnutrition.  It can be argued that the population is too low in many areas to provide the cooperation and man power to provide better facilities without outside aid. Only cities are overpopulated, and that is usually by choice. As population numbers have grown, the world has seen an increase in the standard of living, as reflected in the global GDP per capita, due to division of labor and shared responsibility for both agriculture and developing infrastructure.  We should be doing all we can to raise the world’s poor out of poverty. Caring for the environment is the last thing on the minds of people who are having difficulty feeding their children.  Raising their standard of living is the best thing we could do to stabilize the population and protect the environment. Unfortunately, the progressives would rather do the opposite for ideological reasons.

I have seen the benefits of higher population and the negative side of low population myself. I grew up in an area of the Appalachian Mountains where population is low. Services that are available in the cities and towns a couple of hours away are not or only marginally available in these mountainous rural areas.  Even finding a plumber or electrician is difficult.  Although the situation is better now because of improvements in highways, many in the area still must travel to the cities for proper medical care.  Lower population means lower tax basis, fewer businesses, less opportunity. It has been difficult getting businesses, whether they are medical facilities, manufacturing, commercial or food and entertainment,  interested in locating in an area where the customer and workforce base are low.  It has been particularly difficult getting doctors to come and stay.  It hasn’t been that long since the first fast food restaurant came into the area.  I bring this up to illustrate the logic of raising the population to improve living standards.  Granted, this is a far cry from poor villages in other countries, but it still illustrates the point that higher population brings higher living standards.

[1] Eugenics is the “science” of improving the human race by selective breeding of genetically superior people and preventing supposedly genetically inferior people from reproducing.

[2] Thomas Robert Malthus, An Essay on the Principles of Population, 1798, London

[3] Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species , 1858, London, The Descent of Man, 1871

[4] Francis Galton, 1865 article “Hereditary Talent and Character”, Hereditary Genius., 1869, Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development, 1883.

 

DDT is needed now more than ever (revised/reposted)

kaykiser

Bring back DDT – Save Africa and other impoverished areasAonpheles mosquito feeding

Over 80% of infectious diseases are caused by insects and other arthropods. DDT is desperately needed in impoverished countries where insect borne diseases kill and sicken millions every year, cutting lifespans and productivity.  Africa, India and South-Central Americas are most affected. This unpardonable crime amounts to continuing genocide of brown races by western powers.

Without these insect borne diseases, populations may increase at first, but better health will facilitate the building of infrastructure, agriculture and industry that can raise millions out of poverty, ignorance and hopelessness.  These changes will benefit the environment, because healthy people raised above dire poverty will be able to care for their environment.  Recent claims of mosquito resistance to DDT are grossly overblown and used as an excuse to prevent resumption for insect control.  WHO has required proof of NO resistance for its use in an area, but that requires proving a negative, which is impossible. The aim is not to kill every mosquito, but to reduce or eliminate the transmission of malaria and other diseases between insect vectors and humans.  Mosquitos emerge clean and must acquire malaria from infected people.  That’s why it did not return to countries where it was eliminated. Break the cycle to end the misery.

“How much labor and waste of time these wicked insects do cause, but a ray of hope, in the use of DDT, is now held out to us.”            — Out of My Life and Thought: An Autobiography, Dr. Albert Schweitzer (translated from Ma Vie et Ma Pensee)

DDT worked so well that malaria and similar diseases were eradicated in most developed countries and were near eradication in poorer countries before DDT was banned in 1972 by EPA in spite of failure to find any harm to humans or the environment by an overwhelming body of research.

“To only a few chemicals does man owe as great a debt as to DDT. It has contributed to the great increase in agricultural productivity, while sparing countless humanity from a host of diseases, most notably, perhaps, scrub typhus and malaria. Indeed, it is estimated that, in little more than two decades, DDT has prevented 500 million deaths due to malaria that would otherwise have been inevitable. Abandonment of this valuable insecticide should be undertaken only at such time and in such places as it is evident that the prospective gain to humanity exceeds the consequent losses. At this writing, all available substitutes for DDT are both more expensive per crop-year and decidedly more hazardous.”

— National Academy of Sciences, Committee on Research in the Life Sciences of the Committee on Science and Public Policy, The Life Sciences: Recent Progress and Application to Human Affairs, The World of Biological Research, Requirements for the Future (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1970), 432.                             (Emphasis added)

Rachel Carson’s 1962 book, Silent Spring, was filled with lies, half-truths, misinterpretation of research results and wild speculations.  Rather than being an attempt to protect humans and the environment as stated, it was really part of an effort to stop population increases in Africa, India and other impoverished countries.

“My own doubts came when DDT was introduced for civilian use. In Guyana, within two years it had almost eliminated malaria, but at the same time the birth rate had doubled. So my chief quarrel with DDT in hindsight is that it has greatly added to the population problem.”

                          —Alexander King, cofounder of the Club of Rome, 1990

Population Bomb by Paul Erilich (1968) was a another book based on Malthusian, (overpopulation), eugenicist, racist lies, aka propaganda.

“The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate…”                              — Paul Ehrlich, The Population Bomb, 1968

Population control groups such as the Club of Rome, supported by charitable foundations such as the Rockefeller Foundation, continue to spread the myth of overpopulation.  Many rural areas have too few healthy people to build roads, other infrastructure and industry.

In 1972 DDT was banned by US EPA Administrator William Ruckelshaus in spite of overwhelming scientific evidence presented at hearings that refuted claims of harm by activist groups such as Environmental Defense Fund and Audubon Society.

“DDT is not a carcinogenic, mutagenic, or teratogenic hazard to man. The uses under regulations involved here do not have a deleterious effect on fresh water fish, estuarine organisms, wild birds, or other wildlife…and…there is a present need for essential uses of DDT.”                — EPA Administrative Law Judge Edmund Sweeney, after months of hearings, “In the Matter of Stevens Industries, Inc., et al., L.F. & R. Docket Nos. 63, et al.). Hearing Examiner’s Recommended Findings, Conclusions, and Orders, April 1972.” (40 CFR 164.32). (Consolidated DDT Hearings)  As summarized in Barrons, May 1, 1972

Note that this case was brought on behalf of the Environmental Defense Fund, an advocacy group that opposed any use of modern fertilizers and pesticides as harmful to the environment, regardless of evidence to the contrary.

Beginning in the 1970’s, US AID, UN WHO, UNESCO and the World Bank have pressured leaders of poor countries to discontinue DDT as a prerequisite to receiving essential aid. This continues to the present with exception of WHO recently allowing limited spraying of interior walls in selected areas.

Although DDT is the most studied pesticide on the planet, it is still listed as an environmental toxin and possible carcinogen because the EPA listing has not been changed, in spite of all of the studies that failed to find harmful effects on humans or the environment.  It is much safer and more economical than any of the proposed replacements.

Verifying the Claims of Silent Spring

None of Rachel Carson’s “facts” about environmental and human harm were true. Most of the facts below, except where noted, are from “DDT: A Study in Scientific Fraud,” by J. Gordon Edwards, Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons Volume 9 Number 3 Fall 2004. (See link below)

Dr. Edwards examined each of Silent Spring’s claims and found them wrong and possibly fraudulent.

Not one person has been harmed or died from DDT.

  • The only death associated with DDT was a 3 yr. old child that drank a solution of DDT in kerosene, which is a hydrocarbon known to be toxic.
  • J. Gordon Edwards was a Ph.D. entomologist who sometimes ate a spoonful of DDT powder at his lectures as a demonstration of its safety. He suffered no significant ill effects and died of a heart attack at age 84 while hiking in the Rockies.

DDT is not carcinogenic, mutagenic or teratogenic

  • “Workers in the Montrose Chemical Company had 1,300 man-years of exposure, and there was never any case of cancer during 19 years of continuous exposure to about 17mg/man/day.”
  • “Concerns were sometimes raised about possible carcinogenic effects of DDT, but instead its metabolites were often found to be anti-carcinogenic, significantly reducing tumors in rats.”
  • Expected rise in leukemia in children and breast cancer years later in girls exposed during puberty never happened.

Bird deaths, thin egg shells and buildup in the environment have proven to be false.

  • Bird deaths at the University of Michigan, cited by Carson, were not from DDT, but were probably from soil fungicide containing mercury. In later tests, mercury was found in the soil and earthworms there. Other areas did not experience bird deaths from spraying of DDT. Carson’s Source was: Bird Mortality in the Dutch elm disease program in Michigan, Bulletin 41, Cranebrook Institute of Science by George John Wallace; Walter P Nickell; Richard F Bernard
  • According to Audubon Society Annual Christmas Bird Counts, bird populations actually increased during the thirty years of DDT use. Numbers rose from 90 birds seen per observer in 1941 to 971 birds seen per observer in 1960.
  • The eggshell thinning studies cited by Carson could not be replicated and had actually reduced dietary calcium, needed to build egg shells, of experimental birds to get that result.
  • Museum specimens compared to wild population eggs may have led to false claims of thinning because the museums used the best specimens available; natural variability in the wild may have been interpreted as thinning. “the whole idea that pesticides are concentrated as one moves up the food chain, which is crucial to Carson’s arguments about distant and delayed effects, has become increasingly dubious in the years that followed” (Fleming, New Conservation Movement, 31). Source: Reading Rachel Carson by Charles T. Rubin
  • DDT is not metabolized by birds and is rapidly excreted in their droppings.
  • “The counts of raptorial birds migrating over Hawk Mountain, Pennsylvania, indicated that there were many more hawks there during the “DDT years” than previously. The numbers counted there increased from 9,291 in 1946 (before much DDT was used) to 13,616 in 1963 and 29,765 in 1968, after 15 years of heavy DDT use.”

Aquatic life has not been harmed by DDT; it is practically insoluble in water, with only 1.2 parts per billion at saturation.

  • A study cited by Carson claimed 500 ppb DDT in seawater inhibited photosynthesis and killed algae. The problem with this study is that alcohol was added to the tank to dissolve the DDT in the water. Alcohol alone would do that.
  • The assumption of persistence of DDT in seawater for decades was also challenged. Tests showed DDT and its metabolites disappeared in as few as 38 days.

References:

See “DDT: A Study in Scientific Fraud,” by J. Gordon Edwards, Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons Volume 9 Number 3 Fall 2004. On the web at:

http://www.jpands.org/vol9no3/edwards.pdf

See also “The Truth about DDT and Silent Spring” by Robert Zubrin, adapted from Robert Zubrin’s Merchants of Despair: Radical Environmentalists, Criminal Pseudo-Scientists, and the Fatal Cult of Antihumanism, published in 2012, in New Atlantis Books series. On the web at:

www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-truth-about-ddt-and-silent-spring

Internat’l Orgs deny essential resources to poor countries – part 2, details

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Countries by poverty rate – World Bank, Peter Lonjers

Many international organizations propagate drastic population control measures under the radar while publicly advocating and providing (some) aid to the poor and endorsing environmental concerns. This includes governmental and nongovernmental agencies such as UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization), IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), UNFPA (United Nations Fund for Population Activities), The World Bank, USAID (United States Agency for International Development), the Club of Rome and its many spin-offs, Worldwide Fund for Nature, formerly called World Wildlife Fund (WWF), Green Peace, Population Council, International Planned Parenthood Federation, etc.

As a part of the Population Control Agenda and the overpopulation myth, in addition to enforced sterilization, abortion and birth control methods, other means of limiting both population and life span have been applied to impoverished countries and are often tied to reception or denial of aid or loans[i].

Of these, disease control and electrical power are the most important because they can facilitate many of the other items on the list, and kick-start the economy.  A healthy workforce and power to run industry, business, medical facilities and develop transportation systems are key to economic development.  Although many African countries need foreign aid and international loans now, the goal should be to help them raise their economy to the point where they are net contributors to the world economy or at least are self sufficient.

Throwing crumbs at the problem is not enough to accomplish this goal without actual investment in infrastructure.  See detailed list below of essential necessities that international organizations have denied or failed to provide/ promote :

DDT and Disease Control: Banning DDT has caused a rebound of malaria, once almost eradicated in many areas, and many other insect borne diseases, resulting in an estimated million deaths each year from malaria alone. (Estimates vary, but the real number is unknown.)  Many of the agencies named above, as well as many Western nations, withheld funds from foreign aid and loans for development unless underdeveloped countries abandoned DDT.  Poorer nations had no choice but to “voluntarily” ban the use of DDT to control insect borne diseases, which account for 80% of infectious diseases in these countries.  The economic loss in human productivity from malaria, TB and other diseases is incalculable.

Further research has disproved the claims of Rachael Carson’s book, Silent Spring, that DDT causes environmental harm to birds or aquatic life, cancers or other human harm.  Predictions of an upsurge in cancer and extinction of birds failed to materialize.  Not one human has ever been seriously harmed or died from its use or abuse, and robins to eagles flourished during and after its 30 year use in the United States.  DDT is practically insoluble in water, so no aquatic toxicity is possible and soil bacteria destroy it in a few weeks or months, ending any persistence.

It is cheaper than other insecticides, and is safer and easier to make, handle and distribute.  The claims that insects in poor countries developed immunity to it are false or grossly overblown. (Also, many African countries lacking transportation infrastructure never used DDT in the past so that development of resistance was impossible.)  India never participated in the ban, manufactures its own DDT and uses it judiciously with occurrence of very little resistance.  The UN standards for allowing use of DDT include unrealistic proof of NO resistance in the area.  That’s proving a negative, which is impossible. The aim is not to exterminate every mosquito, but to reduce their numbers until there are no more human carriers.

In addition to DDT treatment on interior walls for mosquito control, insect and parasite control must also include replacing thatched roofs where mosquitos hide with metal or tile, sealing the interior of homes from insects with wire screens that allow cooling air in but exclude insects, as well as education, fly swatters and glue strips, clean water to prevent dysentery and waterborne parasites, shoes/ sandals to keep pinworms and other parasites from entering through the feet, closed toilets, preferably with septic systems, to reduce fly-borne diseases.

Malaria Facts:  Malaria drugs can cure malaria if available, but symptoms only appear after 9 to 14 days or longer, by which time there may be liver or kidney damage.  Once symptoms appear, malaria can kill in as little as one day or persist for weeks or relapse over a longer period of time.  Reinfection is possible since the parasite imparts only partial immunity.  Each bout of malaria destroys red blood cells equivalent to a pint of blood, resulting in chronic anemia and kidney damage from repeated bouts for much of the African population.  Babies, children, pregnant women, the elderly and the infirm are especially vulnerable.

The malaria parasite requires both humans and mosquitos to complete its life cycle.  Mosquitos are “born” clean and must pick up the parasite (Plasmodium sp.) from an infected person. It takes another 10 days for the parasite to change into the stage that is infectious to humans.  No infected humans, no malaria even though the mosquito vector may still exist.  That is why it did not recur in North American and European countries when DDT was banned after 30 years’ use.  Human malaria does not infect animals and vice versa, with the rare exception of Plasmodium knowlesi, a primate species found in the Southeast Asia.

Power Plants: Over 600 million people in sub-Saharan Africa have no access to electricity.  Based on CO2 reduction, Climate Change advocates and international agreements provide funding  preferentially for renewable energy such as solar and wind power, which are unreliable, intermittent, environmentally harmful and require exotic elements, meanwhile discouraging or prohibiting development of power plants based on abundant fossil fuel, (coal, oil or natural gas), hydroelectric, geothermal or nuclear energy.  Hydroelectric power is necessarily clean, renewable and sustainable, but is hated by environmentalists for assumed harm to ecosystems.  Earlier successes in other countries over time have proven this assumption false except for temporary local effects.  Nature adapts.

Solar and wind power are, by their nature, inconsistent, unreliable, intermittent. Solar only works during the day when the sky is clear or nearly clear.  Wind only works on windy days, but only in a narrow range of velocities; too slow doesn’t generate power; too fast and both blades and generators are damaged. Wind power kills birds and bats that are important for insect control, and creates infrasound that is harmful to humans and animals.  Both solar and wind power require backup generation by other means: fossil fuel, hydroelectric, etc.  Solar and wind power are only useful as supplemental sources so they are at best temporary solutions.  Single home solar panels are only a feel-good drop in the bucket for the estimated 600 million needy people in sub Saharan Africa. It would be impossible to supply enough of these to make much of a difference, and is at best a temporary solution until rural power systems can be provided.  Arguments against other types of power plants usually involved cost of installing transmission lines.  However, except for single home solar systems, all types of power have the same requirements, including solar and wind.

It is well documented that environmentalists have stopped or prevented over 200 hydroelectric dams in Africa, although it is the most sustainable, reliable, cleanest and safest energy source and uses conventional materials and technology.  Hydroelectric power doesn’t require huge dam projects.  Systems based on even small waterfalls, dams or run-of-the-river systems can supply local power much sooner and cheaper.  African rivers have sufficient hydroelectric power generation capacity to supply all of the continent’s needs for the foreseeable future.  Only a tiny fraction of it has been developed.  One ray of hope is the large Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) being built on the upper Nile with a capacity of 6000 MW.  For comparison, the Aswan High Dam in Egypt has 2100 MW capacity and Cohora Brassa in Mozambique has 2075 MW capacity.  There are already a number of medium to small capacity systems in Africa including three plants at Victoria Falls. Many more are possible and needed.  India was an early pioneer and has become a leader in hydroelectric power generation, exports power and provides engineering support for new systems to other countries.

Geothermal energy is available in seismically active areas in Africa, mostly in the Rift Valley.  By sinking wells into thermal strata, steam or hot water can be used to run electricity generators.  The technology is well established but development is just beginning in Africa.  Other sources of electrical power generation include biomass and tidal generators.  Biomass has major drawbacks, including pollution and loss of vegetation from biomass burning.  Nuclear is among the cleanest power sources with no emissions, and only limited waste handling issues.

The way out of Energy Poverty should involve an all-of-the-above approach, including fossil fuels, geothermal, hydroelectric, nuclear, solar, tidal, biomass and wind.  The need is too great in lost lives and productivity to wait.  The need is urgent.  Once Energy Poverty is eliminated and other systems are in place, then fossil and bio-fuel power plants could be phased out or reduced in favor of hydroelectric, geothermal and nuclear power.

Availability of reliable electricity and natural gas are important for economic development, industry and medical infrastructure as well as home cooking and refrigeration, which are needed to provide a safe, clean food supply and to reduce harmful indoor air pollution from bio-fueled cooking and heating fires.  Electricity can solve a host of other problems including water purification, sanitation, roads, railroads, airstrips, access to markets and medical facilities.

Clean Water and Sanitation: Lives and health are impacted by holding as a low priority the development of village clean water wells or providing city slums with at least rudimentary piped-in purified water and sanitation systems. The environmentalist myth of dwindling global water supplies and limited resources is included in the justification of these policies, although village wells and reservoirs behind even modest hydroelectric dams could supply all their needs.  Many African women spend hours each day carrying water from streams and lakes, which contains dangerous bacteria and parasites.  The result of this is high infant and childhood mortality from intestinal parasites and diarrhea, the number one killer of young children in poor countries.

Sanitation is also needed but ignored, now consisting of open pit toilets, at best, or simply defecation and urination in fields and streams.  Flies carry disease from these sources, including tuberculosis (TB), leprosy, typhoid, cholera, dysentery, polio, anthrax, salmonella, parasite eggs and numerous other diseases.  As a start, clean water wells with manual pumps are needed in local villages as well as replacing open pit toilets with septic systems that enclose waste.  With electricity, water pumping and purification as well as flush toilets and local sewage treatment plants are possible.

Transportation: The development of roads and railroads needed for economic development and access to healthcare facilities, employment opportunities and markets is discouraged or prohibited, as disruptive to wildlife habitats.  Roads and railroads are erroneously assumed to break up habitats, isolate wildlife populations and disrupt seasonal migration patterns. All of these myths have been thoroughly refuted in areas where new roads and pipelines have not disrupted migration and sometimes resulted in more not less wildlife.

Modern Agriculture:  Modern agricultural methods and high yield crops are discouraged or prevented in favor of less productive, more labor intensive subsistence, so-called sustainable, aka organic, farming, “for the good of the environment.”  This has the opposite effect and causes soil depletion that naturally results in slash and burn deforestation as depleted fields must be abandoned for freshly cleared land.  Modern agriculture is a more sustainable practice, requiring only rotation of crops on fewer acres than subsistence farming and greatly increased yields per acre.  Higher yield per acre means fewer acres are needed to feed a population, saves forests and makes surplus produce available to sell or trade.  Modern agriculture using fertilizers, pesticides and improved crop varieties are opposed by organic farming organizations and subsidizing governments in developed nations.  The Green Revolution of improved varieties and practices, available for 50 years, has been applied successfully in some African nations, but only in areas with adequate roads for access to markets. Building the transportation infrastructure could facilitate introduction of modern agriculture in less developed areas.

GMO[ii] aka Biotech and Improved Crops:  Banning or discouraging the use of more productive, more drought, insect and disease resistant and more nutritious conventional high yield and GMO crops for improved yields and better nutrition is a crime against humanity.  For example, GMO Golden Rice, provides vitamin A that could end the cycle of blindness and death among the poor whose diets are dominated by rice.  The European Union has a ban on all agricultural products, not just GMO, from countries that grow any GMO crops.  This ban is largely based on protecting subsidized European farmers from competition by African, Asian and American produce.

Governments of many poor countries choose to ban GMO crops so they can sell their produce to the European Union, not because of any fears of GMO scare stories propagated by anti-GMO advocacy groups. These advocacy groups are backed by Western organic farming organizations to suppress their domestic and imported competition from high yield conventional and GMO crops, thus increasing their market share.  GMO is a term used by these groups for biotech improved varieties to imply harmful when it really means improved food crops by inserting specific genes to enhance characteristics such as higher nutrition and crop yields, drought, disease and insect resistance and reduced need for pesticides.

Contrary to scare stories, most companies have given away rights to many of these crops to help poor people, who can choose to grow them or not.  Contrary to propaganda of anti-GMO advocates, no one is forced to grow GMO or buy any agricultural chemical.  Propaganda would have you believe the big bad Monsanto is holding the world hostage, but the truth is that there are at least 60 developers in a dozen countries involving at least one beneficial modification in each of 30 varieties of fruits, vegetables and fibers.  Why would so many develop and promote products that harm their customers?  That’s illogical and ridiculous!

In June of 2016, over 100 Nobel Laureates signed an open letter to Greenpeace, the UN and Governments around the world to stop their criminal campaign against Biotech improved crops and in particular Golden Rice that can save the lives and sight of millions. You can read the letter here http://supportprecisionagriculture.org/nobel-laureate-gmo-letter_rjr.html

Industry: Environmentalists and communists discourage development of industry, including manufacturing and natural resource extraction (oil, gas, coal, minerals), as exploiting the workers and harmful to the environment, rather than, in reality, providing employment while raising the standard of living and improving environmental stewardship.  The result is high unemployment, unabated poverty and an inability to care for the environment.  Control of diseases that now cause high absenteeism and low productivity is as important as reliable electricity for industry. (see DDT above)  Foreign and domestic investment and development should be encouraged.  Support from industry could further economic and infrastructure development. 

Medicine: The UN and environmental organizations have failed to make local medical facilities and medicines available to rural areas. This is tied to failure to provide adequate roads and railroads as well as natural gas and electrical power needed for these facilities and their availability to the rural poor. This is also linked to the population control agenda.  In many areas, healing medicines and facilities are lacking essential medicines and devices, while birth control and sterilization facilities are well stocked.

Education: Failure to build schools or to provide instruction in hygiene, nutrition and childcare, and to train the people for skilled and semi-skilled labor, modern agriculture and small business administration.  There is also a great need for higher learning facilities to provide medical, technical and leadership personnel.

HIV/AIDS: Diagnosis in rural areas based on symptoms without confirmation of the virus is an excuse for not treating longstanding endemic illnesses and malnutrition.  Most of those “diagnosed” with AIDS in poor countries have not been tested for the actual HIV virus. They have been assumed to have HIV/AIDS through disparate symptoms such as fever, headache, rash, sore throat, swollen lymph nodes, weight loss, chronic diarrhea and/or cough, all of which can be caused by malnutrition and many common parasites or infectious diseases as well as severe illnesses such as malaria or tuberculosis (TB).  The United Nations has named TB as a leading indicator of AIDS.  By the UN diagnosing AIDS from symptoms without lab tests, many TB and malaria victims were left untreated, resulting in higher death rates, (falsely attributed to HIV/AIDS).

While TB and other chronic illnesses often weaken the immune systems and cause acquired immune deficiency, i.e. AIDS, it has nothing to do with HIV or sexual behavior.  This deception has a triple whammy for the UN.  It excuses high death rates and failure to treat endemic diseases, it incentivizes HIV/AIDS research funding in developed countries by falsely declaring it a pandemic, and it has the potential for vindicating population control programs in the minds of potential donors by creating a false picture of rampant immorality and promiscuity.  Even with HIV/AIDS diagnosis, treatment should concentrate on treating the presenting malnutrition and endemic diseases first, e.g. malaria, TB, etc., instead of starting with AIDS chemotherapy, which further depresses the immune system, or no treatment at all.

It should also be noted that those actually tested for HIV/AIDS in urban settings may be misdiagnosed due to low specificity of the test, failure to properly retest and several factors such as pregnancy or other diseases that cause false positives.  Manufacturers of the tests require retesting by more than one type of detection protocol for confirmation.  The unusually high incidence in South Africa, (60% female at a rate of 15-25% compared to less than 2% in other countries,) may be due to administration at gynecological clinics and failure to retest by a more than one method.  Any retests are only done by the same protocol as the original diagnosis.  Here again, treatment of the endemic diseases first is crucial. HIV/AIDS doesn’t kill people; it cripples the immune system and reduces resistance to other diseases. Note: retesting after HIV/AIDS treatment is started may result in false negatives.

Cultural Preservation (Stagnation): Environmentalists promote preservation of primitive cultures in toto as of higher importance than developing higher standards of living while preserving cultural heritages.  There is no harm to the cultural heritage by replacing thatched roofs with metal roofs and adding doors and screens to keep out insects and small animals, as well as other “modern” improvements such as electric lights, refrigerators and stoves; a clean water well and proper toilets; a road passable by vehicles to get to markets and clinics, etc.

Political Unrest: Failure to address political corruption, violence and terrorism creates a climate that tends to keep out aid workers from charitable organizations.  It also puts roadblocks in the way of developing the economy, industry, education, healthcare, electrical power and transportation infrastructure.  Violence in any form must be controlled for development to advance. Pressure by international organizations should be applied to address corrupt governments, lawlessness and violence.

Anticolonial propaganda was and is spread by socialists and communists as a way to control the people and make them suspicious of development efforts by Western charities. Muslim groups have also propagated these scare stories. In the 1960s the Soviet Union stirred up anti-colonialism among African nations leading to demands for independence from colonial powers without adequate preparation for proper self-governance.  This was #43 of the 45 Communist Goals revealed by Dr. Cleon Skousen in his 1958 book The Naked Communist and read into the Congressional Record in 1963, “#43. Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self-government.” 35 African nations became independent in the 1960s, half a dozen in the late 1950s and a similar number in the 1970s.  Of course, part of the blame falls on the colonial powers that failed to prepare the people for self government or to develop sufficient infrastructure needed for economic development.  Rather than a fast overthrow without preparation, a more gradual training and handing over of the government would have prepared them better for self-government.

In Summary:  As can be readily seen, these priorities are upside down, many having the opposite effect of their stated goals. Keeping people on bare subsistence almost guarantees high birth rates to help farm and in anticipation of high infant and childhood mortality, while causing maximum harm to the environment.

To develop a robust economy, a healthy workforce and infrastructure to facilitate economic development are needed.  By far, disease control and electrical power are most needed and can drive development.  DDT and electricity could jump-start this development followed by transportation, clean water, sanitation, and medical facilities.  Control of insect borne diseases would eliminate high rates of employee absenteeism, encourage both domestic and foreign investment in manufacturing and other industries, and provide much needed jobs and money to raise families out of poverty.

Private corporations in Western countries need to take a fresh look at Africa for investment in foreign production in lieu of communist China.  Investment in infrastructure could produce significant benefits while raising the standard of living of millions and developing new markets and protecting the environment.  Such successes could have a domino effect.  Small starts can become large movements.

Get involved. You can do your part as individuals by donating to worthy charities, not UN and Red Cross/Crescent, which squander donations and work through corrupt governments.  World Vision  http://www.wvi.org/about-world-vision and Samaritan’s Purse  https://www.samaritanspurse.org/ )  lead my list of worthy charities for helping needy people directly.  Both feature designated donations and have Christmas catalogues that allow donors to buy shares of projects such as clean water wells, medicines, schools, cattle and small animals, agriculture and small business training and support, etc.

Several organizations support biotech, high yield crops and modern farming practices such as: ISAAA, International Service for Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications at http://www.isaaa.org/ and Genetic Literacy Project at https://geneticliteracyproject.org/donate/

 

[i] See part 1 for more information at Internat’l Orgs deny essential resources to poor countries, Part 1

[ii] GMO or “Genetically Modified Organisms” is a term invented by the Organic Farming Industry to scare people into avoiding such improved foods.  “Non-GMO” is an ignorant term that is used for advertising purposes and to placate Big Organic’s smear campaigns.  There is absolutely no benefit to it. The better terms are Precision Agriculture or Biotech Crops. So-called GMO involves a process where a specific plant gene is inserted into a plant to give it beneficial characteristics.  Earlier plant breeding processes used a shotgun approach where whole genomes are involved in cross breeding or radiation treatment, and hoping that more beneficial than harmful genes will show up in some off-spring.

Internat’l Orgs deny essential resources to poor countries, Part 1

kaykiser

Most people assume that trusted international leaders and nonprofit organizations would value life and want to raise the standard of living and lifespans of people in less developed cultures. This has apparently not been the case for many internationally recognized governmental and non-governmental agencies. Among the preponderance of international organizations, the focus is on reducing the population and maintaining the status quo, not on humanitarian aid or developing underdeveloped cultures.  Although this is slowly changing through various charitable organizations, most official international agencies give only enough aid and support to barely sustain the under-privileged, but not enough to raise their standard of living, develop their infrastructure or change their long range outcome.  It has repeatedly been demonstrated that raising the standard of living and health of impoverished peoples is the best way to both stabilize the population and protect the environment.

Haiti & Dominican Republic border – Effect of biomass burning vs. hydroelectric power. [1]
For those dealing with high infant and childhood mortality and struggling to feed their families, high birth rates in anticipation of those losses, and to provide farm labor for subsistence farming along with an inability and unwillingness to protect the environment are the natural consequences. Destitute people will do whatever is deemed necessary to survive, including harming the environment. You would, too.  Thus, progressive policies that keep indigenous peoples in their poverty and squalor for “cultural preservation” or to “save the planet” have the opposite effect of their stated ends of preserving the environment and improving human life.

Many international organizations propagate drastic population control measures under the radar while publicly advocating and providing (some) aid to the poor and endorsing environmental concerns. This includes governmental and nongovernmental agencies such as UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization), IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), UNFPA (United Nations Fund for Population Activities), The World Bank, USAID (United States Agency for International Development), the Club of Rome and its many spin-offs, Worldwide Fund for Nature, formerly called World Wildlife Fund (WWF), Green Peace, Population Council, International Planned Parenthood Federation, etc. Many of these organizations swap and share members and leaders, and cooperate to help each other toward common population control goals.

Worldwide Need for UNFPA services – UN Population Fund at http://www.unfpa.org/data

The Population Control agenda is rooted in the Eugenics movement that considered brown and black people to be inferior to the white race.  When that became unpopular, they hid this origin and emphasized the overpopulation myth and population control “for the good of the planet.”  Meanwhile they still maintaining an attitude that brown and black people are incapable of improvement and need to be taken care of and led.  This is a pernicious lie!  The present state of environmental and economic suppression and control is still a form of colonialism.  There is hope for Africa and other underdeveloped countries to become economically independent, but priorities and attitudes must change. 

The Club of Rome describes itself as “a group of world citizens, sharing a common concern for the future of humanity.” Its members includes current and former heads of state, UN bureaucrats, high-level politicians and government officials, diplomats, scientists, economists and business leaders from around the globe. Ostensively a charitable organization, it really advocates for control of population in underdeveloped countries as its primary goal and attempts to influence governments through its high-level members.  In 1972 it published a report entitled The Limits to Growth. In its own words, its mission is “to act as a global catalyst for change through the identification and analysis of the crucial problems facing humanity and the communication of such problems to the most important public and private decision makers as well as to the general public.”  As such, it has been one of the primary promoters of government and NGO policies limiting reproduction in poor countries by withholding aid and loans unless strict population control measures are in place.

“The common enemy of humanity is man. In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill.  All these dangers are caused by human intervention, and it is only through changed attitudes and behaviour that they can be overcome. The real enemy then, is humanity itself.” (emphasis added)

— The Club of Rome

Although, as a part of the population control agenda, people in developed countries have been encouraged into voluntary sterilization, birth control and abortions, especially among the low income populations [2], the main focus is on targeting the poorest and most vulnerable people in underdeveloped countries.  Aid money to impoverished nations is often linked to a demand for population control quotas on mandatory (forced or coerced) sterilizations, implantation of IUDs and injected birth control chemicals for the poorest people.  This is the ugly secret hidden behind the humanitarian image projected for donations.  Their websites and other publications hide this agenda under euphemistic and colorful terms such as “family planning,” “research” and “improving the lives of the poor.”

In addition to enforced sterilization, abortion and birth control methods, other means of limiting both population and life span have been applied and are often tied to reception or denial of aid. See below for summary and more detail in Part 2 in next post; the list includes denial or failure to provide/ promote :

  • DDT for control of insect borne diseases. (80% of diseases are zoonotic.)
  • Power Plants except unreliable (aka green) wind and solar
  • Clean Water and Sanitation to reduce diseases
  • Transportation: roads and railroads for access to markets and clinics
  • Modern agriculture in favor of slash & burn subsistence (“sustainable”) agriculture
  • Access to EU markets is denied if genetically modified or high yield crops are grown
  • Industry investment outlook is poor due to high absenteeism from disease (see DDT)
  • Medicine: poor facilities and supplies, except for sterilization and birth control
  • Education: failure to train in hygiene, child care, agriculture and small business
  • HIV/AIDS diagnosis without confirmation as excuse for not treating TB, Malaria, etc.
  • Cultural Preservation in toto is encouraged, rather than economic development
  • Political Unrest is allowed to persist that discourages involvement by charities
  • Anti-Colonial Propaganda to scare people from accepting assistance/expertise.

Of these, disease control and electrical power are the most important because they can facilitate many of the other items on the list, and kick-start the economy.  A healthy workforce and power to run industry, business, medical facilities and transportation are key to economic development. Although many African countries need foreign aid and international loans now, the goal should be to help them raise their economy to the point where they are net contributors to the world economy or at least are self sufficient.

[1] Photo from WUWT, post reposted here:  How Environmental Organizations Are Destroying The Environment

[2] The population control agenda has been so successful in developed countries that for many countries birth rates are below replacement levels of 2+ children per couple.  This is becoming a problem for countries like Japan and Germany where employment quotas for even essential services are hard to fill and an aging population is dependent on the care of fewer offspring.  This will remain a problem until birth rates rise again to above replacement rates.

Killing Africa – Evil in the name of Good

kaykiser
Countries by poverty rate – World Bank, Peter Lonjers

In my upcoming book I will use Africa as the “poster child” to illustrate the evil that is being continued against the developing world in the name of good. The modern Environmental movement, including Climate Change, is closely associated with and grew out of the overpopulation myth started in the 18th and 19th centuries, and the Population Control and Eugenics movements of the 20th century. Climate Change is just the latest face of Socialist/ Communist philosophy using fear, guilt and shame to control people, and not only keep poor nations poor, but ultimately to bring down Western civilization and its successful free market economic system.

Their agenda is based on an anti-human, anti-freedom, anti-progress de-growth philosophy. They are actually pushing a return to a simpler romanticized life, complete with subsistence farming and shorter lifespans as a way to “save the planet.”  Never mind that the romanticized “good old days” never existed, but were actually brutal and cruel.  How would you like using an unheated outdoor toilet complete with spiders and snakes, chopping wood for heat, carrying water every day from a spring or well, heating water for baths and cooking on a wood burning cook stove in both summer heat and winter cold, scrubbing your clothes on a washboard and hanging them on a clothesline even in freezing weather? I’ve done it and it’s no fun.

Even this is a cut above the life in poor nations where many don’t even have stoves, washtubs, wells and proper toilets, much less electric lights.  This brutal and harsh life is about where the early American settlers were, and it was continued in some isolated areas into the middle of the 20th century.  Life was a daily struggle just to live and feed their families.  Lifespans were short and disease was rampant.  In the 1980s when wood stoves were all the rage, my friends couldn’t understand why I didn’t want one.  I had enough of chopping and carrying in wood and carrying out messy ashes when I had no choice. It might have been an adventure when I was young, but give me modern conveniences any day.

While agenda driven proponents of Environmentalism and its daughter Climate Change, aka Global Warming, claim that Western civilization is to blame (for whatever the cause du jour is), it is actually the most environmentally responsible system in the world. It is also the most generous and the most capable of helping the poor. Because we have the means and the incentive, we are able to care for the environment better, clean the water and the air and protect wildlife and habitats. People in under-developed countries who struggle just to feed their families are the least environmentally responsible by necessity. The romanticized “Noble Savage” never existed.  They do whatever is necessary to survive.  Their homes are drafty and cold or sweltering hot with indoor air pollution from bio-based cooking fires, vermin and disease carrying insects, and poor sanitation even for babies.  Many spend hours each day carrying water from streams, which often contain dangerous bacteria and parasites.

I thank God for:

  • Electricity that can provide light, heat, cooling, cooking, hot water for washing and news and weather reports to avoid immanent dangers; electricity also provides power for many of the items below.
  • Clean central heat and air conditioning, which have saved countless babies, the elderly and the infirm from heat exhaustion or heat stroke in summer and hypothermia in winter;
  • Refrigeration to keep food from spoiling and avoid food poisoning;
  • A clean cooking stove to avoid indoor air pollution and kill pathogens in food;
  • Purified water on tap to avoid water borne diseases, and flush toilets;
  • Plenty of safe, healthy foods for good nutrition and health;
  • A safe place to live for shelter from the weather without disease carrying vermin and insects;
  • Vehicles and good roads to provide access to medical facilities, jobs and markets;
  • Modern medicines, antibiotics and vaccines to cure or control diseases and prolong life;
  • Computers and cell phones for educational purposes and to contact help when needed.

Viva la technology that has kept me alive, comfortable and able to contribute to charities that help the down-trodden[1].  I only wish I could do more.  My upcoming book is dedicated to that aim: to raise awareness and prompt others to speak out against the tyranny that is holding poor countries down in the name of “saving the planet.” What hubris to think we could save the planet!  The planet doesn’t care about our puny efforts. It has always been out to kill us. Only our efforts, preferably including technology, keep us alive and well. Meanwhile, the earth, as a self-correcting system that acts in cycles, is just fine.

However, there is a tyranny against poor underdeveloped countries that cries out for readily available solutions. We should strive for that better world I described in my previous blog, Anti-Humanism – Disease, Starvation, Poverty, Sterilization, not just for developed countries, but for ALL.  It is possible. Poor countries are not hopeless, just helpless against forces aimed at keeping them controlled, primitive and poor.  We are within sight of solving these problems, but are being hindered by environmentalists and tyrannical, corrupt governments and international organizations that foster the myths of scarcity, overpopulation and hopelessness.

“Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!” —Isaiah 5:20

“… For I was hungry, and you gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and you gave me no drink: I was a stranger and you took me not in; naked, and you clothed me not: sick, and in prison, and you visited me not. Then shall they answer him, saying, Lord, when did we see you hungry, or thirsty, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto you?  Then shall he answer them, saying, Truly I say unto you, In as much as you did it not to one of the least of these, you did it not unto me.”  — Matthew 25:42-45

“Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” — Source uncertain: evolved from various sources: Maimonides (12th century), Indian or Chinese proverbs, etc., 19th and 20th century writers.

[1] World Vision and Samaritan’s Purse lead my list of charities that use their funds best and bypass corrupt governments to give aid directly to the needy. Aid includes food, clothing, safe shelter, clean water wells, farm animals, seeds, medicines, clinics, schools, training for hygiene, agriculture and small business.

Anti-Humanism – Disease, Starvation, Poverty, Sterilization

kaykiser

Imagine living in a world where all nations and continents are fully developed, prosperous and healthy. Technological developments have been used to eliminate starvation, extreme poverty and to improve health, and where stewardship of the environment is the norm.   Now imagine you have just discovered an island where none of these things are available.  Wouldn’t you be horrified and enraged that this situation is allowed to continue in a world of abundance?  Then you learn that the powerful would rather manage the situation than end it, and that they give environmental concerns as their reason for keeping the poor people in their disease-ridden, miserable squalor. Then you also learn that many wealthy nations want to keep it that way and actually block trade from poor nations rather than compete in the marketplace or help them grow their economy as a new market in which to sell their own goods. Wouldn’t your outrage and feelings of frustration and helplessness grow exponentially?

Well, that is the actual situation, as it exists today, especially in most areas of Africa, but also India, South America, the Middle East, China, Southeast Asia and Oceana. Because it has been going on for such a long time, we have come to accept it as the norm that can’t be changed.  If this was a new situation, everyone would want to mobilize to fix it.  There are many internal reasons for the on-going situation such as corrupt governments and primitive customs, but there are also outside forces that have insured that it is perpetuated “for the good of the environment.”  Through propaganda, these same forces have convinced most people in the developed world that it is an unsolvable problem. It is not. It is a deliberate scheme based on false assumptions and concerted efforts to control population in less developed countries.  It is environmental and economic colonialism, meant to suppress those least able to defend themselves in the name of “saving the planet.” When the poor are struggling just to stay alive, they are not capable of caring for the environment.  It would be better for the environment if we raised them out of poverty.

In my second book in the Modern Mythology Series, to be published later this year or early next year, I will use Africa as the “poster child” to illustrate the evil that is being continued in the name of good. The modern Environmental movement, including Climate Change, is closely associated with and grew out of the anti-human overpopulation myth started in the 18th century, and the Population Control and Eugenics movements of the 20th century. Climate Change is just the latest face of anti-human, de-growth and overpopulation myths that are used as a tool of the Socialist/ Communist philosophy.  They use fear, guilt and shame to control people and not only keep poor nations poor, but ultimately to bring down Western civilization and its successful free market economic system.

“The common enemy of humanity is man. In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with   the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill. All these dangers are caused by human intervention, and it is only through changed attitudes and behaviour that they can be overcome. The real enemy then, is humanity itself.” (emphasis added)

— The Club of Rome

“My own doubts came when DDT was introduced for civilian use. In Guyana, within two years it had almost eliminated malaria, but at the same time the birth rate had doubled. So my chief quarrel with DDT in hindsight is that it has greatly added to the population problem.”

—Alexander King, cofounder of the Club of Rome, 1990

Day of Reckoning for DDT Foes? NOT! Junkscience.com 2006

kaykiser

“…terrible toll in human lives (tens of millions dead — mostly pregnant women and children under the age of 5), illness (billions sickened) and poverty (more than $1 trillion dollars in lost GDP in sub-Saharan Africa alone) caused by the tragic, decades-long ban.”

Day of Reckoning for DDT Foes?  Reblog from Junkscience.com 2006

By Steven Milloy September 21, 2006, FoxNews.com

Last week’s announcement that the World Health Organization lifted its nearly 30-year ban on the insecticide DDT is perhaps the most promising development in global public health since… well, 1943 when DDT was first used to combat insect-borne diseases like typhus and malaria.

Overlooked in all the hoopla over the announcement, however, is the terrible toll in human lives (tens of millions dead — mostly pregnant women and children under the age of 5), illness (billions sickened) and poverty (more than $1 trillion dollars in lost GDP in sub-Saharan Africa alone) caused by the tragic, decades-long ban.

Much of this human catastrophe was preventable, so why did it happen? Who is responsible? Should the individuals and activist groups who caused the DDT ban be held accountable in some way?

Rachel Carson kicked-off DDT hysteria with her pseudo-scientific 1962 book, “Silent Spring.” Carson materially misrepresented DDT science in order to advance her anti-pesticide agenda. Today she is hailed as having launched the global environmental movement. A Pennsylvania state office building, Maryland elementary school, Pittsburgh bridge and a Maryland state park are named for her. The Smithsonian Institution commemorates her work against DDT. She was even honored with a 1981 U.S. postage stamp. Next year will be the 100th anniversary of her birth. Many celebrations are being planned.

It’s quite a tribute for someone who was so dead wrong. At the very least, her name should be removed from public property and there should be no government-sponsored honors of Carson.

The Audubon Society was a leader in the attack on DDT, including falsely accusing DDT defenders (who subsequently won a libel suit) of lying. Not wanting to jeopardize its non-profit tax status, the Audubon Society formed the Environmental Defense Fund (now simply known as Environmental Defense) in 1967 to spearhead its anti-DDT efforts. Today the National Audubon Society takes in more than $100 million per year and has assets worth more than $200 million. Environmental Defense takes in more than $65 million per year with a net worth exceeding $73 million.

In a February 25, 1971, media release, the president of the Sierra Club stated that his organization wanted “a ban, not just a curb” on DDT, “even in the tropical countries where DDT has kept malaria under control.” Today the Sierra Club rakes in more than $90 million per year and has more than $50 million in assets.

Business are often held liable and forced to pay monetary damages for defective products and false statements. Why shouldn’t the National Audubon Society, Environmental Defense, Sierra Club and other anti-DDT activist groups be held liable for the harm caused by their recklessly defective activism?

It was, of course, then-Environmental Protection Agency administrator William Ruckelshaus who actually banned DDT after ignoring an EPA administrative law judge’s ruling that there was no evidence indicating that DDT posed any sort of threat to human health or the environment. Ruckleshaus never attended any of the agency’s hearings on DDT. He didn’t read the hearing transcripts and refused to explain his decision.

None of this is surprising given that, in a May 22, 1971, speech before the Wisconsin Audubon Society, Ruckleshaus said that EPA procedures had been streamlined so that DDT could be banned. Ruckleshaus was also a member of — and wrote fundraising letters for — the EDF.

My note: This speech was before the seven months long EPA hearings before Judge Sweeney began in fall of 1971, so even though the hearings concluded DDT was not harmful to man or environment, Ruckelshaus  already had his mind made up.

The DDT ban solidified Ruckelshaus’ environmental credentials, which he has surfed to great success in business, including stints as CEO of Browning Ferris Industries and as a director of a number of other companies including Cummins Engine, Nordstrom, and Weyerhaeuser Company. Ruckelshaus currently is a principal in a Seattle, Wash., -based investment group called Madrona Venture Group.

Corporate wrongdoers — like WorldCom’s Bernie Ebbers and Tyco’s Dennis Kozlowski — were sentenced to prison for crimes against mere property. But what should the punishment be for government wrongdoers like Ruckleshaus who, apparently for the sake of his personal environmental interests, abused his power and affirmatively deprived billions of poor, helpless people of the only practical weapon against malaria?

Finally, there is the question of the World Health Organization itself. What’s the WHO been doing for all these years? There are no new facts on DDT — all the relevant science about DDT safety has been available since the 1960s. Moreover, the WHO’s strategy of mosquito bednets and malaria vaccine development has been a dismal failure. While the death toll in malarial regions has mounted, the WHO has been distracted by such dubious issues as whether cell phones and French fries cause cancer.

It’s a relief that the WHO has finally come to its senses, but on the other hand, the organization has done too little, too late. The ranks of the WHO’s leadership need to be purged of those who place the agenda of environmental elitists over the basic survival of the world’s needy.

In addition to the day of reckoning and societal rebuke that DDT-ban advocates should face, we should all learn from the DDT tragedy.

With the exception of Rachel Carson (who died in 1964), all of the groups and individuals above mentioned also promote global warming alarmism. If they and others could be so wrong about DDT, why should we trust them now? Should we really put the global economy and the welfare of billions at risk based on their track record?

Steven Milloy publishes JunkScience.com and CSRWatch.com. He is a junk science expert, an advocate of free enterprise and an adjunct scholar at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

See “DDT: A Case Study in Scientific Fraud” by J. Gordon Edwards, PhD, 2004 at http://www.jpands.org/vol9no3/edwards.pdf

For more information see also my earlier blog – Bring back DDT – Save Africa and other impoverished areas