Real risks, irrelevant risks

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Few parents want themselves or their children to be prescribed drugs that cause anemia, nausea, diarrhea, increased infection risks, fertility problems, fetal defects, hair loss and even death. But when those chemotherapy drugs mean not dying from cancer, it's an easy choice.

That's the situation facing Africa -- only for us it's not cancer. Our concern is malaria, which infects nearly 400 million of us, and kills 1 million of our precious children, every single year.

We desperately need the African equivalent of chemo drugs -- DDT and other insecticides -- to prevent this terrible disease. Thankfully, the U.S. Agency for International Development, World Health Organization and other agencies are helping us launch spraying programs. Just spraying tiny amounts of DDT on walls keeps 90 percent of mosquitoes from even entering homes, irritates those that come in so they don't bite, and kills any that land -- for six months or more. No other chemical, at any price, can do that.

But chemical-hating activists continue to oppose these lifesaving programs and raise constantly changing "concerns" like: "Some researchers think DDT could be inhibiting lactation and might be related to premature births, low birth weights and slow reflexes in babies."

Recently, the University of California-Berkeley and Los Angeles Times reported that "very high exposure" to DDT can cause mental test scores in 2-year-olds to drop slightly. They say this minor problem may disappear by the time the children enter school -- but still urged that Africa consider "alternative antimalarial controls" and "balance" risks carefully against benefits.

However, these concerns aren't even relevant to Africa. No one is talking about massive DDT spraying for agriculture, or even insect control. We're talking about limited, controlled spraying on walls of houses.

There are no viable "alternatives." Nothing works as well as DDT, does what it does, for as long, or at such a low price. Moreover, every chemical has risks. In fact, DDT is 100 times less toxic to humans than nicotine in cigarettes, just as safe as the pyrethroids used in agriculture and mosquito control, and far less toxic than chemotherapy drugs, say experts like Dr. Donald Roberts, professor of tropical disease at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences.

Antimalaria drugs are also powerful chemicals. Fansidar can cause severe vomiting and lung and liver damage. Chloroquine (which no longer even works well) has harmful effects; and even Artemisia-based drugs have neurological side effects. People aren't just exposed to them. Babies, little children, pregnant women and old people alike must ingest them every time they get malaria.

Bed nets are impregnated with pyrethroids, to make them kill mosquitoes -- and people have to sleep under them, breathing in the vapors and rubbing their skin against the nets.

Researchers and activists have never studied or compared these side effects, or evaluated their risks and benefits. Nor have they recommended taking these products (or chemotherapy drugs) off the market -- which would be shortsighted and tragic.