Show 906
Segment 1. John Stosell and Richard Tren detail how the DDT ban, a great victory for environmentalism, has led to a multitude of deaths throughout the world.
To watch the video of this audio segment visit:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHwqandRTSQ
7 minutes
Segment 2. Reason TV. Demonizing DDT: Challenging The Scare Campaign That Has Cost Millions of Lives
To watch the video of this audio segment visit:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXQePTscn5c&feature=share&list=PL153F59E8B8619158
In The Excellent Powder: DDT's Political and Scientific History, Richard Tren and Donald Roberts argue that the infamous insecticide is the world's greatest public-health success stories, saving millions of lives by preventing insect-borne disease. Unfortunately for those in areas still infested with mosquitoes and other flying bugs, DDT is also the world's most-misunderstood substance, the target of a decades-long scientifically ignorant and ideologically motivated campaign that has vastly limited its use and applications.
From Rachel Carson in the 1960s to contemporary critics, DDT has been the object of what Roberts, a professor of tropical public health at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, calls "scare campaigns" that link DDT to "theoretical harms to wildlife and human life that simply don't exist."
Dubbed "the excellent powder" by Winston Churchill for its life-saving qualities, DDT has the potential to transform the developing world from a malarial hell into something else again. Yet as Tren, the winner of the 2009 Julian L. Simon Award, warns, under current international conventions, global DDT production is scheduled to be halted in 2017, thereby consigning much of the world to less-effective and more-expensive alternatives that will consign millions of poor people to living hell.
Reason.tv's Nick Gillespie sat down with Tren and Roberts, who are part of Africa Fighting Malaria, to talk about how DDT got such a bad rap and what can be done to set the record straight.
Approximately 9.15 minutes.
Segment 3 Michael Crichton on DDT
5 minutes
Segment 4- Silent Spring at 50: The False Crises of Rachel Carson
Cato Institute, 2012
Thursday, September 20, 2012
To watch the video visit:
http://www.cato.org/event.php?eventid=9185
Featuring the co-editor Andrew Morriss, D. Paul Jones, Jr., & Charlene A. Jones Chairholder in Law and Professor of Business, University of Alabama; Senior Fellow, Property and Environment Research Center; Richard Tren, program officer at Searle Freedom Trust; moderated by Jerry Taylor, Senior Fellow, Cato Institute.
Purchase Book
Widely credited with launching the modern environmental movement when published 50 years ago, Rachel Carson's Silent Spring had a profound impact on our society. While Carson was not the first to write about the dangers of pesticides or to sound environmental alarms, her book captured and retained the attention of the public. As an iconic work, the book has received little critical inquiry, but this landmark anniversary provides an opportunity to reassess its legacy and influence. In Silent Spring at 50: The False Crises of Rachel Carson, experts explore the book's historical context, the science it was built on, and the policy consequences of its core ideas. The conclusions reached by the authors make it clear that the legacy of Silent Spring is highly problematic. Carson made little effort to provide a balanced perspective and consistently ignored key evidence that would have contradicted her work. Thus, while the book provided a range of notable ideas, a number of Carson's major arguments rested on what can only be described as deliberate ignorance. Silent Spring at 50 reveals the dangers of substituting sensationalism for fact, and apocalyptic pronouncements for genuine knowledge. Join Andrew Morriss, one of the book's authors and editors, for what promises to be a unique and compelling discussion.
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