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Up to the minute notes on the current state of free thinking and free living: Kentucky moonshine - original analysis and reporting from MoreThings, and all round pop culture museum of sight and sound - photo galleries, mp3 and video downloads.
Al Barger and MoreThings - getting people's goats since 1998.
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January 07, 2008
Nothing But Nets = Nothing But Nonsense
For some months now, I've been seeing this PSA for a charity outfit called Nothing But Nets. Their deal is that they are looking for money to buy nets to put over third world kids' beds to keep out disease bearing mosquitoes. As some or other sports guy spokesmen says in the ad, "That's the easiest thing ever."
Well, no it is not. It is not the easiest, nor the cheapest, nor the most effective thing to deal with the perennial problem of malaria bearing mosquitoes. For a suggested $10 donation, they can buy nets to go over a bed - which might protect whatever one or two children are in that bed while they are in the bed. That won't be doing the rest of the house any good, much less the outside, or those kids when they're not in the bed.
Now, you might say that some protection is better than none, but we can do far better and cheaper - except for some politically correct nonsense which is costing a lot of lives. For the $10, we could provide a basic classic pesticide DDT to not just keep away but actually KILL mosquitoes in probably a dozen houses - with the lingering small remnant of even a modest conservative dosage helpful in warding off other mosquitoes from wanting to come in.
Opponents of DDT mostly seem to be dealing with emotional rather than scientific arguments. The stuff is poison obviously, that's the point. Enough of it in a local environment can have some deleterious effects, but they've been massively overblown and misrepresented by all appearances, starting in Rachel Carson's infamous alarmist Silent Spring book from 1962.
But the actual bad effects of the stuff in reality seem to be mostly minimal, and we can get good effects from a small amount. Hundreds of thousands of lives were saved by putting out a little bug spray. But some alarmist junk science has caused the abandonment of DDT, sacrificing thousands of human lives for the sake of some emotional foolishness.
So now we're being asked to spend relatively large amounts of money for nets which are not nearly as effective - rather than accepting the trade off that there might be some marginal bad side effects to a cheap and highly effective pesticide.
For my part, I wouldn't waste my money on this overpriced and half-assed approach. I would, however, be happy to spend a few bucks to bootleg some villagers a couple of cans of the good old-fashioned bug killing power of DDT.
posted by Al at 1/07/2008 12:20:00 PM
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