It's Shark Week on the Discovery Channel. These prehistoric beasts scare everyone (except Manny). But there's another animal that kills 200,000 times more people every year. That creature would be the mosquito, which tops LiveScience.com's list of deadliest animals. Some animals which scare me but did not make the list include hippopotamuses, capibaras, and pirhanas.
The divide between what we do fear most and what we should fear most is great. Sharks kill about ten people every year. Mosquitoes, by acting as the malarial transmission agent, kill about two million. Yet, it's sharks that spawn bestselling books, their own week on cable television, and a series of movies. Similarly, we fear DDT more than mosquitoes. DDT has never killed a person. But like sharks, there are some sensational stories regarding DDT that will scare the eyeballs out of you. So, we ban a chemical agent that once saved millions of lives and tolerate a pest that takes millions of lives. Had only the Discovery Channel launched Mosquito Week or Peter Benchley penned a terrifying novel about malaria, our fears would more neatly conform to actual dangers.
What about the Chupacabra?
That DDT ban by whitey, that is, western powers is really amazing. The loony lefties who think the west wants to kill off the thirld world should have had a field day with that ban all these years. But, wait, it is environmentalists who have caused and support the ban and the malarial carnage that ensues. Funny how the left often blames the right for doing what they in fact are the one's doing.
Excellent post. When DDT was introduced to Ceylon around four decades ago, malaria infections dropped from 2.8 million to under 100 in a few years. Then meddling western hippies got involved, and after the ban on DDT, the infection rate went right back up into the millions. Thanks, Rachel Carson. Birdies are indeed precious.
Kimoto Dragons can be put into the scary classification with the shark. Both have a lurid history of a menacing, vicious creature that has unknown behavior patterns that scientists continue to study.
As with baseball players, we are usually more impressed by the dramatic spectacular danger (sharks, Koufax, they even sound alike) than by the consistent workmanlike performer (Palmeiro, mosquito). You know, if the effort is made one can usually see everything in terms of baseball.
With regard to Rachel Carson, it could be argued she is responsible for more deaths than any of the past century's tyrants, with all due respect to the homicidal skills of Stalin, Mao and Hitler. What is perhaps saddest in the whole tragic history of the DDT debacle is that the impact of the pesticide on birds and other wildlife as detailed in Carson's book were either grossly overstated or simply wrong. And for that, tens of millions of third world men, women and children get to die on the altar of environmentalism.
Sorry. Mosquitoes are just not that darned scary.
Although, when a mosquito is circling, I do hear the Jaws theme......Da dum...da dum...dadadaddadadada...........
Is it just me?
Thom,
As indicated by my initial post, I'm certainly no fan of Carson. I despise environmentalists, especially those who use the coercive power of government to ram their agenda down the throats of people thousands of miles across the globe. However, it sounds like a huge exaggeration to suggest that she might be "responsible for more deaths than" Stalin, Mao, or Hitler. For instance, the Communist dictators in the 20th century were responsible for an estimated 100 million deaths. Do you have proof of the "tens of millions" figure?
Thanks,
Ben
DDT has never been banned in antimalarial use, and bans on its agricultural use have helped to slow the development of resistance, which was the main reason (along with lack of funding) that the Sri Lankan program was abandoned.
You might want to check
http://timlambert.org/2005/07/nodefactoddtban/
