DDT and Hard Choices

DDT is bad for birds and might (or might not) cause cancer and birth defects. It's also the most effective weapon against the world's worst insect spread disease, malaria. Consequently, the World Health Organization has recommended that it be used, in limited circumstances, for mosquito control.

We will be faced with many such tough choices in the environment in the years ahead, but overpopulation will greatly compound them all. Probably the most effective thing we could do to cure poverty, prevent war, and limit disease is to promote and assist in population control in the underdeveloped world - or any place with high birth rates. Yet another issue on which Bush is disastrouly wrong. It's amazing how he seems to bat 1.000 in folly.

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