A student-operated publication at Santa Rosa Junior College.

The Oak Leaf

A student-operated publication at Santa Rosa Junior College.

The Oak Leaf

A student-operated publication at Santa Rosa Junior College.

The Oak Leaf

Bring back DDT

In the movie “The Fly” scientist Seth Brundle, after morphing into a half-fly half-man monster, says concerning his studies on bug behavior, “Insects don’t have politics. They’re very… brutal. No compassion, no compromise. We can’t trust the insect.” Unfortunately this warning has not been heeded, because insects are winning the war on infestation.

As a society we have gone too far in the campaign for animal rights. Stopping the force feeding of ducks, or protesting veal cows being chained down to restrict their movement to keep them nice and tender, are worthwhile causes. But we have started to give animals the rights of people, and they just are not deserving of those rights, especially bugs.

Last year President Obama made headlines for his Mr. Miyagi-esque swatting of a fly during a press conference, a move that even earned him cool points with FOX News. However, PETA decried the action, going so far as to call it an “execution.” Decry Obama all you want—healthcare reform was a disappointment—but a fly with a 24-hour lifespan is insignificant.

Rachel Carson scored the first victory for insects; when she went the way of Benedict Arnold against her own species, with her 1962 book “Silent Spring.” Using science found to have been misrepresented, she spoke out against the pesticide DDT, and its supposed devastating harm to bird eggs. Based on experiments conducted by Dr. Dewitt in 1956, Carson omitted from her book that quails fed DDT in their food hatched only 4 percent less of their eggs than the non-DDT control group, along with omitting that pheasants fed DDT hatched 27 percent more eggs than the control group.

Nonetheless, DDT was banned in the U.S. in 1972; only two years after the National Academy of Sciences published a report saying, “To only a few chemicals does man owe as great a debt as to DDT… In little more than two decades, DDT has prevented 500 million human deaths, due to malaria, that otherwise would have been inevitable.” DDT would start losing legality all over the world despite its ability to combat malaria, which kills an estimated one to three million a year. Including in Africa, where 90 percent of worldwide malaria fatalities a year occur. Luckily, we get to enjoy the beauty of four percent more quails and the pleasant hum of mosquito swarms, while millions die, thanks to a bunch of hippies in the Environmental Protection Agency scapegoating DDT to serve their agenda.

We need to bring DDT back not just for those in the developing world, but for the protection of ourselves in America as well. An invasion has begun, with troops flooding the East Coast no longer frightened by the prospect of DDT. Bedbugs, once wiped out by widespread DDT application, are back and attacking New York with a vengeance, and they’re spreading west. Parasites that hide during the day, bedbugs suck the blood of their hosts at night. They can be picked up anywhere and be transported home. After bedbugs were found in his Manhattan studio, Howard Stern did his radio show wearing a hazmat suit, to prevent the infestation from spreading to his home.

We need DDT back to stop these parasites before they reach California, and to save millions of human lives in Africa and other malaria affected regions. Our well being as people is more important than that of insects and animals, and we need to prove it to the hippies once and for all, by dropping the nuclear bomb that is DDT on the terrorist pests that are bedbugs, mosquitoes, and all other insects. As Seth Bundle’s assistant Ronnie says, “Be afraid. Be very afraid.”  

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