DDT Persuasive Speech
FYI - This Speech has been altered in several major ways since I’ve memorized it… someday I might re-type the manuscript but not today.
As a parent, I now have an appreciation for life that surpasses any other emotion conceivable. Children are the future of our Earth, and they are each treasures. Yet, in Africa a child dies every 30 seconds, according to the Public Affairs Institute, March 2004. This is the equivalent of an entire school bus, full of children, being destroyed every 17 minutes, 24 hours per day. What could cause this horrible atrocity? Malaria. A disease that according to many scientists today can be beaten with a tool that we’ve known about for nearly a century. This tool is DDT. Wrongfully banned, and the only true solution. Between two hundred and six hundred million people are affected with malaria alone each year and the roughly two million children under the age of five will not live through it. Deadly mosquito-borne virus’s, such as malaria and West Nile, have threatened our own country, past and present, and will continue to do so if we do not act soon. We in the United States in particular need to rethink our policies and strategies regarding the worldwide use of DDT to contain malaria and other mosquito-carried diseases.
– First, we will need to look at these viruses and their ever-increasing threat to the human population. Then, we’ll explore the specific matter of our position with regards to DDT and how this is further fueling these problems. With that covered, we can examine some steps to take to hopefully get to the bottom of this global disaster.
–According to the New Statesman, March 14th 2005, more than 40 percent of the world’s population is currently at risk for infection by malaria. Although the U.S. has been free from this threat for a great while, this wasn’t always the case in our countries history. As reported by Current Science, Nov 5th 2004, well over a million soldiers died during the American Civil War from malaria. In 1939 our government discovered that DDT was an extremely powerful and cost-effective pesticide and began an aggressive campaign to eradicate mosquitoes carrying the disease from our countries wetlands. By 1951, 12 years later, malaria had been completely removed from the United States. However, we should not become too comfortable with this fact as the mere existence of malaria on a planet where distance is of little deterrence should be enough to be seen as a threat. It takes from weeks to a year before symptoms of malaria might manifest themselves in a person. In that time, an infected traveler could come home and spread the virus, through mosquitoes, to a limitless number of hosts before he or she even knew they were sick. Also, today’s trend of global warming continues to create a more inviting environment for mosquitoes to thrive. Due to the flooding in New Orleans caused by Hurricane Katrina, a report by The Transcript, September 6th 2005, shows officials feared the threat of a West Nile virus outbreak from increased temperatures and the vast amount of standing water. According to The Oregonian, September 28th, 2005, after Hurricane Rita swept through Port Arthur, Texas it left the city without power, water, or gas. These issues, coupled with 90-degree temperatures and a fresh storm created another potentially hazardous situation for Americans. Over the years, scientists have developed several different methods for fighting malaria such as vaccines with atrocious side effects, expensive alternative pesticides, and drug-therapy treatments for those infected. We’ve pushed these developments on countries in lieu of DDT, and in many cases we have seen the plague of malaria outbreaks soar. According to the British Medical Journal, December 2nd, 2004, South Africa put DDT on their ban list in 1995. The cases of malaria promptly jumped from four thousand cases per year to nearly thirty thousand cases just 4 years later. South Africa was forced to begin using DDT again in 2001 because after facing a 6-year epidemic, they could find nothing more effective.
– Now that we have a grasp on exactly what is at stake, we can look into why our current policies are hindering the welfare of our planet.
– The use of DDT was never questioned on a large scale until Rachel Carson, an ecologist, wrote a book in 1962 titled Silent Spring. According to Alternatives Journal, October 2004, her book explained that the use of DDT was not only a war on insects but also a war waged against our Earth. The book created widespread panic by its readers and in 1972 the United States responded by completely banning the use of DDT. Not only did the United States ban DDT from being used within our borders, they also took an aggressive approach on the world stage by withholding economic aid to countries that continued to use it. Since the ban of DDT, the world’s best scientists have had more than three decades to either prove that it is dangerous to humans or create a more effective method for keeping mosquitoes at bay. According to Current Health, they have done neither of these. In fact, there has never been a conclusive, peer-reviewed study that proved that DDT was harmful to humans. Also, in more than thirty years of research we haven’t found anything cheaper, or that lasts nearly as long without the need for reapplication. Plus, every other pesticide used has, over time, become less and less potent as the mosquitoes adapted to its effects - DDT has never lost its potency. Finally, until we can put DDT into the proper perspective, we will never be able to give it any serious thought. The argument made by Rachel Carson stands strong: DDT is bad for our environment. It’s harmful to our ecosystems, and the price of its’ previous abuse is still being paid. But, to better illustrate the fallacy of her book, let’s consider another common household insecticide: Raid. How would America respond if pest controllers decided to lift several tons of Raid into an aircraft and spray it over our crops and livestock? This is exactly how DDT was used 50 years ago, and it is for this reason that it is banned now. But, since Raid was used responsibly, anybody with a small pest problem can purchase a can at his or her corner grocery store. Why should we treat DDT any differently?
– Now that we understand the causes behind this pesticide ban, we should explore some possible solutions to correct the decades of misinformation.
– The first step to rolling back the worldwide disaster lies with our federal government, and that is to remove the ban that we so rashly instated. During the peak of DDT’s usage in the 1950’s, we were dropping literally millions of pounds per year on agricultural fields and even livestock to remove ticks. According to Human Events, May 14th, 2005, a single deployment of DDT over a 10-acre field could have been used to prevent mosquito infestations in Guyana for an entire year. Rather than initiating a ban, we should have reacted to Rachel Carson’s book by examining how we used the chemical. According to the Public Affairs Institute, the entire premise of her book is refuted by the mere fact that instead of spraying tons of DDT over the land, small amounts could be applied to the walls of a home without the need of another application for up to six months. This semi-annual application of DDT causes no harm to the inhabitants, and for that matter it also rarely kills the mosquitoes. Using DDT in this manner allows it to act merely as a repellent. A repellent so strong that in the event that a lone mosquito did choose to enter a home, it would die. This method provides yet another powerful layer of protection to those in areas threatened with these plagues. Because of our own irresponsible usage more than fifty years ago, we have limited our own defensive measure against mosquito-born diseases and, more importantly, we’ve condemned others who have a greater need than ours. The second step the government must take to solving this problem is to support third-world countries usage of DDT to protect their citizens rather than give them useless tools that don’t ever attack the source of the issue. According to the New Statesman, at the 2005 World Economic Forum, actress Sharon Stone contributed ten thousand dollars to buy bed nets for Tanzania. Her action spurred a thirty-minute flurry of donations by audience members, which totaled to more than one million dollars. These weren’t just normal bed nets that they purchased, but they were nets treated with an insecticide called chloroquine, which is now among those pesticides losing their potency. Also, according to the same article, it would cost roughly ten times this dollar amount on an annual basis to provide these nets to each household in Tanzania. Continuing to provide inadequate solutions such as these is worse than doing nothing at all. Finally, there are a few things that you and I as individuals can do to assist those in the decision-making positions. Get connected with some online resources like rollbackmalaria.org to see what kind of progress is being made and to voice your own support. The Center For Disease Control’s information on malaria, located at cdc.gov/malaria, provides several ways to protect you when traveling to parts of the world plagued with it. By informing yourself on traveling into these areas, you will decrease your chances of becoming infected and spreading the disease upon return. Through these steps of federal legislation, international support, and individual education, I believe that we can effectively reduce or eradicate this threat, as we know it.
– I hope we all have a clear understanding now of the battle that we face, and the awesome weapon that we have to face it with. The United States can choose to be bold and lead, or to keep our mouths closed and watch the suffering until it comes into our backyard. We have seen the devastation that these diseases can cause – I just hope that we all understand that it is happening this very moment. By now we should realize that we possess the tools to beat these viruses, we just need to support it in the international community and allow other countries to protect their own citizens. The choice is not difficult when I think that my child could be on that school bus. My son, or perhaps your own children, brothers or sisters, could be in one of those deadly buses that end countless lives, every 17 minutes, 24 hours per day.