MORE ON MALARIA
Reader Bryan Spencer, a research associate with the Red Cross, writes:
I haven't read the NYTimes article yet, but I spent many years as a graduate student studying malaria. It's true that DDT is a tool that should still be available given its efficacy and low cost, but it is not true that were it widely used we could save 2 million lives a year. The challenges to eradicating disease in a third world country are vastly greater than doing so in one such as ours, and DDT is just one piece of that puzzle. Having fewer restrictions on its use would no doubt save some lives, but if the article suggests that all malaria deaths in Africa could be averted by DDT use, then the author is pushing fantasy, not good science.
This mistake is mine, not Tina Rosenberg's, and was inadvertent. (Please read the article.) I didn't mean to suggst that all deaths from malaria could be averted by DDT, just that the cumulative death toll of not using DDT is enormous and infuriating. When you throw in the indirect deaths from malaria's depressing effects on economic productivity, which are hard to estimate, the numbers are even greater.