My God, my first look at that photo I thought it was a screenshot of some new videogame.

Please follow the link to the article and read the How to Help section (after viewing the pictures). I have donated many malaria nets, it's one of the few ways I feel I'm actually doing something to help people.

The bag of blood picture is truly grotesque.

Malaria is something very easy to wipe out with utterly non-toxic DDT (non-toxic to humans or birds, unlike Rachel Carlson's panic-scare book 'Silent Spring' claimed). Mainly takes houses or mud huts painted with a think veneer of DDT and bed nets impregnated with DDT. The Environmental movement has millions of deaths on their bloody hands, but that's their whole point: to kill as many people as possible. Lately? Telling Africa it can't burn oil to make electricity to power hospitals. No, they didn't outright ban DDT for anti-malarial use. That would be too obvious. Instead they just ended production of it by banning it as a pesticide, putting all the companies that made it out of that part of their business. Instead? Our government continues to use pesticides to kill cocaine crops in South America, where Malaria is also on the rebound. Even if DDT did kill birds, what is a decade of a few million dead birds compared to one of decade after decade after decade of killed humans?

@3 NikFromNYC

What makes DDT disastrous is its persistence in the environment. Concentrated dosage in predators does tend to disrupt embryos in a variety of ways. So yes, it's not toxic to adult humans or birds, but it strongly interferes with reproduction.

However, I would agree the coca eradication agenda imposed by the USA on Bolivia is a deeply flawed effort. President Evo Morales seems cool about reversing this situation.

Assistant Moderator Avram Grumer and I had a bet going on how many comments it would be before someone

...pops in to parrot the myth that Silent Spring led to a UN ban on DDT which is to blame for millions of malaria deaths.

The actual reason that many nations passed laws outlawing massive outdoor DDT spraying was the mosquitoes were starting to develop resistance. Much of Carson's Silent Spring is devoted to this topic.

The new pro-DDT, anti-Carson movement is the brainchild of right-wing economic propagandist Roger Bate, who also works for tobacco companies trying to minimize public awareness of health problems caused by smoking. His group, Africa Fighting Malaria was founded to try to disrupt World Health Organization efforts to discourage smoking in developing countries by painting WHO as an enemy of public health.