Rich countries used aid dollars to pressure African countries to stop using DDT. Aid has probably increased the number of poor people who have died from Malaria.
Most of the agricultural improving techs were developed for profit not charity reasons, although dwarf wheat is an important exception that supports your viewpoint.
Eliminating smallpox wasn’t really done for chartable reasons, meaning that rich countries had an incentive to be efficient about it. It also caused the USSR to develop smallpox bio-weapons.
Africa’s main problem is low economic growth caused mostly by its many “vampire” governments. Aid feeds these vampires and so does create negative effects large enough “to negate the direct lifesaving effects of the best medical aid, e.g. vaccines or malarial bed nets.”
I’m not claiming Malthusian factors should dominate moral considerations, just that they need to be taken into account.
Although I can’t prove this, I believe that the vast sums of money spent on foreign aid to poor nations have done much to convinced the elite of poor nations that their nations’ poverty is caused by unjust distribution of the world’s resources not the elites’ corruption and stupid economic policies.
James, the discussion was about things that one can donate to as a private individual looking to have a maximal positive impact, using resources like GiveWell and so on. So arguments that governments doing foreign aid are often not trying to help or serving crazy side-concerns (e.g. with DDT, although that’s often greatly exaggerated for ideological reasons) aren’t very relevant.
I gave smallpox as an example of a benefit conferred to poor people by transferring resources (medical resources) to their countries. I agree about sloppiness on the part of governments and most donors, but that doesn’t mean that those rare birds putting effort into efficacy can’t attain some.
I agree that Africa’s main problem is low economic growth, and that vampire states play a key role there (along with disease, human capital, etc). You never answered my earlier question, “why not fund anti-corruption/transparency/watchdog groups?” Would you guess that the World Bank Doing Business Report saves one net life per $1000 of expenditure?
“why not fund anti-corruption/transparency/watchdog groups?” I don’t think it would do any good, although I don’t know enough about these groups to be certain of this.
I believe that on average charity given to poor people in poor countries does more harm than good, and I don’t think most people (myself included) are smart enough (even with the help of GiveWell) to identify situations in which giving aid helps these people in large part because of the negative unintended indirect effects of foreign charity.
In contrast, I think that technological spillovers hugely benefit humanity and so while spending money on cryonics isn’t the first best way of helping humanity it is better than spending the money on most types of charities including those designed to help poor people living in corrupt dictatorships.
I agree. It seems likely to me that for-profit investment in developing new technologies (and commercializing existing technologies on a large scale) has had a greater positive impact on human welfare than charitable spending over the last few hundred years. Given that it has also made a lot of early investors wealthy in the process (while no doubt also destroying the wealth of many more) and likely has a net positive expected return on investment I personally like it as a way to allocate some of my resources.
I haven’t yet looked at your last three links, but the first is a tendentious polemic. Taking a look...
After more than 30 years and tens of millions dead—mostly children—the World Health Organization (WHO) has ended its ban on DDT.
This claim is true only in the limited sense that the WHO has tried to stop indiscriminate DDT spraying. But as far as I know, the WHO has never handed down a blanket ban on DDT.
There isn’t a date on Stossel’s editorial, but going by the URL it was published in October 2006. Official WHO documents predating that condone the use of DDT under limited circumstances. For example, this archived copy of a WHO FAQ on DDT from August 2004 says, “WHO recommends indoor residual spraying of DDT for malaria vector control”, citing this 2000 report from the WHO Expert Committee on Malaria. On page 38 (p. 50 in the PDF), the 2000 report “endorsed” the conclusion of a still earlier 1995 study group that “DDT may be used
for vector control, provided that it is only used for indoor spraying, it
is effective, the WHO product specifications are met, and the necessary
safety precautions are applied for its use and disposal”.
DDT is the most effective anti-mosquito, anti-malaria pesticide known. But thanks to the worldwide environmental movement and politically correct bureaucrats in the United States and at the United Nations, the use of this benign chemical has been discouraged in Africa and elsewhere, permitting killer mosquitoes to spread death.
I don’t see how anyone can honestly call DDT “benign” unless they’re ignorant of the evidence for its negative ecological effects. At any rate, Stossel’s decision to solely blame environmentalists & government busybodies for DDT’s unpopularity is disingenuous. Increasing resistance to DDT is another (I would have thought obvious) reason.
DDT was banned by President Richard Nixon’s Environmental Protection Agency in the early 1970s, after Rachel Carson’s book, “Silent Spring,” claimed to show that DDT threatened human health as well as bird populations. But some scientists found no evidence for her claims.
Which is basically meaningless without quantitative evidence. There are always a couple of scientists somewhere who fail to replicate findings that some chemical is dangerous. Also, the EPA ban does not appear to have been a complete ban; this pro-DDT article points out that “the public health provisions of the 1972 US delisting of DDT have been used several times after 1972 in the US to combat plague-carrying fleas, in Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada”.
Even if there was danger to bird eggs, the problem was the amount of DDT used, not the chemical itself.
Presumably Stossel’s implying that the EPA should therefore have just regulated the amount of DDT used, instead of just banning it. But the EPA did allow some uses of DDT after its ban, and the trivially true fact that the dose makes the poison isn’t sufficient for Stossel’s implied argument to go through; he also has to show that regulation would suffice to make DDT exposure less than some critical numerical threshold. Which he doesn’t.
Huge amounts of the chemical were sprayed in America. I’ve watched old videos of people at picnics who just kept eating while trucks sprayed thick white clouds of DDT on top of them. Some people even ran toward the truck—as if it was an ice-cream truck—they were so happy to have mosquitoes repelled. Tons of DDT were sprayed on food and people. Despite this overuse, there was no surge in cancer or any other human injury.
This statement is off in two ways. Firstly, just looking for a “surge” in aggregated levels of injury in the US is a poor way to assess DDT’s level of dangerousness. Secondly, how does Stossel know there was “no surge” in not only cancer, but also “any other human injury”?
Even sticking to cancer, which is relatively well-reported, The National Cancer Institute’s SEER program only has cancer incidence data from 1973 onwards, and I’ve not found earlier reliable data for US cancer incidence. The SEER data isn’t much use for evaluating Stossel’s claim because, of course, it starts the year after the EPA banned DDT in the US. There are earlier estimates of the cancer rate based on death certificates, but I don’t know how well those track incidence. (I’d guess neither does Stossel.)
Nevertheless, the environmental hysteria led to DDT’s suppression in Africa, where its use had been dramatically reducing deaths.
American foreign aid could be used to finance ineffective alternative anti-malaria methods, but not DDT.
I’m not even sure how to test the claim that American foreign aid couldn’t be used to finance DDT use — “American foreign aid” is pretty vague. And what about effective alternative anti-malaria methods like bed nets? Is Stossel implying that there are no effective alternative anti-malaria methods?
Within a short time, the mosquitoes and malaria reappeared, and deaths skyrocketed. Tens of millions of people have died in that time.
But specifically what proportion of those deaths were caused by reductions in DDT use? [Edit: and what sub-proportion of that proportion of deaths could be attributed to foreign aid, rather than other motivations for using less DDT?]
And so on and so forth. It’s also discouraging that the column’s penultimate 4 paragraphs are based on hyperbolic soundbites from Steven Milloy, who has past form in pseudoscience.
Not only is the column misleading, but the claim that
Rich countries used aid dollars to pressure African countries to stop using DDT. Aid has probably increased the number of poor people who have died from Malaria.
is not really meaningful without putting numbers on it. I expect there must be at least one African out there who’s died of malaria because of aid’s political pressure. But it’s not really a compelling argument against aid unless the actual malaria death count due to pressure exerted via foreign aid is much higher.
The first article opens with “the World Health Organization (WHO) has ended its ban on DDT” which is simply a lie. The third article makes the less verifiable:
Meanwhile, vast swathes of the anti-malaria community, including the malaria teams within national donor agencies, are quietly opposed to DDT. Agencies include insecticide spraying in their literature, but then run No-Spray programs.
but I have never seen evidence of this claim. In fact, I have seen it confabulated on the spot by people caught in the first lie.
Rich countries used aid dollars to pressure African countries to stop using DDT. Aid has probably increased the number of poor people who have died from Malaria.
Most of the agricultural improving techs were developed for profit not charity reasons, although dwarf wheat is an important exception that supports your viewpoint.
Eliminating smallpox wasn’t really done for chartable reasons, meaning that rich countries had an incentive to be efficient about it. It also caused the USSR to develop smallpox bio-weapons.
Africa’s main problem is low economic growth caused mostly by its many “vampire” governments. Aid feeds these vampires and so does create negative effects large enough “to negate the direct lifesaving effects of the best medical aid, e.g. vaccines or malarial bed nets.”
I’m not claiming Malthusian factors should dominate moral considerations, just that they need to be taken into account.
Although I can’t prove this, I believe that the vast sums of money spent on foreign aid to poor nations have done much to convinced the elite of poor nations that their nations’ poverty is caused by unjust distribution of the world’s resources not the elites’ corruption and stupid economic policies.
James, the discussion was about things that one can donate to as a private individual looking to have a maximal positive impact, using resources like GiveWell and so on. So arguments that governments doing foreign aid are often not trying to help or serving crazy side-concerns (e.g. with DDT, although that’s often greatly exaggerated for ideological reasons) aren’t very relevant.
I gave smallpox as an example of a benefit conferred to poor people by transferring resources (medical resources) to their countries. I agree about sloppiness on the part of governments and most donors, but that doesn’t mean that those rare birds putting effort into efficacy can’t attain some.
I agree that Africa’s main problem is low economic growth, and that vampire states play a key role there (along with disease, human capital, etc). You never answered my earlier question, “why not fund anti-corruption/transparency/watchdog groups?” Would you guess that the World Bank Doing Business Report saves one net life per $1000 of expenditure?
“why not fund anti-corruption/transparency/watchdog groups?” I don’t think it would do any good, although I don’t know enough about these groups to be certain of this.
I believe that on average charity given to poor people in poor countries does more harm than good, and I don’t think most people (myself included) are smart enough (even with the help of GiveWell) to identify situations in which giving aid helps these people in large part because of the negative unintended indirect effects of foreign charity.
In contrast, I think that technological spillovers hugely benefit humanity and so while spending money on cryonics isn’t the first best way of helping humanity it is better than spending the money on most types of charities including those designed to help poor people living in corrupt dictatorships.
I agree. It seems likely to me that for-profit investment in developing new technologies (and commercializing existing technologies on a large scale) has had a greater positive impact on human welfare than charitable spending over the last few hundred years. Given that it has also made a lot of early investors wealthy in the process (while no doubt also destroying the wealth of many more) and likely has a net positive expected return on investment I personally like it as a way to allocate some of my resources.
As far as I have been able to determine, this is false.
See Deltoid’s DDT category for more on this.
See
http://townhall.com/columnists/JohnStossel/2006/10/04/hooray_for_ddts_life-saving_comeback
http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/COUNTRIES/AFRICAEXT/EXTAFRHEANUTPOP/0,,contentMDK:20905156~pagePK:34004173~piPK:34003707~theSitePK:717020,00.html
http://www.fightingmalaria.org/article.aspx?id=936
http://www.fightingmalaria.org/article.aspx?id=137
I haven’t yet looked at your last three links, but the first is a tendentious polemic. Taking a look...
This claim is true only in the limited sense that the WHO has tried to stop indiscriminate DDT spraying. But as far as I know, the WHO has never handed down a blanket ban on DDT.
There isn’t a date on Stossel’s editorial, but going by the URL it was published in October 2006. Official WHO documents predating that condone the use of DDT under limited circumstances. For example, this archived copy of a WHO FAQ on DDT from August 2004 says, “WHO recommends indoor residual spraying of DDT for malaria vector control”, citing this 2000 report from the WHO Expert Committee on Malaria. On page 38 (p. 50 in the PDF), the 2000 report “endorsed” the conclusion of a still earlier 1995 study group that “DDT may be used for vector control, provided that it is only used for indoor spraying, it is effective, the WHO product specifications are met, and the necessary safety precautions are applied for its use and disposal”.
I don’t see how anyone can honestly call DDT “benign” unless they’re ignorant of the evidence for its negative ecological effects. At any rate, Stossel’s decision to solely blame environmentalists & government busybodies for DDT’s unpopularity is disingenuous. Increasing resistance to DDT is another (I would have thought obvious) reason.
Which is basically meaningless without quantitative evidence. There are always a couple of scientists somewhere who fail to replicate findings that some chemical is dangerous. Also, the EPA ban does not appear to have been a complete ban; this pro-DDT article points out that “the public health provisions of the 1972 US delisting of DDT have been used several times after 1972 in the US to combat plague-carrying fleas, in Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada”.
Presumably Stossel’s implying that the EPA should therefore have just regulated the amount of DDT used, instead of just banning it. But the EPA did allow some uses of DDT after its ban, and the trivially true fact that the dose makes the poison isn’t sufficient for Stossel’s implied argument to go through; he also has to show that regulation would suffice to make DDT exposure less than some critical numerical threshold. Which he doesn’t.
This statement is off in two ways. Firstly, just looking for a “surge” in aggregated levels of injury in the US is a poor way to assess DDT’s level of dangerousness. Secondly, how does Stossel know there was “no surge” in not only cancer, but also “any other human injury”?
Even sticking to cancer, which is relatively well-reported, The National Cancer Institute’s SEER program only has cancer incidence data from 1973 onwards, and I’ve not found earlier reliable data for US cancer incidence. The SEER data isn’t much use for evaluating Stossel’s claim because, of course, it starts the year after the EPA banned DDT in the US. There are earlier estimates of the cancer rate based on death certificates, but I don’t know how well those track incidence. (I’d guess neither does Stossel.)
Again Stossel ignores insecticide resistance.
I’m not even sure how to test the claim that American foreign aid couldn’t be used to finance DDT use — “American foreign aid” is pretty vague. And what about effective alternative anti-malaria methods like bed nets? Is Stossel implying that there are no effective alternative anti-malaria methods?
But specifically what proportion of those deaths were caused by reductions in DDT use? [Edit: and what sub-proportion of that proportion of deaths could be attributed to foreign aid, rather than other motivations for using less DDT?]
And so on and so forth. It’s also discouraging that the column’s penultimate 4 paragraphs are based on hyperbolic soundbites from Steven Milloy, who has past form in pseudoscience.
Not only is the column misleading, but the claim that
is not really meaningful without putting numbers on it. I expect there must be at least one African out there who’s died of malaria because of aid’s political pressure. But it’s not really a compelling argument against aid unless the actual malaria death count due to pressure exerted via foreign aid is much higher.
You make some good points.
Of course I’ve seen lots of articles like that.
The first article opens with “the World Health Organization (WHO) has ended its ban on DDT” which is simply a lie. The third article makes the less verifiable:
but I have never seen evidence of this claim. In fact, I have seen it confabulated on the spot by people caught in the first lie.