Bill Gates and his mosquito moment: fighting malaria
A showboating Bill Gates caused a momentary flurry of fear when he released a bunch of mosquitoes at the high-powered TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design) conference, indicating to the prestigious movers and shakers he was addressing there that they should get a taste of what it might be like for poor third-world denizens of countries subject to mosquito-borne malaria (“there’s no reason only poor people should get malaria”). After they squirmed a bit, he let them know the mosquitoes weren’t infected.
Funny guy, that Bill. I guess his stunt came under the “entertainment” heading in the TED acronym. Next up on the agenda, no doubt, is a sort of shantytown set up on the grounds of the conference, where the leaders will experience what it’s like to live in hovels with no indoor plumbing.
What’s up with Gates? My guess is that he honed his skills teasing his sisters during his formative years (he’s a middle child and only son, with one older and one younger sister). But whatever the possible deep and murky psychological motivations for his approach, the thrust of his talk itself was to emphasize how many people in Africa still die of the disease, most of them children.
Gates has a plan:
He called for greater distribution of insect nets and other protective gear, and revealed that an anti-malaria vaccine funded by his foundation and currently in development would enter a more advanced testing phase in the coming months.
‘I am an optimist; I think any tough problem can be solved,’ he said.
All are laudable actions and very laudable goals. Funny thing, though; there’s a pretty good approach already for this particular tough problem—if environmentalists would stop discouraging the use of DDT. It’s a very effective means of controlling the insect vector that spreads the disease.
In 2006 WHO lifted its ban on the insecticide, and many believe the substance’s adverse environmental and health effects have been greatly exaggerated. For example, South Africa found that it was a very effective tool in the anti-malaria arsenal, with no seeming ill effects. And, as even this environmental group observes as it reluctantly agrees that wider use of DDT would be a good thing, “we believe that the benefits derived from eliminating malaria through the use of DDT far outweigh any dangers.”
Although I don’t have a full transcript, Gates seems to have ignored the entire question of DDT when addressing the TED crowd. Developing a vaccine is great, but in the meantime DDT would be a good stopgap approach:
Where DDT is used, malaria deaths plummet. Where it is not used, they skyrocket. For example, in South Africa, the most developed nation on the continent, the incidence of malaria had been kept very low (below 10,000 cases annually) by the careful use of DDT. But in 1996 environmentalist pressure convinced program directors to cease using DDT. One of the worst epidemics in the country’s history ensued, with almost 62,00 cases in 2000. Shortly after this peak, South Africa reintroduced DDT. In one year, malaria cases plummented by 80 percent. Next door, in Mozambique, whick doesn’t use DDT, malaria rates remain stratospheric. Similar experiences have been recorded in Zambia and other African countries.
No other chemical comes close to DDT as an affordable, effective way to repel mosquitos from homes, exterminate any that land on walls, and disorient any that are not killed or repelled, largely eliminating their urge to bite in homes that are treated once or twice a year with tiny amounts of this miracle insecticide. For impoverished countries, many of which are struggling to rebuild economies wracked by decades of disease and civil war, cost and effectiveness are critical considerations. For poor African countries, cost alone can be determinative.
Gates is a philanthropist, with a great concern for the poor in Africa. But it’s ironic that he doesn’t seem to be advocating the use of the most effective—and cost-effective—way of combating the problem that we have today, in addition to trying to develop newer and better approaches.
When I saw this article yesterday I was shocked. I’ve been in IT for 20 years.
If I tried that stunt – I would no longer be employed.
Bill needs to be marginalized as crazy.
I would never go to a conference where he speaks if I were the attendees.
”there’s no reason only poor people should get malaria”
MUWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
If this is the ‘Entertainment’ part of TED, this is where Batman would swoop in and punch the supervillian while he is monologging.
Gates could dump his entire fortune, without even making a ripple in the war and pestilence that is Africa.
Malicious self-important little ass.
I wrote something about the DDT thing a while back. It was used extensively in the pacific during WW II and, if memory serves correctly, was used in the Southern States in the US to help eradicate malaria here.
In 1962 Rachel Carson’s book, “Silent Spring” was published and was the prime mover behind the banning of DDT in this country and eventually around the world. Again, if memory serves, something like $1 per year of DDT would protect an average village house or hut in Africa. By the time a lot of junk science about the effects of DDT had been debunked its manufacture was banned in most countries around the world.
Even then those who wished the ban continued started saying it was linked to cancers in those who had reached 50 years old. I’ll bet a lot of the mothers and fathers who lost children to malaria would have been more than willing to take the risk their children might have to deal with a cancer when they reached 50.
The whole thing is so reminiscent of the current global warming hysteria.
One other thing I continually fail to understand when it comes to these things is how those who will fight tooth and nail to stop even intelligent design (let alone creationism) to even be offered for study in schools because they believe on evolution is science and worthy of study. If that were so then why wouldn’t they believe some birds (it was Carson’s theory DDT would kill all the songbirds from ingestion of mosquitoes
covered with DDT) would adapt to “skeeters a la DDT” and strengthen the species?
But then again a lot of things don’t make sense to me. Like the fact the anti-malarial drugs now and any vaccines on the horizon will cost billions more than the DDT which would accomplish the same thing. And we will pay most of the freight.
Bill, please stick to producing lousy software (said as someone one of whose computers is infected with Microsoft Vista).
Releasing the mosquitoes was a juvenile stunt; such melodrama is inappropriate for any adult.
And while we’re at it, I wish Gates would take on board that the birth rate in Africa needs to be cut in conjunction with the mortality rate to avoid future famines. Attacking the latter is a “feel-good” program in the short-term, but pursued alone could lead to another Ethiopia/Biafra in the long-term.
One other thing. A couple of years ago bill Gates was one of the main contributors to the three million dollar fund raised to promote the passage of California state funded research on stem cells. Since there was no law against private research on stem cells why didn’t he just (along with his other wealthy friends) set up and fund their own stem cell research institute?
So it doesn’t come down to cures it comes down to a social agenda.
Oddly enough things like this don’t surprise me. Windows no longer processes most public hits to MSN on their own servers – instead they are routing them to linux based servers. Their windows based servers were being attacked too much.
It was hardly “junk science” that led to the suppression of DDT, which was –previous to the ban– widely used in vast quantities as a general, highly persistent, cheap agricultural insecticide. It, along with other chlorinated hydrocarbons was not used, theretofore, in extremely limited quantities, extremely narrowly targeted as a specialized anti-malarial. Quite the contrary!
DDT has been shown, without question, to be UV resistant, hence extraordinarily slow to decompose in the environment; and because it is lipid soluble, rather than water soluble, to bio-accumulate in the fatty tissues of fishes, birds, and mammals: the higher up the food chain, the greater the concentration.
With the increased accuracy of pollutant level testing in the 1970s, DDT was also appearing at alarming concentrations in the body fat of such antarctic species as seals and penguins, thousands of nautical miles distant from actual applications of any pesticides.
Bio-accumulated DDT in the fat tissue of such iconic North American predatory birds as ospreys and bald eagles was also found to be the cause of complex metabolic failure in the mechanism that produced egg shells, resulting in thin-shelled eggs that broke as soon as they were laid; and in short order, to radical collapses in the populations of these two particular species.
Either these issues should count for nothing, given the priorities of human epidemiology; or when they were quite properly acted upon two decades ago, seen now as leading to unforeseen second-order* consequences, which need now to be addressed rationally and scientifically.
Rather than taken as an ideological cheap shot and just another stick with which to beat the enviros.
(*Not so different conceptually from the discovery that UNICEF tube well drilling, as an alternative to domestic use of contaminated surface water, led to the unexpected, second-order consequence of mass arsenic poisoning in Bangladesh.)
What we are talking about is domestic spraying with DDT, which is different from agricultural use. That is why even the WHO has realized that, regardless of the evidence about agricultural use and there is some debate about whether the problems were seriously exaggerated, it should be allowed again. A number of African countries have gone back to using it with great success. But the problem is that Western countries (and I have to admit that the EU, which is desperate to be seen as a country, is in the forefront of this monstrous practice) refuse to buy agricultural produce from countries that use domestic spraying. You can imagine what does to a developing country’s economy. The anti-DDT campaign has killed millions of people.
Yes I should not have used the term junk science. I should have said, instead, that much of the actual environmental problems caused by DDT were not directly from the spraying of the compound.
Helen, Yes I get that that’s what we’re talking about. Then was then, now is now.
The anti-DDT campaign didn’t kill millions of people, the malaria parasite and its mosquito hosts did.
What evidence do you have that agriculture products are, or were ever, presently banned from countries that use extremely limited and controlled applications of DDT for interior household use, and net impregnation only?
Hanoi Paris Hilton:
link. link. Type in “EU”, “DDT”, “ban”, and “Africa” (or any combination of the above words) and you’ll get a whole slew of articles about it.
The African nations are stuck between a rock and a hard place: they can try to save and improve the lives of their people – but run the risk of destroying their economy – or they can save their economy by using less-effective ways to alleviate the suffering of their people.
Considering how many people have died of malaria and it’s side-effects in the last few years, yes, I think it’s right and proper to call out those who are running the anti-DDT campaign. I say the same for those who are running the anti-vaccination campaigns against polio. The only difference is the first is run by wealthy EU bureacrats feeding the fears of a stupid populace, and the latter is run by stupid tribal and/or religious leaders, pandering to the anti-western sentiment on their people. Either way, people are dying.
I understand Gates feeling of empathy for people in Africa. I’ve been to Kenya and Tanzania and, believe me, the people are in desperate straits. They die of malaria, AIDS, unsafe water, and diseases that, if they had our standards of public health, few would even contract. It is heartbreaking.
However, Gray is right, Africa could devour his fortune like a pride of Lions eating a Thompson’s Gazelle. Sickness and death are merely symptoms of the fact that their governments are kleptocracies in which those in the governmment take what wealth there is and let the rest of the people suffer. Both Kenya and Tanzania have the potential to be self sufficient, prosperous countries with high standards of public health. Unfortunately, their leaders prevent that from happening.
Someone else remarked that saving more people by from death by malaria would just mean more people who would die from starvation. That is all too true. Reform of their governments and establishment of free market economics is what will save Africa. But who will or can do it??
Africa will always be a hellhole. I hate to say this because Africans are people with dreams and minds and souls just like the rest of the world. However, no one has the potential to establish the rule of law. Forget democracy, even a relatively fair dictator could avoid the breakdown of trust.
What we could do:
Don’t give thug leaders respect. Don’t let them move to the Riviera – or better yet arrange for them to die after doing so and take their assets. These scumbags should not be recognized as anything above the top gang leader.
Cut off aid to the government – insist that outside agencies distribute the aid.
Ref: “insist that outside agencies distribute the aid”
You mean such exemplars of nobility and efficacy as the “UN family”; the Borld Wank; the African Development Bank??
Arguing over the science [which is far more controversial than HPH suggests] is beside the point. What matters most is the moral calculus that privileges non-human species [especially “iconic” ones] over humans. Questioning Carson’s priorities and those of her followers is not taking a “cheap shot” at the enviros; it is raising a serious objection to what is often a profoundly anti-humanist mind-set.
Any scientific controversy aside, I don’t believe there is any serious objection to the idea that DDT bans (in letter or in spirit) have led to the death of millions.
The lack of concern about this among environmentalists (in my experience at least) is very troubling.
How much effort is expended banning DDT and encouraging Africans to stick with subsistence farming in lieu of GM options and such, all of which help enforce poverty and death?
These are the focus and all we (at least I) hear about from these people.
I have yet to EVER have an environmentalist bring up Norman Borlaug and how we might build on his efforts that have saved so many million lives.
Well that’s not totally true — I recall a column which said he was responsible for the most deaths in history (!).
The priorities of self-proclaimed world-savers are very curious.
Deaths of millions?
Keep in mind that Kenya, for example, still has a mean fertility of about 7. So if one or two or three of those infants died of malaria, their population growth rate is still going to be leading to a doubling every fifteen years, at maximum. No, I wouldn’t like to see my kids die of malaria, which by no means is an easily preventable or treatable disease, but then I only have two. All the malaria prophylaxis drugs are toxic as hell and impracticable, as well as dangerous, for dosing a general population on the long-term.
I don’t see that the issue ever was privileging birds and animals over people. But is it not even up for discussion that vast reductions in childhood mortality will likely, if not inevitably, lead to second order catastrophes somehwere not so far into the future. And that the consequences on our own societies may be vastly worse than children dying prematurely?
Note that the Pakistanis just let Dr. Khan out of house arrest. Suppose he decides to bring his many talents to Africa?
Having done a bit of Googling, it appears that mean fertility in Kenya has now dropped to about five, but evidence suggests that this is due in great part to the prevalence of HIV/AIDS, which in Kenya is about 6%, across the entire population: somewhat lower than the 7.5% in sub-Saharan Africa (peaking to nearly 40% in Botswana and Swaziland!).
About 150,000 Kenyans are now dying annually from AIDS, which excluding intra-uterine transmission, is a disease completely preventable at trivial cost. This is the figure for mortality, not for new HIV infections.
By comparison, the number of new reported cases of malaria –not deaths from malaria– in Kenya is also about 150,000/yr. Note also that malaria, even if untreated, is much less invariably fatal than HIV.
In the face of these numbers, why, again, should ecologists be guilt tripped about concerns over avian biodiversity?
About perspectives of anti-malaria vaccine, Gates is obviously delusional. Attempts to develop it began 70 years ago, and always failed. The reason is not technical, but biological and insurmountable: malaria plasmodium has inherent trick to avoid immunological response, it constantly shifts and rearrange its surface antigens. That is why malaria came in bouts: after human organism developed immune response to present antigene pattern, remission folows, but plasmodium survive inside red blood cells, changes it surface antigens, and a new wave of disease follows. The number of possible serotypes is astronomical, so no vaccine can cover them all; this is a moving target, and it always moves faster than vaccine developers. This is simply waste of money.
As for DDT scare, it was based on a junk science (or, better to say, on half-baked science taken by environs as a gospel). First, the singing birds whose fate arouse public most, turned out to be completely resistant to DDT, so no “silent spring” was ever a real danger; those birds who were susceptible to it, never sing. Toxic effects of DDT turned out to be associated not with DDT itself, but with impurities (other biphenols, comprising up to 30% of the bulk industrial product, and dioxines); they have identical pattern of distribution and accumulation in feed chains.
And, at last, the only promising strategy of control endemic obligatory transmissive infections (those whose transmission requires a specific vector organism) is vector control. I am (was) a specialist in these, taking part in expeditions in Central Asia to eradicate protozoan endemic infections transmited by mosquitoes, mites, flies, – and there never was better way to stop epidemics that to spray DDT at outer walls of adobe structures (not interior) and under overhang roofs.
One of my biology professors in college used to be a travelling parasitologist with the CDC (where, incidentally, I now work). He and his team were responsible for setting up the malaria control programs — more specifically, vector control programs — in Asia and the Pacific, back in the ’50s and ’60s, that ultimately led to the plummeting of malaria rates all over that area of the world. His parasitology class was one of the most fun courses I’ve had; not only did he know his stuff, but he had all sorts of “war stories” from his days with CDC that he would weave into his lectures.
He was adamant in his support of controlled use of DDT for reducing malaria. There’s no question it worked. It’s unfortunate that the issue became so politicized.
This is hardly the first time Gates has released thousands of bugs on an unsuspecting audience.