SELF-STYLED DDT EXPERT OVERRULES CDC


I really don't have time to blog at the moment but have made the time after reading something so amazingly funny it's hard to believe it was written in seriousness. The unintentional humour is provided by Carson-cultist and self-styled DDT expert Bug Girl.

Bug Girl and I are involved in an ongoing dispute about integrated pest management (IPM): she claims IPM was first implemented in the 1950s; I say IPM was implemented much earlier, with successful efforts to control yellow fever and malaria in Panama in the early 1900s. A page at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention summarizing the Panama effort was offered as proof; the page stating in part:

An integrated program of mosquito control was initiated that involved seven basic programs that were strictly enforced.

On having this pointed out to her Bug Girl pulled a Lambert -- calling me names and refusing to post my brief, civil comment. She has now responded with this:

Dude. Give it up.

Here, how about a recent review article from an ACTUAL JOURNAL?

Ehler,-LE
TITLE: Integrated pest management (IPM): definition, historical development and implementation, and the other IPM.
SOURCE: Pest-management-science. 2006 Sept; 62(9): 787-789.

"The seeds of the IPM movement were planted shortly after World War II. A few, far-sighted scientists recognized that indiscriminate use of the new synthetic organic insecticides would prove to be problematic. Californian entomologists, for example, responded with the concept of supervised control, in which insect control was to be supervised by qualified entomologists.[2] This entailed periodic monitoring of both pest and natural enemy populations and application of insecticides only when necessary - in contrast to calendar-based or insurance treatments."

I'm discussing IPM as a formally recognized protocol which got it's *name* and *protocols* mid century.

I can bury you under citations like this one, but it's not worth the trouble. Why not pick up ANY actual entomology text book and see for yourself? What, exactly, is your training in entomology, again?

So according to Bug Girl, mosquito control in Panama -- the effort employing NO INSECTICIDES, by the way -- wasn't IPM because that terminology wasn't used until after World War II. Now that's pretty silly, being akin to arguing that natural selection didn't exist prior to Darwin, which is exactly what Bug Girl then argues, in reverse:

Would you also try to argue that no natural selection could occur before Darwin called it Natural Selection? No. Similarly, many IPM *like* procedures occurred before it was called IPM.

IPM, like natural selection, existed long before being formally "named". If Bug Girl is any guide, science is in big trouble.

And by the way, I have the same entomology qualifications as Bug Girl's hero Rachel Carson: none. Neither of us is peer reviewed, either.


PS – I realize that there's probably a limited audience for DDT posts but will keep them coming so long as lefties keep posting misleading crap on the subject. I see it as a public service.