ONE MAN'S WAR ON SCIENCE

One of Australia's most influential bloggers has repeatedly accused the Australian of waging war on science, most recently pointing to an allegedly "deliberate attempt to deceive" by the newspaper. Well, if deception is the criterion on which such matters are judged, computer scientist Tim Lambert is also waging war on science.

Lambert starts off his post by linking to and quoting from a Washington Post article and a World Health Organization press release on Kenya's success in reducing malaria through the distribution of free, rather than low-cost, long-lasting insecticidal bed-nets (LLINs). Lambert observing:

In light of this and other new evidence, the WHO seems to have reversed the policy it adopted last year of indoor residual spraying (IRS) in high-transmission areas.

Now this is really curious because neither the article nor the press release mentions DDT or indoor residual spraying (IRS). Lambert's leading his readers to believe that LLINs are far superior to IRS (as proven by the Kenyan experience) and that the WHO has all but admitted it was wrong to advocate IRS, and especially so when DDT is employed. Lambert supports this by linking directly to the WHO position paper on insecticide treated nets. But he doesn't link directly to the WHO's 2006 position paper on IRS, linking instead to one of his old posts, where the link to the original WHO document is a bit difficult to find.

Anyway, here is the relevant portion of the WHO's 2006 position paper on IRS:

WHO’s Global Malaria Programme recommends the following three primary interventions that must be scaled up in countries to effectively respond to malaria, towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals for malaria by 2015 and other health targets:

• diagnosis of malaria cases and treatment with effective medicines;

• distribution of insecticide-treated nets (ITNs) to achieve full coverage of populations at risk of malaria; and

• indoor residual spraying (IRS) as a major means of malaria vector control to reduce and eliminate malaria transmission including, where indicated, the use of DDT.

This is from the just released position paper on ITNs:

The WHO Global Malaria Programme (WHO/GMP) recommends the following three primary interventions that must be scaled up in countries for effective malaria control, towards achieving the United Nations Millennium Development Goals by 2015 (http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals):

• diagnosis of malaria cases and treatment with effective medicines;

• distribution of insecticide-treated nets (ITNs), more specifically long-lasting insecticidal nets (LLINs), to achieve full coverage of populations at risk of malaria; and

• indoor residual spraying (IRS) to reduce and eliminate malaria transmission.

The apparent need for both ITNs and IRS being noted:

Neither LLINs nor indoor residual spraying (IRS), the other main method for malaria vector control, may alone be effective enough to achieve and maintain interruption of transmission in holo-endemic areas of Africa. Operational research is needed to determine to which extent combining both interventions would maximize public health impact of malaria vector control and offer opportunities for management of insecticide resistance.

Even though the only change in policy by the WHO is its shift from low-cost to free ITNs, Lambert somehow concludes:

Good news about malaria and a major change in policy from the WHO. But although they reported the WHO's policy change last year, the New York Times did not mention this at all. Instead, they've run an op-ed from Donald Roberts, pushing the use of 1940s technology, DDT. Roberts oversells his study on the repellent effects of DDT. He may be right that mosquitoes will develop resistance to more effective insecticides more quickly than they will to DDT, but the implication of this is not that DDT should be used first, but that the more effective insecticide should be used first and DDT kept as a backup.

The WHO is confident that we now have a way to drastically cut malaria rates and save millions of lives, but the NYT's fetish about DDT seems to have stopped them from mentioning this.

Everything in his post prior to the last two paragraphs is preparation for Lambert having a go at DDT, the New York Times and malaria expert Donald Roberts.

Lambert's position on DDT's repellent qualities varies: when convenient he says it's an attribute; on other occasions it's a negative. Regardless, here he claims Roberts makes too much of DDT's repellency. Not true, Roberts' study simply reports on DDT's value as a repellent, arguing that repellency should be considered when deciding which insecticide is best suited to a particular situation. As for DDT being old technology, that's irrelevant: the mosquito nets Lambert is pimping probably date back a couple of thousand years and they're still effective.

Take a close look at anything Lambert writes about malaria or DDT and you'll find a misrepresentation. The guy is not to be trusted. His ignorant toadies lap it up nonetheless.