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LaRouche in 2004 Press Release LaRouche Calls on President Bush Lyndon LaRouche, pre-candidate for the Democratic Party Presidential primary in 2004, today called for overturning the ban on DDT, in the public health fight to repel the West Nile and other mosquito-borne disease vectors: "The banning of DDT was always based on scientifically fraudulent assertions. And there's no reason that the President of the United States should not intervene now, to force through measures to re-introduce DDT. Maybe the United States isn't producing it any more, but other countries are. I, personally, call on the President of the United States to take necessary measures to overturn the banning of DDT, taking into account the fact that the argument for banning it was always fraudulent. We can not kill people for the sake of condoning a fraud--as we should have learned from the Enron case." As of August, 38 of the continental states report the presence of West Nile virus in mosquitoes. The Gulf Coast states are the hardest hit by infection and deaths. Mosquitoes flourish in the Gulf sub-tropics, and in recent years, health measures have been drastically cut under the budgetary constraints in Louisiana, Mississippi, and nearby states, and by lack of Federal public health infrastructure. The use of the pesticide DDT, discovered in the 1940s, was banned in the United States in 1972, based on fraudulent claims that it caused harm to the environment. In fact, it is rightly regarded as the most life-saving man-made chemical in history, during the decades of its concerted use. Today, over 200 million new cases a year of malaria occur, in the absence of DDT to fight insect-borne diseases. (A review of the DDT story is in 21st Century Science & Technology, Fall 1992, "Environmental Hoaxes Kill; Save the Earth with Technology.") -30- |