Merchants of Death Oppose DDT for Malaria Control

The World Health Organization announced its strong support for spraying the pesticide DDT indoors to help control malaria-carrying mosquitoes earlier this month. According to East African Business Week, a coalition of companies in Uganda led by the British American Tobacco company is against residential use of DDT. Why? Because the companies correctly fear that Ugandan agricultural products could be banned from Europe. As absurd as it may sound, French smokers might in fact wave away coffin nails loaded with natural carcinogens declaring, "Sacre bleu! DDT est la mort!" The Merchants of Death and fearful Europeans are apparently willing to sacrifice the lives of 70,000 to 100,000 Ugandans annually to malaria in order to smoke "organic" tobacco.

The most amusing feature of this sorry episode is that the statement opposing DDT was read by–I kid you not–British American Tobacco Uganda's Corporate Social Responsibility Manager.