DDT: Good and Bad

I really appreciated this article by Naomi Lubick on the World Health Organization's qualified embrace of DDT as a tool in the fight against malaria. Facing up to the compounds shortcomings and ill-effects as well as its efficacy, it strikes me as a model of balanced reporting. Here's an excerpt:

Despite a growing body of evidence on [the deleterious effects of] human exposures [to DDT], the data are not definitive—nor, most agree, are they enough to outweigh the specter of millions of children dying without adequate malaria vector control efforts. "I think the truth is somewhere in the middle," [Janet] Hemingway [director of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine] says, in the arguments for and against banning the pesticide. "DDT is generally effective in killing and repelling mosquitoes and, used sensibly, has saved many lives. That's why it's still there on our books."