DDT Prevents Cancer

I know, crazy.

People are taken aback when I suggest the problem with DDT may have been that it saved too many humans rather than it was environmentally harmful. 

Please consider the following to understand my viewpoint:

“Fraud in science is a major problem.” So begins “DDT: A Case Study in Scientific Fraud” by the late J. Gordon Edwards, Professor Emeritus of Entomology at San Jose State University in San Jose, California.”

The American Spectator

DDT, Fraud, and Tragedy

by GERALD SIRKIN

February 25, 2005, 4:08 AM

“Today, the greatest killer and disabler is malaria, which kills a person every 30 seconds. By the 1960s, DDT had brought malaria near to extinction. “To only a few chemicals does man owe as great a debt as to DDT. In little more than two decades, DDT has prevented 500 million human deaths, due to malaria, that otherwise would have been inevitable,” said the National Academy of Sciences.”

“There has never been any convincing evidence that DDT (or pesticide residues in food) has ever caused cancer in man,” concluded Ames and Jukes.

‘In fact, DDT prevents cancer. “DDT in the diet has repeatedly been shown to enhance the production of hepatic enzymes in mammals and birds. Those enzymes inhibit tumors and cancers in humans as well as wildlife,” wrote Professor Edwards in 1992.”

https://spectator.org/48925_ddt-fraud-and-tragedy/

‘The article was published shortly after his death last July in the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons, Fall, 2004. It is based in part on his 34-page manuscript discussing fraud in acid rain, ozone holes, ultraviolet radiation, carbon dioxide, global warming, and pesticides, particularly DDT.”

I was a lab tech at Montrose Chemical in Torrance, CA in 1965. Montrose was one of the largest manufacturers of DDT in the world at that time. When the Santa Ana winds blew south, I sometimes wondered if DDT got into the coffee at the Farmer’s Brothers plant next door.

DDT looked and smelled delicious when it was melted into a buttery liquid, but I overcame any temptation to eat it.  

I remember when full-time, long-term employees were being tested for DDT residues in their bodies. As I recall they had varying levels of DDT in their bodies, but no one seemed to suffer from cancer or any other ill effects.