Hacker News Reader

Comment by exar0815 | Hacker News Reader

The sad thing is, that we could be a lot further in eradication of many diseases. We are on a good way with polio and measles, but the uneducated and plain stupid people that refuse to vaccinate are a grave danger to that endeavour. Also, the shortsightet and ideologic agenda of many "ecological" organizations for banning DDT was a huge setback in the fight for the eradication of malaria, as is now the zealotry against genetic therapy and stem cell research.

View on HN

Those DDT claims are mythology spread as part of a coordinated political attack. It was never banned for malaria eradication but the actual scientists running those campaigns knew as early as the 1950s that mosquitos were rapidly evolving resistance to the point where it was becoming ineffective.

http://crookedtimber.org/2014/07/14/zombie-ddt-ban-myth-rean...

https://timpanogos.wordpress.com/2007/07/10/ddt-the-problems...

https://membracid.wordpress.com/2007/06/29/ddt-and-attacks-o...

It's not completely clear why this myth keeps circulating but there's reason to believe that at least part was funded as part of a broader attack on the WHO after their successful public health campaigns cut into tobacco company profitS:

http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2007/05/30/who-put-out-the-c...

http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/rehabilitatingcar...

I do not follow it closely, but there's a pretty good chance that the ban on agricultural use of DDT extended its usefulness in combating malaria:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDT#Mosquito_resistance

The targeted use in residences never stopped.

Don't forget the assholes who hijacked vaccination programs in their hunt for a terrorist and severely damaged the reputation of the whole idea in one of the few regions where the disease remains.

Those CIA pricks probably indirectly killed tens of thousands in their hunt for bin Laden.

Just to give some perspective. These are some examples of what vaccination is up against :

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2727330/

The situation is improving slowly, but only in a few ways. It used to be the case that both the mainstream of islam and extremists were against vaccination (and even now the mainstream is wary of it : apparently it proves allah doesn't have power, and of course the disease and it's effects is the fault of the vaccine, not a major flaw of allah).

But extremists are as much against polio vaccination as ever. Apparently they're going to defeat the world with "muslim wombs" and polio vaccination is apparently really a secret plot to make them infertile. (in a way it is of course : more surviving children will extinguish one of the main reasons for having many children, and if it happens the same as in the west in the 20th century, number of children will drop by a lot)

One more thing daesh and muslims are fighting to "save" : http://www.rawa.org/temp/runews/data/upimages/polio_victim_a...

The first article you link,

"Religious Opposition to Polio Vaccination," Emerg Infect Dis. 2009 Jun; 15(6): 978. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2727330/

is quite helpful. Significantly, it was published two years before Osama Bin Laden's compound was discovered and he died.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com