This is why they should be rewarded accordingly

This is why they should be rewarded accordingly.PATRICK WILSONNOTTINGHAM Arts snobbery Sir: St George’s Day on Sunday gave an opportunity to celebrate English pride, a concept which appears foreign to Arts Council England. This publicly funded quango is guilty of cultural cleansing of English folk traditions. If he can’t recall the details, I’m sure Mr Drumheller will be glad to help.RICHARD NEWSONWHITTON, MIDDLESEX Doctors’ rewards Sir: Having worked in an academic environment I can sympathise with Dr Chris Dacke’s comments on GPs’ salaries (letter, 24 April). In 1948 the Swiss scientist Paul M?r was awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine for discovering – nine years earlier – DDT’s insecticidal properties.

Seldom, if ever, has the award been better merited: Indoor Residual Spraying with DDT completely eradicated malaria in the US (where it was endemic) and also in Europe (Italy had been a particular sufferer). The use of DDT also led to dramatic declines in the lethal disease in Asia, South America, and Africa. It was the additional use of DDT -in vast quantities – to safeguard crops against a range of pests that aroused opposition from the fledgling environmental movement.In 1962 Rachel Carson’s immensely influential Silent Spring was published. The book warned passionately about the potential risks to wildlife – and humanity – from the excessive use of DDT.

It led directly to the banning of DDT by the head of the newly-formed US Environmental Protection Agency, William Ruckelshaus. It was certainly a way of putting the EPA on the political map. Where America led, the rest of the developed world followed.This country banned DDT in 1968. Yet as Richard Tren, the director of Africa Fighting Malaria, wrote six months ago: “Since the EPA banned DDT in agriculture, countless studies have been conducted into the potential impact of DDT on human health, yet none of them have been able to find concrete evidence of human harm.

DDT is remarkably non-toxic to humans: people have tried to commit suicide by eating it and failed miserably. DDT is classified as a possible human carcinogen by the International Agency for Research on Cancer, but it is the same classification given to coffee and many other foodstuffs in our daily diet.”Two years ago, a group of malaria scientists and doctors organised by Africa Fighting Malaria sent a petition to the head of the World Health Organisation – which like all the other so-called humanitarian agencies will not support, fund or even permit the active use of pesticides in any anti-malarial campaigns – advocating the indoor spraying of DDT in Africa. Their petition states: “From the late 1970s onwards, malaria control strategy evolved primarily through political processes, not by consultation with malaria control experts: as a result malaria has re-emerged and is now a global health disaster.”Not surprisingly, African-Americans have begun to question the logic – and the humanity – of their country’s leaders in putting the health fears of food consumers above the lives of countless millions of Africans.The African-American Environmental Association produced a paper, quoting Paul Driessen, the author of Eco-Imperialism: Green Power, Black Death: “Where DDT is used, malaria deaths plummet Where it is not used, they skyrocket. In South Africa the incidence of malaria had been kept very low (below 10,000 cases annually) by the careful use of DDT. But in 1996 environmentalist pressure convinced [the government] to cease using DDT. One of the worst epidemics in the country’s history ensued with almost 62,000 cases in 2000 Shortly afterwards South Africa reintroduced DDT In one year, malaria cases plummeted by 80 per cent.