insisted.
Undaunted, Spielman pursued his Ph. D. despite Rozeboomâs warning. He was a firm believer in evolutionâhe had practically memorized his favorite text on the subjectâand he told Rozeboom that âDDT isnât the final answer.â
While Congress reviewed Russellâs IDAB proposal, Spielman took some courses at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Massachusetts. There he met a middle-aged marine biologist who was quietly rethinking the whole DDT question. She told Spielman that evolution would come between DDT and the dream of malaria eradication. DDT-resistant strains of Anopheles mosquitoes were turning up all over the world, she said.
Her name was Rachel Carson, and the same year the United States and WHO embarked on their ambitious campaign to eliminate malarial mosquitoes, Carson started writing Silent Spring . 43 Carson never completely opposed pesticide use; rather, she favored their rational and limited application. Prophetically, she worried that widespread agricultural use of insecticides would endanger efforts to control malaria, typhus, African sleeping sickness, yellow fever, and encephalitis. She wrote:
Â
No responsible person contends that insect-borne disease should be ignored. The question that has now urgently presented itself is whether it is either wise or responsible to attack the problem by methods that are rapidly making it worse. The world has heard much of the triumphant war against disease through the control of insect vectors of infection, but it has heard little of the other side of the storyâthe defeats, the short-lived triumphs that now strongly support the alarming view that the insect enemy has been made stronger by our efforts. Even worse, we may have destroyed our very means of fighting. 44
Â
She noted that the first public health use of DDT occurred in 1943. Allied troops sprayed the chemical liberally to eliminate typhus-carrying lice in Italy. The lice were, in fact, killed, and typhus halted, but a year later DDT-resistant Culex mosquitoes and houseflies stepped into the vacuum. By 1951, mosquitoes and flies in the region were resistant to DDT, methoxychlor, chlordane, heptachlor, and benzene hexachloride, and Italians had returned to time-honored tactics for insect control: screened windows, flypaper, and flyswatters.
In 1959 Spielman joined the faculty of the Harvard School of Public Health and discovered that no courses on malaria or Anopheles mosquitoes were on the curriculum. With the leader of the worldâs malaria eradication campaign on the faculty, it was considered distasteful to offer such courses. Training young scientists in techniques of mosquito control implied that
Paul Russellâs efforts would fail and such knowledge would actually be necessary for future practitioners of public health.
Russell, an ex-missionary, was a kindly, elderly gentleman, and although Spielman had never believed the campaign would succeed, it broke his heart to see the dejection Russell felt when 1963 arrived.
Malaria had, indeed, reached its nadir. But it had not been eliminated. In some countries success was so close that people were already celebrating. Sri Lanka, for example, had 1 million malaria cases in 1955; just eighteen in 1963.
Â
But a dealâs a deal. Russell promised success by 1963, and Congress was in no mood to entertain extending funds for another year, or two. As far as Congress was concerned, failure to reach eradication by 1963 simply meant it couldnât be done, in any time frame. And at the time virtually all the spare cash was American; without steady infusions of U. S. dollars, the effort died abruptly.
In 1963 Harvard put malaria control back on its curriculum.
Spielman shook his head and wondered out loud, âHow can they just abandon all these people?â He knew that, thanks to the near-eradication effort, hundreds of millions of people now lacked immunity to the disease, but lived in areas
Undaunted, Spielman pursued his Ph. D. despite Rozeboomâs warning. He was a firm believer in evolutionâhe had practically memorized his favorite text on the subjectâand he told Rozeboom that âDDT isnât the final answer.â
While Congress reviewed Russellâs IDAB proposal, Spielman took some courses at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Massachusetts. There he met a middle-aged marine biologist who was quietly rethinking the whole DDT question. She told Spielman that evolution would come between DDT and the dream of malaria eradication. DDT-resistant strains of Anopheles mosquitoes were turning up all over the world, she said.
Her name was Rachel Carson, and the same year the United States and WHO embarked on their ambitious campaign to eliminate malarial mosquitoes, Carson started writing Silent Spring . 43 Carson never completely opposed pesticide use; rather, she favored their rational and limited application. Prophetically, she worried that widespread agricultural use of insecticides would endanger efforts to control malaria, typhus, African sleeping sickness, yellow fever, and encephalitis. She wrote:
Â
No responsible person contends that insect-borne disease should be ignored. The question that has now urgently presented itself is whether it is either wise or responsible to attack the problem by methods that are rapidly making it worse. The world has heard much of the triumphant war against disease through the control of insect vectors of infection, but it has heard little of the other side of the storyâthe defeats, the short-lived triumphs that now strongly support the alarming view that the insect enemy has been made stronger by our efforts. Even worse, we may have destroyed our very means of fighting. 44
Â
She noted that the first public health use of DDT occurred in 1943. Allied troops sprayed the chemical liberally to eliminate typhus-carrying lice in Italy. The lice were, in fact, killed, and typhus halted, but a year later DDT-resistant Culex mosquitoes and houseflies stepped into the vacuum. By 1951, mosquitoes and flies in the region were resistant to DDT, methoxychlor, chlordane, heptachlor, and benzene hexachloride, and Italians had returned to time-honored tactics for insect control: screened windows, flypaper, and flyswatters.
In 1959 Spielman joined the faculty of the Harvard School of Public Health and discovered that no courses on malaria or Anopheles mosquitoes were on the curriculum. With the leader of the worldâs malaria eradication campaign on the faculty, it was considered distasteful to offer such courses. Training young scientists in techniques of mosquito control implied that
Paul Russellâs efforts would fail and such knowledge would actually be necessary for future practitioners of public health.
Russell, an ex-missionary, was a kindly, elderly gentleman, and although Spielman had never believed the campaign would succeed, it broke his heart to see the dejection Russell felt when 1963 arrived.
Malaria had, indeed, reached its nadir. But it had not been eliminated. In some countries success was so close that people were already celebrating. Sri Lanka, for example, had 1 million malaria cases in 1955; just eighteen in 1963.
Â
But a dealâs a deal. Russell promised success by 1963, and Congress was in no mood to entertain extending funds for another year, or two. As far as Congress was concerned, failure to reach eradication by 1963 simply meant it couldnât be done, in any time frame. And at the time virtually all the spare cash was American; without steady infusions of U. S. dollars, the effort died abruptly.
In 1963 Harvard put malaria control back on its curriculum.
Spielman shook his head and wondered out loud, âHow can they just abandon all these people?â He knew that, thanks to the near-eradication effort, hundreds of millions of people now lacked immunity to the disease, but lived in areas
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