Richard Curtis, the playwright and unprincipled bigot, has written a film about malaria. This disease has been a scourge of mankind for millennia, killing untold millions. One of the actors, Brenda Blethyn appeared on a BBC breakfast show to talk about the film and her experiences. She passionately told how the disease is a horror and blights the lives of many. Treatment that is cheap to us, is hideously expensive in many of the countries plagued with it.
Brenda talked money; she said £5 would buy a net. This is probably a summary of where she gets her information. The money seeking NGO's talk of the horrible disease and the medicines they can administer and nets they could give out, as long as they are there.
What I wait to see (and Brenda not mentioning it might give us a clue) is whether dear old 'kill global warming sceptics' Curtis can bring himself to mention why malaria is so prolific. Despite no study showing it causes any harm to humans, DDT was banned. This pesticide was very effective; its use in Sri Lanka led to a reduction in cases of malaria, from 3 million in 1946 to just 29 in 1964. Within 5 years of the ban, the number of malaria infections was up to half a million.
Why the ban? Because an early eco-campaigner wrote a book claiming it was dangerous based on loopy visions of Mother Earth, floating around in her head. So well done Rachel Carson for Silent Spring, another fairy story that caught the imagination and led to millions of deaths and unimaginable misery. That is, in the real world. I wonder that she hasn't been given a Nobel Prize; crass stupidity and the promotion of crackpot ideas seems to warrant one these days (eh, Obama?).
Too bad Margaret Sanger isn't still around. She and Carson could be joint recipiants.
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