Is a world-wide ban now the only ethical thing to do? by Larry Powell Did your parents farm In Canada in the years following World War 11 , as mine did? If so, little would they have dreamed of the health dangers lurking within the popular chemical, DDT, which they might well have been spraying on their fields. The product was applied widely (some say indiscriminately) back then to kill bugs that were consuming food crops and forests and spreading human diseases like typhus and malaria. Just as common were assurances from government and industry that “all was well.” But DDT was banned in North America in the 70’s after Rachel Carson exposed it in her book, “Silent Spring” as the culprit in massive die-offs of birds and fish and as a “definite chemical carcinogen.” DDT made a significant resurgence in the early 2000’s, however. That’s when the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the World Health Organization began promoting programs to control malari
