A December 18, 2006 piece in Investor's Business Daily notes that when environmentalists got DDT banned, they may have boosted the death toll not only from malaria but from AIDS, since HIV appears to spread more readily in people suffering from malaria:
Dr. Elizabeth Whelan, president of the American Council on Science and Health, said DDT prevented more human death and disease during its less than thirty years of widespread use (1944-72) than any other artificial chemical in recorded history.
The National Academy of Sciences said that in those years DDT saved more than 500 million lives. In India there were a million deaths from malaria in 1945, and DDT reduced that number to only a few thousand by 1960.
And now we know it can also slow the spread of and reduce the death toll from AIDS. Unless the fear-mongers get in the way.
