We always had a couple
of cans of Raid in the house and would fry junebugs on our screen door with
torches we
made by holding lighted matches under the outlet of the aerosol. I would
travel around the south with my father and I loved to watch the
cropdusters do their wonderful aerial acrobatics, and would get as close
as we could so they would fly right over us. Rachel Carson's book
hadn't yet come into our house. We just didn't consider the stuff to be
poisonous. I used to love the smell of gasoline.
During the fifties the WHO had as its stated goal the complete world-wide
eradication of malaria. For fifteen years, until 1970, the strategy had
been to blanket the malarious world with two grams of DDT per square
meter, then engage in mopping-up operations consisting of reading blood
slides and administering malarial suppressing drugs to wipe out residual
Plasmodium populations in human hosts.
I served in the Peace Corps in Morocco doing a survey of mosquito
populations including Anopheles, the malaria vector, emphasis on host
preference, dabbling in insecticide
resistance, which was considerable at that time (1966-1968). There were
even significant pockets of malaria in the small oases in the Sahara, where
water was such a precious commodity you wouldn't think there would be any
extra lying around for mosquitoes to breed in. But as the guy in
Juriassic Park said, life is inherently chaotic and has a way of filling
niches we don't even know exist.
There is a lot of attention paid to insecticide resistance of the vector
Anopheles, less to the resistance developed by the malaria organism
itself to the quinine-related compounds whose purpose is to suppress the
reproduction cycle of Plasmodium in its marvelous transformations in the
human body.
By 1973 the WHO had given up its Malaria Eradication Program. War,
always malaria's friend, had in too many parts of the world made and
concerted coordinated effort impractical. The sales of DDT resembled
arms sales in that massive political effort to sway governments to the
idea that DDT alone could conquer malaria (can we ever avoid military
metaphors?) skewed science and undermined efforts at other biological
control. Complete eradication concepts slam up against economic
walls--it is just way too expensive to kill the last few mosquitoes.
So we live in a fluid environment with few absolute truths. I buy
organic produce but agonize when a population of gross, huge aphids
infests my favorite pinon tree next to my pumphouse in Taos, or
when I spot winged termites coming out of the main beam supporting the
second story bedroom (left the pinon alone but poisoned the
termites).
Enough of this sunday morning rambling--regards to you all.
Bob Draper
Box 5756
Taos, NM 87571
(505) 758-3027
758-9531
fax 758-1181
rmdraper@laplaza.taos.nm.us