The EU Breaks Eggs in sub-Saharan Africa

In what has become a depressingly frequent story, Western governments are again trying to dictate wildly inapropriate environmental and public health policies to poor countries whose citizens may very well end up paying with their lives. As Richard Tren and Marian Tupy explain, the EU is trying to pressure the Ugandan government into dropping DDT as part of their anti-malaria efforts, despite the hundres of millions of lives the insecticide has saved. DDT is, of course, unpopular in the U.S. and EU because of its legacy as an agricultural insecticide which allegedly caused eggshell thinning in some large predatory birds. The fact that its current use would be to save the lives of the poor and sick in Africa in small doses rather than kill agricultural pests in the U.S. in massive amounts seems to make very little difference to those currently in power.

Thanks to Kendra Okonski and The Commons Blog.

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