by Sonia Shah
19. Blu Buhs, The Fire Ant Wars, 68.
20. Russell, “Speaking of Annihilation,” 1505–29.
21. Clay Lyle, “Achievements and Possibilities in Pest Eradication,” Journal of Economic Entomology 40 (February 1947): 1–8.
22. Bosso, Pesticides and Politics, 81.
23. Quoted in Gordon Harrison, Mosquitoes, Malaria and Man: A History of the Hostilities Since 1880 (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1978), 223.
24. John Farley, To Cast Out Disease: A History of the International Health Division of the Rockefeller Foundation (1913–1951) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 143.
25. Ibid., 130.
26. John Duffy, ed., Ventures in World Health: The Memoirs of Fred Lowe Soper (Washington, D.C.: Pan American Health Organization, 1977), viii.
27. Malcolm Gladwell, “The Mosquito Killer: Millions of People Owe Their Lives to Fred Soper. Why Isn’t He a Hero?” The New Yorker, July 2, 2001.
28. Farley, To Cast Out Disease, 144.
29. Quoted in Harrison, Mosquitoes, Malaria and Man, 223.
30. Peter J. Brown, “Malaria, Miseria, and Underpopulation in Sardinia: The ‘Malaria Blocks Development’ Cultural Model,” Medical Anthropology 17 (1997): 239–54.
31. Ibid.
32. John N. Popham, “Report Progress in Malaria Fight,” New York Times, December 7, 1948.
33. Blu Buhs, The Fire Ant Wars, 73; “DDT Saves the Pines,” New York Times, September 6, 1947; “Conservation: The Menace of DDT,” New York Times, March 1, 1959.
34. Interview with Anna Opel, March 22, 2006.
35. Sonia Shah, Crude: The Story of Oil (New York: Seven Stories, 2004), 18.
36. Harrison, Mosquitoes, Malaria and Man, 230–31; Andrew Spielman and Michael D’Antonio, Mosquito: A Natural History of Our Most Persistent and Deadly Foe (New York: Hyperion, 2001), 149.
37. Snowden, The Conquest of Malaria, 205; Harrison, Mosquitoes, Malaria and Man, 229; Andrew Spielman et al., “Time Limitation and the Role of Research in the World-wide Attempt to Eradicate Malaria,” Journal of Medical Entomology 30, no. 1 ( January 1993): 6–19.
38. Farley, To Cast Out Disease, 285.
39. Gladwell, “The Mosquito Killer.”
40. Randall Packard, The Making of a Tropical Disease: A Short History of Malaria (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007), 144.
41. “U.N. Gains Ground Against Malaria,” New York Times, June 7, 1952.
42. M. J. Dobson et al., “Malaria Control in East Africa: The Kampala Conference and the Pare-Taveta Scheme: A Meeting of Common and High Ground,” Parassitologia 42 (2000): 149–166.
43. Perkins, “Reshaping Technology in Wartime,” 169–86.
44. Russell, “The Strange Career of DDT,” 770–96.
45. Paul F. Russell, “Lessons in Malariology from World War II,” American Journal of Tropical Medicine 26 (1946): 5–13.
46. “Public to Receive DDT Insecticide.”
47. Russell, “Speaking of Annihilation,” 1505–29.
48. Russell, “The Strange Career of DDT,” 770–96.
49. Perkins, “Reshaping Technology in Wartime,” 169–86.
50. Whorton, Before Silent Spring, 251.
51. Bosso, Pesticides and Politics, 63.
52. Perkins, “Reshaping Technology in Wartime,” 169–86.
53. “Flies Resist DDT,” New York Times, October 31, 1948.
54. WHO Expert Committee on Malaria, 1947, “Report on Dr. Pampana’s Mission to Greece and Italy,” WHO Docs., IC/Mal/8/21, August 1947, quoted in Harrison, Mosquitoes, Malaria and Man, 233.
55. “Flies Resist DDT.”
56. Popham, “Report Progress in Malaria Fight.”
57. Paul F. Russell, Man’s Mastery of Malaria (London: Oxford University Press, 1955), 148.
58. Greer Williams, The Plague Killers: Untold Stories of Three Great Campaigns Against Disease (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1969), 175.
59. J. A. Nájera, “Malaria and the Work of the WHO,” Bulletin of the World Health Organization 67, no. 3 (1989): 229–43.
60. Ibid.
61. Socrates Litsios, “Malaria and International Health Organizations,” prepared for “Philanthropic Foundations and the Globalization of Scientific Medicine,” Quinnipiac University, November 6–18, 2003, quoting WHO, Eighth World Health Assembly, Mexico, May 10–27, 1955. official Records of the WHO, No. 63: 205.
62. James L. A. Webb, Humanity’s Burden: A Global History of Malaria (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 167; “Soviet Aid Offer on Malaria Cited,” New York Times, January 12, 1958.
63. R. M. Packard, “‘No Other Logical Choice’: Global Malaria Eradication and the Politics of International Health in the Post-war Era,” Parassitologia 40 (1998), 217–29.
64. “Malaria Eradication,” Report and Recommendations of the International Development Advisory Board, Washington, D.C., April 13, 1956.
65. Harry Cleaver, “Malaria and the Political Economy of Public Health,” International Journal of Health Services 7, no. 4 (1977): 557–79.
66. “Malaria Eradication.”
67. Ibid.
68. Ibid.
69. G. Sambasivan, “Roundtable Discussion: WHO’s Passive Role,” World Health Forum 1, nos. 1, 2 (1980): 8–33.
70. “Mosquitoes Developing an Armor Against DDT After 9-year War,” New York Times, March 14, 1952.
71. Robert K. Plumb, “Dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane,” New York Times, January 16, 1955.
72. Spielman and D’Antonio, Mosquito, 150; Laurie Garrett, The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance (New York: Penguin Books, 1994), 50; C. P. Gilmore, “Malaria Wins Round 2,” New York Times, September 25, 1966; Jean Mouchet, “Agriculture and Vector Resistance,” Insect Science and Its Application 9, no. 3 (1988): 297–302; Harrison, Mosquitoes, Malaria and Man, 295; U. D’Alessandro and H. Buttiëns, “History and Importance of Antimalarial Drug Resistance,” Tropical Medicine and International Health 6, no. 11 (November 2001): 845–48.
73. William G. Brogdon and Janet C. McAllister, “Insecticide Resistance and Vector Control,” Emerging Infectious Diseases 4, no. 4 (October–December 1998): 605–13.
74. Brown, “Malaria, Miseria, and Underpopulation in Sardinia,” 239–54.
75. Willard H. Wright, Forty Years of Tropical Medicine Research: A History of the Gorgas Memorial Institute of Tropical and Preventive Medicine, Inc., and the Gorgas Memorial Laboratory (Baltimore: Reese Press, 1970), 102.
76. In fact, the problem of resistant mosquitoes wasn’t quite as straightforward as Russell and IDAB suggested. Under a DDT onslaught, any mosquito that could avoid fatal DDT poisoning had a strong advantage, true. The ones that could imperviously absorb the compound and fly away were truly dangerous, since they could both resist the DDT and effectively transmit malaria. But there were others. Many Anopheles mosquitoes found DDT-treated surfaces irritating and simply avoided them altogether, opting to bite or rest, or both, out of doors, free from the enervating chemical. In one study, as many as three out of five mosquitoes actively avoided DDT-treated surfaces. Theoretically these DDT-repelled mosquitoes had just as much chance of mothering battalions of progeny as the DDT-resistant ones, but unlike the resistant mosquitoes, their survival tactic allowed them much less opportunity to bite and infect human beings with malaria. In other words, even if DDT failed to kill sufficient numbers of mosquitoes, it could still repel sufficient numbers to effect the same result: a cessation of malaria transmission. “Malaria eradication,” Report and Recommendations of the International Development Advisory Board, Washington, D.C., April 13, 1956.
77. Williams, The Plague Killers, 175–76; Spielman et al., “Time Limitation and the Role of Research,” 6–19.
78. Dwight D. Eisenhower, “Annual Message to the Congress on the State of the Union,” January 9, 1958, via the American Presidency Project, www.american presidency.org.
79. Howard A. Rusk, “Aiding Fight on Malaria,” New
York Times, December 15, 1957.
80. “U.S. Will Help India Eradicate Malaria,” New York Times, December 6, 1957.
81. M. A. Farid, “The Malaria Programme: From Euphoria to Anarchy,” World Health Forum 1, no. 1 (1980): 8–33; “U.S. Will Help India Eradicate Malaria.”
82. Robert S. Desowitz, The Malaria Capers: More Tales of Parasites and People, Research and Reality (New York: W. W. Norton, 1991), 214; M.G. Candau, “World Acts to Combat Malaria,” New York Times, March 19, 1960.
83. Packard, The Making of a Tropical Disease, 157.
84. “WHO Reports 11 Countries Have Eradicated Malaria,” New York Times, January 24, 1960; Candau, “World Acts to Combat Malaria.”
85. Desowitz, The Malaria Capers, 14; Amy Yomiko Vittor et al., “The effect of Deforestation on the Human-biting Rate of Anopheles darlingi, the Primary Vector of Falciparum Malaria in the Peruvian Amazon,” American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene 74, no. 1 (2006): 3–11.
86. Harrison, Mosquitoes, Malaria and Man, 242–43; Gilmore, “Malaria Wins Round 2.”
87. Julian de Zulueta and François Lachance, “A Malaria-Control Experiment in the Interior of Borneo,” Bulletin of the World Health Organization 15 (1956): 673–93.
88. Brown, “Malaria, Miseria, and Underpopulation in Sardinia,” 239–54.
89. Gilmore, “Malaria Wins Round 2.”
90. De Zulueta and Lachance, “A Malaria-Control Experiment in the Interior of Borneo,” 673–93.
91. Spielman and D’Antonio, Mosquito, 172; “Dr. Paul F. Russell, 89; Specialist on Malaria,” New York Times, November 9, 1983.
92. Garrett, The Coming Plague, 49.
93. T. H. Weller, “World Health in a Changing World,” Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene 77, suppl. (April 1974): 54–61.
94. Geoffrey M. Jeffery, “Malaria Control in the Twentieth Century,” American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene 24, no. 3 (1976): 361–71.
95. F. Y. Cheng, “Deterioration of Thatch Roofs by Moth Larvae after House Spraying in the Course of a Malaria Eradication Programme in North Borneo,” Bulletin of the World Health Organization 28 (1963): 136–37.
96. Gordon R. Conway, “Ecological Aspects of Pest Control in Malaysia,” from J. T. Farvar and J. P. Milton, eds., The Careless Technology: Ecology and International Development (New York: Natural History Press, 1972).
97. Arthur Brown, “Personal Experiences in the Malaria Eradication Campaign, 1955–1962,” Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine 95, no. 3 (March 2002): 154–56.
98. D. K. Visnawathan, The Conquest of Malaria in India: An Indo-American Cooperative Effort (Madras, India: Company Law Institute Press, 195), cited in Harrison, Mosquitoes, Malaria and Man, 241.
99. Tom Harrisson, “Operation Cat-drop,” Animals 5 (1965): 512–13.
100. R.A.F. Operations Record Book, Changi, Singapore, March 1960.
101. R. M. Packard, “Malaria Dreams: Postwar Visions of Health and Development in the Third World,” Medical Anthropology 17 (1997): 179–96.
102. Visnawathan, The Conquest of Malaria in India, 195, cited in Harrison, Mosquitoes, Malaria and Man, 241.
103. T. C. Boyle wrote: “You should have seen them . . . the little parachutes and harnesses we’d tricked up, 14,000 of them, cats in every color of the rainbow, cats with one ear, no ears, half a tail, three-legged cats . . . all of them twirling down out of the sky like great big oversized snowflakes.” Boyle’s fictional fourteen thousand figure found its way into retellings of the Borneo story and was replicated widely. “As wonderful and touching and Disney-like this story is, it actually has nothing to do with the World Health Organization . . . The story has been reproduced and published in books, journals, and on the Internet, without any supporting evidence or references,” huffed the WHO librarian Thomas Allen when asked about it. “Once this cat got out of the bag, there was no getting it back in.” T. C. Boyle, “Top of the Food Chain,” in Without a Hero: Stories (New York: Viking, 1994); Carole Modis, “Operation Cat Drop,” Quarterly News of the Association of Former WHO Staff (April–June 2005); correspondence with Thomas Allen, January 15, 2008.
104. Harrison, Mosquitoes, Malaria and Man, 244.
105. Quoted in Gladwell, “The Mosquito Killer.”
106. Harrison, Mosquitoes, Malaria and Man, 254.
107. “DDT: Its Days as a Killer Are Numbered,” New York Times, November 16, 1969.
108. Nájera, “Malaria and the Work of the WHO,” Bulletin of the World Health Organization 67, no. 3 (1989): 229–43.
109. Harrison, Mosquitoes, Malaria, and Man, 295.
110. Spielman and D’Antonio, Mosquito, 161.
111. Harrison, Mosquitoes, Malaria and Man, 248.
112. G. Davidson and A. R. Zahar, “The Practical Implications of Resistance of Malaria Vectors to Insecticides,” Bulletin of the World Health Organization 49 (1973): 475–83.
113. Mario Pinotti, “Chemoprophylaxis of Malaria by the Association of an Antimalarical [sic] Drug to the Sodium Chloride Used Daily in the Preparation of Meals,” International Congresses of Tropical Medicine and Malaria 2 (1953): 248; Rostan de Rohan Loureiro Soares, “Sal Chloroquinado, Novo Metodo Deprofilaxia da Malaria,” Revista Brasiliera de Medicina ( July 1955): 448.
114. D. Payne, “Did Medicated Salt Hasten the Spread of Chloroquine Resistance in Plasmodium falciparum?” Parasitology Today 4, no. 4 (1988).
115. D’Alessandro and Buttiëns, “History and Importance of Antimalarial Drug Resistance.”
116. Howard A. Rusk, “Health Projects Abroad,” New York Times, September 22, 1963.
117. Packard, “Malaria Dreams,” 179–96.
118. Brown, “Malaria, Miseria, and Underpopulation in Sardinia,” 239–54.
119. Farley, To Cast Out Disease, 291.
120. Brown, “Malaria, Miseria, and Underpopulation in Sardinia,” 239–54.
121. M. A. Farid, “The Malaria Programme: From Euphoria to Anarchy,” World Health Forum 1, no. 1 (1980): 8–33.
122. Farley, To Cast Out Disease, 277.
123. Packard, The Making of a Tropical Disease, 147.
124. Farley, To Cast Out Disease, 273, citing T. Poleman, “World Food: A Perspective,” Science 188 (1975): 510–28, and Kingsley Davis, “The Population Specter: Rapidly Declining Death Rate in Densely Populated Countries,”American Economic Review 46 (1956): 305–18.
125. Williams, The Plague Killers, 181.
126. Russell, Man’s Mastery of Malaria, 246.
127. Ware and Whitacre, The Pesticide Book; “Toxicological Profile for DDT, DDE, and DDD,” Agency for Toxic Substance and Disease Registry, 2002; International Programme on Chemical Safety, “Global Assessment of the State-of-the-Science of Endocrine Disruptors.”
128. “Conservation: The Menace of DDT,” New York Times, March 1, 1959.
129. “Farmers Warned on DDT,” New York Times, May 25, 1947.
130. Plumb, “Dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane.”
131. Ralph H. Lutts, “Chemical Fallout: Silent Spring, Radioactive Fallout, and the Environmental Movement,” in Craig Waddell, ed., And No Birds Sing: Rhetorical Analyses of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2000), 24.
132. Terence Kehoe and Charles Jacobson, “Environmental Decision Making and DDT Production at Montrose Chemical Corporation of California,” Enterprise and Society 4, no. 4 (2003); “U.S. Seeks to Keep Milk Free of DDT,” New York Times, April 23, 1949.
133. Bosso, Pesticides and Politics, 122–23.
134. Webb, Humanity’s Burden, 172.
135. Packard, The Making of a Tropical Disease, 169.
136. Weller, “World Health in a Changing World,” 54–61.
137. Spielman and D’Antonio, Mosquito, 173.
138. Harrison, Mosquitoes, Malaria, and Man, 248, 253.
139. L. J. Bruce-Chwatt, “Resurgence of Malaria and Its Control,” Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene 77, suppl. (April 1974): 62–66.
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140. Ibid.
141. Socrates Litsios, The Tomorrow of Malaria (Wellington, New Zealand: Pacific Press, 1996), 101.
142. Harrison, Mosquitoes, Malaria, and Man, 257.
143. Jonathan A. Leonard, “Malaria Strikes Back: A ‘Dying’ Disease Kills Again,” Chicago Tribune, August 15, 1979.
144. Nájera, “Malaria and the Work of the WHO,” 229–43.
145. Alan Riding, “Malaria Spreading in Central America as Resistance to Sprays Grows,” New York Times, August 23, 1977.
146. Spielman and D’Antonio, Mosquito, 172.
147. Packard, The Making of a Tropical Disease, 174.
148. Historical currency conversion from 1960 dollars to 2009 dollars calculated with www.futureboy.homeip.net/fsp/dollar.fsp?quantity=7¤cy=dollars&fromYear=1960.
149. José Nájera, “Malaria: New Patterns and Perspectives,” World Bank Technical Paper Number 183 (Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 1992).
150. Harrison, Mosquitoes, Malaria, and Man, 296.
151. Packard, The Making of a Tropical Disease, 159.
152. Nájera, “Malaria: New Patterns and Perspectives.”
153. Elisabeth Rosenthal, “Outwitted by Malaria, Desperate Doctors Seek New Remedies,” New York Times, February 12, 1991.
154. Walther H. Wernsdorfer, “Epidemiology of Drug Resistance in Malaria,” Acta Tropica 56 (1994): 143–56.
155. Harrison, Mosquitoes, Malaria, and Man, 295.
156. www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/smallpox/en/.
157. Andrew Spielman et al., “Time Limitation and the Role of Research in the Worldwide Attempt to Eradicate Malaria,” Journal of Medical Entomology 30, no. 1 ( January 1993): 6–19.
158. Sambasivan, “Roundtable Discussion: WHO’s Passive Role,” 8–33.
159. Georgann Chapin and Robert Wasserstrom, “Agricultural Production and Malaria Resurgence in Central America and India,” Nature 293 (September 17, 1981): 181–85.
160. Andrew Spielman, lecture at Harvard University, March 2, 2006.
161. A. P. Ray, “Roundtable Discussion: Warning Should Be Heeded,” World Health Forum 1, nos. 1, 2 (1980): 8–33.
162. Paul F. Russell, “Roundtable Discussion: Goal of Eradication Must Be Maintained,” World Health Forum 1, nos. 1, 2 (1980): 8–33.