‘Don’t let the bedbugs bite,” it seems, is no longer a fashionable good-night wish for Big Apple kids, even in the city’s high-rent districts and posh hotels. Growing infestations of the ravenous bloodsuckers have New Yorkers annoyed, angry about officialdom’s inadequate responses — and “itching” for answers.
Instead, their Bedbug Advisory Board recommends a bedbug team and an educational Web site. Residents, it advises, should monitor and report infestations. Use blowdryers to flush out (maybe 5 percent of) the bugs, then sweep them into a plastic bag and dispose properly. Throw away (thousands of dollars’ worth of) infested clothing, bedding, carpeting and furniture.
Hire (expensive) professionals who (may) have insecticides that (may) eradicate the pests — and hope you don’t get scammed. Don’t use “risky” pesticides yourself. Follow guideline for donating items, and be wary of
bedbug risks from donated furniture and mattresses.
New Yorkers want real solutions, including affordable insecticides that work. Fear and loathing from decades of chemophobic indoctrination are slowly giving way to a healthy renewed recognition that the risk of not using chemicals can be greater than the risk of using them (carefully). Eco-myths are being replaced with more informed discussions about the alleged effects of DDT and other pesticides on humans and wildlife.
Thankfully, bedbugs haven’t been linked to disease — except emotional distress associated with obstinate infestations, incessant itching and pathetic “proactive” advice, rules and “solutions” right out of “Saturday Night Live.”
It is hellish for people who must live with bedbugs and can’t afford eradication pros such as those Hilton Hotels or Mayor Bloomberg might hire. But [now] imagine what it’s like for some 2 billion people who live 24/7/365 with insects that definitely are responsible for disease: malarial mosquitoes.
Malaria infects more than 300 million people annually. For weeks on end, it renders them unable to work, attend school or care for their families — and far more susceptible to death from tuberculosis, dysentery, HIV/AIDS, malnutrition and other diseases that stalk their impoverished lands.
This vicious disease causes low birth weights in babies and leaves millions permanently brain damaged. It kills more than a million annually, most of them children and mothers, the vast majority in Africa. It drains families’ meager savings and perpetuates the region’s endemic poverty.
Emotional distress? Imagine the stress that comes from having no escape from destitution and disease, having to support a child with a perpetual 10-year-old’s mental functions, burying your baby, wife or sibling, or wondering whether you can walk 20 miles to a clinic before the child you are carrying dies and whether the clinic will have (noncounterfeit) medicine to cure her.
Frustration over absurd bedbug programs? Imagine the reaction Africans must have to “malaria no more” campaigns that claim they’ll (eventually) eradicate the disease solely with insecticide-treated bed nets, drugs, “capacity building,” education and (maybe someday) mosquitoes genetically engineered not to carry malaria parasites. As for insecticide spraying, especially DDT, forget it.
DDT is the most powerful, effective, long-lasting mosquito repellant ever invented. Spraying the eaves and inside walls of mud huts and cinderblock homes every six months keeps 80 percent of the flying killers from entering. It irritates most that do enter, so they leave without biting, and kills any that land.
Yet many aid agencies refuse to encourage, endorse or fund spraying. Many don’t even want to monitor mosquito and malaria outbreaks or determine success in reducing disease and death rates. That’s more difficult and costly than counting the number of bed nets distributed and underscores the embarrassing reality that their “comprehensive” (and politically correct) programs achieve only 20 to 40 percent reductions in morbidity and mortality. By contrast, as South Africa and other countries have shown, adding insecticides and DDT can bring 95 percent success.
Since the Environmental Protection Agency banned DDT in 1972, billions have been stricken by malaria and tens of millions have died. This is intolerable.
We need adult supervision and informed debate on pesticide policies, laws and regulations. We can no longer leave those decisions to anti-chemical activists in unaccountable pressure groups and government agencies. These zealots are making decisions that affect the quality of life for millions of Americans — and life itself for billions of poor people worldwide.
If not for the economy and mental health of Americans afflicted by bedbugs, then do it for Africa’s sick, brain-damaged and dying parents and children.
Paul Driessen, senior policy ad viser for the Congress of Racial Equality, is author of “Eco-Imperi alism: Green power — Black death.”