by hilzoy
Yesterday, John Quiggin had a post on Crooked Timber that was very interesting. It concerns an idea I had been rather vaguely aware of, but hadn’t really focussed in on: that Rachel Carson and the environmentalist movement were responsible for the deaths of thousands, maybe millions, even “tens of millions” from malaria. This is completely untrue (I’ll say why below the fold), not that that has stopped people from saying that it is in places like the WSJ, the National Review Online, and even the US Senate.
As Quiggin notes, there’s a mystery about this, namely: where did it come from? It has all the hallmarks of a coordinated campaign — editorials placed in prominent newspapers, all citing the same dubious examples, for instance, and its very own website — but it’s not clear why anyone would undertake such a campaign.
“One of the great puzzles of the DDT myth has been that it appeared to arise from pure ideological animus against Carson and the environmental movement – DDT is not patented so there were no profits to be obtained from pushing it.”
So what’s up?
Well: I had started to try to piece the story together when I discovered that Tim Lambert had done it for me. So I’ll just quote him (though you should read the whole thing):
“So how did the “Rachel killed millions” claim get from lunatic fringe to mainstream?
Well, in 1998, the new Director-General of the World Health Organization, Gro Harlem Brundtland established the Tobacco Free Initiative to reduce death and disease caused by tobacco use. Since it would also reduce tobacco company profits, they used one of their favourite tactics: When an agency plans to take actions against smoking, tobacco companies pay third parties to attack the agency for addressing tobacco instead of some other issue. For example, when the FDA proposed to regulate nicotine, Philip Morris organized and paid for an expensive anti-FDA campaign of radio, television and print ads from think tanks such as the CEI.
So Philip Morris hired Roger Bate to set up a new astroturf group Africa Fighting Malaria and criticize the WHO for not doing enough to fight malaria. The key elements of AFM’s strategy:
“Simplify our arguments.
Pick issues on which we can divide our opponents and win. Make our case on our terms, not on the terms of our opponents – malaria prevention is a good example. …
this will create tensions between LDCs and OECD countries and between public health and environment.”
The simple argument they used to drive a wedge between public health and environment was that we had to choose between birds and people. That by banning DDT to protect birds, environmentalists caused many people to die from malaria.”
So, in a nutshell: the WHO was about to undertake an initiative that would have harmed the tobacco companies. The tobacco companies, in turn, hired shills to attack the WHO. They presumably hired some to attack the WHO’s tobacco initiative, but they also hired people to attack other things the WHO was doing in order to discredit it more generally. Thus, the attack on Rachel Carson.
***
Malaria prevention is incredibly important. For that matter, so is the WHO and its anti-tobacco initiative. This story shows the tobacco industry funding people to spread misinformation, not because they themselves have any interest in malaria and DDT, but just to sow confusion and skepticism about the WHO at a time when it was a threat to their interests.
This is a story of intellectual corruption. And it has real public costs. People need to be able to trust experts: the alternative is everyone having to develop his or her own expertise in everything. When people who should know better allow themselves to be paid to shill for industry, they undermine that trust. And that makes us all worse off.