The Universal Antidote

Saddam’s Sister by PJ Lang
“Do you know the greatest disaster to befall the pharmaceutical industry?
Smallpox. By eradicating Smallpox, from the population, they wiped out a huge potential market and profit.
In Sri Lanka, in 1948, there were 2.8 million malaria cases and 7,300 malaria deaths. They introduced widespread DDT use. Malaria fell to just 17 cases and zero deaths in 1963. From 2.8 million down to 17. After DDT use was discontinued, Sri Lankan malaria cases returned to 2.5 million in 1968 and 1969, and the disease remains a killer in Sri Lanka today.
Now there are many arguments and theories why DDT was discontinued and is not sprayed widely, but it is clearly a matter of fact that spending on anti-malarial drugs for 17 people is far, far less than spending on the anti-malarial drugs for 2.5 million people. Extrapolate those numbers world wide and you would go from 40 million sufferers per year down to about 300 cases, hardly enough to base an industry on the manufacture of anti-malarial medicines.
The only major anti-DDT campaign was based on the story that the eggshells of wild birds in North America were getting thinner because of the toxicity of DDT. As the Americans say ‘You are shitting me.’ The Brits are more polite, ‘You are kidding, right?’ Thirty nine million, nine hundred and ninety nine thousand, seven hundred people suffering each year because some bloody bird has a thin egg shell.”