Abolish Malaria as a Gift for Earth Day

I attended an event a few night's ago to raise awareness and money to help prevent and abolish malaria. It occurred to me that giving to this cause would be the perfect "gift" to celebrate Earth Day, which was April 22nd. Malaria is an illness that can easily be eradicated -- we have the knowledge of what to do - education, mosquito nets and medication, and the network of distribution is being worked out too.

Celebrating Earth is about enjoying, nurturing and protecting our environment. It's also about using our evolved skills and knowledge to help facilitate the most hospitable environment we can for earth's inhabitants while at the same time protecting all life forms from irrevocable damage. The damage caused by this illness is formidable and needs to be stopped. Millions of children die every year - malaria kills a child every 30 seconds -- that's clearly not very hospitable. We can change this. Donating to www.MalariaNoMore.org is the perfect way to express our gratitude for life, and an appropriate "Earth Day" gift to humanity.

 

Follow Cheryl Saban Ph.D. on Twitter: www.twitter.com/csaban

Comments

[dlet]

08:21 AM on 04/26/2009

While this may be an admirable goal, I would think this article would have been better written for Human Day. The focus of Earth Day is to promote our caretaking of the Earth not of ourselves. While the distinction can be blurred sometimes, let's just try and not introduce a bunch of things to distract from the main point. Anyway, there is a World Malaria Day on April 25th....just three days after Earth Day.

[Manny Moss]

02:06 PM on 04/24/2009

In what way is eradicating one species for the benefit of another a responsible idea to be associated with Earth Day? Especially when the species that benefits is the one destroying the Earth. I don't want to advocate the suffering of any human being, and your goal is a lofty one. Malaria is a terrible disease with a high human and economical cost. But your notions of environmentalism and Earth Day are flawed if you think that something that benefits only humans is environmentally responsible. And this concept is a symptom of the soft-headed thinking that cheapens the concept of a green revolution by green-washing every destructive habit with a slightly less-destructive habit. Pick a different day to honor.

[MerrieWay]

11:04 AM on 04/24/2009

Not only do you stand for greatness of women... this article has inspired me to step up even more giving of my skills, to help youth know they can live green. Green has to be a conciousness that continues to grow.
I loved reading your new book "Self Worth" - it's awesome and will change a lot of lives.
Keep up the good work...
Merrie Lynn Ross & MerrieWay (kids) applaud your effort. 2 Thumbs UP

[shaman]

10:39 AM on 04/24/2009

I clicked the wrong reply button, I was not replying to JnrNorman but to Rhetticent.

[RightWingMarine]

10:34 AM on 04/24/2009

you know what works better than nets? DDT. But so long as we let a discredited book prevent the use of DDT we can let children die on the false belief that we are saving birds.

[rwext]

08:07 AM on 04/24/2009

as said below...... Malaria and Cholera are killing babies every day thanks to the ganggreen efforts that won't allow DDT to be used... but like Clean Coal , and global warming , ignorance kills and is doing just that

[rtolmach]

07:31 PM on 04/23/2009

You can give bednets as a charitable gift in a friend's name at ChangingThePresent.org: http://changingthepresent.org/gift/1081/protect_families.

[JnrNorman]

04:31 PM on 04/23/2009

I bought a few a few bed nets at the church I go to.


Worldwide Protest;
http://www.chemtrails911.com/archive_pages/00_2007_01_07.htm

[shaman]

10:30 AM on 04/24/2009

DDT has not been banned. Do a little research on the web and you will find a lot of information.

See as an example:

http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2006/09/becker_and_posners_ignorance_a.php

There are problems with all of the solutions proposed (nets, DDT etc). Each has benefits and costs. Do we really expect people to spend an average of 12 hours a day under nets? Use of substantial amounts of DDT in the 60s and earlier resulted in resistence. Limiting its use will delay the resistence build up, but it remains a clear and present danger. Drugs to combat malaria also risk resistence.

We have also had sucess with cleaning up areas and draining standing water so the mosquitos can't breed. I see nothing at the website www.MalariaNoMore.org that discusses this approach (although I might have missed it).

Ultimately we will need to gene sequence the disease and the mosquito (it is the female only as I recall that transmits the disease) to come up with a genetic solution.

[Rhetticent]

05:29 PM on 04/27/2009

DDT was banned in MOST USES in 1972 in the US, followed by a worldwide ban for agriculture worldwide. by the Stockholm convention. It remained available for very limited disease control uses thereafter, but remained controversial, and was harder to obtain because the limited uses led to very limited production. The fact remains that malaria was largely controlled when DDT wes easily available and inexpensively obtained, and that millions have died since DDT has not been used.

[Rhetticent]

05:37 PM on 04/27/2009

India is still using DDT to great success. I'd feel a lot better about sending DDT to Africa rather than nets. I do agree with you that the idea of wearing nets 24 hours a day is a bit foolish. So, can we spray until you get done with the genetic squencing?

[Rhetticent]

04:16 PM on 04/23/2009

Sadly enough we pretty much had eradicated malaria using DDT. Then came Rachel Carson and the mythi of the bird egg damage, now discredited. Millions of people have died as a result. I wonder if any of the environmental advocates responsible feel even the slightest bit of remorse?