Rise of Zika

Re: Bring Back DDT, letter to the editor, Aug. 20. A sad commentary on North Americans’ collective intelligence is that it took over a year of the relentless northern march of the Zika virus before someone — perspicacious National Post letter writer Florence Smith — publicly connected the dots with Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring. Carson’s well-intended, but ill-advised, warnings panicked an unthinking public and governments into banning DDT, with the evil consequences catalogued by Smith.

The worst effect so far for Canadians has been the explosive surge of bedbugs, which DDT had virtually eliminated from the western world. DDT is by far the best, and in many cases the only, defence against a horde of insect-borne problems.

It is also comparatively benign, as shown by the wartime practice of spraying DDT directly onto lice-infected persons with no ill effects. Donald McKay, Calgary.