A Tale of a Rejected Godsend

(I write this epilogue with much passion, and considering the nature of the example I am describing, I hope you can sympathize with this passion and the strong language I will here use, even if you are not exactly on the same page with me on all of these matters.)

Let me give just one example of the rotten fruit of this obsession with food/medicine purity — an example that modern developed world liberal environmentalists will have to answer for on Judgment Day — the ban on DDT (Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane), a cheap, safe, easy, and effective pesticide.

Mosquito-borne malaria infects half a billion people every year and kills over a million every year — mostly children. Every 30 seconds, a child dies of this easily preventable disease.

Use of DDT is a very easy way to deal with, and even practically eliminate, malaria. DDT is a miracle weapon against mosquitoes, and it could save hundreds of thousands of lives, if not more, each year.

In the 1950s and 60s, back when more Christians realized that synthetic chemicals are not intrinsic evils, DDT was used widely and saw incredible success. In Sri Lanka in the 1960s, DDT use decreased Malaria infection rates from a consistent million per year to … wait for it.. 18. Yes, eighteen. Even more recently, whenever a country decides to buck political correctedness and go back to DDT usage (e.g. South Africa in the 1990s), malaria decreases dramatically.

In 2007, one scientist presented a solid argument that the ban on DDT is precisely what we have to thank for the deaths of 20 million children. (A number far higher today, after 14 more years of needless, easily preventable deaths)

But pleasing and appeasing developed world rich liberal environmentalists means much more to those wielding power than does saving millions of children’s lives. The chemical-opposition-obsessed developed world rich liberals with their virtue signaling hatred of pesticides always manage to put a stop to it.

It is well known that DDT is not even toxic at all in humans from indirect exposure. After decades of relentless study, all scientists have been able to conclude is that it “might” be weakly carcinogenic in a few circumstances. Virtually everything, by the way, is at least weakly carcinogenic. We live in a fallen world and pretending we can make it 100% safe by our own efforts aimed at food and medicine purity is a delusion. Have we forgotten that the sun is carcinogenic, electricity is carcinogenic , red meat is carcinogenic, sugar (including “whole organic raw etc. etc.” sugar) is carcinogenic, coffee is carcinogenic , pickles are carcinogenic, shoe repair is carcinogenic, chimney sweeping is carcinogenic, sawdust is carcinogenic, alcohol is carcinogenic (but remember what substance Christ Himself chose as the host for his Precious Blood?), salted fish is carcinogenic, and on this list goes.

Oh, how easy it is for us developed world couch potatoes — always inundated by infinite and infallible environmentalist wisdom like “what is known to cause cancer by the State of California” — to throw a fit every time there is some alleged ever-so-slight carcinogenic potential in a chemical that itself could save millions from disease or prevent millions from starving. Oh, how easy we have it! We are not at risk from starving — quite the contrary, we are obese and are eating ourselves to death (though we always manage to find a way to blame it on chemicals or modern food-related technology instead of our own sloth and gluttony). We are not at risk from these diseases that spread in densely populated tropical or desert areas with inadequate sanitation infrastructure.

While armchair Google warriors pour themselves out researching every little potential problem with every chemical and agricultural process they can discover the name of — blasting all over the internet every picture of a lab mouse with a tumor they can find because this mouse was given some chemical in a dosage thousands of times more concentrated than any human would ever be exposed to in real life — millions of children are dying for lack of any food and any medicine. What a tragic dichotomy!

Oh, how these poor people long for the scraps from our tables — how they long for the food we snub our noses at because it isn’t “whole enough” or “raw enough” or “natural enough.” How like the rich man we are in Our Lord’s parable with Lazarus languishing at his very doorstep.

Developed world rich liberals, who are above all else obsessed with increasing their life expectancy, would much rather rid the earth of one additional chemical that might possibly have an infinitesimally small chance of increasing their risk of cancer than they would like to permit the use of a chemical that will definitely save tens of millions of children’s lives. Developed world rich liberals, after all, are not at risk from Malaria; and neither are their children.

But DDT is just one of so many examples like this.

Dear developed world rich liberals, truly genocidal effects are being reaped by your obsession with infinitesimal increases to your life expectancy by your hyper zealous sprinting after every potential infinitesimal decrease of alleged weak carcinogens in the world. Why don’t you take a moment and step out of your own little world of petty concerns, foodie blogs, natural toilet bowl cleaners, avocado toast and organic Starbucks lattes, and instead take a peek at Lazarus outside your door? Why don’t you recognize that the universe does not revolve around your desire to add a few moments of duration to your earthly life?

I, for one, do not want to go to my Judgment Day having poured myself out in pursuit of bodily health and relentless opposition to the very chemicals, agricultural technologies, etc., that may have actually been Godsends in order to save millions of lives.