Pandora's Lab: Seven Stories of Science Gone Wrong

by Paul A. Offit

In 1955, the World Health Assembly directed the World Health Organization to launch a global malaria elimination program with DDT as its centerpiece. By 1959, when the program swung into operation, more than 300 million people had already been saved by DDT. By 1960, malaria had been eliminated from 11 countries. As malaria rates went down, life expectancies went up, as did crop production, land values, and relative wealth. Probably no country benefited more from the WHO program than Nepal, where spraying began in 1960. At the time, more than two million Nepalese, mostly children, suffered from malaria. By 1968, the number was reduced to 2,500. Before the malaria control program, life expectancy in Nepal was 28 years; by 1970, it was 42 years.

In India, between 1952 and 1962, DDT spraying caused a decrease in annual malaria cases from 100 million to 60,000. By the late 1970s, no longer able to use the pesticide, the number of cases increased to 6 million.