The evil lies in tenuous links
Yolandi Groenewald covers recent research that purports to find a link between DDT spraying for malaria control and urogenital birth defects in children (‘Lesser of two evils”, November 20). Unfortunately Groenewald appears to have accepted the findings at face value without critically assessing the research methods and study design. Even a cursory look at the paper she covers will show inconsistencies in the underlying data and statistical manipulation designed to achieve results the researchers seek.
Instead of providing a balanced report on a controversial paper, Groenewald links use of DDT in malaria control to the case of the athlete Caster Semenya without reporting that Semenya was born and grew up 300km away from malarial areas that are sprayed with DDT and, further, that no DDT has been used in her region for around 40 years.
Groenewald also raises other potential human health effects that are supposedly caused by DDT, such as cancer, diabetes, low birth weight and miscarriages. Groenewald does not inform readers that the evidence to support these claims is weak, inconsistent, unreplicated, contradictory and controversial. The basic epidemiological standards required to prove a cause-and-effect relationship are crucially important in any situation but even more so when the subject, DDT, plays such a vital role in saving lives. Ignoring these standards and reporting claims of harm anyway amounts to scaremongering.
DDT has been used for six decades and despite thousands of studies there is no firm evidence that it causes harm to human health. On the contrary, DDT’s success in malaria control and other public-health programmes has benefited human health around the world on a vast scale. Furthermore, malaria not only kills thousands every day but we know it is responsible for anaemia, low birth weight and miscarriages. It is also a serious economic drain on Africa. Where DDT has been used to control malaria, human health has improved dramatically and populations have risen.
The report adds to the unjustified and unscientific bias against DDT and undermines the outstanding efforts of South Africa’s malaria-control programmes. This is potentially tragic: it could worsen malaria cases and deaths, and it could direct attention away from finding the real causes of urogenital birth defects in boys. — Richard Tren and Jasson Urbach, Africa Fighting Malaria, Washington DC and Durban
The article on DDT omitted to mention that there are alternatives to DDT. Mexico has had great success with the use of integrated vector management (IVM) control methods that reduce and sometimes eliminate the need for insecticides. Research in South Africa has not yet demonstrated whether IVM could be practical in the local context. That does not mean that IVM is not effective, nor that our only choice is to use DDT — simply that more effort should be made to provide the evidence on which to base decisions.
As pointed out in my interview, there is a likelihood that mosquitoes will develop resistance to DDT over time, as has occurred in the past, and, as increasing scientific knowledge about the risks from DDT exposure accumulates, the risk-benefit from the use of DDT to control malaria will change. Although DDT may be in use now because it is seen as the only option, it is unlikely to remain the case in the future. — Professor Leslie London, Centre for Occupational and Environmental Health Research School of Public Health and Family Medicine, University of Cape Town
The following statements in ‘Lesser of two evils” are incorrect:
The research was about urogenital birth defects in boys and the association with DDT exposure. The study did not report any association with intersex as implicated in the header.
Caster Semenya did not grow up in the Vhembe but in the Capricorn Municipality District. She is therefore not from the study area.
I state categorically that the study did not link the study area or DDT exposure to what has been reported in the press about Semenya. — Professor Riana Bornman, department of urology, University of Pretoria and Steve Biko Academic Hospital
‘Brown envelope’ journalism driven by lies
The leaking of tapes to the media raises serious questions about the conduct of the relevant newspaper and its journalist — and the role played by the then premier of the Western Cape, Lynne Brown (‘Brown-envelope journalism”, November 13; ‘Paid-for news saga deepens”, November 27). Questions about the legality of the tapes, the recording of official meetings of the premier and journalistic ethics need answers. If Brown did sanction recording private conversations, then as a democracy we are in trouble. Besides, what exactly is the content of the tapes? Who has authenticated them?
A few weeks before the elections Vukile Pokwana, at the time an accounts director at Hip-Hop Media, informed Hip-Hop management that Brown, through her former media liaison officer Thabo Mabaso (now at PetroSA), had requested a meeting with him. Management at the time agreed there was nothing wrong in him meeting with the premier. Mabaso collected Pokwana at the Hip-Hop offices for the meeting.
What Pokwana reported to management at the time about the meeting was vastly different from what the Mail & Guardian‘s story tries to imply. Hence our request to the journalist to let us listen to the tapes, to verify their authenticity and to make sure they have not been manipulated, before we reply. This we deem a fair and reasonable request. Why it was denied boggles the mind. We can only assume that a particular agenda was at play, with the full knowledge of the journalist concerned. In hindsight, it is clear that Brown’s aim was to set up Pokwana for personal and political reasons. This is a despicable act for a premier and a deliberate abuse of state power and resources for factional political ends.
Hip-Hop Media has instructed its lawyers to request copies of the tapes and to take the necessary action it is allowed to in terms of the law, even laying criminal charges if it is found that individuals have transgressed the law by recording the conversation or leaking the so-called tapes.
The allegations that Hip-Hop Media has paid journalists in ‘brown envelopes” and that it received contracts from politicians are devoid of truth. They are blatant lies driven by a few politicians with their own selfish agendas and eagerly supported by our competition. Their strategy includes smear tactics, the constant repetition of half-truths, distortions, innuendos and outright lies. These are then leaked to the media using their senior journalist friends and unsuspecting journalists.
Hip-Hop Media wants to put it on record that it is not our policy to pay journalist to do their job. We have never done so and will never do so. On the allegation that politicians awarded contracts to Hip-Hop Media, there is now litigation afoot to dispel this notion and thus we cannot comment, save to say we have documentary proof that no politician has intervened in the awarding of tenders and that the tenders awarded to Hip-Hop Media were legitimate in terms of the Public Finance Management Act (2007) and other relevant legislation. — Hip-Hop Media, Cape Town
M&G responds: We are confident of the authenticity of the tape. For legal and source-protection reasons we are unable to distribute it, but we understand some of those involved are seeking to obtain a copy through the courts.
Missing driver of sexual behaviour
I agree with Chris Kenyon and Sizwe Zondo in ‘Riding HIV’s superhighway” (November 20) that HIV-prevention messages should track the dynamics of sexual transmission more closely. But they are too quick to write off the effects of socioeconomic marginalisation.
HIV may not be a disease of poverty, but more a disease of just-a-little-money. Casual labourers, forestry workers and miners, among others, may not be in the lowest income bracket but they experience the social exclusion and lack of real opportunity that make them more willing to take risks. That those most likely to get HIV are just off the bottom of the pile isn’t picked up by linear regressions of HIV status and wealth.
The best survey proxy for marginalisation is probably low educational attainment. Here, the evidence from Africa is clear: better-educated people were initially more likely to get HIV, but studies since 1996 generally show higher odds of HIV among people with less education. The largest study of HIV and risk factors in South African youth (by Wits University’s Reproductive Health and HIV Research Unit in 2003) found that those who had not completed school were twice as likely to have HIV as those who had.
Do multiple concurrent partnerships provide biological superhighways for HIV? Yes. But does that explain why black people have much higher rates of HIV infection? That is far from certain.
Kenyon and Zondo re-analysed a survey in Cape Town and found far higher rates of sexual concurrency among Africans compared to other racial groups, with no significant difference between richer and poorer Africans.
But even if rates of partner concurrency among Africans do not vary across income groups, the outcomes may be moderated by other factors such as stronger personal incentives to protect against infection. Certainly, having more than one sexual partner at the same time puts you at high risk for HIV infection. But sexual behaviour is not solely determined by culture or tradition.
What the authors fail to understand is that response to life circumstance may be a far more compelling driver of sexual behaviour than response to messages. — David Harrison, Somerset West
Make it 365 days of activism
This is the 10th year in which South Africa has taken part in 16 days of activism against the abuse of women and children (16 Days feature, November 27).
The memory of Makgabo Matlala still haunts many South Africans. The granddaughter of Transvaal Judge President Bernard Nqoepe, she was brutally murdered at the age of four in a house robbery. In the same incident, the family’s 59-year-old nanny was tied up and raped.
I remember a sad day in 2008 at the University of Johannesburg when I was called to the scene of an emergency. A young woman I knew had been raped and severely beaten, to the extent that the intention of murder was clear. She recovered physically, but the emotional scars will live with her forever.
What drives a human being to that level of madness? Only a brainless monster could execute such a deed.
Remember Nwabisa Ngcukana’s brutal assault at the Noord Street taxi rank in 2008? The then 25-year-old was undressed, beaten and doused with alcohol for wearing a miniskirt in public.
Have we as a society lost our marbles?
Let us turn 16 days of activism into 365 days of activism and make the world a caring place where women and children can feel safe. — Tebogo Ditshego, Kagiso
We’re a potjie
I am not convinced that the metaphor of a rainbow adequately describes South Africa. It suggests harmonious separateness, but once it has formed it slowly disappears and the colours never change or switch places.
A better metaphor is potjiekos.
In a potjie, all kinds of things exist together: name an ingredient and someone will surely have used it in a potjie.
Each ingredient adds something to the overall flavour. A potjie is dynamic and diverse, like our country. As ingredients, we all have a role to play and our roles have to be played out together: you can’t do a potjie in separate pots, only one. — Bob Andrew
In brief
Maya Fisher-French’s open letter ‘We can’t afford this —” (Money, November 13) is addressed to ‘Dear Central Energy Fund”. CEF (Pty) Ltd, sometimes erroneously referred to as the Central Energy Fund, is not involved in the subject she addresses. It is the responsibility of the National Energy Regulator of South Africa to consider and pronounce on the electricity-tariff increase proposed by Eskom. — Mandla Tyala, group communication, CEF (Pty) Ltd
Your report of November 27 on the Critical Thinking Forum on BEE records one speaker as saying ‘the South African economy was only growing at 1.7%, literally at a snail’s pace —” Literally? One of the requirements of critical thinking must surely be precision in the use of language. — Paul Browning, Moreleta Village
Malefo Mosimanyana writes Julius Malema should be ‘groomed in the Congress tradition, using our Marxist-Leninist tools of analysis” (Letters, November 27). May I remind Mosimanyana that Karl Marx was an anti-Semite descended from lines of rabbis and Talmudic scholars. — Jonathan Pryor