On July 24, 1900 following the publication of Notes on Mosquitoes and their remedies, newspapers began promoting USDA‘s chief entomologist Leland Howard’s extermination plans for the “plague of mosquitoes” through spraying kerosene over bodies of water. [3]
Howard capitalised on the recent confirmation that mosquitoes were the vector of malaria disease, providing reason to shift agricultural pest control focus to now pest control of public health concern. His focus on fast acting chemical remedies to alleviate “public health anxieties”, he even equated the objective to Jenner’s approach to smallpox! [1, 2]
“Then came World War I. In yet another ingeniously calculating move, Howard let the War Department know that, with mites and mosquitoes and lice endemic to trench warfare, entomologists armed with chemical sprays could be just as critical to the war effort as soldiers armed with rifles. “Warfare against insect life,” he explained, required the Division of Entomology to expand its arsenal to include benzene, carbolic acid, creosote, alkaline soaks, and sulfur baths. Medical entomology, as they called it, was born.” [1]
By 1955 the World Health Organisation shifts the chemical control of mosquitoes from kerosene to widespread spraying of DDT, in the name of “scientific” malaria control! How many “epidemic” diseases coincided with the practice of mass toxic chemical spraying?