The Heartland Institute

Some bedbugs have begun carrying a deadly staph bacteria, researchers report, bringing a dangerous new twist to the resurgence of bedbug infestations since the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency outlawed the effective pesticide DDT 40 years ago. The nation’s bedbug population, which was almost completely wiped in the United States ...

Whenever the Environmental Protection Agency or the green movement uses the term "it's for the children" as a justification for their legislative and regulatory restrictions, it is the children who are the first to suffer. First, the EPA banned DDT. And even though this ban in the United States did not require other nations ...

A couple months ago, when its dog-sledding business lost customers, a Canadian company had a hundred of its dogs killed. The incident “shocked” and “angered” people. The employee who shot the dogs said he suffered “post traumatic stress” from killing them and wants compensation. Animal activists used the incident in campaigns ...

Bedbug invasions are on the rise in New York City public schools, with 1,700 confirmed cases during the past year, according to the latest reports from the New York City Department of Education (DOE). City Taking Action Marge Feinberg, spokesperson for the DOE, says the city is being transparent about all bedbug cases reported ...

With bedbug infestations making a comeback in Ohio and across the United States, Ohio Department of Agriculture officials are petitioning the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to rethink its ban on residential use of Propoxur, a chemical that shows promise in battling the bloodsucking pests. Bedbug Infestations Rising “Most householders ...

The bedbug, an obnoxious pest long thought confined to the sleepless nights of a bygone era, is back. From college dormitories and homeless shelters to hospital maternity wards, high-end condos, and swanky hotels, bedbugs are embarked on one of the most remarkable entomological comebacks in recent memory. The problem seems to ...

How to Spend $50 Billion to Make the World a Better Place Bjorn Lomborg, editor Cambridge University Press, 2006 208 pages, $12.99, ISBN 978-0521685719 Given tens of billions of dollars to protect the planet and improve the human condition, how would those dollars best be spent? Some of the world s leading social economists ...

The True Story of DDT, PCB, and Dioxin By Przemystaw Mastalerz Wydawnictwo Chemiczne, 2005 226 pages, $20, ISBN-13: 9788390577654 Environmental advocacy groups have spared no effort to create the impression that organochlorines are extremely resistant to degradation and thus difficult to remove from the environment. Contrary to ...

New York City is feeling the biting effects of anti-chemical laws as a bedbug epidemic has infested every part of the city. The city received 7,000 bedbug infestation complaints in 2007, more than 10 times the number recorded as recently as 2004. City Council Member Gale Brewer (D-Upper West Side) is taking the unprecedented ...

A World Health Organization (WHO) official claims the current chikungunya virus outbreak in northern Italy is the result of climate change. This widely reported absurdity undermined rational debate at a time when world leaders were negotiating climate policy in New York and Washington. World leaders discussing far-reaching policies ...

The U.S. government in mid-December extended the President's Malaria Initiative (PMI) to eight nations on the African continent. PMI, initially launched by President George W. Bush in June 2005, increases U.S. funding for anti-malaria campaigns in 15 nations by more than $1.2 billion over the next five years. The program aims ...

Paul Driessen is a warrior on the front lines of the battle against Third World poverty and disease. As a senior policy advisor for the Congress of Racial Equality and a senior fellow with the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, Driessen dedicates himself to identifying and eliminating the obstacles that keep people in ...

Bedbug infestations have nearly doubled nationwide since the year 2000, according to pesticide companies, and a ban on DDT and other effective pesticides is to blame. Bedbugs were a notorious risk for those staying in hotels and motels until the 1950s, when scientists learned DDT was an effective weapon against the bloodsucking ...

Concerned about the rising number of deaths mosquito-borne malaria is inflicting on its citizens, the government of Uganda has approved the use of the pesticide DDT to combat the deadly disease. Activists Rebuffed The decision, handed down in January, marks the end of a protracted conflict that pitted public health officials ...

Idi Amin once terrorized the East African nation of Uganda. Hundreds of thousands of ordinary citizens were murdered and tortured during his despotic regime and he all but destroyed a once vibrant economy. The country is relatively stable now and the economy has enjoyed good economic growth for several years. However, millions ...

Africa Fighting Malaria, a public policy organization dedicated to educating people about the scourge of malaria, submitted a letter on January 22 to U.S. Sens. Robert C. Byrd (D-WV) and Thad Cochran (R-MS), chairman and ranking member, respectively, of the Senate Appropriations Committee, requesting the approval of proposed 2007 ...

While it is wonderful that the bald eagle will be taken off the Endangered Species list, many media reports repeated the fiction that the ban on DDT use in the U.S. was a major factor in the species' recovery. There is no scientific evidence that DDT had any negative impact on our national bird. To the contrary, DDT ...

Malaria kills over one million children a year in Africa, more than any other disease. Last September the World Health Organization (WHO) released new policy guidelines for malaria control that call for increased spraying of insecticides inside houses, or indoor residual spraying (IRS), and encouraged the use of DDT, which is ...

Adding momentum to an effort by human rights groups and environmental activists to prevent more than 1 million deaths a year, the World Health Organization (WHO) on September 15 announced it would promote indoor spraying of DDT to fight malaria in Africa. " When I took the job last October, I asked my staff and malaria experts ...

Marathon Oil Corporation is reporting remarkable success in a first-of-its-kind malaria eradication program. New statistics from Equatorial Guinea in West Africa show the number of malaria-carrying mosquitoes has declined by 95 percent since Marathon launched its mosquito eradication campaign in 2003, according to Time magazine on ...