Active versus Passive Moral Culpability.

Malaria is a disease Westerners no longer have to think about. Independent malariologists believe it kills two million people a year, mainly children under 5 and 90 percent of them in Africa.

Yet DDT, the very insecticide that eradicated malaria in developed nations, has been essentially deactivated as a malaria-control tool today. DDT is most likely not harmful to people or the environment. Certainly, the possible harm from DDT is vastly outweighed by its ability to save children's lives. "I cannot envision the possibility of rolling back malaria without the power of DDT," said Renato Gusm-o, who headed antimalaria programs at the Pan American Health Organization, or P.A.H.O., the branch of W.H.O. that covers the Americas. "In tropical Africa, if you don't use DDT, forget it."

"Why it can't be dealt with rationally, as you'd deal with any other insecticide, I don't know," said Janet Hemingway, director of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine. "People get upset about DDT and merrily go and recommend an insecticide that is much more toxic."

Washington is the major donor to W.H.O. and Roll Back Malaria, and most of the rest of the financing for those groups comes from Europe, where DDT is also banned. There is no law that says if America cannot use DDT then neither can Mozambique, but that's how it works. The ban in America and other wealthy countries has, first of all, turned poor nations' agricultural sectors against DDT for economic reasons. A shipment of Zimbabwean tobacco, for example, was blocked from entering the United States market because it contained traces of DDT, turning Zimbabwe's powerful tobacco farmers into an effective anti-DDT lobby. From a health point of view, of course, American outrage would have been more appropriate if traces of tobacco had been found in their DDT than the other way around.

Read the whole thing: What the World Needs Now Is DDT (New York Times; registration required).

Catching up: Thursday.

Well, my weekend started off with a nuisance. I took Friday off from work so I could attend Norwescon, which opened Thursday evening. So, I get there Thursday evening only to get a call saying I have to come back to the office and fix a bug. The "Now, Or Else" was very clear.

I get back to discover that the bug is rather boring. When creating a Microsoft Windows share on our product, if you decide not to use the wizard but instead choose to edit the field values directly (the advanced view) and you neglect to type in a name for the share, you're supposed to get a warning and then get sent back to the wizard's opening page to type in a name. Instead, you get the warning and then a blank screen. If you hit the 'Go Back' button, you get the opening page and can proceed. This is (a) a relatively rare operation in the field, (b) requires user stupidity to make the bug arise, and is (c) completely cosmetic.

I fix it. But I questioned why the bug was given a "Priority 1: Critical" status in the first place. Apparently, the triage team thought that the bug meant that the "advanced view" was completely inaccessible. It was not, and even the initial bug report said so. They just misread it. When it was passed by my manager, he said the same thing and apologized for misreading it.

Y'know what I think happened? I think my manager knew that the priority change was unnecessary, but he wanted the fix made because if it went in before midnight, his would be the only department with zero bugs when Release Candidate One was compiled-- and wouldn't that just look marvelous on his record?