Thanks for your comments. I do agree with you that the situation is bad only from the point of view of the United States. It is certainly a benefit for other countries and perhaps it is a cycle that will get repeated many more times in the future. In the innovation business one country’s gains inevitably is another country’s loss. It is a game where the best country that offers the best opportunities wins and the US should not take for granted that intellectual supremacy is fleeting. In the 1930′s, it was mandatory for graduate students in science to be able to read either French or German because scientific innovations decades before were coming from those countries. This shifted after WW II to English for the same reason. And I will not be so surprised one day in the future that the mandatory language requirement will be Chinese or Russian.

In a global sense, I also agree with you that innovation, even military ones, in the long term benefits all of mankind, though I am sure there are many who will argue that some innovations, such as atomic energy, is a disservice. Only time will tell.

Many thanks once again and apologize for the long wait for my reply.

I am not sure I could agree with your main premise that entire process of reverse brain drain is negative. It sure is bad for United States, but it it is good for those countries which are welcoming smart people and let them innovate. If at the end there will be more good science done it is going to be positive for the humankind in its entirety.

Take my example. I graduated in a year when Soviet Union fell apart. My class was, probably, the last which got a “classical” Soviet engineering education. The higher education system and R&D in the former soviet republics mostly fell apart in the coming years. Many engineers and scientists left for United States and Europe to continue they scientific work or at least have a decent job to feed their families. In my own case I moved to US and went into computer programming, thus somewhat wasting resources invested in the engineering part of my education. It is sure a loss to a now bankrupt USSR but few will argue that staying there was the right thing to do.

If United States is at a point where it doesn’t have economic basis or political will to sustain leading edge science then let it be. I would be really worried if the innovators had no other place to go. However, if China, India, Latin America, or even Europe could offer safe, innovator friendly environment they deserve it. As long as good science and innovation is done somewhere it not a waste of talent at all.

Todd Landman

there’s a huge supervolcano that hasn’t quite popped in Yellowstone Nat’l Park, eh? now, i have no science degrees, i’m more of a Scientific American/Popular Mechanics kind of person. But wouldn’t it be great if the United States could follow ICELAND in her use of geothermal solutions that are right there?
I know those who are owned by the Greedy Oil Pigs would simply say that it would not be cost effective — in the way that they lied about my beloved Solar Energy all through the Carter years. But applying modern technology and innovative design thinking to the Yellowstone Supervolcano COULD potentially create a source of energy that would get power and at the same time potentially REDUCE the danger of that volcano erupting — to say little of “creating jobs.” Yeah, it wouldn’t “do itself.”

This might just be a crackpot notion.

On the subject of DDT, I wish to share with you an excerpt from an article published a few days ago that applies to this discussion:

“For over seventy years, DDT has been a vital insecticide in the battle against disease. Yet it is vilified for largely illegitimate concerns about its impact on the environment and human health. Through a mix of environmental fervor, self-interest, and disregard for evidence-based policy, United Nations (UN) agencies are misleading the public about DDT–mistakenly claiming it is not needed and can be eliminated globally by 2020”
Roger Bate, Donald Roberts, Richard Tren
http://www.aei.org/docLib/2011-HPO-01-g.pdf

Though it is not a worldwide ban, the US, under NAFTA, forced Mexico, the biggest manufacturer of DDT, to stop production. Today, there is only one major manufacturer of DDT—Hindustan Insecticides Limited of India. So, your argument that it is freely available is also incorrect. The anti-DDT movement was successful in preventing the use of DDT, but with limited options to replace it and hoping that other things will come up. Sure, just new, more expensive insecticides later on that also eventually show resistance. But in the span of decades when DDT was not available, that millions died over that time span because there were limited options to bring the mosquito population down low enough cannot be argued. How many really is for the bean counters to come up with. Certainly, malaria declined in the last few years because of the billions of dollars spent on bed nets. But, rest assured, when Bill Gates and the Western governments run out of money or shift focus on even more catastrophic concerns (and there is always one coming up), malaria will surge.

Malaria eradication can only come when the measures that the US put in effect before DDT can be duplicated in Africa where most of the deaths occur. It is not likely to come for at least another generation. I, myself, am not in favor of insecticides, but it is a necessarily evil that can only be reduced if there are other more sustainable methods of mosquito control in Africa. We are also working this using a fish control method (see first blog entry) and so far look quite promising.

I certainly appreciate your concerns on this issue because there are many differing views that can also be easily justified scientifically. It creates a healthy discussion and may yield something good along the way.

Best wishes,
Jonathan

When the spraying of the pesticide, DDT, to kill mosquitoes was banned for the sake of protecting other non-target species from being decimated, millions of Africans died of malaria instead.

Actually, in the U.S., spraying of DDT to kill mosquitoes was not banned, but not considered necessary since malaria had been controlled by 1939, and eradicated within the next decade, mostly before DDT became available. The ban in the U.S. covered agricultural use — no DDT on cotton.

Because the ban on DDT covered only the U.S., of course, it affected no one in Africa. EPA’s order on DDT specifically left manufacturing untouched, so the supply of DDT to use against malaria was increased significantly, at least doubled.

But, by 1965, the World Health Organization’s campaign to eradicate malaria had been frustrated by overuse of DDT by farm organizations in Africa and Asia, which overuse bred DDT-resistant and DDT-immune mosquitoes. The practice was untenable of temporarily knocking down mosquito populations with DDT while treating and eliminating malaria in the local human population.

However, since the U.S. ban on spraying DDT on cotton crops, malaria deaths worldwide have been cut by more than half. Malaria deaths are now at the lowest rate and lowest total in human history.

So, it’s dead wrong to claim that millions died because the U.S. stopped spraying DDT on cotton crops. DDT has never been banned for use against malaria, there has never been a shortage of DDT for use anywhere (even today), and the war against malaria continues, though made more difficult by DDT overuse.

If you wish to imply that fracking is rather like DDT use, then we should act immediately to ban all fracking. Was that your point?