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Potential Malaria Breakthrough Drug Forgotten and Now Ignored Due to Its Chemical Relative and Its Venue of Invention

Progress in science, like progress everywhere, is not inevitable. Progress often requires champions or entrepreneurs to persist in overcoming obstacles. In the case of DFDT, the obstacles arise due to the drug’s association with the chemical DDT and with Nazi Germany, the first of which is unjustly reviled and the second of which is justly reviled. But DFDT should not be judged by either its relatives or its venue of origins It should be judged by its efficacy against malaria, and by its effects, if any, on the environment.

(p. D1) In postwar Allied intelligence reports examined by Dr. Ward and his colleagues, German scientists claimed their insecticide, now called DFDT, was more effective than DDT. Allied officials dismissed those assertions as fanciful, especially given the deplorable behavior of Hoechst, the German chemical manufacturer that developed the insecticide, during the war. The company had forced residents of countries occupied by Germany to work in its factories, and it tested drugs on concentration camp prisoners.

The insecticide was forgotten for decades.

Now, work by Dr. Ward and his colleagues, reported this month [Oct. 2019] in an article in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, appears to corroborate the German claims. The forgotten compound killed mosquitoes in as little as one-fourth the time as DDT.

. . .

(p. D4) Conceivably the more lethal DFDT could be used in even smaller, possibly safer doses. A new option could allow public health officials to rotate insecticides and thwart the resistance to DDT in many mosquitoes today.

“It’s exciting and desperately needed,” said Duane J. Gubler, an emeritus professor in the emerging infectious diseases program at Duke University and the National University of Singapore Graduate Medical School. He was not involved in the study.

But will anyone today risk the time and money needed to determine whether DFDT could be a safe and effective tool against malaria as well as other mosquito-borne diseases like Zika, dengue and yellow fever?

“Donors, governments, they just don’t want the backlash, even if it’s not wholly justified,” said Bart Kahr, Dr. Ward’s colleague at N.Y.U. and an author of the paper.

. . .

The N.Y.U. chemists started the research with no interest in insecticides whatsoever.

They were studying materials that crystallize in a twisted helical pattern. One of the ways to identify such molecules is to scan the internet for images of crystals made by hobbyists. DDT, they found, exhibited the characteristic pinwheel gradients of a helical crystal when illuminated with polarized light.

Jingxiang Yang, a postdoctoral researcher at N.Y.U., started growing DDT crystals and found not only the expected crystals but also more jumbled, chaotic patterns.

“There was some organized and some crazy,” Dr. Kahr said. “We didn’t expect the other stuff, and that other stuff turned out to be a different arrangement of molecules in the crystal. That form wasn’t known to science.”

That led to the next set of experiments. “Since we have two forms,” Dr. Kahr said, “it was natural to ask, which of these forms was the historical killer of insects?”

It turned out that the chaotic form of DDT is deadlier.

As they were going through early scientific data on DDT, the N.Y.U. chemists found mentions of DFDT.

The compound, difluoro-diphenyl-trichloro-ethane is the same molecule as DDT, except with fluorine atoms replacing two of the chlorines.

The Germans developed DFDT at least in part to avoid paying the licensing fees for DDT to the Swiss. It is also possible that the chemical ingredients for DFDT, although considerably more expensive at the time than those for DDT, may have been more readily available in wartime Germany.

. . .

Dr. Kahr wonders: If DFDT had displaced DDT, would the 1955 push have succeeded in bringing malaria under control before resistance set in? “What if this compound wasn’t forgotten,” he said. “What would the world be like? Science doesn’t go as linearly as the general public thinks it does.”

For the full story see:

Kenneth Chang. “Old Mix To Fight Malaria?” The New York Times (Tuesday, October 22, 2019 [sic]): D1 & D4.

(Note: ellipses, and bracketed month, added.)

(Note: the online version of the story was updated Oct. 22, 2019 [sic], and has the title “A Nazi Version of DDT Was Forgotten. Could It Help Fight Malaria?” Where the more detailed online version differs from the print version, the passages quoted above follow the print [sic] version.)

The academic article co-authored by Ward, Kahr, and others, and mentioned above, is:

Zhu, Xiaolong, Chunhua T. Hu, Jingxiang Yang, Leo A. Joyce, Mengdi Qiu, Michael D. Ward, and Bart Kahr. “Manipulating Solid Forms of Contact Insecticides for Infectious Disease Prevention.” Journal of the American Chemical Society 141, no. 42 (2019): 16858-64.

Growth-Impeding Red Tape Especially Hurts Small and Midsize Firms

(p. B1) When Markus Wingens created the position of “energy manager” for the metal heat-treatment company he runs in southwestern Germany, his idea was to increase energy efficiency and attract customers interested in sustainability.

But the job has become as much a task of filling out paperwork and studying seemingly ever-changing laws as it is ensuring that the firm, Technotherm Heat Treatment Group, is meeting energy requirements.

Last year, four new laws and 14 amendments to existing ones governing energy use took effect, each bringing fresh demands for data to be reported and forms to be submitted — in many cases to prove the same standards that the company has already been certified as reaching since 2012, Mr. Wingens said.

“We have the Renewable Energy Act, we have the Energy Efficiency Act, we have the Energy Financing Act, and each comes with an administrative burden,” he said. “It’s madness.”

Freedom from red tape has been a rallying cry for farmers from Poland to Portugal at recent protests against European Union laws and policies. Indeed, the burden of bureaucracy is a general complaint of corporate executives across the globe.

But nowhere is the issue more pressing than in Germany, Europe’s largest economy, which is facing anemic growth of no more than 0.2 percent this year. In a report last month, the International Monetary Fund called “too much red tape” one of the major impediments to reviving the German economy.

For example, it takes 120 days to obtain a business license in Germany — more than double the average in other Western economies. Germany also lags behind the rest of the European Union in the digitization of government services, still requiring written forms for certain tax refunds and building permits.

. . .

(p. B2) German companies spend 64 million hours every year filling out forms to feed the country’s 375 official databases, according to industry estimates. When the Stuttgart chamber of commerce asked its 175,000 members to name their biggest challenges, red tape topped the list.

. . .

The red tape drain on time and resources is felt especially by small and midsize firms — those with fewer than 500 employees and annual revenue below €50 million (about $54 million) — that are the backbone of the German economy.

These businesses often lack in-house legal departments dedicated to filing audits, recording statistics and deciphering which information is wanted by which authorities — the European, federal, state and local governments.

. . .

“In Germany, we have regulations about handing over business cards at business meetings and whether it’s still allowed,” [Andreas Kiontke, a lawyer who works with the Stuttgart chamber of commerce] said.

For the full story see:

Melissa Eddy. “German Business Is Tangled in Red Tape.” The New York Times (Tuesday, April 15, 2024): B1-B2.

(Note: ellipses added. The bracketed information on Andreas Kiontke is from a couple of paragraphs earlier.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date April 9, 2024, and has the same title as the print version.)

Musk Calls German Anti-Electric-Vehicle Ecoactivists “Dumber Than a Doorstop”

(p. B1) GRÜNHEIDE, Germany—When Tesla opened its first full-scale European factory in this sleepy community outside of Berlin, Elon Musk was feted as a hero, the chancellor gave a speech and workers cheered the rollout of new Model Ys.

On Wednesday [March 13, 2024], almost two years to the day later, Musk was back, this time to cheer up workers after an act of sabotage by suspected eco-activists shut down the plant for more than a week.

. . .

Tesla didn’t respond to requests for comment on the various incidents. In a post on his X social-media platform, Musk has called the eco-activists “dumber than a doorstop” for their criticism of electric vehicles.

As the plant’s managers and workers gathered in a tent on the factory grounds for a “team huddle” on Wednesday, Musk could be seen carrying his son. Hoisting the boy onto his shoulders amid calls of “Elon, Elon,” he shouted back: “They can’t stop us!” and “Ich liebe Dich!”—German for “I love you.”

As he left, reporters asked him whether he was still committed to expanding the plant and producing vehicles in Germany.

“Yes, absolutely,” he said. “Germany rocks!”

For the full story, see:

William Boston. “Tesla Faces Blowback in Germany.” The Wall Street Journal (Friday, March 15, 2024): B1-B2.

(Note: ellipses, and bracketed date, added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date March 14, 2024, and has the title “Elon Musk’s Plans to Conquer Europe Collide With Germany’s Culture Wars.”)

Environmentalists Throw Mashed Potatoes on Monet Landscape

(p. A7) Two climate activists threw mashed potatoes on a glass-covered painting by the celebrated French Impressionist Claude Monet on Sunday [Oct. 23, 2022] inside a German museum, the latest art attack intended to draw attention to climate change.

Videos show the activists dousing one of the artist’s works, “Grainstacks,” with a thick yellow substance that covered the painting’s warm red hues. The oil on canvas is one of 25 paintings the artist made around 1890 of stacks of hay in the fields near his house in Giverny, France.

The activists, a man and a woman, each glued a hand to the wall by the painting. Then, the woman shouted in German that the world was in “a climate catastrophe, and all you are afraid of is tomato soup or mashed potatoes in a painting,” referring to a similar attack this month in London by activists who threw cans of tomato soup on a painting by Vincent van Gogh.

. . .

Across Europe, climate protesters have sought to capture headlines in recent months by engaging in similar stunts tied to beloved pieces in the art world. In Britain, activists glued themselves to about a half-dozen masterpieces, including a 16th-century copy of “The Last Supper” at the Royal Academy, a major art museum in London. And in Italy, activists glued themselves to a sculpture held in the Vatican and to works in the Uffizi Gallery, in Florence.

For the full story, see:

Eduardo Medina. “Monet Painting Is Splashed In Latest Stunt Over Climate.” The New York Times (Tuesday, October 25, 2022): A7.

(Note: ellipsis, and bracketed date, added.)

(Note: the online version of the story was updated Nov. 8, 2022, and has the title “Climate Activists Throw Mashed Potatoes on Monet Painting.”)

After Defending Nuclear Power, Green German Energy Minister Is Popular in Polls

(p. A8) BERLIN — Germany will keep two of its three remaining nuclear power plants operational as an emergency reserve for its electricity supply, its energy minister announced on Monday [Sept. 5, 2022], delaying the country’s plans to become the first industrial power to go nuclear-free for its energy.

. . .

. . . the decision to extend the life of it nuclear reactors is one of the most symbolic, if not consequential, the government has taken, breaking a political taboo as it tries to show that it is doing all it can to alleviate the crisis. The government said it made the decision based on a series of stress tests playing out worst-case energy scenarios.

. . .

. . . even as he has led his party into sacrificing nearly all of its sacred cows, Mr. Habeck has become one of the most popular politicians in Germany. In polls, he now regularly receives higher ratings than the chancellor.

“We are doing everything that is necessary,” said Mr. Habeck said.

For the full story, see:

Erika Solomon and Melissa Eddy. “As Energy Crisis Worsens, Germany Extends Life of Two Nuclear Reactors.” The New York Times (Tuesday, September 6, 2022): A8.

(Note: ellipses, and bracketed date, added.)

(Note: the online version has the date Sept. 5, 2022, and has the title “Breaking Taboo, Germany Extends Life of 2 Nuclear Reactors.” The online version of the article says that the print version of the article had the title “Germany Extends Life of Two Reactors” but my national print edition of the NYT had the longer title “As Energy Crisis Worsens, Germany Extends Life of Two Nuclear Reactors.”)

FDA Takes “Several Months” to Approve Manufacturers’ “Rapid” Test Applications

(p. A1) As rising Covid-19 infections stoked demand for tests across the U.S. in December, California-based LumiQuick Diagnostics Inc. shipped 100,000 rapid tests to a hospital customer—in Germany.

LumiQuick didn’t receive authorization from the Food and Drug Administration to sell Covid-19 tests domestically after waiting several months for a decision.

Some public-health experts said the relatively strict review process is part of a broader failure by U.S. officials and manufacturers to make and distribute enough rapid tests to track the pandemic adequately. Nearly two years into the pandemic, people have struggled to find tests during the holiday season as infections surge again, fueled by the highly infectious Omicron variant.

. . .

(p. A4) “We’ve never gotten the testing situation well instituted in our country,” said Ezekiel Emanuel, co-director of the Healthcare Transformation Institute at the University of Pennsylvania, and a former member of the Biden administration’s disbanded coronavirus advisory board.

. . .

Some U.S. manufacturers said the FDA’s slow review of new rapid tests discouraged them from making products that they weren’t sure they would be able to sell in the U.S. “Without approval we cannot commit,” said Frank Wang, chief executive officer of BioMedomics Inc., a North Carolina manufacturer that applied for authorization in March. The company has sold some tests outside the U.S.

Another test maker, Kaya17 Inc., said it has been waiting on FDA approval for months. “The FDA has to up their game and move faster,” said Sulatha Dwarakanath, the company’s CEO.

For the full story, see:

Austen Hufford and Brianna Abbott. “Slow Test Approvals Blamed for Shortage.” The Wall Street Journal (Friday, Dec. 31, 2021): A1 & A4.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date December 30, 2021, and has the title “Covid-19 Rapid Test Shortages Tied to Slow Federal Action.” The online version says that the title of the print version is “Tests in Short Supply as Approvals Lag.” But my print version (probably the Central Edition) has the title “Slow Test Approvals Blamed for Shortage.”)

Lenin, Not Stalin, Started “Severe Censorship” and “Terror Against Political Enemies”

(p. 15) With all the inevitable attention on the Bolshevik takeover in October 1917, when Lenin and Leon Trotsky seized power from the ill-fated provisional government, the extraordinary events of February and March should not be forgotten. It was then that unexpected riots over lack of food and fuel by thousands of people in the imperial capital of Petrograd and the ensuing mutiny by garrison troops compelled Czar Nicholas II to abdicate, ending 300 years of Romanov rule and handing political authority to a group of high-minded liberal figures. “Russia became the freest country in the world,” Merridale writes, “as the new government granted an amnesty for political prisoners, abolished the death penalty and dissolved what was left of the detested secret police.” (It also abolished the infamous Pale of Settlement, which had required the czar’s Jewish subjects to live within a defined area of the country; they were now made equal before the law.)

The provisional government inherited power from a discredited autocracy that had resisted any sensible move to establish a constitutional monarchy. Leaders like Alexander Kerensky, Paul Miliukov and Georgy Lvov tried in vain to establish a stable government and withstand the appeal of extreme forces. But the Romanov collapse was so sudden and so thorough that it left no credible institutions capable of governing effectively, let alone in the midst of widespread social turmoil, an imploding economy and the devastations of World War I.

. . .

. . . it was Lenin himself who made it clear that the Bolsheviks would reject democratic values. He “had not traveled back to join a coalition,” Merridale writes, but to undermine the provisional government and establish a dictatorship in the name of the proletariat. It was Lenin who instituted severe censorship, established one-party rule and resorted to terror against his political enemies. Stalin took these measures to further extremes for his own sinister purposes. Merridale is right to recall Winston Churchill’s famous observation about Lenin’s return. The Germans, Churchill wrote, “turned upon Russia the most grisly of all weapons. They transported Lenin in a sealed truck like a plague bacillus from Switzerland to Russia.”

For the full review, see:

Joshua Rubenstein. “Fast-Tracking the Revolution.” The New York Times Book Review (Sunday, June 11, 2017): 15.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the review has the date June 9, 2017, and has the title “Lenin’s Return From Exile Put Russia on the Fast Track to Revolution.”)

The book under review is:

Merridale, Catherine. Lenin on the Train. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2017.

Tariffs Create Incentive to Drink Higher Alcohol Wine

(p. A1) Washington put 25% tariffs on wine from France, Spain, Germany and the U.K. in October 2019 in retaliation for subsidies they made to European aircraft man-(p. A9)ufacturer Airbus SE, arguing they hurt Boeing Co. But it applied only to wine with alcohol content of 14% or less.

What followed was a textbook lesson in tariff economics. Before, America imported about $150 million a year in European wine that exceeded 14% alcohol, Commerce Department data show. In the 12 months since the tariff took effect, that rose to $434 million.

For the full story, see:

Josh Zumbrun. “America Taxed Your Favorite Bordeaux? Try One With More Alcohol.” The Wall Street Journal (Friday, Nov 20, 2020): A1 & A9.

(Note: the online version of the story has the date November 19, 2020, and has the title “The Tale Behind StubHub’s Sale: How Eric Baker Bought Back the Ticket Seller.”)

“All You Need Is a Pair of Eyes”

(p. 1) MUNICH — Dr. Camilla Rothe was about to leave for dinner when the government laboratory called with the surprising test result. Positive. It was Jan. 27 [2020]. She had just discovered Germany’s first case of the new coronavirus.

But the diagnosis made no sense. Her patient, a businessman from a nearby auto parts company, could have been infected by only one person: a colleague visiting from China. And that colleague should not have been contagious.

The visitor had seemed perfectly healthy during her stay in Germany. No coughing or sneezing, no signs of fatigue or fever during two days of long meetings. She told colleagues that she had started feeling ill after the flight back to China. Days later, she tested positive for the coronavirus.

. . .

Dr. Rothe and her colleagues were among the first to warn the world. But even as evidence accumulated from other scientists, leading health officials expressed unwavering confidence that symptomless spreading was not important.

In the days and weeks to come, politicians, public health officials and rival academics disparaged or ignored the Munich team. Some actively worked to undermine the warnings at a crucial moment, as the disease was spreading unnoticed in French churches, Italian soccer stadiums and Austrian ski bars. A cruise ship, the Diamond Princess, would become a deadly harbinger of symptomless spreading. Continue reading ““All You Need Is a Pair of Eyes””

Germans Were “Seduced” by Nazi “Optimism”

(p. C7) In some perceptive passages in the earlier stages of this book, Mr. Fritzsche examines how, during the party’s years in opposition, the Nazis were able to broaden their support away from the original ideological core to voters who, for example, just thought that “something” had to be done to sort out a deeply unsettled country. . . .

What the author stresses is that, contrary to what is so often assumed, many Germans were seduced not by despair but by optimism. Mr. Fritzsche sets out the ways that the Nazis produced the impression that the party was creating a Volksgemeinschaft—a people’s community—through such methods as transforming the Left’s traditional celebration of (p. C8) the first of May into “The Day of National Labor,” a festival of national unity rather than class struggle.

. . .

Mr. Gellately differs from many in the weight he places on the appeal of the “socialist” element in an ideology that, almost from its earliest days, had combined nationalism and anti-Semitism with a distrust of capitalism.

. . .

It was probably the memory of that Volksgemeinschaft, however much it rested on illusion, that explains one of the most remarkable facts in Mr. Gellately’s book: When Germans in the country’s west and in West Berlin—a people still living amid the ruins of the Reich—were asked in 1948 whether National Socialism was a good idea, but poorly implemented, 57% of those polled replied “yes.”

For the full review, see:

Andrew Stuttaford. “High-Speed History.” The Wall Street Journal (Saturday, June 13, 2020): C7-C8.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the review was updated on June 12, 2020, and has the title “Three on the Third Reich: High-Speed History.”)

The two books mentioned in the passages quoted above, are:

Fritzsche, Peter. Hitler’s First Hundred Days: When Germans Embraced the Third Reich. New York: Basic Books, 2020.

Gellately, Robert. Hitler’s True Believers: How Ordinary People Became Nazis. New York: Oxford University Press, 2020.

Mainstream Science, and Governments, Rejected Early Evidence of Symptomless Transmission

(p. 1) MUNICH — Dr. Camilla Rothe was about to leave for dinner when the government laboratory called with the surprising test result. Positive. It was Jan. 27 [2020]. She had just discovered Germany’s first case of the new coronavirus.

But the diagnosis made no sense. Her patient, a businessman from a nearby auto parts company, could have been infected by only one person: a colleague visiting from China. And that colleague should not have been contagious.

The visitor had seemed perfectly healthy during her stay in Germany. No coughing or sneezing, no signs of fatigue or fever during two days of long meetings. She told colleagues that she had started feeling ill after the flight back to China. Days later, she tested positive for the coronavirus.

. . .

Dr. Rothe and her colleagues were among the first to warn the world. But even as evidence accumulated from other scientists, leading health officials expressed unwavering confidence that symptomless spreading was not important.

In the days and weeks to come, politicians, public health officials and rival academics disparaged or ignored the Munich team. Some actively worked to undermine the warnings at a crucial moment, as the disease was spreading unnoticed in French churches, Italian soccer stadiums and Austrian ski bars. A cruise ship, the Diamond Princess, would become a deadly harbinger of symptomless spreading.

. . .

(p. 10) Though estimates vary, models using data from Hong Kong, Singapore and China suggest that 30 to 60 percent of spreading occurs when people have no symptoms.

. . .

After two lengthy phone calls with the woman, doctors at the Robert Koch Institute were convinced that she had simply failed to recognize her symptoms. They wrote to the editor of The New England Journal of Medicine, casting doubt on Dr. Rothe’s findings.

Editors there decided that the dispute amounted to hairsplitting. If it took a lengthy interview to identify symptoms, how could anyone be expected to do it in the real world?

“The question was whether she had something consistent with Covid-19 or that anyone would have recognized at the time was Covid-19,” said Dr. Eric Rubin, the journal’s editor.

“The answer seemed to be no.”

The journal did not publish the letter. But that would not be the end of it.

. . .

On Monday, Feb. 3, the journal Science published an article calling Dr. Rothe’s report “flawed.” Science reported that the Robert Koch Institute had written to the New England Journal to dispute her findings and correct an error.

. . .

Dr. Rothe’s report quickly became a symbol of rushed research. Scientists said she should have talked to the Chinese patient herself before publishing, and that the omission had undermined her team’s work. On Twitter, she and her colleagues were disparaged by scientists and armchair experts alike.

“It broke over us like a complete tsunami,” Dr. Hoelscher said.

. . .

If Dr. Rothe’s paper had implied that governments might need to do more against Covid-19, the pushback from the Robert Koch Institute was an implicit defense of the conventional thinking.

Sweden’s public health agency declared that Dr. Rothe’s report had contained major errors. The agency’s website said, unequivocally, that “there is no evidence that people are infectious during the incubation period” — an assertion that would remain online in some form for months.

French health officials, too, left no room for debate: “A person is contagious only when symptoms appear,” a government flyer read. “No symptoms = no risk of being contagious.”

. . .

(p. 11) Dr. Rothe, . . ., was shaken. She could not understand why much of the scientific establishment seemed eager to play down the risk.

“All you need is a pair of eyes,” she said. “You don’t need rocket-science virology.”

. . .

While public health officials hesitated, some doctors acted. At a conference in Seattle in mid-February, Jeffrey Shaman, a Columbia University professor, said his research suggested that Covid-19’s rapid spread could only be explained if there were infectious patients with unremarkable symptoms or no symptoms at all.

In the audience that day was Steven Chu, the Nobel-winning physicist and former U.S. energy secretary. “If left to its own devices, this disease will spread through the whole population,” he remembers Professor Shaman warning.

Afterward, Dr. Chu began insisting that healthy colleagues at his Stanford University laboratory wear masks. Doctors in Cambridge, England, concluded that asymptomatic transmission was a big source of infection and advised local health workers and patients to wear masks, well before the British government acknowledged the risk of silent spreaders.

The American authorities, faced with a shortage, actively discouraged the public from buying masks. “Seriously people — STOP BUYING MASKS!” Surgeon General Jerome M. Adams tweeted on Feb. 29.

. . .

By the end of the month [March 2020], the U.S. Centers for Disease Control announced it was rethinking its policy on masks. It concluded that up to 25 percent of patients might have no symptoms.

Since then, the C.D.C., governments around the world and, finally, the World Health Organization have recommended that people wear masks in public.

Still, the W.H.O. is sending confusing signals. Earlier this month, Dr. Van Kerkhove, the technical lead, repeated that transmission from asymptomatic patients was “very rare.” After an outcry from doctors, the agency said there had been a misunderstanding.

“In all honesty, we don’t have a clear picture on this yet,” Dr. Van Kerkhove said. She said she had been referring to a few studies showing limited transmission from asymptomatic patients.

Recent internet ads confused the matter even more. A Google search in mid-June for studies on asymptomatic transmission returned a W.H.O. advertisement titled: “People With No Symptoms — Rarely Spread Coronavirus.”