Dr. Rutledge on the Brett Winterble Show
Check out a brand new interview with Dr. Rutledge on the Brett Winterble Show (his interview begins at 22:30) on the truth behind the smears of DDT!
3 Billion To Screen at 2nd Annual The Free Thinking Film Festival
Sunday, November 13, 2011
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3 Billion and Counting Watch the Trailer 108 minutes, 2010 United States Frogbite Productions |
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Dr. Rutledge and his team take an in depth look into a disease that has killed more people than any disease ever known — Malaria. They interview African, Indian, and US Governments, charitable organizations, scientists, politicians, doctors, clinics, victims, and survivors. They explore and expose the politics of domestic and international policies and find the evidence that the public never truly understood. What they find is astonishing. The greatest ecological genocide in the known history of man is laid bare — the 1972 ban of an extraordinary life-protecting chemical DDT. This is politics — the cold brutal crookedness that kills with a stroke of a pen. Short-sightedness of governmental and environmental policies is causing the deaths of millions and the suffering of billions. When the EPA, Greenpeace, World Wildlife Fund, and Sierra refused interviews, Dr. Rutledge knew he had touched a nerve.
“In his dissection of the rise of the environmental movement and the fall of science, Dr. Taylor not only educates us, but he also sparks outrage about the unforeseen consequences of a scientifically ignorant chemical witchhunt, one that has caused untold human suffering and billions of deaths, primarily among children.” |
Ottawa Event: 3 Billion And Counting Screening
http://propagandistmag.com/2011/03/28/ottawa-event-3-billion-and-counting
3 Billion and Counting
Sat. April 9, 2011
Aviation Museum
11 Aviation Parkway
7:00 PM
Admission: $15 (includes HST), $10.00 for students/ seniors
Compact Music, 785 1/2 Bank Street
Compact Music, 190 Bank Street
Ottawa Festivals, 47 William Street
Tickets will also be available at the door.
Tickets are also available on line (click here)
Dr. Rutledge and his team take an in depth look into a disease that has killed more people than any disease ever known — Malaria. They interview African, Indian, and US Governments, charitable organizations, scientists, politicians, doctors, clinics, victims, and survivors. They explore and expose the politics of domestic and international policies and find the evidence that the public never truly understood. What they find is astonishing. The greatest ecological genocide in the known history of man is laid bare — the 1972 ban of an extraordinary life-protecting chemical DDT. This is politics — the cold brutal crookedness that kills with a stroke of a pen. Shortsightedness of governmental and environmental policies is causing the deaths of millions and the suffering of billions. When the EPA, Greenpeace, World Wildlife Fund, and Sierra refused interviews, Dr. Rutledge knew he had touched a nerve.
For businessmen and women to endorse and encourage “alternatives” while a safe and proven PREVENTION sits idle is like fiddling while Rome burns. Africa loses nearly 3000 women and children on a daily basis not to mention 12 billion dollars annually to malaria alone. The team discovers that malaria is completely preventable — completely. These young filmmakers trek from R. Carson’s SILENT SPRING to the dead silence of millions of corpses and billions of suffering ones. And, thirty plus years after the DDT ban the death toll is gargantuan. Is it a mere coincidence that deaths from West Nile virus, mosquitoes, and bedbugs are growing by leaps and bounds right here in the US?? This film is intended to go directly to you, the American people, with the certainty that it will dramatically open up a virtual blizzard of public debate. This is one film that is long overdue…
Free Thinking Film Society
3 Billion and Counting
Sat. April 9. 2011, 7 PM
Aviation Museum
11 Aviation Parkway
Admission: $15 (includes HST), $10.00 for students/ seniors
Copyright © 2010-2011 Free Thinking Film Society.
All rights reserved.
Film raises questions about ban on pesticide
Updated: March 08, 2011 3:40 PM
What kind of crazy person would sprinkle DDT (the “deadly” pesticide dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane) on a bowl of red, ripe strawberries and then gobble them down as if they were covered with whipped cream instead?
Well, that man turns out to be Dr. Rutledge Taylor, a California physician, and after watching the documentary 3 Billion and Counting, which was presented at the Salmar Classic Theatre on Sunday March 6th, and which shows the results of his six years of research into why DDT has got such a bad name, one comes away thinking he may not be so crazy after all.
The film shows that although the Swiss chemist Paul Hermann Müller was awarded the Noble prize for proving the effectiveness of DDT as a pesticide and how this chemical was the leading medium in the eradication of malaria in the United States by the year 1951, how it then came, within a few shorts years after this great victory, to be considered one of the deadliest chemicals ever introduced into the environment. This was essentially brought about by the publication of the book Silent Spring, written by Rachel Carson in 1962, which caused a demonization of this and other pesticides and brought about a war against them led by the then developing environmental movement.
But Taylor paints a totally different picture of DDT and its supposed dangers. His investigations led him and his colleagues on a trip to Africa, where one million people, most under the age of five, are still dying from malaria each year, and he presents the idea that DDT is not the villain that it has been portrayed and that its use would be a great aid in relieving the suffering of the people who are the worst affected by the curse of this dreaded disease.
He further explains and shows the evidence for his conclusions that it was as a result of bad science, greed and a more sinister plan, which uses population control and reduction, as its rationale which has prevented a review of the original decisions around the banning of DDT.
The film raises some very serious questions and concerns, and with five people dying from malaria every minute, makes one hope that someone who can bring about change, will look seriously into these allegations.
For more information, check out www.3 BillionAndCounting.com.
Peter Rowbottom
Dr. Rutledge calls into FoxNews Radio
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Click Here to listen to the archive.
Dr. Rutledge on The Armstrong & Getty Show
Dr. Rutledge will be calling into The Armstrong and Getty Show on Tuesday, February 22 to discuss 3 Billion And Counting.
The Armstrong & Getty Show is a morning talk show co-hosted by Jack Armstrong and Joe Getty. The show airs on television and radio in San Francisco and radio in Sacramento.
For more information visit: http://armstrongandgettyradio.com/
3 BILLION AND COUNTING Exclusive Screening at The American Theatre in Charleston
One time special screening February 16, 2011 at 6:00 pm
The American Theatre located at 446 King Street, one of Charleston’s Historic film and event venues, presents the extraordinary new documentary, 3 BILLION AND COUNTING, (102 minutes) directed and produced by Dr. D. Rutledge Taylor.
This captivating documentary takes an in depth look into a disease that has killed more people than any disease ever known — Malaria. Dr. Rutledge Taylor, a physician specializing in preventative medicine, embarks on a journey to find the truth behind the banning of DDT in 1972. The documentary is filmed as an investigative exploration exposing the world- wide harm that has resulted from the ban on the pesticide DDT. The documentary is filmed unscripted as Dr. Rutledge and his team travel across Africa, India and Malaysia interviewing governments, charitable organizations, scientists, politicians, doctors, victims and survivors. They explore and expose the politics of domestic and international policies and find the evidence that the public never truly understood. What they find is astonishing. The greatest ecological genocide known history of man is laid bare — the 1972 ban of an extraordinary life-protecting chemical DDT. This is politics — the cold brutal crookedness that kills with a stroke of a pen. Shortsightedness of governmental and environmental policies is causing the deaths of millions and the suffering of billions. When the EPA, Greenpeace, World Wildlife Fund, and Sierra refused interviews, Dr. Rutledge knew he had touched a nerve.
Africa loses nearly 3000 women and children on a daily basis not to mention 12 billion dollars annually to malaria alone. The team discovers that malaria is completely preventable — completely. These young filmmakers trek from R. Carson’s SILENT SPRING to the dead silence of
millions of corpses and billions of suffering ones. Now, thirty plus years after the DDT ban the death toll is gargantuan. This film is intended to go directly to you, the American people, with the certainty that it will dramatically open up a virtual blizzard of public debate. This is one film that is long overdue…
Dr. Rutledge on Canadian Evening News
Click below to view Dr. Rutledge on the evening news in Canada discussing 3 Billion And Counting:
http://www.chbcnews.ca/video/index.html?releasePID=S108148pPi8yLeG0y_QZ1_8c5F_kJQ0S
Dr. Rutledge will be calling in to Jacked In with Jessica Samuels on Tuesday
This just in:
Dr. Rutlege will be calling in to AM1150 this coming Tuesday at 5:20pm (PST) to discuss his documentary 3 Billion And Counting with Jessica Samuels.
To listen live over the internet and for more details visit: www.am1150.ca
Dr. Rutledge calls in as a guest to KSRQ News
Dr. Rutledge was a call in guest tonight to KSRQ News in Minnesota to discuss his new film 3 Billion and Counting. To visit KSRQ News, click here. We will update the site once they have released the audio.
NON-COMMERICAL, EDUCATIONAL RADIO
Pioneer 90.1 is KSRQ-FM , a 24-kilowatt FM radio station licensed by the Federal Communications Commission. KSRQ is owned by Northland Community & Technical College of Thief River Falls, MN.
Lancet Review: 3 Billion And Counting
Open Letter to the Lancet Review of the film 3 Billion and Counting
Firstly, let me say that throughout this whole film making process, I have not felt compelled to respond to a film review thus far. However, this review is in a medical journal – my field of expertise. So, I do feel compelled to respond to this “film review”. I sincerely appreciate and would like to thank the editor of the Lancet, Joanna Palmer and the reviewer Amir Attaran for giving their time to review this important film. It really is an honor to have a film reviewed in the Lancet. I wonder how many documentaries have been reviewed by the Lancet? I suspect not too many.
That said, I really found this “film review” simultaneously amusing and sad. Why? Because it was supposed to be a scientific film review of what I consider to be very important subject matter. But instead, it was primarily a personal attack, often employed when one is at a loss in rebuttal of the science, or the facts at hand. They are either inept and do not have the capacity to objectively stay with the scientific facts or are so enthralled by their own ego that they cannot perform what they set out to do. Having interviewed Attaran for the documentary in 2006, I suspect, in this case, it was more of the latter.
Also, I have a question. Why did the Lancet not ask someone of my same level of expertise to review the film? Why a lawyer?
Obviously the answer to that question is in your hands. Now, on to the review. You will find the review below in its entirety. Then below it, I will address all the points line by line. My responses will be in bold and italics.
A distorting take on DDT
Amir Attaran
Knowing a good story, and telling a good story, are two substantially different things. The cineasts behind 3 Billion and Counting certainly know a good story: their film explores the medically incorrect, damaging campaign against dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT), when the scientific evidence is overwhelming that DDT has saved millions of lives from malaria and continues to do so. Their telling of that story, however, is anything but good, so what could have been an educational and entertaining documentary is instead woefully narcissistic, hectoring, and often inaccurate.
The film’s auteur is an osteopath, D Rutledge Taylor, who practises anti-ageing medicine in Los Angeles and is also the film’s funder, director, and music composer. Dressed in scrubs for effect, he cuts a goofy, nerdish, but sometimes endearing figure, as he jets across continents to learn about malaria and how DDT came to be so stigmatised. The narrative style annoys with tales of boyish adventure, as when Taylor brags his way through a border crossing, but there are several important interviews. Some African malaria control managers candidly admit to Taylor that they are afraid to talk about DDT, much less to use it, lest western donors cut off their funding.
For this, Taylor blames the foreign aid industrial complex, in particular contractors with secure jobs selling anti-malaria bednets to the very poor. But his fiercest, most over-the-top invective is laid at the feet of the environmental movement. While environmentalists from Rachel Carson onward often exaggerate DDT’s risks and belittle its benefits—as seen in this film’s interview with a Ugandan environmentalist, who calls DDT use “primitivity”, and urges armed resistance and to “let one die” instead—Taylor is similarly guilty of losing factual moorings. He claims DDT is suitable for many other diseases, some of which are not even insect-borne, and equates its rejection with genocide—overblown statements that are scientifically and legally untrue. Although cinematic exaggeration can make a point when done comically or ironically à la Michael Moore, here the assertions are merely aggressive and wrong.
Thus at best, this film has flashes of interest, amid cringe-inducing stretches. At worst, it is an example of how ideology turns otherwise valid arguments into unethical posturing. One may rightly fault environmentalists’ ideological loathing of DDT, but what exactly, if not ideology, leads the filmmakers to record what seems to be an Indian woman’s death of malaria, apparently without Taylor, a doctor, or his crew stepping in to offer treatment? The middle-ground lesson, in this film lacking middle-ground, seems to be that if factual and ethical laxity led to banishing DDT as a medical intervention in the first place, resort to neither should be had in bringing it back.
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(10)62017-X/fulltext?rss=yes
AA was interviewed for 3 Billion and Counting, although that interview does not appear in the film by mutual agreement with the filmmakers.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
A distorting take on DDT
Amir Attaran
Knowing a good story, and telling a good story, are two substantially different things.
Ok, film review 101. This film is a cinema ve’rite’ (no script) style FEATURE DOCUMENTARY. Documentaries of this style do not “tell stories”. One “tells stories” when one has a pre-written script such as in FEATURE NARRATIVE films. Today, some documentaries do have a pre-written script but are not considered the purest art form – ie “quasi-documentaries”. There was no script in this film. That should be evident in the shooting style. “3 Billion and Counting” was a fact finding mission of documented events. However, this reviewer was not expected to know the difference, so no fault. To review a film for the Lancet, the reviewer is expected to know science and to critique the science. Again, why a lawyer and not a medical doctor reviewing this documentary?
The cineasts behind 3 Billion and Counting certainly know a good story: their film explores the medically incorrect, damaging campaign against dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT), when the scientific evidence is overwhelming that DDT has saved millions of lives from malaria and continues to do so. Their telling of that story, however, is anything but good, so what could have been an educational and entertaining documentary is instead woefully narcissistic, hectoring, and often inaccurate.
Yes, some that view the film may not find it entertaining, especially those who have been steeped in the Rachael Carson School of environmentalism. However, I know for a fact that the film IS educational. Try and find one person on this planet that knew all these facts that were dug up over an intense five long years. You will not find one. I have been thanked by many modern scientists for that which was revealed in the documentary. As far as the line “woefully narcissistic, hectoring, and often inaccurate”, this is a matter of opinion to which one is entitled. However, if one cannot and does not support one’s opinion with specifics, such a diatribe is primarily a useless waste of print space and the reader’s time. Please do point out the inaccuracies. I sincerely would like to know every scientific inaccuracy or any other inaccuracy for that matter.
The film’s auteur is an osteopath, D Rutledge Taylor, who practises anti-ageing medicine
Yes, I am an Osteopathic medical doctor who obtained MD board certification, therefore medically trained in both traditional and functional medicine. However, it was not mentioned that I practice preventive medicine and nutrition, which is Anti-Aging and thus my drive to get to the bottom of why malaria was not being PREVENTED.
in Los Angeles and is also the film’s funder, director, and music composer.
An inaccuracy. I am not the music composer. See opening title card 5 – composers Debbie Gibson and Rudy Haeusermann.
Dressed in scrubs for effect, he cuts a goofy, nerdish, but sometimes endearing figure, as he jets across continents to learn about malaria and how DDT came to be so stigmatised.
Yes, I do dress in scrubs for “effect” much as lawyers generally dress in a tie for “effect”. I dress in scrubs every day. It is my office attire. Ask any patient I have – they will affirm it.
The narrative style annoys with tales of boyish adventure, as when Taylor brags his way through a border crossing,
This may be perceived by some as “bragging”. However the line “money talks and men mumble” is a FACT when crossing African borders with cameras and equipment. Give it a try. Unfortunately, money talks at borders. Had I not paid off each and every one of them, we would not be reading this “film review” because they would have taken my vital footage. That is fact.
but there are several important interviews. Some African malaria control managers candidly admit to Taylor that they are afraid to talk about DDT, much less to use it, lest western donors cut off their funding.
For this, Taylor blames the foreign aid industrial complex, in particular contractors with secure jobs selling anti-malaria bednets to the very poor. But his fiercest, most over-the-top invective is laid at the feet of the environmental movement. While environmentalists from Rachel Carson onward often exaggerate DDT’s risks and belittle its benefits—as seen in this film’s interview with a Ugandan environmentalist, who calls DDT use “primitivity”, and urges armed resistance and to “let one die” instead—Taylor is similarly guilty of losing factual moorings. He claims DDT is suitable for many other diseases, some of which are not even insect-borne.
Truth is never concerned with job security, but job security is indelibly linked to Truth no matter how ugly it may first appear. Every disease listed in the film is transmitted by insects with the part exception of Cholera – flies indirectly transmit it. However, this is really beside the point. Strict attention to the film rather than invoking what seems a personal vendetta would reveal the inaccuracy of the “insect-borne” comment. It was not said that all those cases were insect-borne diseases. The actual statement said “diseases”. There are other diseases such as cholera and dysentery that are indirectly reduced by the reduction of flies with the use of DDT. To quote the late Dr. J Gordon Edwards “when DDT was sprayed in the WWII camps the dysentery wards all closed.” The very credible Dr. J Gordon Edwards was in that war and was one of the first soldiers to be gratefully dusted with DDT. He had first hand experience with DDT and diseases.
and equates its rejection with genocide—overblown statements that are scientifically and legally untrue.
Having addressed the claimed “scientifically untrue” part, now on to the “legal” part. I do not claim to be a lawyer. It really does not matter to me as a doctor what the legal definition of genocide is… If you asked most of the people on the street if withholding a lifesaving technology (DDT) from a destitute population which results in millions of deaths, I think you will find, LEGAL or not, intentional or not, they consider it genocide. Or, some perhaps prefer the new and improved, more sanitized term, “crimes against humanity.”
Dr. Art Robinson, a world renowned scientist, who is in the film, did call it genocide. So, is equating what is happening in Africa by the withholding of DDT to genocide LEGALLY inaccurate? Perhaps so. However, we are talking about people dying. Legal or not, they are still dying. That is a fact. To me, and many others, save perhaps lawyers, it is seen as genocide.
Although cinematic exaggeration can make a point when done comically or ironically à la Michael Moore, here the assertions are merely aggressive and wrong.
Already addressed – see above on the difference in a narrative feature, cinema ve’rite’ feature documentary, and “quasi-documentary”. And again, Attaran utterly fails to address exactly which assertions he found” merely aggressive and wrong.” Therefore, I have no comment.
Thus at best, this film has flashes of interest, amid cringe-inducing stretches. At worst, it is an example of how ideology turns otherwise valid arguments into unethical posturing. One may rightly fault environmentalists’ ideological loathing of DDT, but what exactly, if not ideology, leads the filmmakers to record what seems to be an Indian woman’s death of malaria, apparently without Taylor, a doctor, or his crew stepping in to offer treatment?
I will address the unethical comment. We did not film our giving the girl’s family money to pay for treatment and hospital transport. We did not feel this personal and spontaneous act was important to the film.
The middle-ground lesson, in this film lacking middle ground, seems to be that if factual and ethical laxity led to banishing DDT as a medical intervention in the first place, resort to neither should be had in bringing it back.
I will address the “factual and ethical laxity” comment. I find this comment quite ironic since Attaran’s “review” is so woefully vague, lacking in substance, and absent of scientific critique. I have no further comment.
AA was interviewed for 3 Billion and Counting, although that interview does not appear in the film by mutual agreement with the filmmakers.
Actually, it was NOT mutually agreed that we not use his interview. What actually happened? Attaran line item struck the word irrevocable in the interview release form before signing it. And, if I recall correctly, he looked up at me and said “I would not give that to my own mother”. I knew at that moment, I would not be using Attaran’s interview. It would not have passed the film’s legal review anyway.
Bedbugs and social change
Dr. Rutledge discusses his new documentary 3 Billion And Counting and the current epidemic of bedbugs and the need for social change.
For more information visit:
http://www.3billionandcounting.com
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