He even rebuffed a U.S. Department of Agriculture effort to obtain those materials through the Freedom of Information Act, claiming they were just internal memos. It gets worse. He was a member of the activist group, the Environmental Defense Fund. Ruckelshaus solicited donations for EDF on personal stationery that read, EDF's scientists blew the whistle on DDT by showing it to be a cancer hazard, and three years later, when the dust had cleared, EDF had won. But as an assistant attorney general a year earlier, Ruckelshaus stated in a federal court that DDT has an amazing an exemplary record of safe use, does not cause a toxic response in man or other animals, and is not harmful.
Carcinogenic claims regarding DDT are unproven speculation.
The scientists won a jury verdict. Still, the DDT myth and pesticide hysteria persists. Some fault lies with the chemical industry s tendency to reformulate and move on rather than fight for the facts. Not everyone believes the DDT myth. U.S. Government malaria experts wrote recently in the journal Emerging and Infectious Diseases, Today, DDT is still needed for malaria control.