Flies Developing Resistance To DDT Scientist Admits
How do flies develop resistance to the insecticide DD? A United States entomologist suggests that the insects, by repeatedly coming in contact with doses of DDT not large enough to be lethal, become “conditioned” to the insecticide and eventually are able to tolerate large doses of the chemical.
Dr R. W. Fay of the U.S. Public Health Service Communicable Disease Centre at Savannah, in the State of Georgia, likens this “conditioning” to that which a human being undergoes in becoming “conditioned” to morphine. A human can at first tolerate only a small amount of morphine, Dr Fay explains. But his body rapidly becomes accustomed to the narcotic, and ever-increasing doses are needed to give the same “drugged” sensation. Eventually, a person can take 100 times his first dose and still not feel it.
Animals can handle poisons like DDT by storing small amounts in the fat tissues of the body. Insects, Dr Fay says, may transmit DDTresistance to new generations in the fat content of eggs developing in the bodies of female insects. If adult flies are held in the laboratory, out of all contact with insecticidal deposits, DDT-resistance is apparently “bred out” of the flies in four to 10 generations. *
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Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 14, Issue 95, 8 February 1950, Page 5
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208Flies Developing Resistance To DDT Scientist Admits Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 14, Issue 95, 8 February 1950, Page 5
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