For decades, the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has gotten away with creating regulations that lack sound scientific basis, costing Americans hundreds of billions of dollars without solid evidence that those costs are justified. It's done this in two ways. Sometimes, it has simply thrown out scientific results and regulated to satisfy a political pressure group.  That was largely the case when, in 1972, contrary to its own scientific findings but under heavy pressure from environmentalists, it banned the use of DDT, the most effective, least expensive, safest pesticide by which to control or eradicate disease-carrying insects like mosquitoes and lice. The U.S. had already largely eliminated malaria by widespread spraying of DDT from the 1940s into the 1960s, so the ban didn't have immediate, large-scale negative consequences here.  But it has made it more difficult to combat the recent spread of other insect-borne diseases like West...(Read Full Article)