Dr. Roger LeBrun, an entomologist in the CELS Plant Sciences Department, has been appointed as a Faculty Fellow in the John Hazen White Center for Ethics and Public Service.

The center, based in Washburn Hall at URI, draws its mandate from the O’Hara Ethnics Task Force Report which envisioned an institute at the university which “would promote effective ethical leadership in state and local government and revise school curricula to emphasize government accountability, ethics awareness and citizen responsibility.”

The center puts on workshop programs for public managers.

Each Faculty Fellow is appointed for one year. Fellows are expected to participate in program development, seminar workshops and research and writing on issues related to ethics and public service.

LeBrun’s project is entitled “The Use of DDT in Combating Malaria in Developing Countries.”

Expanding further, Lebrun wrote in his application to the Center “this controversial approach to reducing the impact of a disease that kills 3,000-4,000 children each day will be evaluated in terms of the environmental cost versus its medical benefit.”

LeBrun says he will be working with colleagues at Columbia and Cornell on the project. He notes there is new evidence that the bioaccumulation during the time DDT was used may not have been the main cause of the decline in the Bald Eagle population and that limited applications of DDT might be a compelling argument “that the number of lives saved by reducing contact with malaria-carrying mosquitoes vastly outweighs the minimal environmental costs.”

LeBrun also noted in his communication to the center that he is also working on a RI-based “Adopt a Doctor” program, working with students who will be leaving for South Africa to work in an orphanage where HIV infected children are being treated and is continuing to support the Doctors Without Borders program.