Is there any chance that sponsoring a dance contest may be a touch far afield for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)? Isn’t the agency more accustomed to clamping down on factories with greenhouse gas emissions, which forces more unemployment?
Fear not about wise use of your tax money. The EPA also is promoting a poetry, essay, and photo contest–truly essential government projects, despite our $14.3 trillion national debt.
The EPA advises those enticed to enter the contests, the creative work submitted “should express ‘A Sense of Wonder’ about the sea, the night sky, forests, birds, wildlife, and all that is beautiful to your eyes.” The activity the EPA excitedly announced is the “Rachael Carson Sense of Wonder Contest.”
While the EPA and environmentalists everywhere glorify Rachael Carson as the inspiration for the environmental movement, her major impact on our planet has led to the deaths of millions of people, mainly innocent African children.
It all started with Carson’s 1962 book “Silent Spring.” She theorized that silence would occur when birds no longer would sing because the widespread use of pesticides weakened their egg shells. She also vividly wrote in her book, pesticides generally pollute the environment and even cause cancer.
The book was embraced by environmentalists and became a best- seller throughout the world. Silent Spring led to a ban on DDT in the United States. The absence of DDT has caused the needless deaths of as many as 30 million people from malaria and yellow fever in tropical countries. Most of them were helpless African children, according to Dennis Avery, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute.
In addition, malaria has been allowed to ruin the lives of as many as a billion people with a chronic condition of the disease, who are unable to work. These malaria cases in the tropics could account for much of the poverty in the world today.
Carson was educated as a marine biologist. She worked for some years at the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service. But she began writing as an eleven-year-old. She originally had a co-author for “Silent Spring.” He was Edwin Diamond, who had been science editor of Newsweek magazine. But early in the book’s drafting, Diamond walked away from the project. He said later that “Silent Spring” was an “emotional, alarmist book seeking to cause Americans to mistakenly believe their world is being poisoned.”
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This is a rabid, fully unhinged, lunatic classic! Rachel Carson: KILLER! This article is one for the ages—thanks, Mr Trussell, for alerting us to this major criminal and her unparalleled crimes against humanity.
Top class journalism from a first-rate mind!
I don't think political decisions about using DDT in malaria-ridden parts of the world can rightfully be blamed on Rachel Carson.
First of all, the widespread use of DDT in the 40's and 50's lead to a build-up of the chemical in ALL species on the planet. It is a toxic chemical in large doses, and that's just what is described in Carson's publications, as you go up the food chain its concentration is increased. If it wasn't banned, I'm convinced that we would be seeing EFFECTS (not just traces of the compound) in human populations across the globe. So perhaps when Trussell wrote this article, he didn't take into account that Ms. Carson had in mind the continuity of our species and all other species on our planet. While the deaths resulting from malaria are certainly not something to make light of or ignore; DDT is not the way to go about reducing deaths from the disease. In our society, economy comes before the health of our own species, DDT is a cheaper alternative to medicating the people affected in third-world countries. But we tend to look at the short-term, what about the big picture? If we treated the disease with anti-biotics, we would inevitably spend more money, but solve the problem without putting future generations of every animal species on the planet at risk of probable endangerment – including our own.
Ah, the doom and gloom scenario. Studies where people have devoured large quantities of DDT were shown to have no ill effect.
See here: http://junkscience.com/1999/07/26/100-things-you-…
Enjoy, comrade.
The above comments are proof that the American education system has utterly failed to educate.
Rachel Carson's book was the inspiration for Nixon's EPA head William D. Ruckelshaus to ban DDT despite several scientific investigations where no harm was ever found. Carson's claim that bald eagle egg shells were thinned by DDT turned out to be a bald faced lie by her since she never mentioned that the research she quoted had a second effect – the number of surviving birds was higher, not lower, in the groups with thinned egg shells.
Rachel Carson is cited on the EPA website as the inspiration for the organization. This is the same organization that has destroyed hundreds of thousands of jobs with bogus claims of species extinction. The heralded "saving of the spotted owl" was complete nonsense, since the spotted owl isn't even a separate species. It is genetically identical to the California barn owl with a slight coloring difference. This difference is about as large as the difference between a marmalade house cat and a tabby.
The deaths of more than 40 million people are directly attributable to the banning of DDT. The banning of DDT is directly attributable to Ruckelhaus and Carson. If they are not responsible for this mass slaughter, who is?
DDT, when properly used, is virtually harmless and is the cheapest, most effective method known to repel mosquitoes.
The DDT ban is by no means a unique case of death by pseudo science. The anti-vaccination movement is killing thousands of children today. Despite millions of dollars spent on research showing no connections whatsoever between vaccines and autism people are refusing to vaccinate their children. Once again, measles and whooping cough are deadly diseases.
American schools must be converted from a state propaganda mill to a private education system. The inability of people to grasp basic science will prove more deadly than even the banning of DDT.
Population. Control. Don’t mess with mother nature. Epidemics like this keep things in check. People like Carson get the big picture.
Actually, no research ever showed no harm. All research shows some harm. The dispositive stuff shows that DDT kills entire ecosystems.
EPA must have substantial scientific evidence for a rule before it can issue one, under the Administrative Procedures Act and court rulings. In fact, after EPA banned DDT (a ban that covered agricultural use only), EPA was sued to overturn it, twice. In both cases, the appellate courts ruled EPA had ample evidence for its actions.
Carson made no claims about eggshell thinning. All of that research was conducted after her death, and it all showed that eggshells are thinned by birds consuming DDT. There are more than 1,000 studies on this issue, and none show "no thinning."
Your source is incorrect. Carson cited the work of Dr. DeWitt accurately — he found that DDT killed even non-predatory birds who just ate seeds that got DDT on them. It has been reported, in a hoax, that Carson misreported it, because she failed to note that one clutch of eggs from an affected bird had a "normal hatch rate." However, she did note that.
What the critic failed to note was Dr. DeWitt's next sentence in the research report that said, though there was a normal hatch rate, all the chicks died from DDT poisoning within a few days — so there was zero fledge rate and zero survival rate. Unfortunately Dr. DeWitt's article is now behind a paywall, but you may read all the relevant quotes here.
In May of 1963 President Kennedy's Science Advisory Council reported that Rachel Carson's book was astonishingly accurate with one exception — she had gone a bit easy on DDT. That panel, including a couple of Nobel laureates as I recall, recommended the federal government act immediately to stop its own use of DDT.
Rachel was right in 1962, and she still is.
DDT never destroyed entire ecosystems when it was used as an indoor repellent and that was among the uses that was banned. As for harm to humans people bathed in it without harm.
Carson insisted that DDT caused cancer. No study ever proved that or even came close. She predicted huge increases in "environmentally caused" cancers which never materialized.
The real facts about DDT can be found here:
http://www.junkscience.com/ddtfaq.html#ref1
The reply will be that Steve Milloy is a tool of the oil companies, the tobacco companies, pharmaceutical companies, the Republican party, the John Birch Society, aliens from planet Mongo and Satan himself. That's the only reply possible because Milloy's facts are correct.
You may be right that DDT, when used indoors only, was not so destructive as when tons were sprayed from aircraft.
So what? DDT has been in continuous use for Indoor Residual Spraying since 1946. It was never banned for such use in Africa, and is now available for IRS. The problem is that mosquitoes developed resistance and immunity due to the widespread outdoor use of DDT earlier. You could check out Malcolm Gladwell's history of Fred Soper's courageous campaigns to eradicate the world of malaria in The New Yorker.
Carson did not claim DDT causes cancer — why do people make up stuff about her? Since she died, however, DDT's carcinogenicity in animals including mammals is well established. Fortunately for us, DDT appears to be a weak carcinogen in humans, but if you check with the American Cancer Society, you'll see they list it as a "probable human carcinogen," with other weakly acting agents. Frankly, I don't think the ACS would lie to us about such things.
Junk Science is a notorious junk science site. If you read my dissection of their errors on DeWitt's research you would, as most honest people do, wonder about the other claims made at that site. No claim for DDT, or against Rachel Carson made at that site, can be verified by research. Many, if not most of the citations offered are bogus. The Audubon Society did not claim at any point between 1920 and 1970 that eagle populations were increasing or not threatened by DDT. You gotta admire the chutzpah of a site for being so bold in its hoaxing — but at the same time, you can't claim the site as authoritative, or accurate, or anything other than a hoax site.
Is Steve Milloy a tool of oil companies, too? His inaccuracy alone is quite enough to condemn the site. Do you claim he is accurate? Then I dare you to back up that claim, especially with his citations. It can't be done.
You may be right that DDT, when used indoors only, was not so destructive as when tons were sprayed from aircraft.
So what? DDT has been in continuous use for Indoor Residual Spraying since 1946. It was never banned for such use in Africa, and is now available for IRS. The problem is that mosquitoes developed resistance and immunity due to the widespread outdoor use of DDT earlier. You could check out Malcolm Gladwell's history of Fred Soper's courageous campaigns to eradicate the world of malaria in The New Yorker.
Carson did not claim DDT causes cancer — why do people make up stuff about her? Since she died, however, DDT's carcinogenicity in animals including mammals is well established. Fortunately for us, DDT appears to be a weak carcinogen in humans, but if you check with the American Cancer Society, you'll see they list it as a "probable human carcinogen," with other weakly acting agents. Frankly, I don't think the ACS would lie to us about such things.
Junk Science is a notorious junk science site. If you read my dissection of their errors on DeWitt's research you would, as most honest people do, wonder about the other claims made at that site. No claim for DDT, or against Rachel Carson made at that site, can be verified by research. Many, if not most of the citations offered are bogus. The Audubon Society did not claim at any point between 1920 and 1970 that eagle populations were increasing or not threatened by DDT. You gotta admire the chutzpah of a site for being so bold in its hoaxing — but at the same time, you can't claim the site as authoritative, or accurate, or anything other than a hoax site.
Is Steve Milloy a tool of oil companies, too? His inaccuracy alone is quite enough to condemn the site. Do you claim he is accurate? Then I dare you to back up that claim, especially with his citations. It can't be done.
Isn't that a bit conspiracy like, to condemn someone without evidence and call them a tool of oil companies?
Actually, in Carson's own words, she DID claim that DDT caused the thinning of egg shells and that it caused cancer. Clearly, you have not read her own book, and still defend her.
Also, mosquitoes did not develop "resistance" to DDT. Even the ones who "did" stayed away from it when it was sprayed. Give me a source saying that mosquitoes grew immune to DDT. It takes generations over a long period of time to develop successive immunity. It appears you have not studied natural selection, either.
Again, "probably human carcinogen". Probably means a chance. Your sources do not even agree with you.
Stating facts is not suggesting conspiracy — unless you know that Mr. Milloy is engaged in illegal activities in his consorting with industry sorts.
Studies on eggshell thinning came out in 1974. Carson died a decade earlier, in 1964. She couldn't have made any allegations of eggshell thinning. Are you accusing Rachel Carson of being resurrected? If you think Carson claimed eggshell thinning, I'd love a citation.
Carson also did not claim DDT causes cancer — again, if you claim otherwise, I must ask for a page number in the book. It's not there.
However, DDT is at least a weak carcinogen, and is listed that way by the Centers for Disease Control and every cancer fighting agency on Earth. I'll take the word of the American Cancer Society over yours, thank you.
Got the facts? Put 'em up, with citations, please.
Of course, by 1980, the research was indisputable: DDT causes egghsell thinning.
The best lay explanation of mosquitoes developing immunity to DDT is in http://timpanogos.wordpress.com/2010/04/30/quote-of-the-moment-jonathan-weiners-pulitzer-winning-explanation-of-mosquitoes-developing-immunity-to-ddt/">Jonathan Weiner's 1994 Pulitzer Prize-winning book, The Beak of the Finch, a story of evolution in our time. On pages 254 and 255 he explained:
Population. Control. Don't mess with mother nature. Epidemics like this keep things in check. People like Carson understood this.
Slandering a hero — shame on you.
Malaria deaths in the world today have been reduced to under a million annually — that's a 75% reduction from when Rachel Carson wrote Silent Spring, and when DDT use was at its peak. Much of that reduction in death toll has been accomplished without DDT, and much of the continuing reduction since 2001 has been by employing a method of disease-carrying insect control called integrated vector management, or integrated pest management. In IVM, a variety of methods get deployed to stop the insects from spreading disease — in this case, bednets to stop the bites absolutely (DDT depends on the mosquito getting a bite of a victim first), draining mosquito breeding areas like rain gutters and old tires close by human habitation, and careful use of pesticides where the pesticides are appropriate (that is, where they work).
IVM is the process recommended by Rachel Carson in her book in 1962. It's a tragedy that it took us 40 years to figure out Carson was right, but with malaria deaths under 2 million since 1972, 39 years, at a savings of at least 2 million lives per year, that means Carson's methods have saved 78 million lives.
Shame on you for telling a story at odds with the facts.
More nonsense.
Here's the malaria death totals for most of the entire planet. Note that the data is in 20 year intervals and that the lowest malaria death rate occurred around 1960 (not shown). In particular notice sub Saharan Africa
http://cmr.asm.org/cgi/content/full/15/4/564/T3
Malaria was wiped out in many regions through the use of DDT and draining swamps, both of which are now illegal. The greatest drop in malaria deaths occurred after 1950 when DDT was used extensively. In Africa, the death rate was at it's all time low just prior to the DDT ban.
Carson wasn't a heroine, her error filled work killed hundreds of thousands if not millions.
I'm content to use the WHO figures. They have been criticized for being way too optimistic. But they've only shown fewer than a million annual deaths worldwide since 2005. I'm having difficulty figuring out the source of the information on the chart you offer, but the showing of annual deaths much under a million at any time prior to 1995 runs counter to almost all other sources. If only it were true.
DDT helped in the final eradication of malaria in many temperate climate nations, but DDT was not the sole agent in any case where malaria was cleansed from any nation. No nation that got rid of malaria used DDT as the chief tool — in the U.S. we used a beefed up public health system and greatly improved housing, with screened windows, and essentially banished malaria by 1946, the first year that DDT was available for use against mosquitoes by civilians.
If you can find an error in Silent Spring, please cite it. President Kennedy's Science Advisory Council said it was extremely accurate. I can find no record of any study she cites being contradicted by later research.
Tell us the erroneous claim you think you've found, and page number if you can (the book is available on Google Books, and you can find copies in any good bookstore or library).
I gave the Junkscience site. It provides more evidence than necessary to prove that Carson was wrong.
The Junk Science site is pure junk science. The evidence it provides is pure hokum, bunk. It's false. If Milloy tried to publish that, he'd be committing academic fraud — which is one reason it is not published in science journals.
Just because it's an elaborate hoax doesn't make it any less a hoax.
I love it when a fool does my work for me. You obviously didn't go to Milloy's site because he has no original work on it. He cites articles in things like the JAMA, ornithology journals, newspaper articles and other sources usually scientific journals.
Milloy is not a scientist, he's a reporter. How many reporters publish in scientific journals?
You simply pulled out the standard "he not published in peer-reviewed journals" line without even bothering to see what he wrote.
Thanks, I needed a laugh this morning.
I hate to hear the giggles of gullibles in the morning.
Yes, Milloy offers citations to other people. Alas, for key things, like his claims that DDT is not carcinogenic, his citations go to bogus documents, or he claims documents say one thing when they say another. For example, he claims the work of Dr. DeWitt was misquoted by Carson, but it wasn't; he claimed Dr. DeWitt found DDT doesn't affect hatches of seed-eating birds, but that's not what DeWitt found. DeWitt found that DDT causes chicks to die in their eggs — except in one case, which Milloy quotes, in which the hatch rate was "normal." Milloy stops quoting DeWitt there. Dr. DeWitt's next sentence in the paper said that, though the eggs all hatched, the chicks all died within hours.
So, yes, Milloy offers references. If you bothered to check the, which I asked you to do, you'd find that his references either do not support what he claims, his references deny what he claims, or his references are phony.
Milloy claims to have a science degree. He claims to be working with Dr. Gordon Edwards (admittedly difficult, since Edwards has been dead for more than a decade, but that's not the most bizarre or erroneous thing Milloy claims by far). My point was that none of the serious claims Milloy makes can be supported from hard science. Gordon Edwards appears to have gone a bit dotty in his old age. He could not get anyone to publish his screeds against Rachel Carson in science journals because his claims were faulty. Edwards' last screed was finally published by Lyndon Larouche.
I think any rational person would dismiss anything published by Lyndon Larouche without significant other, reputable support from other sources. In this case, there is no support from any other source.
Original (as in his claims that Audubon found DDT didn't hurt eagles), or quoted (as in most of the rest), anything Milloy says in favor of DDT or against Ms. Carson is false. Gullibility on the part of Milloy fans and readers does not change their complete inaccuracy.
Frankly, you're a condescending prick.
All I'm doing is arguing the facts, and pointing out gross errors that should not be repeated. Since when does standing up for the truth make one a "prick?" As Patrick Henry said, "Make the most of it."
You probably think Patrick Henry a condescending prick, too.
I pointed out that what the Junk Science site offers as evidence is false. It would prove Ms. Carson in error, were it accurate. It is not.
She has killed over a billion people. L.O.L.
I tend to doubt the mortality figures cited. I notice in the link provided by Reason_for_Life that about 90% of the mortality is in sub-Saharan Africa, Considering how shoddy and inadequate the diagnostic and testing procedures are in many African countries, it's likely that many other maladies are being bundled together with malaria and all the resulting deaths reported as due to malaria. This is certainly the way it is with AIDS in Africa: all sorts of symptoms and conditions that nowhere else are associated with AIDS are labelled as AIDS in Africa. In other words, there may be 900,000 malaria victims dying each year in Africa, but most of them are not dying from malaria.
It might be more appropriate to look at the overall mortality rates. Considering that the populations of many African countries have tripled or even quadrupled in the last fifty years, it's clear that mortality rates have plummeted, malaria epidemic or not.
I suspect the truth is to be found somewhere between the politically charged views on DDT. I will take exception to " 99.999 percent of the cancer risks in our food supply come from natural pesticides which Mother Nature puts in fruits and vegetables to guard against fungi, diseases, and insects". Recent research has revealed extremely low incidence of cancer in Egypt's mummies. http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tomchivers/1…
They do however show other diseases of aging such as atherosclerosis.
Of course, DDT was not banned because it was thought to be carcinogenic (though now we know it is, indeed, carcinogenic). DDT was banned because it's an uncontrollable poison in the wild.
LMFAO HAHAHA OH WOW