Yesterday I attended my niece Dacey’s college graduation. The commencement speaker was Robert Reich, the left-wing economist who served as Bill Clinton’s Secretary of Labor and wrote a memoir of the experience that was, he later admitted (unapologetically), partly fictional. (Vide Thomas W. Hazlett, “Planet Reich”.) His exhortations to the graduates were workmanlike. In the spirit of Barack Obama, he warned them that cynicism is the enemy, “cynicism” being the code word du jour for any skepticism about liberal proposals to perfect mankind under the tutelage of a benevolent government.
Well, I’m used to hearing that kind of bloviation at graduation exercises. What irritated me was a preamble lauding the late Rachel Carson on the centenary of her birth. From her Silent Spring, the graduates were told, sprang clean air, clean water and all good environmental deeds.
Miss Carson’s intentions were no doubt benign, and perhaps her book, praised as extravagantly by the mainstream press then as Secretary Reich praises it now, had some beneficial effects. But its primary consequence was the almost complete discontinuance of the use of DDT, still the most effective known anti-mosquito pesticide.
As a direct result of Miss Carson’s good works, malaria, which was dwindling under the impact of DDT by the early 1960’s, is today, according to the Centers for Disease Control,
one of the most severe public health problems worldwide. It is a leading cause of death and disease in many developing countries, where young children and pregnant women are the groups most affected.
At least a million people die of malaria each year, 850,000 of them children under age five, and an incredible 350 to 500 million contract it, suffering symptoms that are often incapacitating. The victims are concentrated in sub-Saharan Africa, where the World Health Organization advocates DDT spraying to help roll back this pestilence, but the political abhorrence generated by Silent Spring lives on. For much more on this grim topic, see Rachel Was Wrong, a Web site hosted by the Competitive Enterprise Institute:
Cultural myths often stand in the way of human progress—in some cases producing devastating consequences. In fact, today millions of people around the world suffer the painful and often deadly effects of malaria because one person sounded a false alarm. That person is Rachel Carson, author of the 1962 best selling book Silent Spring. Many have praised Carson for raising concerns—some legitimate—about problems associated with the overuse of chemicals. Yet her extreme rhetoric generated a culture of fear, resulting in policies have deprived many people access to life-saving chemicals. In particular, many nations curbed the use of the pesticide DDT for malaria control because Carson created unfounded fears about the chemical. As the world commemorates the 100th birthday (May 27, 2007) of the late Rachel Carson, it is time to acknowledge the unintended, adverse effects of Carson’s legacy and find ways to correct them.
Further reading: John Tierney, “Fateful Voice of a Generation Still Drowns Out Real Science”
Carson was right. Malaria fighting in Africa has not been hampered by any ban on DDT, since the "bans" all include a provision excepting the fight of malaria.
In fact, in that NAS document you quote incompletely, NAS laid out the dangers of DDT:
Don't take my word for it; check out the US Fish and Wildlife Service information on Carson and DDT. Or come on over to my blog, and we'll set you on a path for good data: www.timpanogos.wordpress.com
Posted by: Ed Darrell | Sunday, August 12, 2007 at 08:29 PM