Silent Spring, Rachel Carson鈥檚 landmark warning about the indiscriminate use of pesticides, turns 50 this month. By extension, that puts the environmental movement also at the half-century mark 鈥 along with the bitter, divisive argument that continues over the book and the movement it spawned.
The terms of that argument, which emerged in the brutal reaction to Silent Spring from those who saw it as a warning rather than a threat, haven鈥檛 changed much. And they leave us with a vexing question: Why do we fight? How is it that the environment we all share is the subject of partisan debate? After all, the right and the left inhabit the same planet, even if it doesn鈥檛 always seem that way.
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Carson鈥檚 book was controversial before it even was a book. In June 1962, three long excerpts were published by magazine. They alarmed the public, which deluged the Department of Agriculture and other agencies with demands for action, and outraged the chemical industry and its allies in government.
In late August 1962, after he was asked about pesticides at a press conference, President Kennedy ordered his science adviser to form a commission to investigate the problems, the president said, brought to light by 鈥淢iss Carson鈥檚 book鈥.
The fightback
A month later, when Silent Spring was published, the outlines of the fight over pesticides had hardened. Armed with a substantial war chest 鈥 Carson鈥檚 publisher heard it was $250,000 鈥 pesticide makers launched an attack aimed at discrediting Silent Spring and destroying its author.
The offensive included a widely distributed parody of Carson鈥檚 famous opening chapter about a town where no birds sang, and countless fact-sheets extolling the benefits of pesticides to human health and food production. Silent Spring was described as one-sided and unbalanced to any media that would listen. Some did listen: Time magazine called the book 鈥渉ysterical鈥 and 鈥減atently unsound鈥.
Carson鈥檚 critics pushed her to the left of the political spectrum, to a remote corner of the freaky fringe, which at the time included organic farmers, food faddists and anti-fluoridationists.
One pesticide maker, which threatened to sue if Silent Spring was published, was more explicit: Carson, the company claimed, was in league with 鈥渟inister parties鈥 whose goal was to undermine American agriculture and free enterprise in order to further the interests of the Soviet Union and its Eastern European satellites. The word 鈥渃ommunist鈥 鈥 in 1962 the most potent of insults 鈥 wasn鈥檛 used, but it was understood. Silent Spring was un-American, said its more ardent detractors.
And there the two sides sit, 50 years later. On one side of the environmental debate are the perceived soft-hearted scientists and those who would preserve the natural order; on the other are the hard pragmatists of industry and their friends in high places, the massed might of the establishment.
Substitute climate change for pesticides, and the argument plays out the same now as it did a half-century ago. President Kennedy鈥檚 would ultimately affirm Carson鈥檚 claims about pesticides, but then as now, nobody ever really gives an inch.
Rise of malaria
Carson was also accused of having written a book that, though it claimed to be concerned with human health, would instead contribute directly to death and disease on a massive scale by stopping the use of the insecticide DDT in the fight against malaria.
One irate letter to The New Yorker complained that Carson鈥檚 鈥渕ischief鈥 would make it impossible to raise the funds needed to continue the effort to eradicate malaria, and its author wondered if the magazine鈥檚 legendary standards for accuracy and fairness had fallen. Apparently unaware of the distinction between science authors and nudists, the letter writer referred to Carson as a 鈥渘aturist鈥.
The claim that Rachel Carson is responsible for the devastations of malaria, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, has gained renewed traction in recent years. The American Enterprise Institute and other free-market conservatives have defended the safety and efficacy of DDT; and the claim of Carson鈥檚 鈥済uilt鈥 in the deaths of millions of Africans is routinely parroted by people who are clueless about the content of Silent Spring or the sources of the attacks now made against it.
The Competitive Enterprise Institute, a limited-government, free-enterprise think tank, maintains the website rachelwaswrong.org, which details Carson鈥檚 complicity in the continuing plague of malaria.
In 2004, the late writer Michael Crichton offered a bite-sized and easy-to-remember indictment of Carson鈥檚 crime: 鈥淏anning DDT,鈥 Crichton wrote, 鈥渒illed more people than Hitler.鈥 This came in the form of , but in interviews Crichton made it clear this was what he believed.
Ideologically moderate
Rachel Carson, who stoically weathered misinformation campaigns against her before her death from breast cancer in 1964, would find the current situation all-too predictable. As she said once in a speech after the release of Silent Spring, many people who have not read the book nonetheless 鈥渄isapprove of it heartily鈥.
Rachel Carson never called for the banning of pesticides. She made this clear in every public pronouncement, repeated it in an hour-long television documentary about Silent Spring, and even testified to that effect before the US Senate. Carson never denied that there were beneficial uses of pesticides, notably in combating human diseases transmitted by insects, where she said they had not only been proven effective but were morally 鈥渘ecessary鈥.
鈥淚t is not my contention,鈥 Carson wrote in Silent Spring, 鈥渢hat chemical insecticides must never be used. I do contend that we have put poisonous and biologically potent chemicals indiscriminately into the hands of persons largely or wholly ignorant of their potentials for harm. We have subjected enormous numbers of people to contact with these poisons, without their consent and often without their knowledge.鈥
Many agreed. Editorialising shortly after The New Yorker articles appeared, the New York Times wrote that Carson had struck the right balance: 鈥淢iss Carson does not argue that chemical pesticides must never be used,鈥 the Times said, 鈥渂ut she warns of the dangers of misuse and overuse by a public that has become mesmerised by the notion that chemists are the possessors of divine wisdom and that nothing but benefits can emerge from their test tubes.鈥
Pesticide ban myth
Carson did not seek to end the use of pesticides 鈥 only their heedless overuse at a time when it was all but impossible to escape exposure to them. Aerial insecticide spraying campaigns over forests, cities and suburbs; the routine application of insecticides to crops by farmers at concentrations far above what was considered 鈥渟afe鈥; and the residential use of insecticides in everything from shelf paper to aerosol 鈥渂ombs鈥 had contaminated the landscape in exactly the same manner as the then-pervasive testing of nuclear weapons 鈥 a connection Carson made explicit in Silent Spring.
鈥淚n this now universal contamination of the environment,鈥 Carson wrote, 鈥渃hemicals are the sinister and little-recognised partners of radiation in changing the very nature of the world 鈥 the very nature of its life.鈥
The Competitive Enterprise Institute 鈥 to its credit 鈥 acknowledges that Carson did not call for the banning of pesticides in Silent Spring. But it claims that Carson鈥檚 caveat about their value in fighting disease was so overwhelmed by her general disapproval of their use that 鈥渘egative publicity鈥 around Silent Spring halted the use of DDT against malaria, notably in sub-Saharan Africa where some 90 percent of the world鈥檚 malaria cases occur.
It鈥檚 true that Carson found little good to say about DDT or any of its toxic cousins 鈥 the chlorinated aromatic hydrocarbon insecticides developed in the years after World War II and after the Swiss chemist Paul Muller had won a Nobel Prize for discovering DDT. But it鈥檚 a stretch to see how the mood surrounding Silent Spring was the prime cause of DDT鈥檚 exit from the fight against malaria.
And, as the New York Times and other publications proved, it was understood by anyone who took time to read Silent Spring that Carson was not an absolutist seeking to stop all pesticide use.
Waning DDT interest
DDT had been effective against malaria in Europe, in Northern Africa, in parts of India and southern Asia, and even in the southern United States where the disease was already being eradicated by other means. But these were mostly developed areas. Using DDT in places like sub-Saharan Africa, with its remote and hard-to-reach villages, had long been considered problematic. It was an old story and one still repeated: Africa was everybody鈥檚 lowest priority.
And in any case, the World Health Organization (WHO) had begun to question its malaria-eradication programme even before Silent Spring was published. One object lesson was that the heavy use of DDT in many parts of the world was producing new strains of mosquitoes resistant to the insecticide. Just as can happen with antibiotics, the use of an environmental poison clears susceptible organisms from the ecosystem and allows organisms with immunity to take over.
The WHO also faced declining interest in the disease among scientists, as well as sharp funding cuts from the international community.
When, in 1972, the recently created US Environmental Protection Agency banned DDT for most domestic uses, this ruling had no force in other parts of the world, so the insecticide remained part of the international anti-malaria arsenal. The US continued to manufacture and export DDT until the mid-1980s, and it has always been available from pesticide makers in other countries.
Still with us
One result is that DDT is still with us, globally adrift in the atmosphere from spraying operations in various parts of the world, and also from its continuing volatilisation from soils in which it has lain dormant for decades.
The threat of DDT to wildlife 鈥 as a deadly neurotoxin in many species and a destroyer of reproductive capabilities in others 鈥 has never been in doubt. Carson鈥檚 claims in Silent Spring about DDT鈥檚 connection to human cancer and other disorders have not been completely resolved.
The US National Toxicology Program lists DDT as 鈥渞easonably anticipated to be a human carcinogen鈥. The same holds for two of its common break-down products, DDD and DDE, which are also suspected of causing developmental problems in humans.
These are cloudy but worrisome presumptions. DDT is stored in fat tissues 鈥 including ours 鈥 and that storage is amplified with repeated exposures over time and through food chains, with unpredictable consequences. We walk around with our personal body-burden of DDT, a poison we still consume both from decades-old residuals and its ongoing uses. If Rachel Carson hoped to end the use of DDT and our exposure to it, she did a lousy job.
In 2006, the World Health Organization announced a renewed commitment to fighting malaria with DDT, mainly in Africa 鈥 where the WHO had never lifted its approval for this purpose. The move was backed by environmental groups, as it surely would have been by Rachel Carson had she been with us still.
This article first appeared in magazine.
Profile: William Souder is author of , published on 4 September.
