The Green Death -- Silent Spring

UPDATE, 2:57, 18 Feb 2010: We were just provided the following information from a member of the scientific community concerning DDT which we felt should be included as more data was made available to us. Until I received the link to the article in email, I had no idea this was such a huge problem in a lot of the 3rd world countries with the large number of malaria deaths reported each year. Why are we not hearing much about all the deaths? All this money for AIDs but how much goes to combat malaria to erradicate it from the face of the earth?

A couple comments about the malaria/DDT situation:

The number dead now exceeds 100 Million. See: Malaria Clock - It is using WHO figures

Here is another great "FAQ about DDT"

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For every article praising Rachel Carson and her book Silent Spring we find an article taking the opposing view. After reading this article on The Green Death, we started researching and found the most balanced article comes from Bill Moyer, PBS, Rachel Carson and DDT -- A Renewed Controversy published Sep 21, 2007.

Trust us, it was not easy to find any article that was even remotely balanced on the issue of Rachel Carson, Silent Spring, and DDT. We have read some pretty ridiculous claims on both sides of the issue but Bill Moyer's article does a good job of giving facts including Senator (Dr.) Tom Coburn's assessment of Rachel Carson and DDT.

The centenary of Rachel Carson's birth has been the cause of much celebration (see our profile) and of some renewed criticism. Criticism aside, few can debate the impact that SILENT SPRING has had on our natural world, and in inspiring citizens around the globe to work to protect it. Many credit Carson with inspiring the creation of the EPA, as well as the passage of the Clean Air Act and the Endangered Species Act, and laying the groundwork for the environmental movement. Before her landmark book, biologist E.O Wilson writes, "Ecology was near the bottom of scientific disciplines in prestige and support; few Americans even knew what the word meant."

Yet Carson's legacy will forever be intertwined with the chemical DDT and the malaria fight. "A lot of people have used Carson to push their own agendas," explains Roger Bate of the American Enterprise Institute. "We just have to be a little careful when you're talking about someone who died in 1964."

Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) recently put a halt to a bill proposed by Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin (D-MD) that would have honored Rachel Carson for her, "legacy of scientific rigor coupled with poetic sensibility," 100 years after her birth. According to his spokesman, Coburn "opposes these measures honoring Carson because one tragic aspect of Carson's legacy is that unscientific DDT policies have led to, and continue to lead to, millions of preventable deaths in malaria-stricken countries."

Senator Coburn is not alone in his recent criticism of Carson. On his Web site, he invites those interested in reading "more about why Rachel Carson's science was wrong." Rachelwaswrong.org, a Web site hosted by the free-market think-tank, Conservative Enterprise Institute, concludes that, "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." This fervor has been a common note in criticism since the book's release, even though Carson never called for a ban on pesticides — only for study and caution.

Even noted novelist Michael Crichton, in his latest book THE STATE OF FEAR, highlights how he believes alarmists in the environmental movement are doing more harm than good. In a speech to the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco he explained, "The greatest challenge facing mankind is the challenge of distinguishing reality from fantasy, truth from propaganda...As an example of this challenge, I want to talk today about environmentalism."

Excerpt: Read more at Rachel Carson and DDT -- A Renewed Controversy

We particularly took note of the last paragraph with quotes from Michael Crichton's book, The State of Fear, because he talks about distinguishing reality from fantasy and truth from propaganda for starters in about environmentalism. We would have to agree with his assessment.

The bottom line seems to be a lack of Common Sense on the part of the environmentalists over the years by pushing political agendas and ignoring facts. The overuse of DDT was likely a contributing problem in the agriculture community in developing countries which also have a huge malaria problem based on their location in the tropics. This overuse may have led to some malaria carrying mosquitoes becoming resistent to the full effects of DDT. What we need is scientific facts not hysteria.

This hysteria has become a trademark of the environmental movement by substituting fiction for facts in many instances over the years. It continues today with the Global Warming hysteria that is the new agenda for the environmentalist movement. It has been well documented in recent months that this political environmentalist Global Warming movement was based on missing and fraudulent use of data to push their agenda but that hasn't stopped them or even slowed some of them down in continuing to push Global Warming. We would bet that same tenancity went into the calls for the ban of DDT back in the 60's and 70's continuing today.

It is well past time that what happened with DDT to treat malaria and now the latest, Global Warming does not happen in the future where a political agenda is pushed without facts to back it up. The scientific community of the world owes it to everyone to provide the facts and scientific data to back up their conclusions in order for rationale decisions to be made. No more do we want to see flawed or missing data from the scientific community as their push their political agenda. This group of political scientists have given the men and women who are honest and document their data a black eye. Political agendas need to be removed from science and if scientists cannot do that for whatever reason, then they need to resign and run for office or become lobbyist to push their agenda and leave the scientific research to the honest scientists.

That said, we believe every pesticide should be tested and closely monitored to determine the carcinogenic effects if any are present. Most importantly pesticides should only used for the purpose and in the quantities it was intended. In this case, DDT should not have been overused in agriculture in tropical climates where malaria is still a huge problem today. It's purpose was to eradicate malaria carrying mosquitoes and that's what its main purpose should have remained. The old addage "if a little is good, more is better" certainly does not hold true with pesticides or other chemicals.

Read the links including the one, Myths about DDT and decide for yourself which side is right or if both are part right and part wrong. What we do know after all has been written on both sides is that malaria is still a major problem today and something needs done. Environmental radicalism to push an agenda is not good for anyone when its effects causes the loss of human life as has happened with DDT and malaria.

We welcome anyone who wants to write an opinion on either side of the the issue of DDT as long as facts are used. We will keep your comments anonymous if you so desire.

The Green Death
Hot Air
February 16, 2010 by Doctor Zero

Who is the worst killer in the long, ugly history of war and extermination? Hitler? Stalin? Pol Pot? Not even close. A single book called Silent Spring killed far more people than all those fiends put together.

Published in 1962, Silent Spring used manipulated data and wildly exaggerated claims (sound familiar?) to push for a worldwide ban on the pesticide known as DDT – which is, to this day, the most effective weapon against malarial mosquitoes. The Environmental Protection Agency held extensive hearings after the uproar produced by this book… and these hearings concluded that DDT should not be banned. A few months after the hearings ended, EPA administrator William Ruckleshaus over-ruled his own agency and banned DDT anyway, in what he later admitted was a “political” decision. Threats to withhold American foreign aid swiftly spread the ban across the world.

The resulting explosion of mosquito-borne malaria in Africa has claimed over sixty million lives. This was not a gradual process – a surge of infection and death happened almost immediately. The use of DDT reduces the spread of mosquito-borne malaria by fifty to eighty percent, so its discontinuation quickly produced an explosion of crippling and fatal illness. The same environmental movement which has been falsifying data, suppressing dissent, and reading tea leaves to support the global-warming fraud has studiously ignored this blood-drenched “hockey stick” for decades.

The motivation behind Silent Spring, the suppression of nuclear power, the global-warming scam, and other outbreaks of environmentalist lunacy is the worship of centralized power and authority. The author, Rachel Carson, didn’t set out to kill sixty million people – she was a fanatical believer in the newly formed religion of radical environmentalism, whose body count comes from callousness, rather than blood thirst. The core belief of the environmental religion is the fundamental uncleanliness of human beings. All forms of human activity are bad for the environment… most especially including the activity of large private corporations. Deaths in faraway Africa barely registered on the radar screen of the growing Green movement, especially when measured against the exhilarating triumph of getting a sinful pesticide banned, at substantial cost to an evil corporation.

Those who were initiated into the higher mysteries of environmentalism saw the reduction of the human population as a benefit, although they’re generally more circumspect about saying so in public these days. As quoted by Walter Williams, the founder of the Malthusian Club of Rome, Alexander King, wrote in 1990: “My own doubts came when DDT was introduced. In Guayana, within two years, it had almost eliminated malaria. So my chief quarrel with DDT, in hindsight, is that it has greatly added to the population problem.” Another charming quote comes from Dr. Charles Wurster, a leading opponent of DDT, who said of malaria deaths: “People are the cause of all the problems. We have too many of them. We need to get rid of some of them, and this is as good a way as any.”

Like the high priests of global warming, Rachel Carson knew what she was doing. She claimed DDT would actually destroy all life on Earth if its use continued – the “silent spring” of the title is a literal description of the epocalypse she forecast. She misused a quote from Albert Schweitzer about atomic warfare, implying the late doctor agreed with her crusade against pesticide by dedicating her book to him… when, in fact, Schweitzer viewed DDT as a “ray of hope” against disease-carrying insects. Some of the scientists attempting to debunk her hysteria went so far as to eat chunks of DDT to prove it was harmless, but she and her allies simply ignored them, making these skeptics the forerunners of today’s “global warming deniers” – absolutely correct and utterly vilified. William Ruckleshaus disregarded nine thousand pages of testimony when he imposed the DDT ban. Then as now, the science was settled… beneath a mass of politics and ideology.

Another way Silent Spring forecast the global-warming fraud was its insistence that readers ignore the simple evidence of reality around them. One of the founding myths of modern environmentalism was Carson’s assertion that bird eggs developed abnormally thin shells due to DDT exposure, leading the chicks to be crushed before they could hatch. As detailed in this American Spectator piece from 2005, no honest experimental attempt to produce this phenomenon has ever succeeded – even when using concentrations of DDT a hundred times greater than anything that could be encountered in nature. Carson claimed thin egg shells were bringing the robin and bald eagle to the edge of extinction… even as the bald eagle population doubled, and robins filled the trees. Today, those eagles and robins shiver in a blanket of snow caused by global warming.

The DDT ban isn’t the only example of environmental extremism coming with a stack of body bags. Mandatory gas mileage standards cause about 2,000 deaths per year, by compelling automakers to produce lighter, more fragile cars. The biofuel mania has led resources to be shifted away from growing food crops, resulting in higher food prices and starvation. Worst of all, the economic damage inflicted by the environmentalist religion directly correlates to life-threatening reductions in the human standard of living. The recent earthquake in Haiti is only the latest reminder that poverty kills, and collectivist politics are the most formidable engine of poverty on Earth.

Environmental extremism is a breathless handmaiden for collectivism. It pours a layer of smooth, creamy science over a relentless hunger for power. Since the boogeymen of the Green movement threaten the very Earth itself with imminent destruction, the environmentalist feels morally justified in suspending democracy and seizing the liberty of others. Of course we can’t put these matters to a vote! The dimwitted hicks in flyover country can’t understand advanced biochemistry or climate science. They might vote the wrong way, and we can’t risk the consequences! The phantom menaces of the Green movement can only be battled by a mighty central State. Talk of representation, property rights, and even free speech is madness when such a threat towers above the fragile ecosphere, wheezing pollutants and coughing out a stream of dead birds and drowned polar bears. You can see why the advocates of Big Government would eagerly race across a field of sustainable, organic grass to sweep environmentalists into their arms, and spin them around in the ozone-screened sunlight.

Excerpt: Read More at Hot Air