Silent Spring turns 50

[kennyc]

Fifty years ago this month The New Yorker began publishing Rachel Carson's Silent Spring. A series of three articles -- excerpts from the book that would be published that September -- appeared on June 16, 23, and 30, 1962. Under the banner of "A Reporter at Large," Carson's account of environmental peril resulting from the overabundant use of petrochemical-based pesticides unfolded between cartoons and genteel ads for airlines, tasteful upscale merchandise, hotels, and restaurants. It's impossible for anyone not then an adult to imagine what it would have been like to read these pieces in 1962, a time when such chemicals were generally regarded as a modern miracle for home gardeners and industrial agriculture alike. "We thought these things were safe," said my mother, who read Silent Spring as it rolled out in The New Yorker.

Reading Silent Spring today, it is disquieting to realize how much was already known in 1962 about the environmental health impacts of petrochemicals. Even more shocking is to recognize how little our regulatory response to these chemicals' effects has changed, despite the past five decades' great advances in scientific understanding.

Best known for its alarming account of DDT's decimation of birdlife across the United States, Silent Spring is widely credited with sparking the public concern that lead to the chemical's ban in the US ten years later. "Over increasingly large areas of the United States, spring now comes unheralded by the return of birds, and the early mornings, once filled with the beauty of bird song, are strangely silent," Carson wrote, describing the toll pesticide use had taken on American birds. Without changes in practice, brought about in part by Silent Spring, the bald eagle (whose numbers had plummeted to about 400 breeding pairs in the continental US by 1963) might well have disappeared from the lower 48 states.
....

http://www.theatlantic.com/health/ar...rns-50/258926/

[Greg Anos]

The book that killed millions of people...

[kennyc]

Thank Gawd!

[Xanthe]

Still haven't read it....

[VaporPunk]

Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward

The book that killed millions of people...

Huh? Joking? Serious? I honestly don't know what you're on about?

I was supposed to read this in college but never got around to it. I'm pretty sure I skipped class to avoid exposing my ignorance.

[andyh2000]

Originally Posted by VaporPunk

Huh? Joking? Serious? I honestly don't know what you're on about?

I was supposed to read this in college but never got around to it. I'm pretty sure I skipped class to avoid exposing my ignorance.

I aassume he's referring to the demonising of DDT which is very effective against mosquitoes and other bugs and can be used safely. Stop killing mosquitoes and more people get ill.

Andrew

[kennyc]

Regardless of Ralph's warped take on the book, it was a landmark book which almost single-handedly started the environmental movement and all the good things that have come from it.

[Greg Anos]

Originally Posted by andyh2000

I aassume he's referring to the demonising of DDT which is very effective against mosquitoes and other bugs and can be used safely. Stop killing mosquitoes and more people get ill.

Andrew

I'll be more precise.

Malaria.

It used to endemic to the southeastern US, up the Atlantic coast to the D.C. area. It was killed out in the 1930's by a combination of quinine and DDT to kill the Anopholes mosquito.

Same for Southern Europe.

The was a world wide effort to eradicate it world wide, just like smallpox. By 1962, deaths from Malaria were down to 800 a year world wide. There was hope it could be eradicated by 1977.

Then came the DDT ban, caused by Silent Spring. The few surviving reservoirs of Malaria exploded, and by 1977 there were 500,000 deaths a year. Now there are 700,000-800,000 deaths a year by Malaria.

All caused by this book.

But since it isn't in the US and Europe, that didn't matter. And luckily, the Plasmodium hasn't re-established itself in the First World. (A lot of careful Public Health work over the years.) Why do you think Bill Gates chose Malaria as the reason to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to try to create an effective vaccine with his charitable trust?

Not the record of Das Capital/The Communist Manifesto but certainly an A team killer book.

(For those who are interested, I have a degree in Micro/Molecular Biology. Epidemiology is just one of the things I studied...)

I guess this is one of the good things from the environmental movement....

Drop down and read my tag line...

[Witty Username]

Originally Posted by kennyc

Regardless of Ralph's warped take on the book

Warped? There's a lot of evidence to back up the assertion that Silent Spring wasn't/isn't accurate in the effects of DDT.

[bill_mchale]

Originally Posted by kennyc

Regardless of Ralph's warped take on the book, it was a landmark book which almost single-handedly started the environmental movement and all the good things that have come from it.

And all the bad things. Lets be honest, there is an awful lot of absolutism in the environmental movement and some of the more extreme members of the movement really put the environment ahead of people (which logically is the most important reason to be for the environment in the first place).

Just to provide an example; you will probably find it impossible to find any method of power generation that is not opposed by some environmentalists. Wind turbines kill birds, hydro-power kills fish, the chemicals used to create solar cells create toxic waste, nuclear power (which even if you include the use of nuclear weapons has killed fewer people by far in the last 70 years than coal power) creates radioactive waste...

--
Bill

[kennyc]

And a lot of good. More good than bad in my opinion. Mankind has raped and violated the planet and we will likely die in our own filth because we were not more concerned and careful about how we dealt with nature.

P.S. DDT is only a minor issue in the age of the cosmos.

Oh and Ralph, I could care less about your degree particularly since you don't work in the field and are clearly biased on this issue.

This book was not, is not responsible for malaria. If DDT had not been banned, what other results would we have seen? Difficult to say, but I suspect worse that what happened. As always there are many ways to deal with issues. We as a species must learn to live as part of our environment without destroying it. This book and the environmental movement have brought that to light, but I see little chance that we will be able to pull out of the nose-dive while those like Ralph deny both the ravaging of the environment and global warming etc. etc. etc.

[bill_mchale]

Originally Posted by kennyc

And a lot of good. More good than bad in my opinion. Mankind has raped and violated the planet and we will likely die in our own filth because we were not more concerned and careful about how we dealt with nature.

Species go extinct. If humans don't get off of Earth, we will eventually go extinct as well, regardless of whether or not we leave a pristine Earth behind or not.

As for whether the environmental movement has done more harm than good, I think that remains to be seen. Was some correction needed to the level of damage we were doing up to the 1950s and 60s? Absolutely. Have the corrections that have been implemented really going to save the planet/us? Well we will see.

P.S. DDT is only a minor issue in the age of the cosmos.

Tell that to the millions who have contracted malaria in the last 50 years.

Oh and Ralph, I could care less about your degree particularly since you don't work in the field and are clearly biased on this issue.

In this case, does bias mean disagrees with you? Or are you going to be fair and admit you might be biased as well? And which field are you referring to? The field health? Or Pesticides? Or Environmentalism?

This book was not, is not responsible for malaria. If DDT had not been banned, what other results would we have seen? Difficult to say, but I suspect worse that what happened. As always there are many ways to deal with issues. We as a species must learn to live as part of our environment without destroying it. This book and the environmental movement have brought that to light, but I see little chance that we will be able to pull out of the nose-dive while those like Ralph deny both the ravaging of the environment and global warming etc. etc. etc.

Its hard to say what other effects might have occurred had DDT not been banned... But it is fair to say that banning DDT might have eliminated our one chance of eradicating malaria.

--
Bill

[kennyc]

You are entitled to your bias as well as Ralph is, that doesn't make it true.

bi·as/ˈbīəs/
Noun:
Prejudice in favor of or against one thing, person, or group compared with another, usually in a way considered to be unfair.
Verb:
Show prejudice for or against (someone or something) unfairly: "the tests were biased against women"; "a biased view of the world".

[Greg Anos]

Yep, I'm just a biased, dumb, redneck...

Here's a couple articles from no-dumb redneck sites you might want to consider...

http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/v...ry.asp?id=1259

http://timpanogos.wordpress.com/2010...laria-in-2008/

I'd like to give you the original WHO historical numbers, but they took everything down from before 2000. (They used to have them back to 1940, but funny, they don't have them now....)

[SteveEisenberg]

I noticed that the OP article was on the Atlantic web site, but not in their magazine. Instead, the article the web piece is closely based on was published in a much lower circulation magazine. I wonder if it was submitted first to the Atlantic magazine, and web publication is their compromise.

If they rejected it for being one-sided, I applaud the rejection.

It's been so long since I read the book, I could go any way here. Say it's mostly right. Or say it's the founding text of a quasi-religion. Or say that I'm glad MobileRead's lightly enforced anti-political-discussion/anti-religion policy means I've already said too much.