Rachel Carson was an American hero. In the early 1960s, she was the first to warn that a pesticide called DDT could accumulate in the environment, the first to show that it could harm fish, birds, and other wildlife, the first to warn that its overuse would render it ineffective, and the first to predict that more natural means of pest control – like bacteria that killed mosquito larvae – should be used instead.
Unfortunately, the PBS documentary neglected to mention that in her groundbreaking book, Silent Spring, Carson had made one critical mistake – and it cost millions of people their lives.
The first case of mass pathological empathy in the modern world, a repudiation of science in the moral cause to relieve unnecessary human suffering. .
Instead, replaced with the most ancient of religions, paganism, the worship of nature.
Where human lives are literally sacrificed on an altar to wild animals,
A conversion back to worshiping the god of chaos, pre- Mosaic law.
And the false science chock full of lies to perpetuate and ideology in many areas continues to this day.
Ruckelshaus was the real criminal.
Exactly. He later admitted that he knew that the case against DDT was hysteria and banned it anyway. Evil is pretty much defined by such actions. Nixon created the agency and power associated with the EPA and its directors.
Rachel Carson rode the first significant wave of pseudo-environmental hysteria. In the late sixties, it was “common knowledge” that DDT caused thinning of egg shells of raptors and other birds. In her book, ‘Trashing The Planet’, Dixie Lee Ray (former Washington State Governor) documented that there was no evidence to support Carson’s allegations of DDT being responsible for egg shell thinning other than a single shoddy study that no reputable journal would publish and instead was published in one called Poultry Digest. That “study” was an experiment where chickens were fed a diet with DDT but without Calcium and compared the results to a control group fed a normal (DDT free) diet including Calcium. The predictable results were what became “common knowledge” of the effects of DDT.
Dixie Lee Ray was the opposite of today’s politicians as she was an actual scientist, and was not afraid to criticize the environmental movement. She was also a staunch defender of free enterprise, a Democrat in the days when they were likely to the right of Donald Trump.
it was “common knowledge” that DDT caused thinning of egg shells of raptors and other birds.
I remember, about 50 years ago, a seemingly unending number of shoddy TV documentaries beating the viewers over the head with that. Then I was bombarded by that same bilge through all of the science magazines that the junior high school I attended had subscribed to. In addition, I was expected to believe it all and regurgitate it intact, particularly in Grade 10.
I thought it was hogwash and horsefeathers back then and I still do.
John Chittick
I remember Dixie Lee Ray well. I bought a number of her books and handed them out at the time. Now I don’t have a copy! ha.
She was a very well reasoned logical thinker. It’s too bad she wasn’t more widely read.
“There is poetry here,” wrote one reviewer.
I wonder if Rachel would have written so poetically about human death?
Yes. “Roses are red, violets are blue, I love chairman Mao, and so do you.”
Roses are red
Violets are blue
I love communism
And you better do, too.
I prefer:
“There once was a Marxist named Lenin
Who did two or three million men in;
That’s a lot to have done-in,
But where he did one in,
His follower Stalin did ten in.”
Eliminating DDT caused the death of millions and still is, that is fact not fiction. And now for the Ramadan celebrations update…. 1620 dead, 998 wounded.
Her grandchildren owe millions in reparations!!!
Ha. Arguably, yes.
Of course, nobody who actually owes reparations to their victims ever actually pays up.
Israel is still waiting for the bastards who bankrolled Hitler to cough up the $500 billion they owe for Jewish property stolen or destroyed in the war—enough to clear Israel’s national debt and then some.
As kids we would run through the fogging done to keep the skitters down.
Yup, she probably caused about as much death by inspiring DDT to be banned as the Catholic church caused by banning condoms in aids-ravaged Africa.
As the current extreme crop of warmists are also proving, ideological zealots can cause about as much human death and suffering as any army in history.
And don’t forget all those anti-vaxers, communists, abortion cheerleaders, etc., etc.. Hyping bad science and denying history are the left’s top go-to moves.
Finally, the above ideologies are the only real proof that progressives really do believe in diversity. They will kill ANYONE to advance their virtue-signalling, anti-human agendas.
CO – the black brothers don’t use condoms. It’s anathema.
DDT was wonderful. My mother would spray it on the windows in the spring and flies died all summer.
Rachael didn’t cause the deaths. We did. We drank her kool-aid.
otoh, is it just an issue of *which* deaths, ie *when* they happen?
deaths from the withdrawal of the chemical when it happened, or later when the tsetse fly etc evolve from
those tiny few impervious to std dose?
I personally think it is a difficult call in the long term.
but still very sad. mebbe one of those who died was destined to discover the common denominator bugs have to that evolutionary immunity thing. who knows.
even harder to ferret out the best path when it’s drowned in agenda and propaganda.
by the way:
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/rachel-carson/
She should have gone on the Vaudeville circuit with Margaret Sanger, a little blackface along with some Swastikas and Hammer-Sickle uniforms……”a few dead baby’s here, a few dead baby’s there, ta ta da ta duddely da…….”
I have first hand knowledge of use of DDT.
As a boy, I lived in Hong Kong from 1950 to 1956. It was still a third world city then, and pools of water remain after the monsoons to breed mosquitoes. We all slept under mosquito netting, but could not avoid the pests otherwise.
Then my mother discovered (or it was introduced to the colony) DDT. To apply it you use a spray bottle somewhat resembling a phallic symbol. You store DDT in the small attached cylinder, and pump the big cylinder towards that end. The DDT comes out in a fine spray.
It was well known that ingested in large enough quantities, DDT was a poison. And yet my mother, as well as hundreds of thousands more mothers, had a nightly routine of spraying the base of walls, everywhere in the kitchen, and on the floor and walls around the beds. It was also used as an insect repellent before going into mosquito infested undergrowth.
In short, the whole colony was drowning in DDT. And yet, as far as I know, and I have brought this up with dozens of friends who also lived there then, there was not any case of chicken eggs with thin shells, deaths of birds from ingesting DDT killed insects, or any increase in the frequency of any human disease, then or half a century later. The only net effect seemed to have been drastic decreases in mosquitoes and cases of malaria. Consider this to have been a decade long study with close to a million subjects in a nearly isolated sample. (There was hardly any legal traffic between Hong Kong and Communist China.) And it completely contradicted the conjectures of Rachel Carson, who may have caused more deaths worldwide than Hitler, Stalin, or Mao.
There was a biopic in the works. Here’s me at the time: https://www.takimag.com/article/the_silent_spring_that_wont_shut_up_kathy_shaidle/
Get the book ECO-FREAKS it tells about how Carson lied and faked all the evidence which got DDT banned like the effects on Bird Eggs and Human Health