21st Cent Sci & Techn

oops see other node

prolly redumbdent see DDT

FUNDING

Africa Fighting Malaria has received $30,000 from ExxonMobil since 1998.

2004

$30,000 ExxonMobil Foundation

Source: ExxonMobil 2004 Worldwide Giving Report

SOURCES

ExxonMobil 2004 Worldwide Giving Report

2004 Worldwide Contributions and Community Investments Public Information and Policy Researchhttp://research.greenpeaceusa.org/?a=view&d=4380

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The environmentalist assault on the chemical DDT has come at an extremely high cost in human life. It is impossible to know how many people have died needlessly from malaria, yellow fever, leishmaniasis, dengue fever and other insect-borne diseases in the absence of DDT, but it must be millions.

Many environmental groups cut their teeth pushing for bans on agricultural uses of DDT. Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring (1962) was the starting point for much of this, although Carson is certainly not to blame for the environmental crusade that occurred against the chemical after her death in 1964. Silent Spring made important points about the dangers of overuse of agrochemicals, of which DDT was a major component. But it was short on good medical science. For example, Carson led the reader to believe that in one instance, after spraying DDT, a housewife developed leukaemia and died within three months. Such a claim has no scientific validity; in terms of danger to humans, DDT is one of the safest insecticides ever developed.

But while there were serious concerns about the bioaccumulation of DDT up the food chain, and it was rightly phased out for use in agriculture, it still had a valid role in combating public health menaces, notably disease-bearing mosquitos. Not satisfied with having DDT outlawed for agriculture, environmentalists increased pressure for a total ban in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

By 1997, the World Health Assembly had bowed to this pressure, passing a resolution to restrict the use of insecticides in public health, and the United Nations Environment Programme was beginning negotiations towards what would become the Stockholm convention to phase out global use of DDT and 11 other chemicals. Several major environmental organisations were demanding a total ban on DDT by 2007. I attended the negotiations in Geneva in 1999 and Johannesburg in 2000, and recall the change in the position the more responsible green groups took when several hundred malaria scientists, including three Nobel laureates, and some ministries of health from southern African nations demanded that DDT remain available for public health use.

John Quiggin and:{Tim Lambert purport to restore Rachel Carson’s reputation, trashing me and an organisation I helped found, Africa Fighting Malaria, in the process. Their article amounts to ahalf-baked conspiracy theory that breaks down with a cursory review of the facts. The authors’ hope is that by branding me a tobacco lobbyist and claiming the tobacco industry is bankrolling the campaign for DDT, they will convince others to dismiss DDT advocates as industry stooges. They are sadly mistaken.}:

First, the tobacco industry never established the European Science and Environment Forum (ESEF). That allegation was addressed in the Lancet in 2000. ESEF was formed in late 1994 to debate climate change. The vast majority of its funding came from two foundations: the Marit and Hans Rausing Foundation, and the May and Stanley Smith Charitable Trust. The latter became interested in the DDT debate and provided funding through ESEF for the US chapter of Africa Fighting Malaria in 2003.

Second, I was never a tobacco lobbyist. After I wrote two articles on tobacco-related topics in 1996 and 1997, I consulted for Philip Morris, at their request, on international health for a total of about a month in 1998. I never lobbied for the company or promoted cigarettes in any way. I subsequently wrote to Philip Morris asking them to provide funding for a campaign to rehabilitate the use of DDT. This letter, which is now on the web, is the source of nearly all Quiggin and Lambert’s suppositions. Yet I never even had the courtesy of a reply. Philip Morris never funded the campaign, and I haven’t spoken with the company in at least seven years.

Thus without tobacco industry funding, Richard Tren and I set up Africa Fighting Malaria in 2000 in South Africa. Neither of us have had any contact with the tobacco industry since its formation, other than to criticise it. The tobacco industry has publicly opposed the use of DDT for malaria control, largely because of concerns that contaminated plants would not be accepted for production in the EU and other developed countries. AFM led the public outcry against British American Tobacco in 2006 when it opposed the use of DDT in Uganda, absurdly worrying about contamination of its product.

Quiggin and Lambert probably found this information when Googling for “Africa Fighting Malaria” and “tobacco.” It is readily available on AFM’s website, along with a list of the organisation’s funders. AFM does not accept money from malaria control industries—drugs, insecticides or mosquito net manufacturers—nor any governments. Further, a quick look there will show that far from saying that DDT is a panacea, as Quiggin and Lambert assert, AFM continues to explain how complex a disease malaria is, requiring all available techniques to combat it.

Quiggin and Lambert claim that I have managed to pull the wool over the eyes of mainstream journalists, a backhanded compliment. In fact, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the Economist and Nature have all reported correctly on DDT, based on credible and available scientific evidence. As these publications pointed out, although DDT was granted an exemption for public health in the Stockholm treaty and the World Health Organisation (WHO) approved its use for malaria control, no aid agency was purchasing it and some, such as the World Bank and the US government, were actively discouraging its use.

While Chinese and Indian government-backed companies continue to produce DDT for their own public health programmes, and for export, no western company has produced DDT for over a decade. Major chemical companies such as Bayer, Dow Chemical, Du Pont and BASF produce alternative products, and have incentives to see DDT phased out. Bayer actually agitated against the use of DDT, abusing its position as private sector delegate to the Roll Back Malaria Partnership, as reported in the Financial Times. AFM was alone among advocacy groups to raise this as a concern.

The reality is that DDT is probably the most useful insecticide ever used for public health. Despite what Quiggin and Lambert say, the public health provisions of the 1972 US delisting of DDT have been used several times after 1972 in the US to combat plague-carrying fleas, in Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada. DDT still has a place in malaria control, one that has expanded because of sensible recent policies from WHO, the Global Fund and the US government. Quiggin and Lambert are wrong to dismiss WHO’s 2006 support as a restatement of old policy. While DDT has been a WHO-approved insecticide for decades, for many years WHO officials did not promote its use, instead tending to push for insecticide-treated nets. Following WHO statements supporting DDT, some developing-country governments, such as Uganda, have been emboldened to say they want to spray the chemical, even in the face of opposition from local business lobbies.

The environmental movement is not entirely to blame for preventing sensible uses of DDT, but it’s not surprising that it is trying to cleanse history. Its reputation has been dented because of its apparent callousness against the use of a life-saving chemical. Its line, repeated by Quiggin and Lambert, is that environmental groups dropped total opposition to DDT during the Stockholm negotiations. This is misleading. To their credit, some groups, such as the Sierra Club, have come forward with guarded support for DDT. Other groups, such as the South Africa-based Endangered Wildlife Trust, have provided admirable practical assistance to malaria control programs using DDT so that environmental contamination is minimised.....

roger bate 2008

http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/ddtworks

see africa fighting malaria bs exxon to ~ agw?

http://www.alternet.org/environment/ddts-toxic-legacy-continues

Last month's groundbreaking DDT study — linking exposure in the womb to increased risk of breast cancer — represents more than an interesting footnote in the story of this legacy pesticide.

Not only is DDT still in our environment more than 40 years after it was banned in the U.S., it also continues to be sprayed inside homes in many African countries as part of malaria control programs — a practice that could be quadrupling the risk, it turns out, of breast cancer among daughters of women exposed to the chemical during pregnancy.

The study, published in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, looked at breast cancer incidence among daughters of women who were exposed to DDT in the 1960s, when use in the U.S. was widespread. Researchers found that when mothers had higher levels of DDT in their blood, their daughters' risk increased by nearly four times — regardless of family breast cancer history.

Dr. Barbara Cohn, PhD, Director of Child Health and Development Studies at the Public Health Institute in Berkeley, California — and one of the study's authors — describes the significance of the findings:

"This 54-year study is the first to provide direct evidence that chemical exposures for pregnant women may have lifelong consequences for their daughters' breast cancer risk. Environmental chemicals have long been suspected causes of breast cancer, but until now, there have been few human studies to support this idea."

DDT was "Safe"

The study is also significant as a cautionary tale. In the U.S., we have a long and storied history of approving widespread use of pesticides before we fully understand the risk they pose to our health. DDT is the first example in a series of "safer" pesticides that includes organophosphates like chlorpyrifos ("they don't last long in the environment, must be better"), pyrethroids ("the original version was made from flowers!") and neonicotinoids.

[vid]

In every case, dramatic health or environmental harms came to light many, many years after millions of pounds of the chemicals were applied in fields and communities across the country.

The most recent example is Monsanto's flagship herbicide, RoundUp. Earlier this year, the World Health Organization announced that glyphosate, the main ingredient in the most popular pesticide products on the planet, probably causes cancer. Since its introduction, Monsanto marketed RoundUp as the "safer" alternative to more toxic herbicides like atrazine or 2,4-D.

The lesson? Chemicals designed to kill weeds or insects are not likely to be healthy for humans. It's time to find a better way to manage pests.

Mosquitoes, Too

Even when they carry diseases like malaria, insects are better managed without reliance on health-harming pesticides. Malaria is a deadly disease that remains a serious challenge in many countries in Africa. Experience around the world shows that the most effective malaria control programs directly involve the community in addressing the challenge with "integrated vector management" approaches, and tackle the underlying issues — like poverty and lack of access to health care.

Relying on "silver bullet" solutions like spraying DDT inside people's homes is not only less effective, but it also needlessly threatens the health of future generations. My colleague Dr. Abou Thiam of PAN Africa shared his perspective on World Malaria Day this year:

"Significant progress is being made in many African countries in the fight against malaria, without the need to use DDT. It’s high time for a full-fledged transition toward safe, sustainable malaria control. Our children deserve nothing less."

Dr. Cohn's recent study underscores the importance of making this transition sooner than later, for the health of both this generation and those to come.

Search Results

### *Rachel Carson's* Deadly Fantasies - :{Forbes}:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/henrymiller/2012/09/05/rachel-carsons-deadly-fantasies/print/

www.forbes.com/sites/henrymiller/.../rachel-carsons-deadly-fantasies/

Sep 5, 2012 – The legacy of Rachel Carson is that tens of millions of human lives – mostly ... Exposing And Eradicating The Dark World Of Fake Pharmaceuticals ... Her observations about DDT have been condemned by many scientists.

### Rep. Ed Markey: 50 Years After *Rachel Carson's Silent Spring*

www.huffingtonpost.com/.../50-years-after-rachel-car_b_1919597.ht...

Sep 27, 2012 – Today marks the 50th anniversary of Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring. ... The product of four years worth of labor, Carson's Silent Spring carefully and ..... EXCLUSIVE: Man Allegedly Behind Joel Osteen Hoax Speaks Out ...

### The Straight Dope: Was *Rachel Carson* a fraud and is *DDT* actually **...

www.straightdope.com/.../was-rachel-carson-a-fraud-and-is-ddt-actua...

Dec 13, 2002 – Was Rachel Carson a fraud and is DDT actually safe for humans? According to Marjorie Mazel Hecht and [San Jose State University] professor ...

### Setting the record straight on *Rachel Carson*, malaria and *DDT* **...

timpanogos.wordpress.com/.../setting-the-record-straight-on-rachel-c...

Jun 19, 2007 – Setting the record straight on Rachel Carson, malaria and DDT. The contemptible campaign of hoax and calumny against the work and ...

### The American Spectator : *DDT*, Fraud, and Tragedy

spectator.org/archives/2005/02/25/ddt-fraud-and-tragedy

Feb 25, 2005 – Rachel Carson began the countrywide assault on DDT with her 1962 book, Silent Spring. Carson made errors, some designed to scare, about ...

### The Spring is Silent on *DDT* - Llewellyn H. Rockwell Jr. - Mises Daily

mises.org/daily/2236

Jun 28, 2006 – A book called Silent Spring by Rachel Carson was published in 1962, and it eventually created a fantastic backlash ... Indeed, it was a hoax.

### The Lies of *Rachel Carson*

www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/articles/summ02/Carson.html

In 1962, when Rachel Carson published her book Silent Spring, I was delighted. ... I recently learned that a movie honoring Rachel Carson and Silent Spring is ...

### How Important Was *Rachel Carson's Silent Spring* in the Recovery **...

www.scientificamerican.com �� Energy & Sustainability › EarthTalk

Aug 31, 2012 – Rachel Carson's seminal 1962 book, Silent Spring, told the real-life story of how bird populations across the country were suffering as a result ...

[PDF]��

Gordon Edwards, Rachel Carson, and DDT - Nature and **...

www.new-cue.org/quetchenbach%20thoreau%20ASLE.pdf

File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat - Quick View

Gordon Edwards, Rachel Carson, and DDT. The late J. Gordon Edwards is the most initially appealing, substantial, and longest-standing of Carson's post-1962 ...

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am thinker:

J.R. Dunn, consulting editor, has been involved in several fields of business including real estate, infotech, and PR. He managed a real estate corporation in Northern New Jersey for a decade beginning in the late '70s (think Glengarry Glen Ross). During the dot-com epoch, he worked at a pioneering Wall Street business database firm until 9/11 wiped out many of the company's clients. In recent years, he has worked for Novita, a New Jersey political PR agency.

As a writer, J.R. has published three critically acclaimed novels: This Side of Judgment (1994), Days of Cain (1997), and Full Tide of Night (1998). He has also published a number of shorts and articles in various magazines and anthologies.

Additionally, J.R. worked on the academic encyclopedia The International Military Encyclopedia (1992- ) as associate editor for twelve years.

His first book on politics deals with the inexplicably overlooked fact that liberal policies (criminal justice "reform," the CAFE standards, the DDT ban, etc.) tend to kill Americans by the tens of thousands. Provisionally titled Death by Liberalism, the book will be appearing later this year.

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Op/Ed

9/05/2012 @ 12:07PM |11,611 views

Rachel Carson's Deadly Fantasies

By Henry I. Miller and Gregory Conko

We recently passed the 50^th anniversary of Rachel Carson’s best-selling book, “Silent Spring.�� Widely credited with launching the modern environmental movement, it was an emotionally charged but deeply flawed denunciation of the widespread spraying of chemical pesticides for the control of insects. Today, the book is still revered by many, but its legacy is anything but positive.

As detailed by Roger Meiners and Andy Morriss in their scholarly yet very readable analysis, “Silent Spring at 50: Reflections on an Environmental Classic,” Carson exploited her reputation as a well-known nature writer to advocate and legitimatize “positions linked to a darker tradition in American environmental thinking.”Carson “encourages some of the most destructive strains within environmentalism: alarmism, technophobia, failure to consider the costs and benefits of alternatives, and the discounting of human well-being around the world.

Carson’s proselytizing and advocacy raised substantial anxiety about DDT and led to bans in most of the world and to restrictions on other chemical pesticides. But the fears she raised were based on gross misrepresentations and scholarship so atrocious that, if Carson were an academic, she would be guilty of egregious academic misconduct. Her observations about DDT have been condemned by many scientists. In the words of Professor Robert H. White-Stevens, an agriculturist and biology professor at Rutgers University, “If man were to follow the teachings of Miss Carson, we would return to the Dark Ages, and the insects and diseases and vermin would once again inherit the earth.”

In 1992, San Jose State University entomologist J. Gordon Edwards, a long-time member of the Sierra Club and the Audubon Society and a fellow of the California Academy of Sciences, offered a persuasive and comprehensive rebuttal of “Silent Spring. As he explained in “The Lies of Rachel Carson,” a stunning, point by point refutation, “it simply dawned on me that that Rachel Carson was not interested in the truth about [pesticides] and that I was being duped along with millions of other Americans.” He demolished Carson’s arguments and assertions, calling attention to critical omissions, faulty assumptions, and outright fabrications.

Consider, for example, this passage from Edwards’ article: “This implication that DDT is horribly deadly is completely false. Human volunteers have ingested as much as 35 milligrams of it a day for nearly two years and suffered no adverse effects. Millions of people have lived with DDT intimately during the mosquito spray programs and nobody even got sick as a result. The National Academy of Sciences concluded in 1965 that ��in a little more than two decades, DDT has prevented 500 million [human] deaths that would otherwise have been inevitable.’ The World Health Organization stated that DDT had ‘killed more insects and saved more people than any other substance.’”

In addition, DDT was used with dramatic effect to shorten and prevent typhus epidemics during and after WWII when people were dusted with large amounts of it but suffered no ill effects, which is perhaps the most persuasive evidence that the chemical is harmless to humans. The product was such a boon to public health that in 1948 the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to Dr. Paul M��ller for his discovery of the “contact insecticidal action” of DDT.

It is extraordinary that anyone in the mainstream scientific community could continue to embrace sentimental claptrap of “Silent Spring,” so we were surprised to see the commentary, “In Retrospect: Silent Spring,” in the scientific journal Nature in May by evolutionary biologist Rob Dunn. Science is, after all, evidence-based, but Dunn’s puff piece is a flawed and repugnant whitewash of Carson’s failure to present actual evidence to support her assertions, and of the carnage that she caused. It also demonstrates that Dunn knows little about the history or toxicology of DDT.

Although the use of DDT is not risk-free, there is a vast difference between applying large amounts of it in the environment — as farmers sometimes did before it was banned in the United States — and using it carefully and sparingly to fight mosquitoes and other disease-carrying insects, as it is used in a handful of African and Asian countries even today. It is sprayed or dusted indoors in small amounts to prevent mosquitoes from nesting, so exposures are extremely low. The now well-known problems associated with the thinning of raptor’s eggshells– while always exaggerated – can be completely avoided by using DDT with care exclusively in residential areas, because the chemical remains largely near where it is sprayed. No study has ever linked DDT environmental exposure to harm to human health. [DDT --> DDE breast cancer]

A basic principle of toxicology is that the dose makes the poison, and with modern regimens both environmental and human exposures would be very low. But “Silent Spring” condemned essentially all use of chemical insecticides and rejected the firmly established principle that products with known but small risks can offset far larger risks and provide a net safety benefit.

Carson's disingenuous proselytizing spurred public pressure to ban DDT in many countries, with disastrous consequences: a lack of effective control of mosquitoes that carry malaria and other diseases. Malaria imposes huge costs on individuals, families and governments. It inflicts a crushing economic burden on malaria-endemic countries and impedes their economic growth. A study by the Harvard University Center for International Development estimated that a high incidence of malaria reduces economic growth by 1.3 percentage points each year. Compounded over the four decades since the first bans of DDT, that lost growth has made some of the world’s poorest countries an astonishing 40 percent poorer than had there been more effective mosquito control.

It is bad enough that the case against DDT was based on anecdote and innuendo, but Carson and Dunn and the regulators who banned DDT failed to consider the inadequacy of alternatives. Because it persists after spraying, DDT works far better than many pesticides now in use, many of which are just as toxic to birds, mammals, fish and other aquatic organisms. ��And with DDT unavailable, many mosquito-control authorities are depleting their budgets by repeated spraying with expensive, short-acting and marginally effective insecticides.

Another advantage of DDT is that even when mosquitoes become resistant to its killing effects, they are still repelled by it. An occasional dusting of window- and door-frames is extremely effective at keeping mosquitoes out of homes, schools, hospitals, and other buildings. When used in this way, the exploitation of DDT’s repellency also exposes people to lower amounts of insecticide than occurs with the only comparably effective alternative, bed nets soaked in various other pesticides. Moreover, limited DDT spraying does its work at a fraction of the cost.

The legacy of Rachel Carson is that tens of millions of human lives – mostly children in poor, tropical countries �� have been traded for the possibility of slightly improved fertility in raptors. This remains one of the monumental human tragedies of the last century. It is shocking that Dunn, an assistant professor of biology, remains ignorant of Carson’s shortcomings, and deplorable that university students are exposed to a scientist who manifests such ignorance and failure to respect the norms of science. Likewise, Nature’s decision to publish Dunn��s commentary reflects either an antiscientific bias or a failure of peer-review.

Neither Carson nor Dunn appears to appreciate the observation of political scientist and risk analysis expert Aaron Wildavsky that although it is bad to be harmed, it is worse to be harmed in the name of health.

*Henry I. Miller, a physician, is the Robert Wesson Fellow of Scientific Philosophy and Public Policy at Stanford University’s Hoover institution; he was the founding director of the FDA’s Office of Biotechnology. ��Gregory Conko is a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C.

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This article is available online at:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/henrymiller/2012/09/05/rachel-carsons-deadly-fantasies/**

http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/Global_Warming.html

c21

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http://www.forbes.com/sites/henrymiller/2012/09/05/rachel-carsons-deadly-fantasies/print/

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The Lies of Rachel Carson

by Dr. J. Gordon Edwards [SJSU]

(Full text, without tables and illustrations, from the Summer 1992 21st Century)

A well-known entomologist documents some of the misstatements in Carson’s Silent Spring, the 1962 book that poisoned public opinion against DDT and other pesticides.

Entomologist

J. Gordon Edwards

In 1962, when Rachel Carson published her book Silent Spring, I was delighted. I belonged to several environmental-type organizations, had no feelings of respect for industry or big business, had one of my own books published by the Sierra Club, and I had written articles for The Indiana Waltonian, Audubon Magazine, and other environmental magazines.

At the time, I had been engaged in field work at the University of Wyoming research station in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, for three summers and I worked as biological coordinator for the National Park Service in Glacier National Park. I eagerly read the condensed version of Silent Spring in the New Yorker magazine and bought a copy of the book as soon as I could find it in the stores. As I read the first several chapters I noticed many statements that I realized were false; however, one can overlook such things when they are produced by one’s cohorts, and I did just that.

��

As I neared the middle of the book, the feeling grew in my mind that Rachel Carson was really playing loose with the facts and was also deliberately wording many sentences in such a way as to make them imply certain things without actually saying them. She was carefully omitting everything that failed to support her thesis that pesticides were bad, that industry was bad, and that any scientists who did not support her views were bad.

Birds Vs. Human Deaths

I then took notice of her bibliography and realized that it was filled with references from very unscientific sources. Also, each reference was cited separately each time it appeared in the book, thus producing an impressive array of ��references” even though not many different sources were actually cited. I began to lose confidence in Rachel Carson, even though I thought that as an environmentalist I really should continue to support her.

I next looked up some of the references that Carson cited and quickly found that they did not support her contentions about the harm caused by pesticides. When leading scientists began to publish harsh criticisms of her methods and her allegations, it slowly dawned on me that Rachel Carson was not interested in the truth about those topics, and that I really was being duped, along with millions of other Americans.

As a result, I went back to the beginning of the book and read it all again, but this time my eyes were open and I was not lulled into believing that her motives were noble and that her statements could be supported by logic and by scientific fact. I wrote my comments down in rough draft style, and gathered together the scientific articles that refuted what Carson had reported the articles indicated. It was a most frustrating experience.

Finally, I began to join the detractors of Silent Spring, and when hearings were held to determine the fate of DDT in various states of this nation, I paid my own way to some of them so that I could testify against the efforts to ban that life-saving insecticide. It was gratifying to find that great numbers of scientists and health officials whom I had always held in high esteem were also testifying at those hearings, in defense of DDT and in opposition to the rising tide of antipesticide propaganda in environmental publications and in the media.

In testifying and speaking in public, I frequently exposed the misleading references Rachel Carson had cited in her book, presenting her statements from Silent Spring and then reading the truth from the actual publications she was purporting to characterize. This revealed to the audiences just how untruthful and misleading the allegations of Silent Spring really were.

Now, nearly 30 years later, the controversy is still boiling about how truthful Rachel Carson was. I recently learned that a movie honoring Rachel Carson and Silent Spring is being made for television. Because I believe such a movie would further misinform the public, the media, and our legislators, I decided to type up my original rough notes from 1962-1963 and make them available. Here they are, page by page, starting with her dedication.

Dedication: A Lie

Dedication. In the front of the book, Carson dedicates Silent Spring as follows: “To Albert Schweitzer who said ‘Man has lost the capacity to foresee and to forestall. He will end by destroying the Earth.’”

This appears to indicate that the great man opposed the use of insecticides. However, in his autobiography Schweitzer writes, on page 262: “How much labor and waste of time these wicked insects do cause us ... but a ray of hope, in the use of DDT, is now held out to us.” Upon reading his book, it is clear that Schweitzer was worried about nuclear warfare, not about the hazards from DDT!

Page 16. Carson says that before World War II, while developing agents of chemical warfare, it was found that some of the chemicals created in the laboratory were lethal to insects. “The discovery did not come by chance: insects were widely used to test chemicals as agents of death for man.” Carson thus seeks to tie insecticides to chemical warfare. However, DDT was never tested as an “agent of death for man.” It was always known to be nonhazardous to humans! Her implication is despicable.

Page 16. Carson says the pre-war insecticides were simple inorganic insecticides but her examples include pyrethrum and rotenone, which are complex organic chemicals.

Page 17. Carson says arsenic is a carcinogen (identified from chimney soot) and mentions a great many horrible ways in which it is violently poisonous to vertebrates. She then says (page 18): “Modern insecticides are still more deadly,” and she makes a special mention of DDT as an example.

This implication that DDT is horribly deadly is completely false. Human volunteers have ingested as much as 35 milligrams of it a day for nearly two years and suffered no adverse affects. Millions of people have lived with DDT intimately during the mosquito spray programs and nobody even got sick as a result.The National Academy of Sciences concluded in 1965 that “in a little more than two decades, DDT has prevented 500 million [human] deaths that would otherwise have been inevitable.”The World Health Organization stated that DDT had “killed more insects and saved more people than any other substance.” A leading British scientist pointed out that ��If the pressure groups had succeeded, if there had been a world ban on DDT, then Rachel Carson and Silent Spring would now be killing more people in a single year than Hitler killed in his whole holocaust.”

It is a travesty, therefore, if Rachel Carson’s all-out attack on DDT results in any programs lauding her efforts to ban DDT and other life-saving chemicals!

Page 18. Referring to chlorinated hydrocarbon insecticides (like DDT) and organophosphates (like malathion), Carson says they are all “built on a basis of carbon atoms, which are also the indispensable building blocks of the living world, and thus classed as ��organic.’ To understand them we must see how they are made, and how they lend themselves to the modifications which make them agents of death.”

Surely it is unfair of Carson to imply that all insecticides are “agents of death” for animals other than insects.

Page 21. After referring to untruthful allegations that persons ingesting as little as one tenth of a part per million (ppm) of DDT will then store “about 10 to 15 ppm,” Carson states that “such substances are so potent that a minute quantity can bring about vast changes in the body.” (She does not consider the metabolism and breakdown of DDT in humans and other vertebrates, and their excretion in urine, and so on, which prevents the alleged “biological magnification” up food chains from actually occurring.) Carson then states: “In animal experiments, 3 parts per million [of DDT] has been found to inhibit an essential enzyme in heart muscle; only 5 parts per million has brought about necrosis or disintegration of liver cells. ...” This implies that considerable harm to one’s health might result from traces of DDT in the diet, but there has been no medical indication that her statements are true.

On page 22, Carson adds, “... we know that the average person is storing potentially harmful amounts.” This is totally false!

Page 23. Carson says, “the Food and Drug Administration forbids the presence of insecticide residues in milk shipped in interstate commerce.” This is not true, either! The permissible level was 0.5 ppm in milk being shipped interstate.

Page 24. Carson says: “One victim who accidentally spilled a 25 percent industrial solution [of chlordane] on the skin developed symptoms of poisoning within 40 minutes and died before medical help could be obtained. No reliance can be placed on receiving advance warning which might allow treatment to be had in time.”

The actual details regarding this accident were readily available at the time, but Carson evidently chose to distort them. The accident occurred in 1949 in the chemical formulation plant, when a worker spilled a large quantity down the front of her body. The liquid contained 25 pounds of chlordane, 39 pounds of solvent, and 10 pounds of emulsifier (Journal of the American Medical Association, Aug. 13, 1955). Carson’s reference to this as a “25 percent solution” spilled on the skin certainly underplays the severity of that drenching, which was the only account known of such a deadly contamination during the history of chlordane formulation.[so actually 33%?]

Page 28. Carson refers to the origin of organophosphate insecticides like parathion (the insecticide that EPA Administrator William Ruckelshaus recommended as the substitute for DDT). She states that the insecticidal properties of organophosphates were “discovered by a German chemist, Gerhard Schrader, in the late 1930s” and that “Some became the deadly nerve gases. Others, of closely allied structure, became insecticides.”

Actually, the insecticides of that nature were not discovered until after World War II (15 years later than Carson implied) and the similarity of insecticides to the dreaded nerve gases was greatly exaggerated by Carson. Carson’s attempt to spread terror about beneficial insecticides becomes even more vicious:

Pages 36-37. Carson says: “Among the herbicides are some that are classed as ‘mutagens,’ or agents capable of modifying the genes, the materials of heredity. We are rightly appalled by the genetic effects of radiation; how then can we be indifferent to the same effect in chemicals that we disseminate widely in our environment?”

Carson’s comparison between “radiation?" and common herbicides is despicable, for there is a tremendous difference between their mutagenic potentials.

Page 40. Carson claims that “an appalling deluge of chemical pollution is daily poured into the nation’s waterways,” that “Most of them are so stable that they cannot be broken down by ordinary processes,” and that “Often they cannot even be identified.”

These are obviously overstatements designed to worry the reader by using frightening words and intimating that nobody knows what death-dealing chemicals are in the average person’s drinking water. Of course, if they can be detected, they can be identified. The amount of pollutants entering the drinking water of the country was repeatedly analyzed by experts and was found to be below levels that might cause human illness in homes. Carson’s scare-mongering statements would fit more appropriately in the pages of today’s supermarket tabloids.

Pages 50-51. Carson writes that: “Arsenic, the environmental substance most clearly established as causing cancer in man, is involved in two historic cases in which polluted water supplies caused widespread occurrence of cancer.”

I have seen no proof that arsenic causes cancer in humans, and it is known to occur naturally in most kinds of shellfish and other marine life. And, if she were really concerned about public health, Carson should have rejoiced to see that relatively harmless insecticides like DDT were capable of replacing arsenicals and other poisonous inorganic materials!

Page 78. Referring to ��weeds” (which are such foes of healthy crops that they must be decimated before the crops can mature and be harvested, Carson states: “Presumably the weed is taking something from the soil; perhaps it is also contributing something to it.”

She is obviously correct about weeds taking something from the soil as every gardener knows by sad experience, but it takes a tremendous stretch of the imagination to suggest that weeds are desirable in fields of crops!

Carson then refers to a city park in Holland where the soil around the roses was heavily infested by nematodes. Planting marigolds among the roses resulted in the death of the nematodes, she claims, and the roses then flourished. No reference was cited. Based on this unsubstantiated story, Carson concludes that “other plants that we ruthlessly eradicate may be performing a function that is necessary to the health of the soil.”

So, soil with nematodes was just unhealthy anyway, but fields where weeds have crowded out the food crops had healthier soil even before crops were planted? Everyone who personally grows desirable plants will surely disagree with her!

Page 80. Carson says: ��Crabgrass exists only in an unhealthy lawn. It is a symptom, not a disease in itself.�� When the soil is healthy and fertile it is an environment in which crabgrass cannot grow, she says, because other grasses will prevent it from surviving.

Persons who have had crabgrass invade their beautiful lawn will quite rightly object to this wild unsubstantiated statement.

“Astonishing amounts of crabgrass killers” are placed on lawns each year, including mercury, arsenic, and chlordane, she says, relishing the stupidity of nurserymen who have a lifetime of experience. She then cites examples where they “apply 60 pounds of technical chlordane to the acre if they follow directions. If they use another of the many available products, they are applying 175 pounds of metallic arsenic to the acre [highly questionable]. The toll of dead birds is distressing. ... How lethal these lawns may be for human beings is unknown.”

Page 85. Carson says we are “adding... a new kind of havoc—the direct killing of birds, mammals, fishes, and indeed practically every form of wildlife by chemical insecticides indiscriminately sprayed on the land.”

Is it possible that Carson was unaware of the great increases in mammals and game birds harvested by hunters during the years of greatest use of the modern insecticides to which she objects? Is it possible that she was unaware of the tremendous increases in most kinds of North American birds, as documented year after year by participants in the Audubon Christmas Bird Counts? (That abundance was proven by the numbers of birds counted, per observer, on those counts.) The major things that limited numbers of fish during the ”DDT years” was the increasing competition among hordes of fishermen, the damming of multitudes of streams, and the sewage produced by our burgeoning population of healthy, well-fed American people.

Instead of recognizing and appreciating these documented increases of wildlife, Carson says bitterly (page 85): “[Nothing must get in the way of the man with the spray gun. ... The incidental victims of his crusade against insects count as nothing; if robins, pheasants, raccoons, cats, or even livestock happen to inhabit the same bit of earth as the target insects and to be hit by the rain of insect-killing poisons no one must protest.”

Page 87. Carson bemoans the efforts to control the Japanese beetles in Detroit in 1959, saying, “Little need was shown for this drastic and dangerous action.” She then says that a naturalist in Michigan, who she claimed was very well informed, stated that the Japanese beetle had been present in Detroit for more than 30 years. (No entomologist had ever seen one there.) Carson’s naturalist also said that the beetles had not increased there during all that time.

Perhaps she misquoted the naturalist, or perhaps he was just lying, or maybe he simply did not recognize the local Strigoderma beetles that faintly resemble Japanese beetles. Certainly it is impossible that the voracious Japanese beetles were actually present there for 30 years, remaining hidden from all entomologists and home-owners! Everywhere those beetles have invaded they quickly multiplied to a pest status within a few years, causing tremendous damage to flowers, fruits, and (as larvae) destroying the roots of grasses and other plants. Even Rachel Carson should not expect us to believe that in Detroit they displayed entirely different behavior. ...

Page 88. Regarding those Japanese beetles, Carson said that the midwestern states “have launched an attack worthy of the most deadly enemy instead of only a moderately destructive insect.” Thousands of residents of the eastern United States laughed at that ridiculous statement because they had personally experienced the devastation caused by the beetles and their larvae. Incredibly, Carson insisted (page 96) that the Japanese beetle by 1945 “had become a pest of only minor importance. ...”

Page 97. Carson discusses the use of spores of ��milky disease” placed in the soil to kill the beetle larvae, and expresses tremendous confidence in the ability of that bacterium to eradicate them there. As to why they did not fight the epidemic in Michigan by simply using these spores, she explains that it was considered too expensive.

Carson reveals with pleasure the fact that they infect at least 40 other species of beetles, but expresses no concern for environmental harm caused by such a broad-spectrum killer of native insects. To the contrary, on page 99 she attacks the use of pesticides because they “... are not selective poisons; they do not single out the one species of which we desire to be rid.” Evidently she felt that it was all right for bacteria to be broad spectrum poisons, but that pesticides must affect only a single target.

Birds Vs. Human Deaths

Page 99. Carson vividly describes the death of a bird that she thought may have been poisoned by a pesticide, but nowhere in the book does she describes the deaths of any of the people who were dying of malaria, yellow fever, plague, sleeping sickness, or other diseases that are transmitted by insects. Her propaganda in Silent Spring contributed greatly to the banning of insecticides that were capable of preventing human deaths. Carson shares the responsibility for literally millions of deaths among the poor people in underdeveloped nations. Dr. William Bowers, head of the Entomology Department at the University of Arizona, said in 1986 that DDT is the most significant discovery of all time, and “in malaria control alone it saved almost 3 billion lives.”

Rachel Carson’s lack of concern for human lives endangered by diseases transmitted by insects is revealed on page 187, where she writes: “Only yesterday mankind lived in fear of the scourges of smallpox, cholera and plague that once swept nations before them. Now our major concern is no longer with the disease organisms that once were omnipresent; sanitation, better living conditions, and new drugs have given us a high degree of control over infectious disease. Today we are concerned with a different kind of hazard that lurks in our environment—a hazard we ourselves have introduced into our world as our modern way of life has evolved.”

Surely Carson was aware that the greatest threats to humans are diseases such as malaria, typhus, yellow fever, Chagas’s disease, African sleeping sickness, and a number of types of Leishmaniasis and tick-borne bacterial and rickettsial diseases. She deliberately avoids mentioning any of these, because they could be controlled only by the appropriate use of insecticides, especially DDT. Carson evidently preferred to sacrifice those millions of lives rather than advocate any usage of such chemicals.

Page 106. In Lansing, Michigan, a spray program began in l954 against the bark beetles that were transmitting Dutch Elm disease. Carson states “[With local programs for gypsy moth and mosquito control also under way, the rain of chemicals increased to a downpour.” She expresses no concern for the survival of the magnificent elm trees, the dying oak trees, or the torment of people who lived near hordes of blood-sucking mosquitoes, but has tremendous pity for a few birds that had disappeared from the sprayed areas. These positions brought her very little support from the residents.

Carson praises Michigan State University ornithologist George Wallace, who had theorized that robins on the campus were dying because they had eaten earthworms containing DDT from the soil. Many other areas sprayed with DDT did not have dying robins, but Carson studiously avoids mentioning that. Wallace also did not mention the high levels of mercury on the ground and in the earthworms (from soil fungicide treatments on the Michigan campus), even though the symptoms displayed by the dying robins were those attributable to mercury poisoning. Instead, Wallace (and Carson) sought to blame only DDT for the deaths.

The dead birds Wallace sent out for subsequent study were analyzed by a method that detected only “total chlorine content�� and could not determine what kind of chlorine was present; none was analyzed for mercury contamination). It was obviously highly irresponsible for Wallace and Carson to jump to the conclusion that the Michigan State University robins were being killed by DDT, and especially for Carson to highlight the false theory in her book long after the truth was evident.

In many feeding experiments birds, including robins, were forced to ingest great quantities of DDT (and its breakdown product, DDE). Wallace did not provide any evidence that indicated the Michigan State University robins may have been killed by those chemicals. Researcher Joseph Hickey at the University of Wisconsin had testified before the Environmental Protection Agency hearings on DDT specifically that he could not kill any robins by overdosing them with DDT because the birds simply passed it through their digestive tract and eliminated it in their feces. Many other feeding experiments by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and various university researchers repeatedly showed that DDT and DDE in the diet could not have killed wild birds under field conditions. If Carson had mentioned these pertinent details it would have devastated her major theme, which continued to be the awful threats posed by DDT to all nonhuman creatures on the face of the Earth. Instead of providing the facts that would clarify such conditions, she spent several more pages on unfounded allegations about DDT and various kinds of birds.

Page 109. Carson alleges that because of the spray programs, ��Heavy mortality has occurred among about 90 species of birds, including those most familiar to suburbanites and amateur naturalists. ... All the various types of birds are affected—ground feeders, treetop feeders, bark feeders, predators.”

Carson provides no references to confirm that allegation. The Audubon Christmas Bird Counts, in fact, continued to reveal that more birds were counted, per observer, during the greatest “DDT years,” including those types that Carson had declared to be declining in numbers. When marshes were sprayed with DDT to control the mosquitoes, a common result was a population explosion of birds inhabiting the marshes. The increases evidently occurred because of a reduction in bird diseases that were formerly transmitted by local blood-sucking insects, greater abundance of available food (less plant destruction by insects), and increased quantities of hepatic enzymes produced by the birds as a result of ingesting DDT (these enzymes destroy cancer-causing aflatoxins in birds and other vertebrates).

The flocks of birds—such as red-winged blackbirds—that were produced by the millions in marshes that had been sprayed with DDT caused tremendous damage to grain crops in Ohio and elsewhere. Such destruction was not desirable, and if Carson had complained about that nobody could have criticized her for it. Instead, she attempted to convince the readers that spraying the marshes caused the death of the birds nesting there, despite all the evidence to the contrary.

Page 111. Carson says: “All of the treetop feeders, the birds that glean their insect food from the leaves, have disappeared from heavily sprayed areas. ...��

Insecticides temporarily eliminate some insects from sprayed areas, and before others can move in the insectivorous birds cannot find much food there. Carson said the birds had disappeared, and not that they had been killed. She later even admitted that their scarcity could be caused by “lack of insects because of spray.”

Page 118. Carson writes: “Like the robin, another American bird seems to be on the verge of extinction. This is the national symbol, the eagle.”

In that very same year, 1962, the leading ornithologist in North America also mentioned the status of the robin. That authority was Roger Tory Peterson, who asked in his Life magazine Nature library book, The Birds, “What is North America’s number one bird?” He then pointed out that it was the robin! The Audubon Christmas Bird Count in 1941 (before DDT) was 19,616 robins (only 8.41 seen per observer)—see Table 1. Compare that with the 1960 count of 928,639 robins (or 104.01 per observer). The total was 12 times more robins seen per observer after all those years of DDT and other “modern pesticide” usage. Carson had to avoid all references to such surveys or her thesis would have been disproved by the evidence.

Page 119.: Carson spends two pages discussing the Hawk Mountain, Pennsylvania, counts of migrating raptorial birds. Table 2 summarizes the actual total counts of raptors made there during the years before and during the greatest usage of DDT in North America. Obviously, very few of them decreased in numbers during those years. The numbers of migrating hawks (and eagles) increased from 9,29l in 1946 to 16,163 in 1963, but with considerable fluctuation in intervening years.

Page 120. Carson explains the lack of young birds by saying: “... [The reproductive capacity of the birds has been so lowered by some environmental agent that there are now almost no annual additions of young to maintain the race. Exactly this sort of situation has been produced artificially in other birds by various experimenters, notably Dr. James DeWitt of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Dr. DeWitt’s now classic experiments on the effects of a series of insecticides on quail and pheasants have established the fact that exposure to DDT or related chemicals, even when doing no observable harm to the parent birds, may seriously affect reproduction. ... For example, quail into whose diet DDT was introduced throughout the breeding season survived and even produced normal numbers of fertile eggs. But few of the eggs hatched��[emphasis added].

Carson gives no indication of how many might be considered as “few eggs hatching.” Perhaps she thought that her readers would never see the rather obscure journal in which DeWitt’s results were published in 1956, the Journal of Agriculture and Food Chemistry. Otherwise, she surely would not have so badly misrepresented DeWitt’s results! The dosage he fed the quail was 100 parts per million in all their food every day, which was roughly 3,000 times the daily DDT intake of humans during the years of the greatest DDT use!

The quail did not just hatch “a few” of their eggs, as DeWitt’s data clearly reveal (Table 3). As the published data from DeWitt’s experiments show, the “controls” (those quail with no DDT) hatched 83.9 percent of their eggs, while the DDT-fed quail hatched 75 to 80 percent of theirs. I would not call an 80 percent hatch “few,” especially when the controls hatched only 83.9 percent of their eggs.

Carson either did not read DeWitt’s article, or she deliberately lied about the results of DeWitt��s experiments on pheasants, which were published on the same page. The “controls” hatched only 57.4 percent of their eggs, while the DDT-fed pheasants, (dosed with 50 ppm of DDT in all of their food during the entire year) hatched 80.6 percent of theirs. After two weeks, the DDT chicks had 100 percent survival, while the control chicks only had 94.8 percent survival, and after 8 weeks the DDT chicks had 93.3 percent survival while the control chicks only had 89.7 percent survival. It was false reporting such as this that caused so many leading scientists in the United States to take Rachel Carson to task.

Page 122. Carson says various birds have been storing up the DDT in the tissues of their bodies. “And like the grebes, the pheasants, the quail, and the robins, they are less and less able to produce young and to preserve the continuity of their race.”

According to DeWitt’s work, which Carson cited as her source, the birds that were fed exceedingly high levels of DDT every day hatched nearly as many of their eggs (in quail) to 27 percent more of their eggs (in pheasants). The great increases in the numbers of robins were documented in the comments above, in reference to page 118. Carson’s claim, therefore, that those three kinds of birds are less and less able to produce young is remarkably false—and insulting to the reader.

Page 125. Carson writes: “‘Pheasant sickness’ became a well-known phenomenon: birds ��seek water, become paralyzed and are found on the ditch banks and rice checks quivering,’ according to one observer” [emphasis added]. “One observer” is not very credible as a source of scientific information. Is this the best source a science writer like Rachel Carson could supply?

Carson cited Robert L. Rudd and Richard E. Genelly, in an article in The Condor magazine, as the source for the information that follows: “The ��sickness’ comes in the spring, at the time the rice fields are seeded.” This statement is misleading. The sickness may have come in the spring, but it was not in the rice fields. Instead, it was in outdoor pens where the birds were held captive, and all of their food contained rice “treated at the rate of one and one-half pounds of DDT per 100 pounds.” Rudd and Genelly state in The Condor (March 1955): “This value is equivalent to 15,000 parts per million DDT in the diet.”

This amount represents the highest dosage of DDT I have ever heard of in any experimental animal, and I cannot understand why they would use such an extreme concentration. This means that 1.5 percent of every bite of food was “poison.”

And what were the results of this remarkable feeding experiment? As reported in Condor, page 418, four of the birds died “after four or five days” with severe tremors. One died on the tenth day, but never showed any symptoms prior to death. The remaining seven pheasants survived and five of them showed no symptoms. One of the survivors had “slight tremors” and the other had “slight incoordination.” This is a remarkable lack of poisoning, considering the astronomical amount of DDT in their food! I could only surmise that the survivors must have eaten very little of the poisoned food. (Rudd did not measure the amounts ingested, but simply placed the food in the pen.)

��

Carson writes that “the concentration of DDT used [in the fields] is many times the amount that will kill an adult pheasant.” In his article, Rudd concluded that it was “clear that DDT-treated grain is or can be lethal to grain-eating birds,” but he also stated, “This mortality may be entirely eliminated by applying chemical and seed separately” (emphasis added). It appears that Carson’s misleading report of Rudd’s conclusion was designed to deceive the reader regarding DDT hazards in the environment.

The text continues in this vein for another 172 pages, with chapter heads such as “Rivers of Death,” ”The Human Price,” “The Rumblings of an Avalanche,” and “Beyond the Dreams of the Borgias.” I trust that this partial analysis of Carson’s deceptions, false statements, horrible innuendoes, and ridiculous allegations in the first 125 pages of Silent Spring will indicate why so many scientists expressed opposition, antagonism, and perhaps even a little rage after reading Carson’s diatribe. No matter how deceitful her prose, however, the influence of Carson��s Silent Spring has been very great and it continues 30 years later to shape environmentalist propaganda and fund-raising as well as U.S. policy.

J. Gordon Edwards, professor of entomology at San Jose State University in California, has taught biology and entomology there for 43 years. He is a long-time member of the Sierra Club and the Audubon Society and is a fellow of the California Academy of Sciences.

Read Editorial: Bring Back DDT!

Purchase Special DDT collection: 4 21st Century articles

---

MILLOY obit:

Millions in the third world die from malaria every year in large part because of a virtual ban on the controversial insecticide DDT.

The removal of the unwarranted stigma from DDT and the saving of many future lives is now nearer at hand than it has been in the last 30 years thanks to the efforts of Dr. J. Gordon Edwards, who passed away on July 19 at the age of 85.

Though Dr. Edwards is best known to the general public as the author of the now-classic 1961 book "A Climber's Guide to Glacier National Park," his work as an entomologist and professor at San Jose State University may prove to be his most important legacy.

Dr. Edwards led the opposition to environmental extremist efforts to ban DDT in the wake of Rachel Carson's infamous 1962 book "Silent Spring." The testimony of Dr. Edwards and others during Environmental Protection Agency hearings in 1971 on whether to ban the insecticide led to an EPA administrative law judge ruling that, "DDT is not a carcinogenic hazard to man. DDT is not a mutagenic or teratogenic hazard to man. The uses of DDT under the regulations involved here do not have a deleterious effect on freshwater fish, estuarine organisms, wild birds or other wildlife."

Inexplicably — or so it seemed — DDT was nonetheless banned by EPA administrator William Ruckleshaus. Dr. Edwards investigated and uncovered disturbing statements and troubling connections between Ruckleshaus and anti-DDT environmental extremist groups.

In a May 1971 speech before the Wisconsin Audubon Society, Ruckleshausacknowledged being a member of the anti-DDT National Audubon Society and to have "streamlined" EPA procedures so that DDT could be banned even before the administrative hearings had been completed.

After Ruckleshaus left the EPA, he began fundraising for the Environmental Defense Fund, a spin-off of the National Audubon Society and the lead petitioner to have EPA ban DDT.

The probability that Ruckleshaus had made up his mind to ban DDT regardless of the facts is increased by his refusal of requests made under the Freedom of Information Act [ok 1966]and by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to turn over the documentation on which the ban was based.

Dr. Edwards subsequently got into litigation with the New York Times and Audubon Society over DDT.

Perhaps the most well-known allegation about DDT was that the insecticide supposedly caused declines in the populations of birds such as the bald eagle.[even HI Miller concedes?!)

Dr. Edwards knew this was wrong. He knew that these bird populations had declined decades before DDT had ever been used. More importantly, the bird populations were actually rebounding during the years of peak DDT use, according to bird counts.

In an April 1972 edition of American Birds, a National Audubon Society magazine, anti-DDT editor Robert S. Arbib, Jr.,accused a "certain paid scientist spokesman" of lyingabout higher bird counts. No scientists were mentioned by name.

On Aug. 14, 1972, the New York Times recounted Arbib's accusations in a story entitled "Pesticide Spokesman Accused of Lying on Higher Bird Counts." At the urging of the Times' reporter, Arbib named five scientists, including Dr. Edwards.

Dr. Edwards and two others filed suit for libel against the National Audubon Society and the Times. In July 1976, a jury decided that, though the National Audubon Society was not liable, the Times was. [logic? times source was audobon]The jury found the Times article's statements were clearly libelous and made with "malice."

The verdict against the Times was overturned in May 1977 by Judge Irving Kaufman on the grounds that the newspaper was justified in reporting the charges because they were "newsworthy" and that it did not matter that the Times had serious doubts about their truth.[hmm]

Kaufman, as it turns out, was also a close personal friend of the then-publisher of the Times, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger.

An interesting by-product of the trial was evidence that discussions had been held at the Environmental Defense Fund concerning ways to silence and discredit the defenders of DDT like Dr. Edwards.

I met Dr. Edwards in the 1990s while researching the DDT controversy.We collaboratedin 1999 on the fact sheet "100 Things You Should Know About DDT."

Since then, there have been growing rumblings of a rehabilitation for DDT. Public health professionals andnon-governmental organizations, notably Africa Fighting Malaria,stepped up efforts to increase the use of DDT.[driessen]

Now, even the New York Times has seen the light, running a pro-DDT editorial on Dec. 23, 2002 ("Fighting Malaria with DDT), a pro-DDT op-ed column on Aug. 7, 2003 (Is there a place for DDT?") and, most recently, a pro-DDT New York Times Magazine article on April 11, 2004. ("What the World Needs Now is DDT").

Dr. Edwards lived long enough to see the New York Times do a "180" on DDT. It's too bad he didn't live long enough to see a more meaningful payoff for his persistence, namely successful malaria control and eradication — and millions of lives saved. It will be up to the rest of us to fulfill Dr. Edwards' legacy.

Steven Milloy is the publisher of JunkScience.com, an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute and the author of " Junk Science Judo: Self-Defense Against Health Scares and Scams" (Cato Institute, 2001)

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