DDT and the Eco-Nazis

John Tierney's latest column on the centennail of the birthday of eco-warrior-queen Rachel Carson. Her discredited potboiler Silent Spring inspired many a greenie, and a judicious scientific rebuttal made at the time by a distinguished UW professor was ignored. Until now:

Dr. Baldwin led a committee at the National Academy of Sciences studying the impact of pesticides on wildlife. (Yes, scientists were worrying about pesticide dangers long before “Silent Spring.”) In his review, he praised Ms. Carsons’s literary skills and her desire to protect nature. But, he wrote, “Mankind has been engaged in the process of upsetting the balance of nature since the dawn of civilization.”

While Ms. Carson imagined life in harmony before DDT, Dr. Baldwin saw that civilization depended on farmers and doctors fighting “an unrelenting war” against insects, parasites and disease. He complained that “Silent Spring” was not a scientific balancing of costs and benefits but rather a “prosecuting attorney’s impassioned plea for action.”

Ms. Carson presented DDT as a dangerous human carcinogen, but Dr. Baldwin said the question was open and noted that most scientists “feel that the danger of damage is slight.” [snip]

She cited scary figures showing a recent rise in deaths from cancer, but she didn’t consider one of the chief causes: fewer people were dying at young ages from other diseases (including the malaria that persisted in the American South until DDT).

Since then, millions have died in the third world from malaria, which DDT could have prevented for pennies. Sacrificed on the altar of political correctness. Recently wiser heads at the World Health Organization have reversed that decision and begun using DDT again, but the eco-Nazis are arising again in opposition---human life is secondary to their world view. Half of all who die are children.