The science of Silent Spring is rather sketchy, and while Carson wasn't the sole force behind the end of widespread DDT use, she was a major factor.

The problem with DDT isn't it's toxicity, it's the overuse.  Properly managed, DDT is one of the most effective and cheapest ways to battle malaria, which is a terrible disease.  There's no reason malaria should still be as widespread as it is, and the hysteria around DDT is partially to blame for that, I have no doubt.

But Carson did raise awareness of many issues (whether or not she was right on everything), for that she should be commended.  I don't see why there should be a bill to honor her though -- Congress has better things to do.  However, the idea of someone blocking this bill is ridiculous.  

Wow.  It's touching to learn that right-wing America expresses such deep, heart-felt concern about Africans suffering from malaria.

Who would have thunk it?

GonzoDon, that is very well put.  Republicans should always ask themselves: When they seem to be doing good to somebody in trouble, why should anybody believe that they are doing it out of the goodness of their hearts, and not for some ulterior, profitable, self-serving motive?

The educator Ellie Goldberg, in the "exhausted canary" thread, by way of replacing the hapless canary, wrote this:
<<
Rachel Carson was a "Sentinel Lion." Rachel Carson had the courage, the confidence, the reverence for life, and the sense of responsibility to speak out during a period of widespread pesticide abuse and environmental degradation. Her book, Silent Spring, still has the transformational power to be the touchstone for a new wave of social consciousness and political urgency.

Rachel Carson inspires us to think of ourselves, not as whistleblowers, troublemakers, or canaries in the mine, but as guardians, steadfast sentries, and defenders of our community against the decisions that allow pollution to contaminate our air, water and food.
>>

Whether the "sentinel lion" metaphor has legs, I rather doubt, but I like very much what Ellie is getting at.  She is certainly correct to emphasize how inspirational Rachel Carson's writings have been, far beyond the particular issues that Carson was writing about.

First in her articles in The New Yorker, then in her book, Rachel Carson brought home the message that we need to be thoughtful, always: When we thoughtlessly go about our economically profitable activities, such as spraying pesticides on crops, we are ignorantly and foolishly killing many members of our own community of living creatures, whom we love.

Really, I do not see how anyone could deny that this is an important lesson, which no one else was teaching so well just then; and therefore she most certainly deserves some honor, such as the one that Cambridge is bestowing on her.

And we can have no doubt that she would be horrified by the way her anti-DDT message has been abused by US politicians with agendas of their own.  She would be moved to laughter, probably, by the ridiculous accusations that she is a mass-murderer, were it not for the fact that she is being bizarrely charged with the deaths of countless victims of malaria.

On Sunday, May 27, the hundredth anniversary of her birth, we must celebrate her and her work, remembering her love for all human beings, and for all the animals with which we share this world.

Chickens are our cousins! So are other sensitive animals! Enough is enough! No more factory farms!

Please forgive my momentary abstracted distraction.  In the last sentence of my last comment, of course I meant to write "with WHOM we share this world."

Chickens are our cousins! So are other sensitive animals! Enough is enough! No more factory farms!

Where most of the meth precursors are available for anyone to purchase without any regulations.

Sing along!  

How could this be?  And why?  Because the chemical industry (that also makes DDT) runs the state.  That's world class corruption and industrial bribery.

They want absolutely no impediment to selling their wares, no matter how harmfull they may be.  

It's similar to judge Alito's stance on choice.  He wants all americans to be able to choose, between semi-automatic and full automatic weapons.

A meth lab and machine gun in every home?  Yes that's what the corporatist citizens want for their beloved corporate citizens that manufacture chemicals and machine guns.  No pesky regulatory interference between their products and the consumer!

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

staggering forward like a hysterical zombie with Tourette's

And amazingdrx: meth precursors are widely available in every state, in every pharmacy. Counties and states with a major meth problem have restrictions on how much cough medicine and such a customer can purchase per visit.

I did a report on Rachel in fourth grade and she's been an inspiration to me ever since.  

Most people don't reaize that she was also an animal protection advocate and condemned factory farming, which was taking off around the time of her book.

Hey, all:

Wow, I just have to unabashedly say that the beauty of some of the things I read here brings me to tears.  Others make me laugh and some make me angry, and some make me shake my head in disgust, but seldom do I see such beauty.  

Rachel Carson is one of my members of the holy trinity, with Aldo Leopold and Henry David Thoreau being the others.  And "Silent Spring" ranks with "Origin of Species" as history changing literature.  

I guess one thing I cannot understand is how two more troglodyte-ish Senators (Inhofe and Coburn) could come from the same state in the same century.  They should have political targets on their backs for 2008.  

Yep, here's to you, Rachel.

Oh, and I apologize to good troglodytes everywhere.

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!

...to accept that while small, targeted DDT treatments may in fact be worth the costs in order to treat malaria, Rachel Carson's alerting us to the dangers of spritzing the stuff willy-nilly about the landscape is still an achievement worth celebrating?  

This is the trouble with the present crop of Republicans' "War on Nuance."

To be accurate, DDT doesn't really combat malaria, it combats the mosquitoes that transmit the malarial protozoan.  DDT was so overused that  DDT-resistance has developed in mosquito populations. People must apply more and more, plus it concentrates up the foodchain and degrades poorly.  

DDT and associated dioxins bioaccumulate in the fatty tissue of fish, birds, whales, humans. This is bad news.  (Apparently Mr. Bailo forgets how American bald eagles and peregrine falcon populations barely returned from oblivion after DDT use was banned here.)  

Rachel Carson was a conservative worthy of the name; perhaps more of us should read Silent Spring before making glib comments.

Stephen Brown Sharon, PA

I think it's worth reproducing here the excerpt from Rachel Carson's actual words (not a caricature or exaggeration) on DDT and malaria:

"No responsible person contends that insect-borne disease should be ignored. The question that has now urgently presented itself is whether it is either wise or responsible to attack the problem by methods that are rapidly making it worse. The world has heard much of the triumphant war against disease through the control of insect vectors of infection, but it has heard little of the other side of the story - the defeats, the short-lived triumphs that now strongly support the alarming view that the insect enemy has been made actually stronger by our efforts. Even worse, we may have destroyed our very means of fighting. ...

What is the measure of this setback? The list of resistant species now includes practically all of the insect groups of medical importance. ... Malaria programmes are threatened by resistance among mosquitoes. ...

Practical advice should be 'Spray as little as you possibly can' rather than 'Spray to the limit of your capacity' ..., Pressure on the pest population should always be as slight as possible."

Sounds like a very sensible Integrated Pest Management strategy to me, not a blanket disavowal of all DDT treatments.  

Don't tell me -- Republicans from Oklahoma pandering to the tobacco industry? Any other reason would be insane. I'm only relieved that Ms. Carson did not live long enough to see her name dragged across the coals. I loved her book, applaud her forward-thinking, solid science, and choose to ignore the tripe that's being spread by wingnuts like Bailey, et. al. No thinking person would give them a second thought.