Silent Spring: The Consequences of 50 Years of Junk Science, Part IV: The Legacy

“Truth would very patiently wait for us”. Benjamin Franklin

By Rich Kozlovich

(Originally published May 12, 2012 updated May 10, 2016)

Carson became the visionary for modern environmental activism, in spite of the fact that Carson was “neither profound nor original” in her thinking. Carson’s “core message was very much in line with the content of previous’ ‘books and articles published in widely circulated magazines and newspapers.” In reality the “ideological core of modern environmentalism can be traced back to ideas that have been around for centuries and in some cases millennia.”

So why did she have such much of a larger impact on society than the writers before her? Carson wrote differently than her predecessors. Their writings were so obviously misanthropic they made little impact with anyone outside their circle of like thinkers. Carson wrote claiming there were serious health hazards from chemicals to humanity, especially DDT, and that was her message, a plea for the good of humanity. Make no mistake; it was her claims regarding chemicals and cancer that really struck a chord with the public.

She claimed that DDT was a serious carcinogenic agent that with continued use would eventually impact almost 100% of the population. Nothing could have been further from the truth.

• In 1969 primates were used as test subjects for the cancer causing potential of DDT and were fed 33,000 times the amount of DDT than the estimated adult human exposure without any conclusive evidence of it being carcinogenic……Journal of Cancer Research and Clinical Oncology 1999; 125(3-4):219-25
• In over a 20 year period 692 women were studied (265 postmenopausal women with breast cancer and 341 controls) and found “no correlation between serum DDE (the metabolite or breakdown product of DDT) and breast cancer” in women…Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 1999 June; 8(6):525-32
• Workers exposed to 600 times the average amount of DDT the general population for periods of 9 to 19 years showed no elevated cancer risk ………..ER Laws, 1967. Archives of Environmental Health 15:766-775
• To cap off her fallacious claims, a number of individuals ingested 35 mg of DDT daily for two years and tracked for several years afterward. No indication of cancer or even an elevation of risk of cancer…Hayes, W. 1956. JAMA 162:890-897

The science against DDT wasn’t weak - it was non-existent - and remains so to this day. Malaria spraying campaigns began during WWII, since that time until 1972 hundreds of millions of people around the world had been exposed to DDT in large concentrations, including using DDT dust directly on people during the war to get rid of lice. Some of the people were liberated concentration camp internees - with seriously compromised health - who showed no ill effects from these applications. The fact is “not even one peer reviewed, independently replicated study linking exposure to DDT with any adverse health outcome." according to international health scholar Amir Attaran.

But it was Carson who became the right writer, with the right style, for the right time. She stunned the nation with “revelations” that society was “eroding the very fabric of life”, with our modern industrialized lifestyle.

Carson’s attack on “synthetic pesticides is not her most notable achievement”. It was her wider “ecological critique” of society as a whole that has had the most lasting impact. The most important thing we must come to understand is the popularity of Silent Spring created a pattern of thinking. As an example, in 1965 “Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas wrote Wilderness Bill of Rights, proposing that animals, plants and natural objects should have legal rights just as humans do.” This irrational mental pattern continues almost unabated.

The most lasting achievement of Silent Spring was the embrace of the Precautionary Principle, the foundation for every piece of junk science ever promoted. The Precautionary Principle is more commonly known as the “better safe than sorry” principle. It is based on a totally unscientific line of thought that anything can do something detrimental so therefore we need to prevent its use before something bad happens; the lack of scientific findings not-with-standing.

If the Precautionary Principle had been imposed during Edison’s day we wouldn’t have electricity today since the Principle demands you must prove something is safe before you can use it, and we know that electricity isn’t safe. Proving something is safe is a scientific impossibility known as proving a negative. You cannot prove a negative. You can only prove what things do - not what they don’t do - and the green movement knows it. It’s like demanding proof that someone isn’t cheating on their spouse.

The interesting twist in their reasoning is that they refuse to apply this principle both ways. In other words - what would be the negative impact if a product isn’t used. The green movement has never been fond of truth, facts or logic. Neither are they consistent in their thinking. The theme of this movement is that man and all his works are evil and nature and all of its works are benign. Both over simplifications, and both wrong, and since environmentalism is the secular religion of the urban atheist, any deviation is heresy. But that is Carson’s legacy,

The origin of the Precautionary Principle can be traced back to much earlier times, so it was not unique to Silent Spring, but Carson made it popular thinking. Carson and Silent Spring is cited as illustrative in the thinking when developing the Registration, Evaluation, Authorizations, and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH) in the EU, which was enacted in 2005. Silent Spring crossed international boundary’s impacting the world with irrational regulations and unpleasant consequences.

Rachel Carson's work created irrational fears that completely ignored the promise and solutions modern technology brings. Her work laid the foundation for a modern movement that prevents real solutions and real progress, which may actually harm humanity and the environment the green movement claims to be trying to protect. Wind mills are a classic example. They are destroying bat and avian life at massive levels, including endangered species, and the green movement says nothing. Let’s not fail to see things clearly. The movement she is credited with creating is, irrational, misanthropic and morally defective.

 That is her true legacy.

Silent Spring: The Consequences of 50 Years of Junk Science!
Silent Spring: The Consequences of 50 Years of Junk Science! Part II
Silent Spring: The Consequences of 50 Years of Junk Science, Part III

Silent Spring: The Consequences of 50 Years of Junk Science, Part III

By Rich Kozlovich

 

Rachel Carson is commonly known as the mother of the environmental movement due to the publication of her book Silent Spring.  Why did this book have such an impact?  First of all, she was an exceptional writer.  Her writing skills placed her beyond the works of others of her time discussing many of the same subjects.  Originally her major in college was English, which she later changed to biology, but first and foremost she considered herself a writer.   Although classified as a scientist, she wasn’t a practicing scientist.  While “working for the U.S. Bureau of Fish and Wildlife Services in the Commerce Department, her job there was as a writer, summarizing then popularizing the work of scientists in the lab and in the field.”
 

Before she wrote Silent Spring she was already well known for her books about the ocean.  Her personal research included “a brief and shallow dive clinging to a boat’s ladder”.  She never claimed to have been where she had not, but she wrote with a technique “guiding the reader in narrative form, observing as if with her own eyes- or the readers.”  . 

 

Silent Spring started as installments in New Yorker magazine.  Her ocean books were tremendously popular, and accurate.  Two were on the New York Best Sellers list, and appear to have been exemplary works of fact. This gave her credibility with the public, so she already had a reputation as a respected science writer.  The real driving force with the public was her claims that DDT caused cancer and made dire predictions that cancer would be a national plague caused by synthetic pesticides.  She was wrong, and if her work had been peer reviewed before publication the errors in her work would have been exposed.  But this was a book about scare mongering, not science. 

 

The one thing that I hear all the time is that DDT caused egg shell thinning and was destroying the bald eagle population and would decimate the entire bird population everywhere, including robins.  That was blatantly false.  This is an important falsehood because she must have known it was false.  Carson joined the national board of the Audubon Society in 1948 and had to know that the nation’s bird population wasn’t decreasing but in reality increasing during the DDT years.  She also had to know that robins were the most populace bird in North America during that time and had expanded somewhere between 12 and 26 times during those years.
 

The opening chapter of her book is entitled, “Fable for Tomorrow”, where she lays the foundation for the rest of her claims describes a town where;
 

“a strange blight crept over the area and everything began to change.  Some evil spell had settled on the community” mysterious maladies swept the flocks of chickens; the cattle and sheep sickened and died.  Everywhere was a shadow of death.  The farmers spoke of much illness among their families.  In the town the doctors had become more and more puzzled by new kinds of sickness appearing among their patients.  There had been several sudden and unexplained deaths, not only among adults but even among children, who would be stricken and suddenly while at play and die within a few hours.”

 

“There was a strange stillness.  The birds, for example –where had they gone?  Many people spoke of them, puzzled and disturbed.  The feeding stations in the backyards were deserted.  The few birds seen anywhere were moribund; they trembled violently and could not fly.  It was a spring without voices.  On the mornings that had once throbbed with the dawn chorus of robins, catbirds, doves, jays, wrens, and scores of other bird voices there was no sound; only silence lay over the fields and woods.”   
 

She went on to say that chickens had no chicks, farmers were unable to raise any pigs because the piglets were small and died in only a few days.  She then says that bees no longer droned among the blossoms of fruit trees and as a result they were barren.   She then goes on to say;
 

"No witchcraft no enemy action had silenced the rebirth of new life in this stricken world. The people had done it themselves.” 
 

Powerful and moving words, but where was this town?  In the last two paragraphs of the first chapter of her book she then reveals the truth…. it doesn’t exist!
 

“This town does not actually exist, but it might easily have a thousand counterparts in America or elsewhere in the world.  I know of no community that has experienced all the misfortunes I describe." 

 

This is amazing.  After admitting she's making this all up she has the nerve to go on to say:

 

"Yet everyone one of these disasters has actually happened somewhere and many real communities have already suffered a substantial number of them.  A grim specter has crept upon us almost unnoticed, and this imagined tragedy may easily become a stark reality we all shall know."

 

"What has already silenced the voices of spring in countless towns in America? 

 

Towns she admits don't exist but - "This book is an attempt to explain.” - exactly what is it she wants to explain? 

 

So while admitting that this town doesn’t exist, she still attempts to claim all these things “might” be happening.  Her goal was to inculcate into people’s hearts and minds the idea that synthetic pesticides were responsible for an ultimate devastation of human and animal life.  Well, all she described wasn’t happening then nor did any of it ever happen.  Carson made it up and this trend continued throughout Silent Spring.
 

As for the bald eagle; she had to know the bald eagle population wasn’t decreasing.  Being involved with the Wildlife Service and the Audubon Society she had to know the truth.  In 1961 entomologist Philip H. Marvin noted in the Bulletin of the Entomological Society of America that “during the past 15 years of expanded insecticide use, bird numbers have multiplied several fold.”  This was based on the “observations of the Audubon Society’s Christmas Bird Census, which had been conducted every year around Christmas time since 1900 and co-sponsored by Carson’s employer, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service during Carson’s employment there and in the years preceding the publication of Silent Spring.”

Among the many misrepresentations in her book are her claims regarding egg shell thinning, which would threaten avian life in America with extinction.

 

She cited “an obscure study by Dr. James Dewitt of the US Fish and Wildlife Service to shown that DDT was reducing the number of bird eggs that were hatching.”

 

“However the actual study showed that despite feeding quail 3000 times the daily human intake of DDT, their eggs did not hatch significantly less than the control group. The same study done with pheasants showed that the survival rate of hatchlings of DDT feed pheasants actually increased. This is exactly the opposite of what Rachel Carson wrote.”

“Researchers that produced thin shelled quail eggs did so by reducing the calcium intake of the birds. After the study was published in Science magazine, it was exposed as a fraud. The study was then conducted with normal calcium intake. The quail fed DDT treated food did not produce thin shells. However, Science magazine refused to print that study. Its editor later related that they would never print an article supporting the use of DDT.”
 

Carson had to know that and yet still published lies which permeated her work.  On “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.”

 

Dr. J. Gordon Edwards, who spent much of his life debunking Carson’s claims asks;

 

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.
 

As for DDT and bald eagles Steve Milloy, editor of Junkscience.com states that;

 

“As early as 1921, the journal Ecology reported that bald eagles were threatened with extinction – 22 years before DDT production even began. According to a report in the National Museum Bulletin, the bald eagle reportedly had vanished from New England by 1937 – 10 years before widespread use of the pesticide.

“But by 1960 – 20 years after the Bald Eagle Protection Act and at the peak of DDT use – the Audubon Society reported counting 25 percent more eagles than in its pre-1941 census. U.S. Forest Service studies reported an increase in nesting bald eagle productivity from 51 in 1964 to 107 in 1970, according to the 1970 Annual Report on Bald Eagle Status.  The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service attributed bald eagle population reductions to a “widespread loss of suitable habitat,” but noted that “illegal shooting continues to be the leading cause of direct mortality in both adult and immature bald eagles,” according to a 1978 report in the Endangered Species Tech Bulletin…….U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologists fed large doses of DDT to captive bald eagles for 112 days and concluded that “DDT residues encountered by eagles in the environment would not adversely affect eagles or their eggs,” according to a 1966 report published in the “Transcripts of 31st North America Wildlife Conference.”

 

Is it any wonder that Carson captured the imagination of America with chapters entitled, Rivers of  Death; The Human Price; The Rumblings of an Avalanche and Beyond the Dreams of the Borgias.

 

Edwards went on to say at one of his lectures;
 

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.

 

Carson never directly called for the ban on DDT, but the only conclusion anyone could come to after reading Silent Spring was that DDT had to be banned - it was - and people all over the third world became sickened by the hundreds of millions and millions of them died. 

 

Carson lied and people died. 

 

In a trial if someone has been found lying in any aspect of their testimony their entire testimony justifiably called into question.  Should this be any less true of scientists, or science writers?

 

It is one thing when the activists and the media spew out this nonsense, but I am outraged at those within our industry who jumped on board supported that which is unsupportable and corrupt.  Viv Forbes makes this statement regarding Global Warming.  “The public has been misled by an unholy alliance of environmental scaremongers, funds-seeking academics, sensation-seeking media, vote-seeking politicians and profit-seeking vested interests.”  That statement is an apt description for everything promoted by the environmental movement, including the ban on DDT. 

 

Much of what has appeared here was from the book “Silent Spring at 50” by Meiners, Desrochers, and Morriss, Steve Milloy’s “100 Things You Should Know About DDT”, and “The Lies of Rachel Carson”, a presentation by J. Gordon Edwards.  You may wish to view my Sunday, January 27, 2013 Book Review: Silent Spring at 50.   Rich Kozlovich

Silent Spring: The Consequences of 50 Years of Junk Science!
Silent Spring: The Consequences of 50 Years of Junk Science! Part II
 

Silent Spring: The Consequences of 50 Years of Junk Science! Part II

By Rich Kozlovich

(Originally published November 17, 2012)

Silent Spring originally appeared in the New Yorker magazine in a serialized form and was received with such enthusiasm they published the book in late September 1962.

Pest Control Technology came out with their September issue; “Silent Spring Turns 50!”  As a result there are comments that I feel needed to be dealt with first.  In this issue I will continue to deal with the book, the author and some comments made by contributors.

PCT states:

“Whatever you may think of this woman and her message, her effect on the course of history is undeniable. Designated as one of the 100 “most important people” of the 20th Century by Time magazine, Carson was a posthumous recipient (in 1980) of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, one of the two highest civilian honors in the United States. In 1992, her landmark work was judged to be the most influential book of the past 50 years by a panel of 22 distinguished Americans from across the political spectrum. In 2005 — demonstrating that its ability to polarize remains undiminished — “Silent Spring” was included in a list of the “most harmful books of the 19th and 20th Centuries” (along with such worthy companions as “The Communist Manifesto” and “Mein Kampf”) by the conservative magazine Human Events.”

According to PCT they wanted to know what the impact Silent Spring had on the industry.  They wonder; “how many of today’s PMPs had actually read the five-decades-old book that launched the environmental movement, which ultimately led to the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency.”  Apparently they were surprised to find that few had read it and a large number had never heard of it.  What I am surprised at is they were surprised.  Those who know me know I talk to everyone about the green movement in all of its manifestations, including Silent Spring and Rachel Carson.  You would be even more amazed at how many people who style themselves as environmentalists have only heard about it, but never read it.

Having read it twice (thirty years apart, which makes a real difference) I can tell you even after knowing all that I know about Carson and the misinformation she published, I found once again her writing ability is so mesmerizing that I almost emotionally  drawn right back into her spider’s web.  I recommend that everyone read her work.  I recommend that everyone read the truth first.  Then after reading her book, go back and read the truth again. 

You'll need it! 

Let’s make no mistake about this - it was Rachel Carson’s amazing writing ability that won through against her critics - not her scientific acumen.   Carson even attempted to make comparisons between “radiation” and commonly used herbicides.  This is inexcusable since the mode of action for each is totally different.

Yet in spite of the fact that so much of her work has been thoroughly exposed as junk science and deliberate misrepresentation of the facts, her book is required reading in many schools and the impact is still so devastating it is difficult to overcome because Silent Spring has become a religious document.  In short it is the primary religious text of the environmental movement; a movement that is now a secular religion, which included Integrated Pest Management and Green structural pest control, neither of which exists.  It was never a scientific document.  And the environmental movement isn’t a scientific movement.  IPM doesn’t exist in structural pest control and green pest control is environmentalist mythology!

Green is a mixture of blue and yellow. That is the only factual definition of green that will stand the test of time. After that; any other definition is a corruption of a perfectly nice color.  As a philosophy; green is a religion based on mysticism. The ancient Druids would be very comfortable with today’s green movement.  They also willing sacrificed people to their gods of nature.

The featured writer is a Dr. Al Green, an “entomologist and national IPM coordinator for the GSA’s Public Building Service in Washington, D.C.  Clearly his views reflect his reality, however, he at least honestly recognizes that the “IPM” community is divided between the “idealists” and the “pragmatists”!  As for the IPM idealists he notes; “It is, at its core, a product of the social upheaval and activism of the 1960s that spawned a variety of major, interrelated, ideological campaigns that challenged the status quo: environmental, civil rights, women’s rights, consumer protection and antiwar.” I am inclined to think his views lie somewhere in between the two groups.  He does talk about his “economic entomology professor” who “vehemently denounced [Silent Spring] as insidious claptrap.” 

He should have listened to him. 

He states that he doesn’t understand why structural pest control people get so upset at this book because Carson has only passing references to structural applications.  I have to believe he is being disingenuous. In this book Carson says that people died in relatively short time frames after being exposed to DDT.

Ronald Bailey notes; “But hinting at cancer doom decades away was not enough. Carson was convinced that pesticides could wreak their carcinogenic havoc much sooner rather than later. As evidence she cited various anecdotes, including one about a woman "who abhorred spiders" and who sprayed her basement with DDT in mid-August. She died of acute leukemia a couple of months later. In another passage, Carson cites a man embarrassed by his roach-infested office who again sprayed DDT and who "within a short time … began to bruise and bleed." He was within a month of spraying diagnosed with aplastic anemia.” 

Anecdotes are stories!  Stories require no references, no medical history, and most importantly,  no science.  I think that alone is enough reason for our industry to get enflamed.

So many of her references were misleading and often in direct opposition to what was actually stated.  In short….she lied!  In short….she knew she lied!  In short......it wasn’t an accident. 

Green says of Carson - “methodically building her case through an enormous amount of documentation that ranges from the cellular level to the ecosystem. Despite the inevitable, mostly minor, examples of oversimplification and fact-stretching to make a point for general audiences, “Silent Spring” remains an unusually compelling and persuasive book.” 

Is he kiddng?  Did he really read her book?  Does he really understand what happened there?  Unusually compelling and persuasive as her book may have been because it was so well written, the fact remains - it was full of lies.  In a court of law once a witness is found lying all of their testimony is considered worthless, irrespective of how well they tell their lies.  Why is it different in “science”?  

Actually it isn’t - at least it shouldn't be - unless of course those lies benefit the green movement.  Then they will be drug out and touted over and over again, and Ph.D. fellow travelers will attempt to show in some way so those lies don’t matter because they support a “greater good” and then “progress” can be made.  What progress are they talking about?  Adopting Carson’s radical environmental philosophy is not progress.

For now let’s clarify exactly what happened with Carson’s book, which set the pattern for every green scare ever since. Madeleine Pelner Cosman, Ph.D. notes that there are seven steps to this process and usually follow this pattern.

1. Create a "scientific" study that predicts a public health disaster
2. Release the study to the media, before scientists can review it
3. Generate an intense emotional public reaction
4. Develop a government-enforced solution
5. Intimidate Congress into passing it into law
6. Coerce manufacturers to stop making the product
7. Bully users to replace it, or obliterate it

This is the pattern set by Silent Spring, which is no less junk science than the book, “Our Stolen Future: Are We Threatening Our Fertility, Intelligence and Survival? — A Scientific Detective Story”, based on work out of Tulane University which implicated pesticides and other chemicals as endocrine disruptors, which also turned out to be fraudulent, yet these fraudulent claims are still touted by people like Mark Lame as a justification to use less pesticides and support….guess what ?….IPM.

If here is no alternative there is no problem!

To replace what's now being called traditional pest control with an emphasis on pesticides, an alterntive needed to be found.   By claiming there is such a thing as IPM in structural pest control they have an alternative.  So with IPM as the alternative - they can now insist there is a problem.   But pesticides and traditional pest control isn't the real problem.  The real problem is that there is no such thing as IPM or green pest control in structural pest control because neither has a logical foundation.  In agriculture it's “threshold limits”.  What is the logical foundation in structural pest control?  There isn’t any!  Neither IPM nor green pest control has foundation or parameters.

Dr. Green talks about “contamination of our food supply was far more serious, and almost no regard was given to the massive wildlife kills and environmental mayhem that resulted from aggressive aerial campaigns.” 

That is a bit confusing.  Contaminated food?  What contamination? Just how bad was it?  Where did it take place?  When did that take place?  Who was sickened?  How many were sickened?  He doesn't say!   Why not?  In my world I'm challenged constantly to substantiate everything I say, and I expect it and I provide those references in my articles.  Perhaps he became confused with all the food contamination and recalls originating from "organic" farming  practices - and if he's unaware - I can provide reference work.

What massive wildlife kills?  Where did they happen?  What wildlife was impacted?  How many were killed?  Again, no substantiation! I remember the massive fish kills along Lake Erie, but was that caused by pesticides?  Or was it caused industrial pollution, including urban waste?  I think that needs some clarification.  But it absolutely wasn’t caused by DDT. 

All in all, Green did attempt to give the impression of reasonableness.  However, I feel this is merely whitewash and this last expression fully clarifies that for me.  He says;

“Unfortunately, there is one, more seriously flawed, part of Carson’s exposition that has received attention through the years all out of proportion to its significance in her overall message. This is her focus on cancer as the primary health risk that the pesticides of her time presented to humans, a hunch that was only tenuously supported by the data available to her. As an accusation that proved to be extraordinarily energizing for IPM activists, it has similarly served as a lightning rod for critics who have treated it as a central defect that somehow discredits everything else she wrote about the collateral damage of broad-spectrum toxins or the folly of over-reliance on chemical fixes to bend nature to our will. Considering the abundance of subsequent research on a host of non-cancerous human pathologies for which the older pesticides are conclusively responsible, invoking Carson’s cancer connection to disparage her is nothing less than a blatant diversion from the main issue.”

That is not a blatant diversion from any “main issue” - it was foundational to her book.   This was the prod that drove this beastly book into fame and infamy.

“Carson vilified the use of DDT and other pest controls in agriculture but ignored their role in saving millions of lives worldwide from malaria, typhus, dysentery, among other diseases. Millions of deaths, and much greater human suffering, ultimately resulted from pesticide bans as part of disease-eradication campaigns.”  J. Gordon Edwards

Furthermore her book and her philosophy, which was radical in spite of the fact she wasn’t marching in the streets, demonized agricultural technology, clouded the overwhelming evidence before our eyes that modern technology – especially pesticides - created an overwhelming good for human health, and in spite of the amount of pesticides used represent no harm to the environment when used properly.

At least Chris Donaghy got it right.  As for me - I was quoted - lending clarity to the subject - but I had expected to be a featured writer for this issue since I contend I'm the pest control industry's foremost expert on the DDT story.   But, then again, perhaps I'm wrong.  Perhaps we can have PCT or the National Pest Management Association arrange a debate with me and some of these people regarding Carson, Silent Spring, IPM, Green pest control, the EPA or the green movement as a whole - or for that matter - any or all of them.  And since I'm an autodidact with no advanced education and no formal scientific training I would think those who have those intellectual advantages - and find fault with my observations and claims - would enjoy such an easy challenge.

Silent Spring: The Consequences of 50 Years of Junk Science! Part I

Silent Spring: The Consequences of 50 Years of Junk Science!

By Rich Kozlovich

(Originally published August 18, 2012 updated May 13, 2016) 

June 2012 marked the 50 anniversary of the publication of “Silent Spring.” I'm fascinated by how many young people don’t know about this book.  I'm also fascinated by how many who are impressed by it while having never read it. It also amazed me at how much Rachel Carson has been lauded publically, and yet how few people know about Norman Borlaug, who saved untold millions, and if you judge greatness by how many lives a person saves - he was probably the greatest man to have lived in the 20th century, and since he died in 2009 - he may end up being he greatest man to have lived in both centuries.

Rachel Louise Carson (May 27, 1907 – April 14, 1964) lived her early years in Springdale, Pennsylvania, near Pittsburgh, and graduated from the Pittsburgh Pennsylvania College for Women (Chatham College) in 1929. She later earned a master’s degree in zoology from John Hopkins University. She is the author of “Silent Spring” (her 4th book), published in 1962, and is considered by some to be one of the most damaging books of the 20th century.

Her claims in this book about decreases in mammal and avian wildlife as a result of DDT were simply wrong. One of the many claims by Carson was robins were in danger of extinction as a result of continued use of DDT. The truth was that there were more robins in the DDT era than before. And according to Audubon bird charts, there may have been as many as 47 times more. World renowned Ornithologist Roger Tory Peterson stated that the robin was the most abundant bird in North America around the same time that “Silent Spring” came out.

None of the predictions regarding cancer made by Carson ever came true. She died of breast cancer on April 14, 1964, at the age of 56, two years after her book came out. She did not live long enough to see real scientists using real science shred her claims. Unfortunately, her death gave impetus to her unscientific statements.

Considered the mother of the modern environmental movement, her radical naturalism became the standard for the movement. "She taught that the environment had done all of the shaping and directing on the Earth, and it was an act of arrogance for man to attempt to control nature". She is still lauded in various encyclopedias as a thorough, meticulous, highly qualified scientist. Those that have attacked her are presented as self serving large chemical companies. Although the chemical companies did attack her - rightly so - there were also sincere, dedicated scientists such as J. Gordon Edwards who were just as concerned as Carson about large corporations and their designs on nature, and was thrilled when her book first appeared.

The problem was in the details. Edwards also believed that “environmentalism didn’t need fraud to justify itself.” He realized as he read her book there was a lot of information that simply wasn’t true. He noted “she was playing fast and loose with the facts.” Over the years, research on her work has shown this to be so. In spite of all the evidence showing her work should not have been taken seriously, she was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1980.

She claimed that DDT was a serious carcinogenic agent and with continued use would eventually impact almost 100% of the population. That was false! She claimed that DDT was causing egg shell thinning, and, as a result, the bird population was decreasing. That was false!  Furthermore, playing fast and loose with the facts she made inappropriate citations.

 Edwards noted that her “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.” He went on to say, “Carson’s comparison between ‘radiation’ and common herbicides is despicable, for there is a tremendous difference between their mutagenic potentials.”

She states on pages 50-51 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.” According to Edwards, “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!”

I was born in 1946, and just like Carson, I grew up in southwest Pennsylvania. I can understand Carson’s fears for the environment. The effects on the local environment from pollution emanating from coal mines, steel mills and coke ovens in those days would make anyone concerned. Believe me when I tell you that you haven’t seen water pollution until you see a sulfur creek, or air pollution until you have see an old time coke oven. This is still no excuse for dishonesty.

What have been the consequences of these five decades of junk science? Her book launched the modern green movement and also marked the toleration and encouragement of scientists to misrepresent the facts. In the book “Ecological Sanity” published in 1972 by Clause and Bolander, they outline how this early this started, promoting a green agenda that not only lingers, but has become a major source of income for the research universities, making the term ‘scientific integrity’ an oxymoron. In the 50 years since “Silent Spring” was first published, it has become obvious that ‘science’ via media attention generates government grant money - clouding their judgment, impugning their integrity beyond repair.

Despite all the efforts to show Carson was misrepresenting the facts, and that her references were tainted and completely unsupportive of her views, this was an issue that was not going away because it was a philosophical issue, not a scientific one. This was demonstrated by the 1972 EPA hearings based on science shown to be fraudulent, including the fraudulent claims that DDT caused egg shell thinning based on an the obscure study by Dr. James Dewitt of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife service, claiming that DDT caused less eggs to hatch. “However the actual study showed that despite feeding quail 3,000 times the daily human intake of DDT, their eggs did not hatch significantly less than the control group. The same study done with pheasants showed that the survival rate of hatchlings of DDT feed pheasants actually increased. This is exactly the opposite of what Rachel Carson wrote.” The only studies that showed a decrease in egg shell thickness occurred when they withheld calcium from the diet of the birds being tested.

Judge Edward Sweeney was the magistrate appointed by EPA to be the hearing examiner and after 9,000 pages of testimony he determined that DDT should not be banned. This was a decision that was overruled by the first director of the EPA, William Ruckelshaus. When the decision was appealed, he appointed himself as the appeals judge, setting a disreputable pattern of dishonesty that has been apparent ever since.

What has been the result? Between 700,000 and 1 million people, mostly children, die every year from malaria; and this doesn’t include the other insect borne diseases.  According to  Lila Abassi in her article,  Promising Finding for Malaria Vaccine , "We here in the United States have been spared the scourge of malaria, as it is a disease mainly endemic in the tropics. According to the World Health Organization, there were 198 million cases of malaria in 2013.  Meanwhile, there are 3.4 billion people who are exposed to malaria and 1.2 billion considered at high risk.
She goes on to say: Most often, children are disproportionately affected and they account for a majority of the mortality cases. In 2010, of the 1.24 million malaria deaths 714,000 occurred in children less than five years of age.

Carson was an amazing writer, and that is what carried her to the top, not her science; and most certainly not her compassion for humanity. Carson could vividly describe the death of a bird she believed was killed by a pesticide, but nowhere does she describe 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.”

Surely, she had to be aware. Surely, she didn’t care.

This book and the ban on DDT are foundational to the very existence of the environmental movement because they never dreamed of the power and money that would come their way as a result of the ban. Currently the environmental movement takes in more money than 60 of the world’s nations. No trade association can stand against them financially.

This started a movement of Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO’s) that have accrued untold power with regulators and legislators world over. They have even gotten the major chemical companies to fund them, publically support them on many levels including their fraudulent claims about Global Warming, The Montreal Protocol, and a host of other central planning schemes promoted under the guise of environmental protection.

The effect has been to confuse the leaders of industry, the public and public officials. We in pest control have now been infiltrated and corrupted in our thinking. We have lost sight of who and what we are, what is real, what is fact, what is fiction, and what is right and what is wrong. As I look over the web sites of the other state associations, I am absolutely appalled that they are so hot to go green, and yet have no idea what that really means; nor do they seem to be aware of the fraudulent origins of the green movement; yet proudly promoting it with a stench of self-righteousness.

When we adopt a green agenda in structural pest control it means that we are agreeing that everything we have done over the last 70 years has been wrong, and has been detrimental to the environment and humanity. Yet, we are living longer, healthier lives than ever in human history. The world’s population was two billion people at the end of WWII, and it took thousands of years to get to that number. The world’s population has soared to seven billion in less than 75 years. How did that happen if all the synthetic chemicals we are exposed to are so deadly as the green movement would have everyone believe?

Technology and environmental care go hand in hand. The poor undeveloped and under developed countries can’t afford the costs of the kind of care the developed nations deliver. Yet the green movement stands against development true to the radical ‘back to nature’ paradigm promoted by Rachel Carson.

Norman Borlaug was the creator of the Green Revolution, which increased food productivity to fantastic rates saving untold millions from starvation worldwide. Rachel Carson started a movement that killed untold millions thus far and will continue to kill untold millions into the foreseeable future. Carson is lauded, and her lies are taught in our schools as true environmental science. Norman Borlaug is largely unknown. If Rachel Carson was a great scientist - then Adolph Hitler, Joe Stalin and Mao Tse Tung were misunderstood visionaries.

What has been the result of 50 years of Carson’s junk science? We lost our minds!

Editor’s note:   In the coming weeks I will be addressing claims made by Carson.  Socialism in the late 1800's and early 1900's didn't play well with Americans because European socialism is atheistic in nature. As a result they became the Progressive Movement and the binding force was religion, believing that socialism was the practical application of Judaic/Christian ethic. After WWII the binding force was psychology. If you didn't accept their views you were crazy...and only those around my age can remember that scam. After the collapse of the Soviet Union - the icon of socialism - they only had one card to really play as trump - Environmentalism!

Environmentalism is the step child of socialism, the spear point of policy and the binding force of the worldwide socialist movement whose goal is a worldwide socialist government under the auspices of the United Nations as is clearly shown by the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development. We really do need to get that! Once that is understood everything I will publish regarding the "foundational" things of the green movement can be properly understood.