Rachel Carson: Saint or Murderer
I'm currently taking a political science class in which I think I might be the lone liberal. First of all, the teacher is openly "neo-con" and thinks that global warming is a myth created by the "Liberal Media" in order to get the American people to vote democrat. He informed the class this past Wednesday that he would no longer be using Google. He explained that Google had "forgotten" to celebrate Memorial Day this year by not changing the logo on google.com to some kind of war honoring graphic. (read about it here: http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=50425)Do you see what I'm dealing with here? And the class pretty much agrees with him which isn't that surprising with it being BYU and all. All of the stuff above didn't really get to me too much, it was just kind of slightly aggravating and funny at the same time like a lot of stuff at BYU is. There has been one thing though that we discussed in class that I just can't get over.
So the class was arguing about Global Warming as usual, and then the topic switched over to Sheryl Crows comments regarding her proposal to ration toilet paper, a popular topic among neo-cons who like to think that environmentalists are an entirely other species lower than morons. Some how from that, the teacher brought up a theory he had read about that proposes Rachel Carson, author of "silent spring", is responsible for the deaths of 800,000 children a year. For those of you who don't know who she is, Rachel Carson was a marine biologist who discovered that pesticides such as DDT and Dieldrin were creating serious problems to the environment, especially birds. In her book "Silent Spring", Rachel Carson wrote about the damage pesticides were doing to the environment and the irreversible effects that were possible if such chemicals were never banned. The book was a classic and helped start the global environmental movement which also led to the banning of DDT.
My teacher cited an article (http://blogs.forbes.com/digitalrules/2007/05/but_her_heart_w.html)in which Rachel Carson is accused of being responsible for the death of every child who has been killed by malaria because DDT, the chemical Carson's book promoted the banning of, killed malaria invested mosquitoes that now kill little children in thrid-world countries. Sound ridiculous? It baffled me that someone with a Ph.D. could really believe such an obviously illogical thing!
That night, he emailed the article to the class. I read it and got upset. I replied to him with an article (http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2006-09-17-parkinsons_x.htm) that cites scientific evidence that DDT is linked to Parkinson's disease. To this I got the following response "The strategic use [of DDT] advocated in third world countries today is much more strategic and limited. And in any case, I would rather get Parkinson's at 70 than have my child die of malaria at 3."
Unbelievable. The human race is now controlling nature more and more all the time and as a result we are living longer and longer which is going to be a huge problem for the human race down the road. Before the rise of modern medicine, man kind had a niche in the biosphere that allowed for a free flowing correlation between eco-systems. Diseases existed to control the population of species so that the very fragile balance of the food chain could be kept in tact. With the advent of modern medicine and domination of the human race, the rest of our environment has been slowly suffering. Even though there isn't much we can do about our role in the environmet at the moment, I feel that we need to reconsider antibiotics and vaccinations as a source of extending the lives of humans. Diseases exist for a reason and further messing with the natural cycle will in the long run lead to the destruction of the planet's biological environment as we know it. This is an incredibly unpopular opinion, but one I think should at least be given some thought. I believe that it would be much better for children to die of a natural disease that has been around for thousands of years than have elderly people die from a new disease resulting from synthetic chemicals.
So the class was arguing about Global Warming as usual, and then the topic switched over to Sheryl Crows comments regarding her proposal to ration toilet paper, a popular topic among neo-cons who like to think that environmentalists are an entirely other species lower than morons. Some how from that, the teacher brought up a theory he had read about that proposes Rachel Carson, author of "silent spring", is responsible for the deaths of 800,000 children a year. For those of you who don't know who she is, Rachel Carson was a marine biologist who discovered that pesticides such as DDT and Dieldrin were creating serious problems to the environment, especially birds. In her book "Silent Spring", Rachel Carson wrote about the damage pesticides were doing to the environment and the irreversible effects that were possible if such chemicals were never banned. The book was a classic and helped start the global environmental movement which also led to the banning of DDT.
My teacher cited an article (http://blogs.forbes.com/digitalrules/2007/05/but_her_heart_w.html)in which Rachel Carson is accused of being responsible for the death of every child who has been killed by malaria because DDT, the chemical Carson's book promoted the banning of, killed malaria invested mosquitoes that now kill little children in thrid-world countries. Sound ridiculous? It baffled me that someone with a Ph.D. could really believe such an obviously illogical thing!
That night, he emailed the article to the class. I read it and got upset. I replied to him with an article (http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2006-09-17-parkinsons_x.htm) that cites scientific evidence that DDT is linked to Parkinson's disease. To this I got the following response "The strategic use [of DDT] advocated in third world countries today is much more strategic and limited. And in any case, I would rather get Parkinson's at 70 than have my child die of malaria at 3."
Unbelievable. The human race is now controlling nature more and more all the time and as a result we are living longer and longer which is going to be a huge problem for the human race down the road. Before the rise of modern medicine, man kind had a niche in the biosphere that allowed for a free flowing correlation between eco-systems. Diseases existed to control the population of species so that the very fragile balance of the food chain could be kept in tact. With the advent of modern medicine and domination of the human race, the rest of our environment has been slowly suffering. Even though there isn't much we can do about our role in the environmet at the moment, I feel that we need to reconsider antibiotics and vaccinations as a source of extending the lives of humans. Diseases exist for a reason and further messing with the natural cycle will in the long run lead to the destruction of the planet's biological environment as we know it. This is an incredibly unpopular opinion, but one I think should at least be given some thought. I believe that it would be much better for children to die of a natural disease that has been around for thousands of years than have elderly people die from a new disease resulting from synthetic chemicals.
posted by Bruce at
3:01 PM
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