Re: Apple-Crop: Rachel Carson's legacy

[Edge, Rory]

Her legacy is that she was one of a small number of people who, at the time, 
made people conscious of the fact that human activity has an impact on our 
environment.

Not necessarily a bad lesson to learn. 

--
Written on a 4 sq. inch BlackBerry screen, which means that there are probably 
typos :)
  

Re: Apple-Crop: Rachel Carson's legacy

[David Kulp]

The "Tierney Lab" links to http://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/.   
Interesting guy.


Here's the full text for the curious.


 FINDINGS; Fateful Voice of a Generation Still Drowns Out Real Science

By JOHN TIERNEY
Published: June 5, 2007

For Rachel Carson admirers, it has not been a silent spring. They've  
been celebrating the centennial of her birthday with paeans to her  
saintliness. A new generation is reading her book in school -- and  
mostly learning the wrong lesson from it.


If students are going to read ''Silent Spring'' in science classes, I  
wish it were paired with another work from that same year, 1962,  
titled ''Chemicals and Pests.'' It was a review of ''Silent Spring''  
in the journal Science written by I. L. Baldwin, a professor of  
agricultural bacteriology at the University of Wisconsin.


He didn't have Ms. Carson's literary flair, but his science has held  
up much better. He didn't make Ms. Carson's fundamental mistake,  
which is evident in the opening sentence of her book:


''There was once a town in the heart of America where all life seemed  
to live in harmony with its surroundings,'' she wrote, extolling the  
peace that had reigned ''since the first settlers raised their  
houses.'' Lately, though, a ''strange blight'' had cast an ''evil  
spell'' that killed the flora and fauna, sickened humans and  
''silenced the rebirth of new life.''


This ''Fable for Tomorrow,'' as she called it, set the tone for the  
hodgepodge of science and junk science in the rest of the book.  
Nature was good; traditional agriculture was all right; modern  
pesticides were an unprecedented evil. It was a Disneyfied version of  
Eden.


Ms. Carson used dubious statistics and anecdotes (like the improbable  
story of a woman who instantly developed cancer after spraying her  
basement with DDT) to warn of a cancer epidemic that never came to  
pass. She rightly noted threats to some birds, like eagles and other  
raptors, but she wildly imagined a mass ''biocide.'' She warned that  
one of the most common American birds, the robin, was ''on the verge  
of extinction'' -- an especially odd claim given the large numbers of  
robins recorded in Audubon bird counts before her book.


Ms. Carson's many defenders, ecologists as well as other scientists,  
often excuse her errors by pointing to the primitive state of  
environmental and cancer research in her day. They argue that she got  
the big picture right: without her passion and pioneering work,  
people wouldn't have recognized the perils of pesticides. But those  
arguments are hard to square with Dr. Baldwin's review.


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.'' He acknowledged that  
pesticides were sometimes badly misused, but he also quoted an adage:  
''There are no harmless chemicals, only harmless use of chemicals.''


Ms. Carson, though, considered new chemicals to be inherently  
different. ''For the first time in the history of the world,'' she  
wrote, ''every human being is now subjected to contact with dangerous  
chemicals, from the moment of conception until death.''


She briefly acknowledged that nature manufactured its own  
carcinogens, but she said they were ''few in number and they belong  
to that ancient array of forces to which life has been accustomed  
from the beginning.'' The new pesticides, by contrast, were ''elixirs  
of death,'' dangerous even in tiny quantities because humans had  
evolved ''no protection'' against them and there was ''no 'safe' dose.''


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). When that longevity  
factor as well as the impact of smoking are removed, the cancer death  
rate was falling in the decade before ''Silent Spring,'' and it kept  
falling in the rest of the century.


Why weren't all of the new poisons killing people? An important clue  
emerged in the 1980s

Re: Apple-Crop: Rachel Carson's legacy

[Jon Clements]

Dave et al, the article appears to be just a free preview now with an  
upgrade to purchase the whole article. We apologize but apparently  
apple-crop went on a bit of a hiatus in conjunction with myself, so  
the posts have not been getting delivered timely.


FWIW, my impression of Rachel Carson was that she was in impassioned  
scientist that appreciated good science but exposed -- what was then  
-- the indiscriminate use of pesticides that had an extreme impact on  
non-target wildlife. Carson's work and writing kindled the formation  
of EPA, whether you consider that good or bad...


:-)

Jon

Jon Clements
Extension Tree Fruit Specialist
UMass Cold Spring Orchard
393 Sabin Street
Belchertown, MA  01007
VOICE 413.478.7219
FAX 413.323.0382
IM mrhoneycrisp
Skype Name mrhoneycrisp


On Jun 5, 2007, at 1:36 PM, Dave Rosenberger wrote:

Check out the excellent article on Rachel Carson's legacy in  
today's NT Times on-line at the web-site noted below.  (It will NOT  
say what you might expect from the Times!)


If you go article, it is also worth checking out the link "go to  
tierney lab" which appears below the skeleton emerging from the egg- 
shell.  I especially enjoyed the "founding principles" of the  
Tierney lab noted on the right-hand side of the page that appears  
when you click "go to tierney lab."


http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/05/science/earth/05tier.html? 
_r=1&8dpc&oref=slogin

--
**
Dave Rosenberger
Professor of Plant PathologyOffice:  845-691-7231
Cornell University's Hudson Valley Lab  Fax:845-691-2719
P.O. Box 727, Highland, NY 12528Cell: 845-594-3060
http://www.nysaes.cornell.edu/pp/faculty/rosenberger/



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Apple-Crop is not moderated. Therefore, the statements do not represent 
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Apple-Crop: Rachel Carson's legacy

[Dave Rosenberger]

Check out the excellent article on Rachel Carson's legacy in today's 
NT Times on-line at the web-site noted below.  (It will NOT say what 
you might expect from the Times!)


If you go article, it is also worth checking out the link "go to 
tierney lab" which appears below the skeleton emerging from the 
egg-shell.  I especially enjoyed the "founding principles" of the 
Tierney lab noted on the right-hand side of the page that appears 
when you click "go to tierney lab."


http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/05/science/earth/05tier.html?_r=1&8dpc&oref=slogin
--
**
Dave Rosenberger
Professor of Plant PathologyOffice:  845-691-7231
Cornell University's Hudson Valley Lab  Fax:845-691-2719
P.O. Box 727, Highland, NY 12528Cell: 845-594-3060
http://www.nysaes.cornell.edu/pp/faculty/rosenberger/



---


The 'Apple-Crop' LISTSERV is sponsored by the Virtual Orchard 
 and managed by Win Cowgill and Jon 
Clements <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>.


Apple-Crop is not moderated. Therefore, the statements do not represent 
"official" opinions and the Virtual Orchard takes no responsibility for 
the content.