Drug-resistant malaria in Thailand threatens global nightmare

So what happened in between?

Rachel Carson’s Deadly Fantasies

As detailed by Roger Meiners and Andy Morriss in their scholarly yet very readable analysis, “Silent Spring at 50: Reflections on an Environmental Classic,” Carson exploited her reputation as a well-known nature writer to advocate and legitimatize “positions linked to a darker tradition in American environmental thinking.” The book “encourages some of the most destructive strains within environmentalism: alarmism, technophobia, failure to consider the costs and benefits of alternatives, and the discounting of human well-being around the world.”

Carson’s proselytizing and advocacy raised substantial anxiety about DDT and led to bans in most of the world and to restrictions on other chemical pesticides. But the fears she raised were based on gross misrepresentations and scholarship so atrocious that, if Carson were an academic, she would be guilty of egregious academic misconduct. Her observations about DDT have been condemned by many scientists. In the words of Professor Robert H. White-Stevens, an agriculturist and biology professor at Rutgers University, “If man were to follow the teachings of Miss Carson, we would return to the Dark Ages, and the insects and diseases and vermin would once again inherit the earth.”

INC on January 2, 2013 at 7:30 PM

Dr. Frank Enstine on January 2, 2013 at 7:36 PM

I think we only had one ‘sentinel’ chicken come down with it, but they still need to spray. The mosquitoes were terrible here. I remember as a child when one of those spray trucks would travel around we would run after and into its fog. I’m fine, and the next generation is fine as well!

INC on January 2, 2013 at 7:53 PM