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Rachel Carson again
May. 24th, 2007 09:22 pmI've recently learned that I share a birthday not just with ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
jwgh and Vincent Price, but also with "Silent Spring" author Rachel Carson. The upcoming one would be her 100th birthday, and you know what that means, kids: it's time again to remind everyone that she killed more people than Hitler! Look, here are some of the children she killed! Everyone who dies of malaria is, by this accounting, a victim of Rachel Carson and the global ban on DDT that she brought about through the uncaring fanaticism of eco-nuts.
Except that these claims are completely bogus: the use of DDT to fight malaria declined globally largely because its indiscriminate use in agriculture bred resistant mosquitoes, which was one of the things Carson was warning us about.
Fortunately, Tim Lambert can be relied upon to knock this stuff down. Here he demonstrates that today's attacks are essentially the same ones used by Monsanto in the 1960s.
It's gotten to the point that I have a default attitude of skepticism toward organizations claiming to support the fight against malaria in the developing world, because some of them are just astroturf organizations devoted to bashing environmentalists over DDT. And I resent that.
jwgh and Vincent Price, but also with "Silent Spring" author Rachel Carson. The upcoming one would be her 100th birthday, and you know what that means, kids: it's time again to remind everyone that she killed more people than Hitler! Look, here are some of the children she killed! Everyone who dies of malaria is, by this accounting, a victim of Rachel Carson and the global ban on DDT that she brought about through the uncaring fanaticism of eco-nuts.Except that these claims are completely bogus: the use of DDT to fight malaria declined globally largely because its indiscriminate use in agriculture bred resistant mosquitoes, which was one of the things Carson was warning us about.
Fortunately, Tim Lambert can be relied upon to knock this stuff down. Here he demonstrates that today's attacks are essentially the same ones used by Monsanto in the 1960s.
It's gotten to the point that I have a default attitude of skepticism toward organizations claiming to support the fight against malaria in the developing world, because some of them are just astroturf organizations devoted to bashing environmentalists over DDT. And I resent that.