Lost Woods: The Discovered Writing of Rachel Carson by Rachel Carson
It is also worthy of note that during the years 1959, 1960, and 1961, airplane crashes involving crop-dusting planes totaled 873. In these accidents 135 pilots lost their lives. This very fact has led to some significant research by the Federal Aviation Agency through its Civil Aeromedical Unit – research designed to find out why so many of these planes crashed. These medical investigators took as their basic premise the assumption that spray poisons accumulate in the pilot’s body – inside the cells, where they are difficult to detect.
These researchers recently reported that they had confirmed two very significant facts: 1. That there is a causal relation between the build-up of toxins in the cell and the onset of sugar diabetes. 2. That the build-up of poisons within the cell interferes with the rate of energy production in the human body.
I am, of course, happy to have this confirmation that cellular processes are not so “irrelevant” as a certain scientific reviewer of Silent Spring has declared them to be.
This same reviewer, writing in a chemical journal, was much annoyed with me for giving the sources of my information. To identify the person whose views you are quoting is, according to this reviewer, name-dropping. Well, times have certainly changed since I received my training in the scientific method at Johns Hopkins! My critic also profoundly disapproved of my bibliography. The very fact that it gave complete and specific references for each important statement was extremely distasteful to him. This was padding to impress the uninitiated with its length.
Now I would like to say that in Silent Spring I have never asked the reader to take my word. I have given him a very clear indication of my sources. I make it possible for him – indeed I invite him – to go beyond what I report and get the full picture. This is the reason for the 55 pages of references. You cannot do this if you are trying to conceal or distort or to present half truths.
Another reviewer was offended because I made the statement that it is customary for pesticide manufacturers to support research on chemicals in the universities. Now, this is just common knowledge and I can scarcely believe the reviewer is unaware of it, because his own university is among those receiving such grants.
But since my statement has been challenged, I suggest that any of you who are interested make a few inquiries from representative universities. I am sure you will find out that the practice is very widespread. Actually, a visit to a good scientific library will quickly establish the fact, for it is still generally the custom for authors of technical papers to acknowledge the source of funds for the investigation. For example, a few gleaned at random from the Journal of Economic Entomology are as follows:
1. In a paper from Kansas State University, a footnote states: Partial cost of publication of this paper was met by the Chemagro Corporation.
2. From the University of California Citrus Experimental Station: The authors thank the Diamond Black-Leaf Co., Richmond, Virginia, for grants-in-aid.
3. University of Wisconsin: Research was also supported in part by grants from the Shell Chemical Co., Velsicol Chemical Corporation and Wisconsin Canners Association.
4. Illinois Nat. Hist. Survey: This investigation was sponsored by the Monsanto Chem. Co. of St. Louis, Mo.
A penetrating observer of social problems has pointed out recently that whereas wealthy families once were the chief benefactors of the Universities, now industry has taken over this role. Support of education is something no one quarrels with – but this need not blind us to the fact that research supported by pesticide manufacturers is not likely to be directed at discovering facts indicating unfavorable effects of pesticides.
Such a liaison between science and industry is a growing phenomenon, seen in other areas as well. The AMA, through its newspaper, has just referred physicians to a pesticide trade association for information to help them answer patients’ questions about the effects of pesticides on man. I am sure physicians have a need for information on this subject. But I would like to see them referred to authoritative scientific or medical literature – not to a trade organization whose business it is to promote the sale of pesticides.
We see scientific societies acknowledging as “sustaining associates” a dozen or more giants of a related industry. When the scientific organization speaks, whose voice do we hear – that of science? or of the sustaining industry? It might be a less serious situation if this voice were always clearly identified, but the public assumes it is hearing the voice of science.
What does it mean when we see a committee set up to make a supposedly impartial review of a situation, and then discover that the committee is affiliated with the very industry whose profits are at stake? I have this week read two reviews of the recent reports of a National Academy of Sciences Committee on the relations of pesticides to wildlife. These reviews raise disturbing questions. It is important to understand just what this committee is. The two sections of its report that have now been published are frequently cited by the pesticide industry in attempts to refute my statements. The public, I believe, assumes that the Committee is actually part of the Academy. Although appointed by the Academy, its members come from outside. Some are scientists of distinction in their fields. One would suppose the way to get an impartial evaluation of the impact of pesticides on wildlife would be to set up a committee of completely disinterested individuals. But the review appearing this week in The Atlantic Naturalist described the composition of the Committee as follows: “A very significant role in this committee is played by the Liaison Representatives. These are of three categories. A.) Supporting Agencies. B.) Government Agencies. C.) Scientific Societies. The supporting agencies are presumably those who supply the hard cash. Forty-three such agencies are listed, including 19 chemical companies comprising the massed might of the chemical industry. In addition, there are at least 4 trade organizations such as the National Agricultural Chemical Association and the National Aviation Trades Association.”
The Committee reports begin with a firm statement in support of the use of chemical pesticides. From this predetermined position, it is not surprising to find it mentioning only some damage to some wildlife. Since, in the modern manner, there is no documentation, one can neither confirm or deny its findings. The Atlantic Naturalist reviewer described the reports as “written in the style of a trained public relations official of industry out to placate some segments of the public that are causing trouble.”
All of these things raise the question of the communication of scientific knowledge to the public. Is industry becoming a screen through which facts must be filtered, so that the hard, uncomfortable truths are kept back and only the harmless morsels allowed to filter through? I know that many thoughtful scientists are deeply disturbed that their organizations are becoming fronts for industry. More than one scientist has raised a disturbing question – whether a spirit of lysenkoism may be developing in America today – the philosophy that perverted and destroyed the science of genetics in Russia and even infiltrated all of that nation’s agricultural sciences. But here the tailoring, the screening of basic truth, is done, not to suit a party line, but to accommodate to the short-term gain, to serve the gods of profit and production.
These are matters of the most serious importance to society. I commend their study to you, as professionals in the field of communication.
28
[1963]
A New Chapter to Silent Spring
AS CARSON LEARNED OF FURTHER INCIDENTS of pesticide damage and injury from other scientists and from the letters she received from readers, she included this new information every time she spoke in public. Her speeches during this last year of her life reflect her moral conviction that “no civilization can wage relentless war on life without destroying itself, and without losing the right to be called civilized.”
Her address to the women of the Garden Club of America in January, 1963, opened a new, aggressively political phase of the pesticide struggle. Here Carson focused specifically on the economic and political forces that prevented chang
She also addressed the stream of propaganda that had issued from pesticide trade groups, misinformation that hid their true links to industry behind bland affiliations to research organizations or educational institutions. The speech reveals Carson as a tough and trenchant political infighter who understood the nature of her opposition, and who wisely directed her message to concerned individuals, such as the activist women of the nation’s garden clubs.
I AM PARTICULARLY GLAD to have this opportunity to speak to you. Ever since, ten years ago, you honored me with your Frances Hutchinson medal, I have felt very close to The Garden Club of America. And I should like to pay tribute to you for the quality of your work and for the aims and aspirations of your organization. Through your interest in plant life, your fostering of beauty, your alignment with constructive conservation causes, you promote that onward flow of life that is the essence of our world.
This is a time when forces of a very different nature too often prevail – forces careless of life or deliberately destructive of it and of the essential web of living relationships.
My particular concern, as you know, is with the reckless use of chemicals so unselective in their action that they should more appropriately be called biocides rather than pesticides. Not even their most partisan defenders can claim that their toxic effect is limited to insects or rodents or weeds or whatever the target may be.
The battle for a sane policy for controlling unwanted species will be a long and difficult one. The publication of Silent Spring was neither the beginning nor the end of that struggle. I think, however, that it is moving into a new phase, and I would like to assess with you some of the progress that has been made and take a look at the nature of the struggle that lies before us.
We should be very clear about what our cause is. What do we oppose? What do we stand for? If you read some of my industry-oriented reviewers you will think that I am opposed to any efforts to control insects or other organisms. This, of course, is not my position and I am sure it is not that of The Garden Club of America. We differ from the promoters of biocides chiefly in the means we advocate, rather than the end to be attained.
It is my conviction that if we automatically call in the spray planes or reach for the aerosol bomb when we have an insect problem we are resorting to crude methods of a rather low scientific order. We are being particularly unscientific when we fail to press forward with research that will give us the new kind of weapons we need. Some such weapons now exist – brilliant and imaginative prototypes of what I trust will be the insect control methods of the future. But we need many more, and we need to make better use of those we have. Research men of the Department of Agriculture have told me privately that some of the measures they have developed and tested and turned over to the insect control branch have been quietly put on the shelf.
I criticize the present heavy reliance upon biocides on several grounds: First, on the grounds of their inefficiency. I have here some comparative figures on the toll taken of our crops by insects before and after the DDT era. During the first half of this century, crop loss due to insect attack has been estimated by a leading entomologist at 10 percent a year. It is startling to find, then, that the National Academy of Science last year placed the present crop loss at 25 percent a year. If the percentage of crop loss is increasing at this rate, even as the use of modern insecticides increases, surely something is wrong with the methods used! I would remind you that a non-chemical method gave 100 percent control of the screwworm fly – a degree of success no chemical has ever achieved.
Chemical controls are inefficient also because as now used they promote resistance among insects. The number of insect species resistant to one or more groups of insecticides has risen from about a dozen in pre-DDT days to nearly 150 today. This is a very serious problem, threatening, as it does, greatly impaired control.
Another measure of inefficiency is the fact that chemicals often provoke resurgences of the very insect they seek to control, because they have killed off its natural controls. Or they cause some other organism suddenly to rise to nuisance status: spider mites, once relatively innocuous, have become a worldwide pest since the advent of DDT.
My other reasons for believing we must turn to other methods of controlling insects have been set forth in detail in Silent Spring and I shall not take time to discuss them now. Obviously, it will take time to revolutionize our methods of insect and weed control to the point where dangerous chemicals are minimized. Meanwhile, there is much that can be done to bring about some immediate improvement in the situation through better procedures and controls.
In looking at the pesticide situation today, the most hopeful sign is an awakening of strong public interest and concern. People are beginning to ask questions and to insist upon proper answers instead of meekly acquiescing in whatever spraying programs are proposed. This in itself is a wholesome thing.
There is increasing demand for better legislative control of pesticides. The state of Massachusetts has already set up a Pesticide Board with actual authority. This Board has taken a very necessary step by requiring the licensing of anyone proposing to carry out aerial spraying. Incredible though it may seem, before this was done anyone who had money to hire an airplane could spray where and when he pleased. I am told that the state of Connecticut is now planning an official investigation of spraying practices. And of course on a national scale, the President last summer directed his science advisor to set up a committee of scientists to review the whole matter of the government’s activities in this field.
Citizens groups, too, are becoming active. For example, the Pennsylvania Federation of Women’s Clubs recently set up a program to protect the public from the menace of poisons in the environment – a program based on education and promotion of legislation. The National Audubon Society has advocated a 5-point action program involving both state and federal agencies. The North American Wildlife Conference this year will devote an important part of its program to the problem of pesticides. All these developments will serve to keep public attention focused on the problem.
I was amused recently to read a bit of wishful thinking in one of the trade magazines. Industry “can take heart,” it said, “from the fact that the main impact of the book (i.e., Silent Spring) will occur in the late fall and winter – seasons when consumers are not normally active buyers of insecticides [ … ] it is fairly safe to hope that by March or April Silent Spring no longer will be an interesting conversational subject.”
If the tone of my mail from readers is any guide, and if the movements that have already been launched gain the expected momentum, this is one prediction that will not come true.
This is not to say that we can afford to be complacent. Although the attitude of the public is showing a refreshing change, there is very little evidence of any reform in spraying practices. Very toxic materials are being applied with solemn official assurances that they will harm neither man nor beast. When wildlife losses are later reported, the same officials deny the evidence or declare the animals must have died from “something else.”
Exactly this pattern of events is occurring in a number of areas now. For example, a newspaper in East St. Louis, Illinois, describes the death of several hundred rabbits, quail and songbirds in areas treated with pellets of the insecticide, dieldrin. One area involved was, ironically, a “game preserve.” This was part of a program of Japanese beetle control.
The procedures seem to be the same as those I described in Silent Spring, referring to another Illinois community, Sheldon. At Sheldon the destruction of many birds and small mammals amounted almost to annihilation. Yet an Illinois Agriculture official is now quoted as saying dieldrin has no serious effect on animal life.
A significant case history is shaping up now in Norfolk, Virginia. The chemical is the very toxic dieldrin, the target the white fringed beetle,
However, alert reporters soon proved these assurances to be without foundation. The actual method of application was to be by seeders, blowers and helicopters: the same type of procedure that in Illinois wiped out robins, brown thrashers and meadowlarks, killed sheep in the pastures, and contaminated the forage so that cows gave milk containing poison.
Yet at a hearing of sorts concerned Norfolk citizens were told merely that the State’s Department of Agriculture was committed to the program and that it would therefore be carried out.
The fundamental wrong is the authoritarian control that has been vested in the agricultural agencies. There are, after all, many different interests involved: there are problems of water pollution, of soil pollution, of wildlife protection, of public health. Yet the matter is approached as if the agricultural interest were the supreme, or indeed the only one.