Science Does Not Justify Ban on DDT
March 1, 2003
S. Fred Singer Dr. S. Fred Singer was among the first and is still the most prominent scientist in the world... (read full bio)
New Year’s Day 2003 marked the thirtieth anniversary of the Environmental Protection Agency’s ban on the pesticide DDT.
With malaria striking youngsters in the Washington, DC suburbs last summer, we should remind ourselves that DDT is the most potent weapon against the mosquitoes that spread the disease. The ban was a political decision made by the EPA administrator, acting against the best scientific advice of his own organization.
Full article here:
news.heartland.org
The Lies of Rachel Carson
by Dr. J. Gordon Edwards
(Full text, without tables and illustrations, from the Summer 1992 21st Century)
A well-known entomologist documents some of the misstatements in Carson’s Silent Spring, the 1962 book that poisoned public opinion against DDT and other pesticides.
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Entomologist
J. Gordon Edwards
| In 1962, when Rachel Carson published her book Silent Spring, I was delighted. I belonged to several environmental-type organizations, had no feelings of respect for industry or big business, had one of my own books published by the Sierra Club, and I had written articles for The Indiana Waltonian, Audubon Magazine, and other environmental magazines.
At the time, I had been engaged in field work at the University of Wyoming research station in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, for three summers and I worked as biological coordinator for the National Park Service in Glacier National Park. I eagerly read the condensed version of Silent Spring in the New Yorker magazine and bought a copy of the book as soon as I could find it in the stores. As I read the first several chapters I noticed many statements that I realized were false; however, one can overlook such things when they are produced by one’s cohorts, and I did just that.
As I neared the middle of the book, the feeling grew in my mind that Rachel Carson was really playing loose with the facts and was also deliberately wording many sentences in such a way as to make them imply certain things without actually saying them. She was carefully omitting everything that failed to support her thesis that pesticides were bad, that industry was bad, and that any scientists who did not support her views were bad.
Full article here:
21stcenturysciencetech.com
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