Rachel Carson, Mass Murderer?
The creation of an anti-environmental myth

By Aaron Swartz
From Extra!
2007

Sometimes you find mass murderers in the most unlikely places. Take Rachel Carson. She was, by all accounts, a mild-mannered writer for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service—hardly a sociopath’s breeding ground. And yet, according to many in the media, Carson has more blood on her hands than Hitler.

The problems started in the 1940s, when Carson left the Service to begin writing full-time. In 1962, she published a series of articles in the New Yorker, resulting in the book Silent Spring—widely credited with launching the modern environmental movement. The book discussed how pesticides and pollutants moved up the food chain, threatening the ecosystems for many animals, especially birds. Without them, it warned, we might face the title’s silent spring.

Farmers used vast quantities of DDT to protect their crops against insects—80 million pounds were sprayed in 1959 alone—but from there it quickly climbed up the food chain. Bald eagles, eating fish that had concentrated DDT in their tissues, headed toward extinction. Humans, likewise accumulating DDT in our systems, appeared to get cancer as a result. Mothers passed the chemical on to their children through breast milk. Silent Spring drew attention to these concerns and, in 1972, the resulting movement succeeded in getting DDT banned in the U.S.—a ban that later spread to other nations.

And that, according to Carson’s critics, is where the trouble started. DDT had been sprayed heavily on houses in developing countries to protect against malaria-carrying mosquitoes. Without it, malaria rates in developing countries skyrocketed. Over 1 million people die from it each year.

To the critics, the solution seems simple: Forget Carson’s emotional arguments about dead birds and start spraying DDT again so we can save human lives.

Worse than Hitler?
“What the World Needs Now Is DDT” asserted the headline of a lengthy feature in the New York Times Magazine (4/11/04). “No one concerned about the environmental damage of DDT set out to kill African children,” reporter Tina Rosenberg generously allowed. Nonethe-less, “Silent Spring is now killing African children because of its persistence in the public mind.”

It’s a common theme—echoed by two more articles in the Times by the same author (3/29/06, 10/5/06), and by Times columnists Nicholas Kristof (3/12/05) and John Tierney (6/05/07). The same refrain appears in a Washington Post op-ed by columnist Sebastian Mallaby, gleefully headlined “Look Who’s Ignoring Science Now” (10/09/05). And again in the Baltimore Sun (“Ms. Carson’s views [came] at a cost of many thousands of lives worldwide”—5/27/07), New York Sun (“millions of Africans died . . . thanks to Rachel Carson’s junk science classic”—4/21/06), the Hill (“millions die on the altar of politically correct ideologies”—11/02/05), San Francisco Examiner (“Carson was wrong, and millions of people continue to pay the price”—5/28/07) and Wall Street Journal (“environmental controls were more important than the lives of human beings”—2/21/07).

Even novelists have gotten in on the game. “Banning DDT killed more people than Hitler, Ted,” explains a character in Michael Crichton’s 2004 bestseller, State of Fear (p. 487). “[DDT] was so safe you could eat it.” That fictional comment not only inspired a column on the same theme in Australia’s Sydney Morning Herald (6/18/05), it led Senator James Inhofe (R-Ok.) to invite Crichton and Dr. Donald R. Roberts, a longtime pro-DDT activist, to testify before the Senate Committee on Environ-ment and Public Works.

But other attacks only seem like fiction. A web page on junkscience.com features a live Malaria Death Clock next to a photo of Rachel Carson, holding her responsible for more deaths than malaria has caused in total. (“DDT allows [Africans to] climb out of the poverty/subsistence hole in which ‘caring greens’ apparently wish to keep them trapped,” it helpfully explains.) And a new website from the Competitive Enterprise Institute, RachelWasWrong.org, features photos of deceased African children along the side of every page.

Developing resistance
At one level, these articles send a comforting message to the developed world: Saving African children is easy. We don’t need to build large aid programs or fund major health initiatives, let alone develop Third-World infrastructure or think about larger issues of fairness. No, to save African lives from malaria, we just need to put our wallets away and work to stop the evil environmentalists. Unfortunately, it’s not so easy.

For one thing, there is no global DDT ban. DDT is indeed banned in the U.S., but malaria isn’t exactly a pressing issue here. If it ever were, the ban contains an exception for matters of public health. Meanwhile, it’s perfectly legal—and indeed, used—in many other countries: 10 out of the 17 African nations that currently conduct indoor spraying use DDT (New York Times, 9/16/06).

DDT use has decreased enormously, but not because of a ban. The real reason is simple, although not one conservatives are particularly fond of: evolution. Mosquito populations rapidly develop resistance to DDT, creating enzymes to detoxify it, modifying their nervous systems to avoid its effects, and avoiding areas where DDT is sprayed — and recent research finds that that resistance continues to spread even after DDT spraying has stopped, lowering the effectiveness not only of DDT but also other pesticides (Current Biology, 8/9/05).

“No responsible person contends that insect-borne disease should be ignored,” Carson wrote in Silent Spring. “The question that has now urgently presented itself is whether it is either wise or responsible to attack the problem by methods that are rapidly making it worse. . . . Resistance to insecticides by mosquitoes . . . has surged upwards at an astounding rate.”

Unfortunately, her words were ignored. Africa didn’t cut back on pesticides because, through a system called the “Industry Cooperative Program,” the pesticide companies themselves got to participate in the United Nations agency that provided advice on pest control. Not surprisingly, it continued to recommend significant pesticide usage.

When Silent Spring came out in 1962, it seemed as if this strategy was working. To take the most extreme case, Sri Lanka counted only 17 cases of malaria in 1963. But by 1969, things had once again gotten out of hand: 537,700 cases were counted. Naturally, the rise had many causes: Political and financial pressure led to cutbacks on spraying, stockpiles of supplies had been used up, low rainfall and high temperatures encouraged mosquitoes, a backlog of diagnostic tests to detect malaria was processed and testing standards became more stringent. But even with renewed effort, the problem did not go away.

Records uncovered by entomologist Andrew Spielman hint at why (Mosquito, p. 177). For years, Sri Lanka had run test programs to verify DDT’s effectiveness at killing mosquitoes. But halfway through the program, their standards were dramatically lowered. “Though the reason was not recorded,” Spielman writes, “it was obvious that some mosquitoes were developing resistance and the change was made to justify continued spraying.”

But further spraying led only to further resistance, and the problem became much harder to control. DDT use was scaled back and other pesticides were introduced—more cautiously this time—but the epidemic was never again brought under control, with the deadly legacy that continues to this day.
Instead of apologizing, the chemical companies went on the attack. They funded front groups and think tanks to claim the epidemic started because countries “stopped” using their products. In their version of the story, environmentalists forced Africans to stop using DDT, causing the increase in malaria. “It’s like a hit-and-run driver who, instead of admitting responsibility for the accident, frames the person who tried to prevent the accident,” complains Tim Lambert, whose weblog, Deltoid, tracks the DDT myth and other scientific misinformation in the media.

Front and center
Perhaps the most vocal group spreading this story is Africa Fighting Malaria (AFM). Founded in 2000 by Roger Bate, an economist at various right-wing think tanks, AFM has run a major PR campaign to push the pro-DDT story, publishing scores of op-eds and appearing in dozens of articles each year. Bate and his partner Richard Tren even published a book laying out their alternate history of DDT: When Politics Kills: Malaria and the DDT Story.

A funding pitch uncovered by blogger Eli Rabbett shows Bate’s thinking when he first started the project. “The environmental movement has been successful in most of its campaigns as it has been ‘politically correct,’” he explained (Tobacco Archives, 09/98). What the anti-environmental movement needs is something with “the correct blend of political correctness ( . . . oppressed blacks) and arguments (eco-imperialism [is] undermining their future).” That something, Bate proposed, was DDT.

In an interview, Bate said that his motivation had changed after years of working on the issue of malaria. “I think my position has mellowed, perhaps with age,” he told Extra!. “[I have] gone from being probably historically anti-environmental to being very much pro–combating malaria now.” He pointed to the work he’d done making sure money to fight malaria was spent properly, including a study he co-authored in the respected medical journal the Lancet (7/15/06) on dishonest accounting at the World Bank. He insisted that he wasn’t simply pro-DDT, but instead was willing to support whatever the evidence showed worked. And he flatly denied that AFM had ever received money from tobacco, pharmaceutical or chemical companies.

Still, AFM has very much followed the plan Bate laid out in his original funding pitch to corporations: First, create “the intellectual arguments to make our case,” then “disseminate these arguments to people in [developing countries]” who can make convincing spokespeople, and then “promote these arguments . . . in the West.” The penultimate page gives another hint that stopping malaria isn’t the primary goal: “Is the DDT problem still relevant?” is listed as an “intellectual issue to be resolved”—once they got funding. (When asked for comment on this, Bate became upset and changed the subject.)

Bate continues to insist that resistance isn’t much of an issue, because its primary effect is to keep mosquitoes away from DDT-covered areas altogether. Instead he claims “resistance was a useful device by which it was easy to pull the plug” on an anti-malaria campaign that was failing because of administrative incompetence. “You’re not likely to see an aid agency [admit this],” he said when asked for evidence. “I’m not sure what you want me to say. If you read enough of the literature, you get that strong impression.” But few experts aside from those affiliated with AFM seem to have gotten the same impression.

DDT’s dangers
These myths can have serious consequences. For one thing, despite what is claimed by the right, DDT itself is quite harmful. Studies have suggested that prenatal exposure to DDT leads to significant decreases in mental and physical functioning among young children, with the problems becoming more severe when the exposure is more serious (American Journal of Epidemiology, 9/12/06; Pediatrics, 7/1/06), while the EPA classifies it as a probable human carcinogen.

For another, resistance is deadly. Not only has DDT’s overuse made it ineffective, but, as noted, it has led mosquitoes to evolve “cross-resistance”: resistance not only to DDT but also to other insecticides, including those with less dangerous environmental effects.

And perhaps most importantly, the pro-DDT line is a vast distraction. There are numerous other techniques for dealing with malaria: alternative insecticides, bed nets and a combination of drugs called artemisinin-based combination therapy, or ACT. ACT actually kills the malaria parasite fast, allowing the patient a quick recovery, and has a success rate of 95 percent (World Health Organization, 2001). Rollouts of ACT in other countries have slashed malaria rates by 80 to 97 percent (Washington Monthly, 7/06).

But such techniques require money and wealthy nations are hesitant to give it, especially when they think they can just avoid the whole problem by unbanning DDT. “DDT has become a fetish,” says Allan Schapira, a former senior member of the malaria team at the World Health Organization (Washington Monthly, 7/06). “You have people advocating DDT as if it’s the only insecticide that works against malaria, as if DDT would solve all problems, which is obviously absolutely unrealistic.”

As a result, senators and their staff insist that DDT is all that’s necessary. And the new director of WHO’s malaria program, Arata Kochi, kicked off his tenure by telling the malaria team that they were “stupid” and issuing an announcement that “forcefully endorsed wider use of the insecticide DDT” while a representative of the Bush administration stood by his side. Half his staff resigned in response (New York Times, 9/16/06).

There are genuine issues with current malaria control programs: incompetent administration, misuse of funds, outdated techniques, a lack of funding and concern. And, much to their credit, many on the right have drawn attention to these problems. Africa Fighting Malaria has frequently called for more effective monitoring, and conservative Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Ok.) has used his influence to fight corruption in anti-malaria programs.

But the same Tom Coburn recently held up a bill honoring the 100th anniversary of Rachel Carson’s birth on the grounds that “millions of people . . . died because governments bought into Carson’s junk science claims about DDT” (Raw Story, 5/22/07). Even AFM’s Bate was quoted as finding this a bit too much, pointing out that Carson died in 1964, just two years after Silent Spring was published (Washington Post, 5/23/07). But apparently getting a few digs in at the environmental movement is just too hard for conservatives to resist.



B’nai Brith Uses Human Rights Complaint to Squelch Critcism of Israel

By Sid Shniad

From Canadian Dimension Magazine
2007

Harry Abrams, B.C. representative for B’nai Brith, has filed a human-rights complaint with the Canadian Human Rights Commission against Peace, Earth and Justice, alleging that the

Victoria-based website, its editors, manager and director “contrive to promote ongoing hatred affecting persons identifiable as Jews and/or as citizens of Israel.”

On the basis of the complaint, the website’s publisher has removed eighteen articles allegedly containing anti-Semitic material pending the outcome of an inquiry.

According to Abrams, a Victoria businessman, the complaint was filed because the website ran articles putting forth, “The idea that Israel has no right to exist or that Israel is an apartheid state.” He says other Canadian websites are being examined for possible complaints before the commission. “We have to show that Canadian law extends to the Internet as well as the conventional printed word,” he explains.

The Canadian Human Rights Commission says it is required to address any complaint alleging a violation of the Canadian Human Rights Act. Articles on the website, www.pej.org, discuss the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and last summer’s war in Lebanon. Some question Israel’s right to exist — as a Jewish state. Others compare Israeli treatment of Palestinians with the Nazi persecution of Jews. One article, entitled “We Should Nuke Israel,” spoofs a column that ran in the Toronto Star, which argued for a tactical strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

The director of the legal department of B’nai Brith Canada, which is a party to Abrams’ complaint, said the articles “are virulently anti-Israel to the point that they meet the criteria of crossing the line of legitimate criticism of the state straight into anti-Semitism.”

PEJ News, which has been going since 1996, provides articles and on-line discussions of peace, environment and justice issues written by its own and other writers. The site claims a monthly readership of 500,000.

Until January, 2007, Chris Cook was the site’s senior editor. At that time, he left to set up www.pacificfreepress.com, where he is managing editor. Cook is outraged at the role played by the mainstream media in dealing with Israel and Palestine.

“The situation in Palestine worsens by the hour,” he says, “while the corporate and state media in Canada do nothing. In fact, they do less than nothing. If they were to refrain from coverage, at least Canadians wouldn’t be subject to the distortion

of facts and outright lies fed to the hotel-based journalists in Jerusalem by the Israel Defense Forces and relayed verbatim into their homes,” Cook insists.

He is outraged by what has happened in Victoria. “B’nai Brith, through their representative Harry Abrams, has smeared me and those responsible for running www.pej.org, charging that our attempts to inform both Canada and the broader world of the reality of the situation facing Palestinian and Lebanese civilians at the hands of the Israeli regime are tantamount to anti-Semitism. In a tactic that has worked for them before, they are conflating criticism of the State of Israel with the proliferation of racist material — something that is legally actionable in Canada. Clearly their goal is to stifle honest debate.”

In Cook’s view, “the most insidious aspect to this stratagem is the claim made by B’nai Brith and other, similar organizations to speak on behalf of all Canadian Jews when it comes to the subject of Israel. I know this to be patently false. There is a growing chorus among Jews in Canada and abroad against both the policies of the state of Israel, and the neocons and Zionists who would cast themselves in the role of official Jewish spokespersons.”

The Canadian Jewish Congress recently refused membership to the dissident Alliance of Concerned Jewish Canadians, a coalition of Canadian Jews who are critical of the policies of the Israeli government toward the Palestinians, and who support the demand to end the occupation. This move, together with the filing of this suit by B’nai Brith, indicate that Canada’s Zionist organizations are circling the wagons in unquestioning support of Israel.

As the crisis in the region deepens, it is becoming increasingly important for progressives in Canada to raise their voices in defiance of attempts to suppress freedom of speech — and on behalf of a just settlement that addresses the issues of occupation, the discrimination experienced by Palestinian citizens of Israel, resettlement of Palestinian refugees who were displaced from their homes, and compensation for those who are unwilling or unable to relocate.

Samples from the 18 Offending Articles
Kurt Nimmo, “Sacking Livingstone: The Mayor, the Reporter, the Nazi Concentration Camp Guard, and the Board of Deputies of British Jews,” February 28, 2006
Nimmo does not hold back in attacking Zionism. He writes, “Nothing will be allowed to stand in the way of the Holocaust Orthodoxy, in effect an immensely profitable shake down operation for Israel … and the Zionist master plan to decimate Muslim society and culture.”

James Petras, “Condemnation’s Necessity,” December 25, 2006
Petras writes, “Jewish agencies … see defense of Israel as their number-one goal, trumping all other items on the agenda.” He acknowledges, “Many Jewish writers, including those who are somewhat critical of Israel, have raised pointed questions about our critique of the Zionist power configuration in the United States and what they wrongly claim are our singular harsh critique of the state of Israel.”

Virginia Tilley, “Apartheid Israel,” December 6, 2006“The Palestinians’ original sin — the ‘failing’ has consigned them collectively to expulsion, dispossession, exile, and a cruel and humiliating occupation — is … that they are not Jewish.”

Virginia Tilley, “Boycott Now!”, August 5, 2006
Tilley points to “specific crimes: Israel’s continual attacks on Palestinian civilians; its casual disdain for the Palestinian civilian lives ‘accidentally’ destroyed in its assassinations and bombings; its deliberate ruin of the Palestinians’ economic and social conditions; its continuing annexation and dismemberment of Palestinian land; its torture of prisoners; its contempt for UN resolutions and international law; and especially, its refusal to allow Palestinian refugees to return to their homeland.” She adds, “[O]pen official racism and its attendant viol- ence casts Israel into the ranks of pariah states.”

Kathleen Christison, “Atrocities in the Promised Land,” July 17, 2006
“A nation that mandates the primacy of one ethnicity or religion over all others will eventually become psychologically dysfunctional. Narcissistically obsessed with its own image, it must strive to maintain its racial superiority at all costs and will inevitably come to view any resistance to this imagined superiority as an existential threat.”

Chris Hedges, “Worse than Apartheid,” December 23, 2006
Hedges reports, “Israel has rounded up hundreds of Palestinians, destroyed Gaza’s infrastructure, including its electrical power system and key roads and bridges, carried out huge land confiscations, demolished homes and plunged families into a crisis that has caused widespread poverty and malnutrition.” Hedges, however, is no ideologue of the elected Palestinian party Hamas, calling its politics “repugnant.” He asks, though, how Israeli terrorism can “curb suicide attacks and foster peace? Do [Israeli Jews] not see that the rest of the Middle East watches the slaughter in horror and rage?”.



Plastic Into Hope — and Art

From Eco-Art.com

Diners at the food court in Montreal's Eaton Centre can't miss the message to please recycle their plastic water bottles – there's a five-story sculpture made of them rising above their heads.

The mall has had a vision of reducing landfill-bound waste for some time, working with tenants for two years by recycling paper and cardboard used in its 175 stores and restaurants. For the 500,000 shoppers who visit the mall each week, there are reusable lunch sacks and separate containers for waste, glass, paper and metal in the food court, and they can drop off used cellphones and batteries at the information booth.

But research shows Quebecers recycle less than 9 percent of the plastic water bottles bought in the province. When Eaton Centre marketing director Zeina Barghout was looking for creative ways to increase recycling efforts, the idea of a visual reminder that was too huge to ignore was born. Why not collect all the water bottles discarded in the mall and transform them into a work of art right there in the food court, where it might make people think about where they were tossing their trash?

The materials were not hard to find: Since the beginning of July, 10 recycled plastic receptacles shaped like water drops have been placed around the shopping center. They carry the message of the project: "Drop by drop, transforming plastic into hope," and by the first week in October, had collected more than 25,000 bottles. Local artist-sculptor Phil Allard has transformed the trash into a translucent, snakelike sculpture that reaches up toward the domed atrium 160 feet above the food court.

"All of my work is based on recycling and recovery," Allard told the Montreal Gazette. "It's a question of using useless things to show people they don't need them in their lives. It's one thing to protest, another to create." To create the sculpture, Allard tied the bottles together with fishing line, then wrapped them in transparent plastic chicken wire, and attached more bottles to the wire. He's removed the labels from the bottles on the outside of the wire to let the sunlight from the atrium shine through.

Plans for the finished sculpture call for four 25 meter-long sections filled with up to 70,000 bottles. By the beginning of October, two sections were in place, and the third under construction. Barghout told Eco-Artware.com that visitors will find "a surprise at the top" of the completed work. The sculpture is place from Oct. 24 through mid-November — when the Christmas decorations go up, according to Barghout. Then all those plastic bottles are destined to be recycled. The mall’s efforts to raise awareness of plastic and other kinds of recycling will be ongoing.