Rachel Carson and "Silent Spring"

Keith Lockitch has written a powerful indictment of Rachel Carson, her 1960s classic "Silent Spring", and the horrific impact it -- and the events that followed -- had on the use of DDT to combat malaria. Millions have died as a result, pure and simple. Read this article to learn things like:

• Though nearly eradicated decades ago, malaria has resurged with a vengeance because DDT, the most effective agent of mosquito control, has been essentially discarded -- discarded based not on scientific concerns about its safety, but on environmental dogma advanced by Carson.
• The scientific case against DDT was, and still is, nonexistent. Almost 60 years have passed since the malaria-spraying campaigns began -- with hundreds of millions of people exposed to large concentrations of DDT -- yet, according to international health scholar Amir Attaran, the scientific literature "has not even one peer reviewed, independently replicated study linking exposure to DDT with any adverse health outcome."
• Estimates put today's malaria incidence worldwide at around 300 million cases, with a million deaths every year.
• We should seek, Carson wrote, not to eliminate malarial mosquitoes with pesticides, but to find instead "a reasonable accommodation between the insect hordes and ourselves." If the untouched, "natural" state is one in which millions contract deadly diseases, so be it.
• Earth First! founder Dave Foreman writes: "Ours is an ecological perspective that views Earth as a community and recognizes such apparent enemies as 'disease' (e.g., malaria) and 'pests' (e.g., mosquitoes) not as manifestations of evil to be overcome but rather as vital and necessary components of a complex and vibrant biosphere."

Near the end of his article Lockitch notes: "In the few minutes it has taken you to read this article, over a thousand people have contracted malaria and half a dozen have died." Wow.