Beacon Broadside

Fifty years ago today, Houghton Mifflin published Rachel Carson’s revolutionary book Silent Spring. In honor of the anniversary, we share this excerpt from Lost Woods: The Discovered Writing of Rachel Carson, a collection edited by Linda Lear and published by Beacon in 1998. 

Linda Lear is a biographer and historian. She is the author of the acclaimed biography of Rachel Carson, Rachel Carson: Witness for Nature. Lear’s research papers and adjunct collections dealing with Carson’s life, Carson’s friends and colleagues, and the controversy over Silent Spring form the core of the Lear/Carson Collection at The Linda Lear Center for Archives and Special Collections at Connecticut College. Find out more about Carson, Linda Lear, and upcoming events at RachelCarson.org.

This address to the Women’s National Press Club (December 1962) stands as one of Carson’s most important statements following publication of Silent Spring and the beginning of the ferocious industry backlash against her. Like Silent Spring, her speech can be read as a democratic manifesto in the long tradition from Thoreau, Harriet Beecher Stowe through Martin Luther King Jr. Carson dares to suggest here that “profit and production” might be motives that would make industry and government officials lie to the public about what was being done to the environment and to the whole fabric of life. This was an astonishing idea in the Cold War. Like those who came before her, Carson as an individual was pushing back to power and in doing so she was declaring that environmental rights were also human rights.—Linda Lear, September 2012

My text this afternoon is taken from the Globe
Times of Bethlehem, Pa., a news item in the issue of October 12. After
describing in detail the adverse reactions to Silent Spring of the farm
bureaus in two Pennsylvania counties, the reporter continued: “No one in either
county farm office who was talked to today had read the book, but all
disapproved of it heartily.”

This sums up very neatly the background of much of
the noisier comment that has been heard in this unquiet autumn following the
publication of Silent Spring. In the words of an editorial in the Bennington
Banner, “The anguished reaction to Silent Spring has been to refute
statements that were never made.” Whether this kind of refutation comes from
people who actually have not read the book or from those who find it convenient
to misrepresent my position I leave it to others to judge.

Early in the summer–as soon as the first
installment of the book appeared in the New Yorker–public reaction to Silent
Spring was reflected in a tidal wave of letters–letters to Congressmen, to
newspapers, to Government agencies, to the author. These letters continue to
come and I am sure represent the most important and lasting reaction.

Even before the book was published, editorials and
columns by the hundreds had discussed it all over the country. Early reaction
in the chemical press was somewhat moderate, and in fact I have had fine
support from some segments of both chemical and agricultural press. But in
general, as was to be expected, the industry press was not happy. By late
summer the printing presses of the pesticide industry and their trade
associations had begun to pour out the first of a growing stream of booklets
designed to protect and repair the somewhat battered image of pesticides. Plans
are announced for quarterly mailings to opinion leaders and for monthly news
stories to newspapers, magazines, radio, and television. Speakers are
addressing audiences everywhere.

It is clear that we are all to receive heavy doses
of tranquilizing information, designed to lull the public into the sleep from
which Silent Spring so rudely awakened it. Some definite gains toward a
saner policy of pest control have been made in recent months. The important
issue now is whether we are to hold and extend those gains.

The attack is now falling into a definite pattern
and all the well-known devices are being used. One obvious way to try to weaken
a cause is to discredit the person who champions it. So the masters of
invective and insinuation have been busy: I am a “bird lover – a cat lover – a
fish lover”– a priestess of nature – a devotee of a mystical cult having to do
with laws of the universe which my critics consider themselves immune to.

Another piece in the pattern of attack largely
ignores Silent Spring and concentrates on what I suppose would be called
the soft sell, the soothing reassurances to the public. Some of these
acknowledge the correctness of my facts, but say that the incidents I reported
occurred some time in the past, that industry and Government are well aware of
them and have long since taken steps to prevent their recurrence. It must be
assumed that the people who read these comforting reports read nothing else in
their newspapers. Actually, pesticides have figured rather prominently in the
news in recent months: some items trivial, some almost humorous, some
definitely serious.

These reports do not differ in any important way
from the examples I cited in Silent Spring, so if the situation is under
better control there is little evidence of it.

[…]

We are told also that chemicals are never used
unless tests have shown them to be safe. This, of course, is not an accurate
statement. I am happy to see that the Department of Agriculture plans to ask
the Congress to amend the FIFRA to do away with the provision that now permits
a company to register a pesticide under protest, even though a question of
health or safety has been raised by the Department.

We have other reminders that unsafe chemicals get
into use – County Agents frequently have to amend or rescind earlier advices on
the use of pesticides. For example, a letter was recently sent out to farmers
recalling stocks of a chemical in use as a cattle spray. In September,
“unexplained losses” occurred following its use. Several suspected production
lots were recalled but the losses continued. All outstanding lots of the
chemical have now had to be recalled.

Inaccurate statements in reviews of Silent
Spring are a dime a dozen, and I shall only mention one or two examples. Time,
in its discussion of Silent Spring, described accidental poisonings
from pesticides as very rare. Let’s look at a few figures. California,
the only state that keeps accurate and complete records, reports from 900 to
1000 cases of poisoning from agricultural chemicals per year. About 200 of these
are from parathion alone. Florida has experienced so many poisonings recently
that this state has attempted to control the use of the more dangerous
chemicals in residential areas. As a sample of conditions in other countries,
parathion was responsible for 100 deaths in India in 1958 and takes an average
of 336 deaths a year in Japan.

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.

[…]

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 four 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.