Pandora's Lab: Seven Stories of Science Gone Wrong

by Paul A. Offit

ENVIRONMENTALISTS HAVE ARGUED that when it came to DDT, it was pick your poison. If DDT was banned, more people would die from malaria. But if DDT wasn’t banned, then people would suffer and die from a variety of other diseases, not the least of which were leukemia and other cancers. There was one problem with this line of reasoning: Despite Carson’s warnings in Silent Spring, studies in Europe, Canada, and the United States showed that DDT didn’t cause liver disease, premature births, congenital defects, leukemia, or any of the other diseases she had claimed. Indeed, the only type of cancer that had increased in the United States during the DDT era was lung cancer, which was caused by cigarette smoking. DDT was arguably the safest insect repellent ever invented—far safer than many of the other pesticides that have since taken its place. Still, environmentalists argued that we aren’t alone on this planet. We share it with many other species. Aren’t we responsible for them, too? The final irony of Silent Spring was that Rachel Carson hadn’t only overstated DDT’s effects on human health; she had overstated its effects on animal health.

In research contemporaneous with Carson and recently published, DDT has been shown to have negative impacts on human health, animal health, and the overall health of environments. Her book - the kindle version, at least, which is the copy I own - has 46 pages of citations, most of which reference studies and journals and are linked to in-text citations. More recently, a PSA from the Pesticide Action Network - a nonprofit coalition of 600 people and groups - on DDT (published in 2012), the pesticide has been linked to neurological effects in babies due to intrauterine exposure (2006 study published in Pediatrics) and was found in the milk of cows exposed to DDT (1996 study published in the Archives of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology), among other deleterious effects. I'm also more inclined to believe the information compiled by Carson herself and the more recent information cited by PAN, as they provide cited information leading back to peer reviewed scientific articles rather than a bunch of books and blog posts, especially as BOTH of the bloggers cited in the bibliography for this chapter disagree with your point and cite reputable sources (such as the World Health organization) that disagree with your supposed data. Also, even if DDT didn't harm human health, we would still have to worry about it for its environmental ramifications. There is no planet B. Just like issues with climate change, if we trash Earth to the point where it's uninhabitable for humans, then that's just tough for us and every other species we'll take down the road to extinction with us.