Pandora's Lab: Seven Stories of Science Gone Wrong

by Paul A. Offit

With the popularity of Black Stork and the support of lawmakers, American citizens were ready to take the next step—to legislate forced sterilization. These procedures had the blessing not only of the medical and scientific communities, but also eventually of the United States Supreme Court. Eugenicists argued that the country would need to sterilize the lower 10 percent of the population and to continue to sterilize the lower 10 percent until the gene pool was pure.

History does not always make us feel proud of our nation.

Many residents had written letters, sickened by the aftermath of the spraying. Health officials were unbowed. But Olga Huckins refused to be ignored. She sent a copy of her Boston Herald letter to her friend, Rachel Carson. Four years later, Carson published a book about it. Called Silent Spring, it became an international best seller, alerting the world to the dangers of pesticides, landing Carson on national television programs and in front of congressional hearings, winning praise from people as diverse as President John F. Kennedy, Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, and singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell, and making Carson one of the most famous and most influential women in the United States. Unfortunately,