Originally published 7 November 2000
Not long ago, I was sitting with students on a high outcrop of rock in the woods near our college campus. A deep screen of color on every side — oaks, maples, and hickories in their autumn glory — absorbed the sounds of highway and town. Sunlight fell through the canopy, warming the rock, warming our bodies. Insects patrolled the surface of the rock and danced in air. Birds sang.
You’d never have guessed in that magical place that elsewhere in the world folks are worried about environmental degradation. But, of course, the planet is threatened by several sorts of environmental catastrophes.
I told the students about the happy dream of the 1950s, when science promised to wipe out insect-borne diseases with DDT, including especially the worldwide killer, malaria. I told them about the fogging machines that went up and down the streets and beaches of America spraying insecticide into the air. I told them about the airplanes that flew low over our towns, laying down mists of DDT.
I told them, too, about the letter Olga Owens Huckins sent to Rachel Carson, a biologist and writer already famous for her books, The Sea Around Us and The Edge of the Sea.
Huckins and her husband owned a private bird sanctuary in Duxbury. As part of a mosquito control program, and without permission, the state sprayed the property from the air, leaving dead song birds in its wake. Huckins wrote an angry letter to the Boston Herald and sent a copy to Carson.
The rest, as they say, is history. Carson did her research, then wrote the book that many consider to be the most influential environmental tract ever written. Silent Spring soared to the best-seller lists and was translated worldwide. Rachel Carson became the most famous woman scientist in America. And the environmental movement as we know it was born.
Carson was subjected to bitter attacks from the chemical industry and its allies in the federal government. As her biographer says, “She was questioning not only the indiscriminate use of poisons but the basic irresponsibility of an industrialized, technological society toward the natural world.”
Carson’s views prevailed, and DDT was put on hold in the United States and in many other parts of the world.
Today, the songbirds are back in Massachusetts, but malaria continues as the world’s biggest killer of children. Since the withdrawal of DDT for malaria control in South Africa, for example, cases of the disease have quadrupled. Many public health officials now call for renewed use of DDT in certain malaria-ridden parts of the globe, at least until a vaccine or genetic fix comes along.
Did Silent Spring save songbirds in Massachusetts and put babies at risk in Mozambique? The students who sat with me on the woodsy outcrop must deal with the muddy moral arithmetic of pesticide use — and with a new issue that only their generation can resolve. This time it is not pesticides, but genetic engineering.
Nothing so agitates grassroots environmentalists as the prospect of engineered plants and animals. Not since Carson released her book upon the world have we seen a higher level of indignation. The power to modify genes raises specters that give pause to even the most ardent technologists.
So far, the battle has been mostly about genetically modified foodstuffs. By putting bacteria genes into corn, for example, the plant can be made “naturally” toxic to insects, thereby decreasing a farmer’s dependence on pesticides that kill indiscriminately and make their way into the food chain. Soybeans and canola are spiked with bacterial genes that resist weed killers, making it possible for farmers to use herbicides that will increase yields with less soil erosion.
Genetic engineering will help make it possible to feed the world’s billions with less dependence on pesticides and artificial fertilizers, say the advocates of genetically modified crops. Other, equally compelling voices accuse genetic engineers of dangerously tinkering with the very essence of life.
Will widespread popular aversion to genetically modified organisms prevent scientists from modifying the genome of the malaria parasite in such a way as to disrupt its deadly ability to prey on the human immune system, or from creating a malaria-resistant mosquito to replace natural populations? And, if so, what will be the fate of millions of potential victims of the disease?
The students who were with me on the outcrop are deeply pro-environment, and instinctively opposed to genetically modified organisms. They are also opposed to pesticides in the food chain, artificial fertilizers in lakes and streams, soil erosion, poverty, malnutrition, and malaria. How they will balance these sometimes competing agendas remains to be seen.
Albert Schweitzer said: “Man can hardly even recognize the devils of his own creation.” We are not that good at recognizing the angels, either. Let’s hope the current generation of young people has more success balancing the blessings and perils of technology than did those of us who lived in the thrilling certainties of DDT and Silent Spring.
