Balancing perils against blessings

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.