Right Wing Attacks Rachel Carson and PAN
DDT advocates are using the 100th Anniversary of Rachel Carson’s birth to trumpet their call for more DDT use around the world and tarnish Carson’s legacy by blaming the scientist for the ongoing scourge of malaria. In the U.S., Carson’s centenary was marked by a flood of pro-DDT postings on conservative blogs and dozens of Carson-bashing essays in the mainstream press. As a National Geographic cover story on malaria put it: “Rachel Carson, the environmental icon, is a villain; her three letter devil, DDT, is a savior.”
The major forces behind the campaign to vilify Carson and deify DDT are the same think tanks and institutions that have been fighting the regulation of chemicals, promoting genetically-engineered seed, and dismissing scientific evidence of climate change. Their work is funded by big tobacco, mining (particularly in South Africa), oil, and chemical corporations (including Monsanto).
One right-wing website, RachelWasWrong.org, features photos of young malaria victims alongside a quote from Uganda’s Health Minister: “Misguided environmentalists are killing Africans.”
On June 5, in a New York Times opinion piece entitled “Fateful Voice of a Generation Still Drowns Out Real Science,” John Tierney caricatured Carson’s work as a “hodgepodge of science and junk science…, dubious statistics and anecdotes.” In a reference to PAN, Tierney dismissed “Carson’s disciples who still divide the world into good and bad chemicals, with DDT in their fearsome ‘Dirty Dozen’.”
In a May 30 New York Post essay, “Greens’ African Death Toll,” Paul Driessen (the author of Eco-Imperialism: Green Power, Black Death) claimed Carson’s “exaggerations and outright fabrications” were responsible for the deaths of “tens of millions.” Driessen proceeded to disparage “Pesticide Action Network and other agitators [who] still claim DDT is ‘associated with’ low birth weights in babies.” Driessen called DDT’s links to premature births, low birth weights and impaired reflexes “unproven and trivial.” (Driessen similarly dismisses numerous scientific studies linking DDT to miscarriages, male reproductive harm, genital abnormalities, and developmental problems in children.)
In a May 13 Wall Street Journal editorial-page opinion essay, Driessen called the “alleged risks” of DDT “pure speculation…trumpeted by radical groups like Pesticide Action Network” and concluded: “No wonder people have called anti-insecticide policies ‘eco-imperialism,’ ‘eco-manslaughter,’ ‘neo-colonialism’ and ‘racist experiments’ on the world’s poor.”
The op-eds identify Driessen as a “senior policy advisor for the Congress of Racial Equality.” Driessen, is also a senior fellow with the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise, and has played a lead role in the campaign to promote fossil fuels and repudiate evidence of human-caused climate change.
Meanwhile, the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) has been busy churning out anti-Carson/pro-DDT essays on a daily basis. Most of the essays were penned by Angela Logomasini who maintains that the “needlessly alarmist tone of Silent Spring has produced tragic results” by using “explosive rhetoric” to condemn DDT when “there is no compelling body of evidence that DDT causes any human health problems.” In a May 31 Washington Times essay titled “Rachel Carson’s Deadly Legacy,” Logomasini charged that “the Pesticide Action Network of North America (PANNA) and Beyond Pesticides are spreading misinformation about DDT risks.”
In a published response in the Washington Times, PAN Africa director Abou Thiam countered that “DDT’s impacts on human health are well documented and new studies continue to show evidence of harm.” Instead of applying toxic chemicals, Thiam wrote, “what we need in Africa are proven, community-based programs that include a range of tools such as bed nets, education, better health care, water drainage and improved sanitation.”
Contrary to her critics’ accusations, Carson never called for an outright ban on DDT. “Spray as little as you possibly can,” she advised, just don’t “spray to the limit of your capacity.”
A CEI staff member told the Inter Press Service in 2004 that the group received funding from Monsanto, a former manufacturer of DDT. Monsanto also supports the work of Driessen’s employer, the pro-DDT Congress of Racial Equality. CORE, the former-civil-rights-organization-turned-right-wing-libertarian group, contributes content to the RachelWasWrong.org website.