Silent Spring
Debate over environmentalism and DDT restrictions

Carson has been targeted by some organizations opposed to the environmental movement, including Roger Bate of the pro-DDT advocacy group Africa Fighting Malaria and the libertarian think tank Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI); these sources oppose restrictions on DDT, attribute large numbers of deaths to such restrictions, and argue that Carson was responsible for them. These arguments have been dismissed as "outrageous" by former World Health Organization scientist Socrates Litsios. May Berenbaum, University of Illinois entomologist, says, "to blame environmentalists who oppose DDT for more deaths than Hitler is worse than irresponsible". Investigative journalist Adam Sarvana and others characterize this notion as a "myth" promoted principally by Bate.

In the 1990s and 2000s, campaigns against the book intensified, in part due to efforts by the tobacco industry to cast larger doubt on science-driven policy as a way of contesting bans on smoking. In 2009, the heavily corporate-funded CEI set up a website falsely blaming Carson for deaths to malaria. This triggered a point-by-point rebuttal by biographer William Souder, who reviewed the distortions used by campaigners against Silent Spring.

A 2012 review article in Nature by Rob Dunn commemorating the 50th anniversary of Silent Spring and summarizing the progressive environmental-policy changes made since then, prompted a response in a letter written by Anthony Trewavas and co-signed by 10 others, including Christopher Leaver, Bruce Ames and Peter Lachmann, who quote estimates of 60 to 80 million deaths "as a result of misguided fears based on poorly understood evidence".

Biographer Hamilton Lytle believes these estimates are unrealistic, even if Carson can be "blamed" for worldwide DDT policies. John Quiggin and Tim Lambert wrote, "the most striking feature of the claim against Carson is the ease with which it can be refuted". DDT was never banned for anti-malarial use, and its ban for agricultural use in the United States in 1972 did not apply outside the U.S. nor to anti-malaria spraying. The international treaty that banned most uses of DDT and other organochlorine pesticides — the 2001 Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (which became effective in 2004) — included an exemption for the use of DDT for malaria control until affordable substitutes could be found. Mass outdoor spraying of DDT was abandoned in poor countries subject to malaria, such as Sri Lanka, in the 1970s and 1980s; this was not because of government prohibitions but because the DDT had lost its ability to kill the mosquitoes. Because of insects' very short breeding cycle and large number of offspring, the most resistant insects survive and pass on their genetic traits to their offspring, which replace the pesticide-slain insects relatively rapidly. Agricultural spraying of pesticides produces pesticide resistance in seven to ten years.

Some experts have said that restrictions placed on the agricultural use of DDT have increased its effectiveness for malaria control. According to pro-DDT advocate Amir Attaran, the result of the (activated in 2004) Stockholm Convention banning DDT's use in agriculture "is arguably better than the status quo... For the first time, there is now an insecticide which is restricted to vector control only, meaning that the selection of resistant mosquitoes will be slower than before."
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