This Day in History: American author Rachel Carson was born on this day in 1907. Carson wrote the environmentalist Bible, Silent Spring, which eventually led to the ban on the pesticide DDT. DDT was the safest, cheapest, and most effective tool against Malaria. Sadly though, DDT is now banned in much of the world. Her argument was that DDT use would eventually kill of all the birds, and hence lead to a Silent Spring with no birds chirping. This claim was overstated, so much so that during the years DDT was used, some birds multiplied so well that they became pests. Six million blackbirds ruined Scotland Neck, North Carolina in 1970, polluting streams, depositing nine inches of droppings on the ground and killing the forest where they roosted at night. [Associated Press, March 18, 1970] Click here for more.
As a result of the ban on DDT, millions have died.
"To only a few chemicals does man owe as great a debt as to DDT… In little more than two decades, DDT has prevented 500 million human deaths, due to malaria, that otherwise would have been inevitable." [National Academy of Sciences, Committee on Research in the Life Sciences of the Committee on Science and Public Policy. 1970. The Life Sciences; Recent
Progress and Application to Human Affairs; The World of Biological Research; Requirements for the Future.]
It is believed that [malaria] afflicts between 300 and 500 million every year, causing up to 2.7 million deaths, mainly among children under five years. [Africa News, January 27, 1999]
World Malaria Day occurs three days after Earth Day...there wouldn't be a Malaria Day if it wasn't for the movement behind Earth Day.
The banning of DDT is one of the greatest tragedies of the past century. "Since the mid-1970s, when DDT was eliminated from global eradication efforts, tens of millions of people have died from malaria unnecessarily: most have been children less than five years old." ~Paul A. Offit
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