Coburn Vows to Block Senate Resolution Honoring Rachel Carson
by Jeff McIntire-Strasburg, St. Louis, MO 
on 05.24.07
This coming Sunday would've been Silent Spring author and environmental hero Rachel Carson's 100th birthday. In recognition of Carson's contributions to the creation of the modern environmental movement, Sen. Benjanmin L. Cardin (D-MD) has announced his intentions to submit a resolution celebrating Carson's work. While most treehuggers would consider this a no-brainer, Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) has announced that if Cardin submits his proposal, he will block it. According to the Washington Post,
In a statement on his Web site [Tuesday], Coburn (R) confirmed that he is holding up the bill. In the statement, he blames Carson for using "junk science" to turn public opinion against chemicals, including DDT, that could prevent the spread of insect-borne diseases such as malaria, which is spread by mosquitoes.Coburn, whose Web site says he is a doctor specializing in family medicine, obstetrics and allergies, said in the statement that 1 million to 2 million people die of malaria every year.
"Carson was the author of the now-debunked 'The Silent Spring,' " Coburn's statement reads. "This book was the catalyst in the deadly worldwide stigmatization against insecticides, especially DDT."
While Coburn has the right to argue about Carson's legacy, his stance is striking many as unreasonable... even people the Senator might normally list as allies. Roger Bate, a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, noted that Carson died soon after the publication of Silent Spring, so perhaps Dr. Coburn is overstating her influence on efforts to completely eliminate DDT use to fight malaria. Carson biographer Linda Lear notes "Carson was never against the use of DDT, ... She was against the misuse of DDT."
Malaria is a serious health issue in the developing world, and deserves serious debate over the most effective ways to combat it. Refusing to honor Rachel Carson seems like, at best, a roundabout way of bringing this issue into the spotlight. ::Washington Post via alirae at Hugg
Image sources: Washington Post, Senator Coburn's website
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"Malaria is a serious health issue in the developing world, and deserves serious debate over the most effective ways to combat it. Refusing to honor Rachel Carson seems like, at best, a roundabout way of bringing this issue into the spotlight"
You give Coburn too much credit here. The man, along with James Infofe, is entirely in the pocket of industry groups and refuses to accept that global warming exists. I don't think there is anything he wouldn't do to prevent the environmental movement from having a moment to honor an influential member.
Read mathematician John Holland's HIDDEN ORDER, on diversity and convergent evolution. If we kill off the occupants of a niche, other beasties evolve to fill it. If people think they're gonna eliminate mosquitos, maybe their smoking something. Overuse of DDT only makes the bugs stronger.They evolve and adapt infinitely more quickly than humans, because they have a life cycle a million times faster.
What's the solution to malaria? I dunno, I don't have to know, but I know what isn't.
To some people - maybe this is at an unconscious level - any aspect of mainstream culture that came about in the 1960s and early 70's is viewed as a worth sacred cow to be tipped. Whether its protecting ANWR, feminism, protesting, whatever: shoot first look for facts later.
Think tank "experts" have been very successful in promoting the falsehood that DDT was banned for use in preventing malaria where it is a serious endemic problem. And all because of environmentalists of course. DDT has always been available as a insecticidal option in developing nations where serious threat of malaria existed. However , at the urging of the World Health Organization and environmentalists, it is true, DDT was greatly reduced in use in developing nations from the 60's onward both because of avian reporductive toxicity and because the skeeters were found to have developed resistance from over-use, just as they did, more recently, to the substituted pyrethroid family of insecticides (which now too is having to be abandoned in those same nations for the same reason).
Note: a DDT ban was enforced for environmental reasons in the US and parts of the EU, which do not have a malaria problem of significance. And , it should be noted that the WHO encouraged reduced open spraying, substituting targeted spraying by alternate and more effective pesticides.
Climate change is the ball to keep our eye on, as it may spread tropical diseases like malaria in places where they presently do not exist, including in the US and northern EU. If that happens, we will be glad once again to have DDT and skeeters that have lost their resistance to it. And we'll have Rachel Carson to thank for it!
The thought that a single Senator could block the passage of a bill with wide appeal seemed strange to me, so I dug a little deeper.
From Coburn's page on Senate rules, it looks like this bill is being offered up for "unanimous consent", meaning that it's assumed everyone agrees to it unless they call the leadership and tell them they don't. Coburn called and said he didn't agree with it.
Of course, the practical result of all this is that he is in fact blocking the passage of the bill by Sunday (and all this criticism is rightly placed), but it would all have been moot if it had just gone up for a vote.
Blame it on the strange rules of the Senate, I suppose.
Read mathematician John Holland's HIDDEN ORDER, on diversity and convergent evolution. If we kill off the occupants of a niche, other beasties evolve to fill it. If people think they're gonna eliminate mosquitos, maybe their smoking something. Overuse of DDT only makes the bugs stronger.They evolve and adapt infinitely more quickly than humans, because they have a life cycle a million times faster.
A "replacement" species will not appear in anything resembling the short period of time that you imply. Mosquitos have a lifecycle that is about 30 times faster than humans. This means that we will only have to wait a few thousand years instead of a million. Holland knows what he is talking about and I won't dispute his models, but the timescale for what you are talking about doesn't help humans right now. On the other hand, an entomologist friend of mine did a study up here in Canada and came to the conclusion that we could safely eradicate mosquitos with no long term consequences to biodiversity and ecosystem health.
"Read mathematician John Holland's HIDDEN ORDER, on diversity and convergent evolution. If we kill off the occupants of a niche, other beasties evolve to fill it. If people think they're gonna eliminate mosquitos, maybe their smoking something. Overuse of DDT only makes the bugs stronger.They evolve and adapt infinitely more quickly than humans, because they have a life cycle a million times faster."
Oh boy. If a poison that kills something just makes that something bigger and stronger, then why don't we have car-size rats full of the black plague today??
I was a baby during the 70's, so I'm still trying to catch up on what influences occured during that decade, and who influenced them, and all I've been able to read about Rachel Carson recently is that she was a quack with a quack (but deliberately emotional) theory that got disproved immediately. How exactly does that make her an environmental hero? Are we still hearalding praises to the scientists who thought the world was flat too? If anything, she hurt the movement because as I grew up in the 80's, all I heard was how off-the-wall nutty environmentalists were, thanks to representatives like her. REAL science, REAL theories, with REAL solutions will always be the ONLY way to get anything accomplished. Emotional reactions and scare tactics will never last for a movement..isn't that why most tree-huggers don't like the Bush Administration??
By complete coincedence, Sen. Coburn was the OBGYN of my cousin (helping to bring two beautiful babies into the world and our family), and is an outstanding physican, an INCREDIBLY honest, intelligent, caring human being (rare qualities for a politician), and I'd trust his judgement on what is and isn't worthy of a scientific or environmental Congressional blue ribbon ANY DAY!
Chris, you may want to read something Rachel Carson wrote before calling her a quack. She was a biologist who made the argument that we must learn to avoid uncontrolled use of chemical pesticides. She was writing soon after the thalidomide disaster and a huge scandal involving poisoned cranberries so there are good reasons for the strong public response to her writing. The chemical industry launched a vicious personal campaign against her but she held her own. Although DDT has not been shown to be a carcinogenic as she suggested, it appears to have serious effects on human hormones. In any event her book was a wake-up call to consider the environment and Sen. Coburn's refusal to honor her is shabby, small-minded and based on ignorance.