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Ironically, Charles Darwin set great store by his study of earthworms, which effectively mix and make most of the soil on Earth, but his successors in evolutionary science have tended to neglect the creatures that live beneath their feet. Instead, Professor Blaxter said, they regard the soil as a kind of test bed - or “black box” - that there is no need to understand. He added that this project would help to redress that issue. “Until the soil collapses, and the ecosystems dies completely, we don't know what's going on. We have to start to get inside the ‘black...

Rachel Carson honor at risk in Senate May 23, 2007 WASHINGTON – Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn has effectively blocked a resolution to honor environmental author Rachel Carson on the 100th anniversary of her birth, saying that her warnings about environmental damage have put a stigma on potentially lifesaving pesticides, congressional staffers said yesterday. Sen. Benjamin Cardin, D-Md., had intended to submit a resolution celebrating Carson, author of the 1962 book “Silent Spring,” for her “legacy of scientific rigor coupled with poetic sensibility.” Carson, who died in 1964, would have turned 100 this Sunday. Cardin has delayed the legislation, a spokeswoman...

Rachel Carson wrote Silent Spring--the book that got mosquito-killer DDT banned and launched the modern environmental movement--while struggling with cancer. The disease killed Carson in 1964, two years after Silent Spring came out. Today's Washington Post has a story on Carson--whose 100th birth anniversary occurs later this month--and her noble fight against cancer. A touching piece. But maddening, too! Because in the story's 34 paragraphs, there are only a buried pair, the 26th and 27th, that note the ongoing controversy about DDT's ban. A Maryland Congressman (evil Republican, of course ... wink, wink) is quoted as saying that malaria deaths...

Who says there's never any good news? After more than 30 years and tens of millions dead -- mostly children -- the World Health Organization (WHO) has ended its ban on DDT. DDT is the most effective anti-mosquito, anti-malaria pesticide known. But thanks to the worldwide environmental movement and politically correct bureaucrats in the United States and at the United Nations, the use of this benign chemical has been discouraged in Africa and elsewhere, permitting killer mosquitoes to spread death.

An open-minded review of what extreme environmentalists have wrought on the USA and on the world inescapably leads to the conclusion that they have caused millions of deaths and trillions of dollars in damages and losses. If you think this is incorrect or an exaggeration, let us consider the record with respect to just three issues: the snail darter, nuclear power and DDT. The Snail Darter In 1976, with the Tellico Dam on the Tennessee River 99% complete, its construction was stopped and its destruction was ordered after a tiny fish called the snail darter was discovered in that river.

Sept. 27, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – In his August 16, 2006 LifeSiteNews.com Special Report, Green Hands Dipped In Blood: The DDT Genocide, John Jalsevac exposed what may have been the worst crime of the 20th century, exceeding perhaps even the many millions of deaths caused by the Nazi’s or the horrific mass killings of Stalin or Mao Tse Tung. The current cause celebre of AIDS has caused nowhere near the perhaps 80 million deaths that have resulted so far in large part from the 30 year ban on the use of DDT to prevent malaria.Finally, recent news is that, despite...

Last week's announcement that the World Health Organization lifted its nearly 30-year ban on the insecticide DDT is perhaps the most promising development in global public health since well, 1943 when DDT was first used to combat insect-borne disease like typhus and malaria. Overlooked in all the hoopla over the announcement is the terrible toll in human lives (tens of millions dead, mostly pregnant women and children under age 5), illness (billions sickened) and poverty (more than $1 trillion in lost GDP in sub-Saharan Africa alone) caused by the tragic, decades-long ban.

See for example this thread first. I first saw this in Chemical & Engineering News, lo! these many years ago (maybe 1984 time frame?), and claim no credit except for remembering it. A mosquito was heard to complain, "I fear they have addled my brain!" "The cause of my sorrow is para-dicholoro- diphenyl-trichloroethane!"

Rachel Carson, a driving force behind the modern environmental movement, grew up in a modest homestead in Springdale Borough near the Allegheny River. For the budding marine biologist, the river's waters were an early inspiration. Now, more than four decades after Ms. Carson's death, her presence may return to those waters. Allegheny County Council tomorrow will consider renaming the Ninth Street Bridge in her honor. If the resolution is approved, Ms. Carson would join Roberto Clemente and Andy Warhol as namesakes for the three Downtown "Sister Bridges" that cross the Allegheny. "This is long overdue," said Esther L. Barazzone, president...

August 15, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Communism and fascism, as horrifically bloody as their legacy has been, have a lesser death count attributed to them than the misguided worldwide ban on DDT enforced by the World Health Organization, international aid organizations and others. So reports John Jalsevac in the LifeSiteNews.com Special Report, Green Hands Dipped In Blood: The DDT Genocide.Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring, decrying the supposedly great harm caused by all pesticides to the natural environment and humans was released in 1962 and eventually led to the ban on DDT, still the most effective, cheapest, and arguably the cleanest way...

Stopping Malaria In the wake of the tsunami, malaria and other mosquito-borne diseases may be the next tragedy to hit Southeast Asia. DDT can prevent this tragedy. The massive magnitude 9.0 earthquake in Southeast Asia unleashed a terrifying tsunami that has already claimed more than 200,000 lives. But as the rainy season approaches, a new disaster may be in the offing. Standing water left by the tsunami and turned brackish with the onset of monsoon rains may attract swarms of disease-bearing mosquitoes. These mosquitoes may infect thousands upon thousands, maybe even millions, of tsunami survivors with malaria. According to the Associated...

Thirty-five years after the first Earth Day galvanized environmentalists, the movement is suffering a national identity crisis. Local environmentalists say San Diego County is cultivating a vibrant environmental community interested in preserving open spaces, cleaning up beaches and pressing for cleaner air. But the green establishment can't seem to get its way in Washington, D.C., the cause of much soul-searching in the run-up to Earth Day festivities that will span the globe tomorrow. Critics contend that environmentalists lack a compelling vision and say the movement has become just another special interest. Even though environmental groups' coffers are fat and people...

Environmental ideology demands opposition to DDT despite the millions of malaria deaths its use could prevent. The West Nile virus deaths being reported across North America are a grim echo of a larger tragedy. Each year a million lives are taken worldwide by another mosquito-borne killer: malaria. Though nearly eradicated decades ago, malaria has resurged with a vengeance. But the real tragedy is that its horrific death toll is largely preventable. The most effective agent of mosquito control, the pesticide DDT, has been essentially discarded--discarded based not on scientific concerns about its safety, but on environmental dogma. The environmental crusade...

Millions in the third world die from malaria every year in large part because of a virtual ban on the controversial insecticide DDT. The removal of the unwarranted stigma from DDT and the saving of many future lives is now nearer at hand than it has been in the last 30 years thanks to the efforts of Dr. J. Gordon Edwards, who passed away on July 19 at the age of 85.

Ever since Rachel Carson's 1962 book "Silent Spring," environmental extremists have sought to ban all DDT use. Using phony studies from the Environmental Defense Fund and the Natural Resources Defense Council, the environmental activist-controlled Environmental Protection Agency banned DDT in 1972. The extremists convinced the nation that DDT was not only unsafe for humans but unsafe to birds and other creatures as well. Their arguments have since been scientifically refuted. While DDT saved crops, forests and livestock, it also saved humans. In 1970, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences estimated that DDT saved more than 500 million lives during the...

Ever since Rachel Carson's 1962 book "Silent Spring," environmental extremists have sought to ban all DDT use. Using phony studies from the Environmental Defense Fund and the Natural Resources Defense Council, the environmental activist-controlled Environmental Protection Agency banned DDT in 1972. The extremists convinced the nation that DDT was not only unsafe for humans but unsafe to birds and other creatures, as well. Their arguments have since been scientifically refuted. While DDT saved crops, forests and livestock, it also saved humans. In 1970, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences estimated that DDT saved more than 500 million lives during the...

Don't believe all you read well, except maybe this Argument for DDT use has merit but needs more facts to support claim A recent letter to the editor attempts to shatter conventional wisdom on DDT and its connection to declines in bird populations years ago. The letter writer wrote "not one study has shown that the inclusion of DDT in the diet of any birds has caused eggshell thinning." This simply is not true. The statement was written in the greater context of a point that the recent shotgun killing of four brown pelicans on the National Seashore is less...

A pandemic is slaughtering millions, mostly children and pregnant women -- one child every 15 seconds; 3 million people annually; and over 100 million people since 1972 --but there are no protestors clogging the streets or media stories about this tragedy. These deaths can be laid at the doorstep of author Rachel's Carson. Her1962 bestselling book Silent Spring detailed the alleged "dangers" of the pesticide DDT, which had practically eliminated malaria. Within ten years, the environmentalist movement had convinced the powers that be to outlaw DDT. Denied the use of this cheap, safe and effective pesticide, millions of people --...