Rachel Carson wrote the Silent Spring. Books begins with a “fable of tomorrow”. A true story made up of examples from many real communities where the use of DDT has caused harm to wildlife, birds, bees, farm animals, pets and even people.
Silent Spring was published in August 1962 and very soon became a revolutionary and highly readable book

Remember how Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau claimed some people were bad because they didn’t believe in science?
That’s one of the stupidest statements I’ve ever heard, by the way. There is plenty of evidence that science can never have definitive conclusions, science must be constantly examined, science is all about discussion and questioning and testing. Science is not the belief or consensus of the majority, and certainly not the opinion of politicians. Especially when science is subsidized by industry, political and business interests.

“How could intelligent beings seek to control a few unwanted species by a method that contaminated the entire environment and brought the threat of disease and death even to their own kind? Yet this is precisely what we have done. We have done it, moreover, for reasons that collapse the moment we examine them.”
Rachel Carson, Silent Spring

Silent Spring was broken down into three parts in The New Yorker.
Of which President John F. Kennedy read in the summer of 1962. Thanks to him, too, the book became an instant bestseller and the most discussed book at the time.

Drawing on many of her own resources as well as those from federal science and private research, Carson spent more than six years documenting the fact that humans were abusing powerful, persistent, chemical pesticides before finally recognizing the catastrophic extent of their damage to the entire biosphere.
She describes how DDT accumulates in bodies and water and soil and persists for 2-20 years. This has affected a wide range of animals and plants in the food chain, with a proven degeneration of species and their gradual extinction.

“Nature has introduced great variety into the landscape, but man has displayed a passion for simplifying it. Thus he undoes the built-in checks and balances by which nature holds the species within bounds.”
Rachel Carson, Silent Spring

The misuse of the scientific discovery of DDT has gone hand in hand with media and political propaganda, corporate advertising.
Therefore, all scientific and lay doubters were dehumanized and shut out of the media. This was eventually experienced by the author herself, who died of cancer two years after the book was published.

What is DDT?
A toxic substance discovered in 1874. Since 1939, it has been one of the most famous insecticides. DDT was brought to Europe by the American army.
In small doses it kills insects, in larger doses it kills mammals and birds, humans etc. It is cancer causing. It takes decades to break down!
In pure form it is a colourless or white crystalline powder, very faint aromatic smell, very poorly soluble in water, well soluble in some organic solvents such as fats!

The use of DDT for agricultural purposes was first banned in 1968 in Hungary, 1970 in Sweden and Norway. In the USA in 1972 and in the UK in 1984. A complete ban followed in a number of countries later.
More about DDT>>

Thanks to media and political pressure, people have come to believe scientists and doctors that the chemical DDT is not harmful, but generally useful.
The poisonous consequences of the substance were neglected and it was sprayed on the streets and in schools in order to rid people of dangerous parasites and to live in a happy and healthy world.

As so many times later, up to the last metalloid pandemic, the people, through their disinterest and blind faith in science, jumped on the toes of the pharmaceutical and chemical companies, who were always and only after profits. As if in a carbon copy, human stupidity and disinterest has been copied from generation to generation.

“We stand now where two roads diverge. But unlike the roads in Robert Frost’s familiar poem, they are not equally fair. The road we have long been traveling is deceptively easy, a smooth superhighway on which we progress with great speed, but at its end lies disaster. The other fork of the road — the one less traveled by — offers our last, our only chance to reach a destination that assures the preservation of the earth.”
Rachel Carson, Silent Spring

Rachel Carson was convinced that the federal government was part of the problem.
And she asked. “Who is talking about what and why? Or Cui bono, who profits from it!
She identified human stupidity and arrogance, the financial personal and corporate selfishness and psychopathy of many senior managers, and most importantly, corruption at all levels of corporate governance as the core of the poison.

Most importantly, she asks.
Can we harmonize ourselves and society so that we are an equal part of earth systems?

“All this has come about because of the sudden rise and prodigious growth of an industry for the production of man-made or synthetic chemicals with insecticidal properties. This industry is a child of the Second World War. In the course of developing agents of chemical warfare, some of the chemicals created in the laboratory were found to be lethal to insects. The discovery did not come by chance: insects were widely used to test chemicals as agents of death for man.”
Rachel Carson, Silent Spring