Lost Woods

by Rachel Carson

  I wonder whether citizens would not do well to be guided by the strong hint given by the Court of Appeals reviewing the so-called DDT case of the Long Island citizens a few years ago.

  This group sought an injunction to protect them from a repetition of the gypsy moth spraying. The lower court refused the injunction and the United States Court of Appeals sustained this ruling on the grounds that the spraying had already taken place and could not be enjoined. However, the court made a very significant comment that seems to have been largely overlooked. Regarding the possibility of a repetition of the Long Island spraying, the judges made this significant general comment: “… out would seem well to point out the advisability for a district court, faced with a claim concerning aerial spraying or any other program which may cause inconvenience and damage as widespread as this 1957 spraying appears to have caused, to inquire closely into the methods and safeguards of any proposed procedures so that incidents of the seemingly unnecessary and unfortunate nature here disclosed, may be reduced to a minimum, assuming, of course, that the government will have shown such a program to be required in the public interest.”

  Here the United States Court of Appeals spelled out a procedure whereby citizens may seek relief in the courts from unnecessary, unwise or carelessly executed programs. I hope it will be put to the test in as many situations as possible.

  If we are ever to find our way out of the present deplorable situation, we must remain vigilant, we must continue to challenge and to question, we must insist that the burden of proof is on those who would use these chemicals to prove the procedures are safe.

  Above all, we must not be deceived by the enormous stream of propaganda that is issuing from the pesticide manufacturers and from industry-related – although ostensibly independent – organizations. There is already a large volume of handouts openly sponsored by the manufacturers. There are other packets of material being issued by some of the state agricultural colleges, as well as by certain organizations whose industry connections are concealed behind a scientific front. This material is going to writers, editors, professional people, and other leaders of opinion.

  It is characteristic of this material that it deals in generalities, unsupported by documentation. In its claims for safety to human beings, it ignores the fact that we are engaged in a grim experiment never before attempted. We are subjecting whole populations to exposure to chemicals which animal experiments have proved to be extremely poisonous and in many cases cumulative in their effect. These exposures now begin at or before birth. No one knows what the result will be, because we have no previous experience to guide us.

  Let us hope it will not take the equivalent of another thalidomide tragedy to shock us into full awareness of the hazard. Indeed, something almost as shocking has already occurred – a few months ago we were all shocked by newspaper accounts of the tragedy of the Turkish children who have developed a horrid disease through use of an agricultural chemical. To be sure, the use was unintended. The poisoning had been continuing over a period of some seven years, unknown to most of us. What made it newsworthy in 1962 was the fact that a scientist gave a public report on it.

  A disease known as toxic porphyria has turned some 5,000 Turkish children into hairy, monkey-faced beings. The skin becomes sensitive to light and is blotched and blistered. Thick hair covers much of the face and arms. The victims have also suffered severe liver damage. Several hundred such cases were noticed in 1955. Five years later, when a South African physician visited Turkey to study the disease, he found 5,000 victims. The cause was traced to seed wheat which had been treated with a chemical fungicide called hexachlorobenzene. The seed, intended for planting, had instead been ground into flour for bread by the hungry people. Recovery of the victims is slow, and indeed worse may be in store for them. Dr. W. C. Hueper, a specialist on environmental cancer, tells me there is a strong likelihood these unfortunate children may ultimately develop liver cancer.

  “This could not happen here,” you might easily think.

  It would surprise you, then, to know that the use of poisoned seed in our own country is a matter of present concern by the Food and Drug Administration. In recent years there has been a sharp increase in the treatment of seed with chemical fungicides and insecticides of a highly poisonous nature. Two years ago an official of the Food and Drug Administration told me of that agency’s fear that treated grain left over at the end of a growing season was finding its way into food channels.

  Now, on last October 27, the Food and Drug Administration proposed that all treated food grain seeds be brightly colored so as to be easily distinguishable from untreated seeds or grain intended as food for human beings or livestock. The Food and Drug Administration reported: “FDA has encountered many shipments of wheat, corn, oats, rye, barley, sorghum, and alfalfa seed in which stocks of treated seed left over after the planting seasons have been mixed with grains and sent to market for food or feed use. Injury to livestock is known to have occurred.

  “Numerous federal court seizure actions have been taken against lots of such mixed grains on charges they were adulterated with a poisonous substance. Criminal cases have been brought against some of the shipping firms and individuals.

  “Most buyers and users of grains do not have the facilities or scientific equipment to detect the presence of small amounts of treated seed grains if the treated seed is not colored. The FDA proposal would require that all treated seed be colored in sharp contrast to the natural color of the seed, and that the color be so applied that it could not readily be removed. The buyer could then easily detect a mixture containing treated seed grain, and reject the lot.”

  I understood, however, that objection has been made by some segments of the industry and that this very desirable and necessary requirement may be delayed. This is a specific example of the kind of situation requiring public vigilance and public demand for correction of abuses.

  The way is not made easy for those who would defend the public interest. In fact, a new obstacle has recently been created, and a new advantage has been given to those who seek to block remedial legislation. I refer to the income tax bill which becomes effective this year. The bill contains a little known provision which permits certain lobbying expenses to be considered a business expense deduction. It means, to cite a specific example, that the chemical industry may now work at bargain rates to thwart future attempts at regulation.

  But what of the nonprofit organizations such as the Garden Clubs, the Audubon Societies and all other such tax-exempt groups? Under existing laws they stand to lose their tax-exempt status if they devote any “substantial” part of their activities to attempts to influence legislation. The word “substantial” needs to be defined. In practice, even an effort involving less than 5 percent of an organization’s activity has been ruled sufficient to cause loss of the tax-exempt status.

  What happens, then, when the public interest is pitted against large commercial interests? Those organizations wishing to plead for protection of the public interest do so under the peril of losing the tax-exempt status so necessary to their existence. The industry wishing to pursue its course without legal restraint is now actually subsidized in its efforts.

  This is a situation which the Garden Club, and similar organizations, within their legal limitations, might well attempt to remedy.

  There are other disturbing factors which I can only suggest. One is the growing interrelations between professional organizations and industry, and between science and industry. For example, the American Medical Association, through its newspaper, has just referred physicians to a pesticide trade association for information to help them answer patients’ questions about the effects of pesticides on man. I would like to see physicians referred to authoritative scientific or medical literature – not to a trade organization whose business it is to promote the sale of pesticides.

  We see scientific societies acknowledging as “sustaining associates” a dozen or more giants of a related industr
y. When the scientific organization speaks, whose voice do we hear – that of science or of the sustaining industry? The public assumes it is hearing the voice of science.

  Another cause of concern is the increasing size and number of industry grants to the universities. On first thought, such support of education seems desirable, but on reflection we see that this does not make for unbiased research – it does not promote a truly scientific spirit. To an increasing extent, the man who brings the largest grants to his university becomes an untouchable, with whom even the University president and trustees do not argue.

  These are large problems and there is no easy solution. But the problem must be faced.

  As you listen to the present controversy about pesticides, I recommend that you ask yourself – Who speaks? – And Why?

  29

  [1963]

  Letter to Dr. George Crile, Jr.

  CARSON’S CANCER along with its attendant heart disease entered a more virulent phase early in 1963. This letter to her cancer surgeon and friend, George “Barney” Crile,* of the Cleveland Clinic, was written barely a month after her triumphant appearance at the Garden Club and just shortly after the death of Crile’s wife, Jane, who had been Carson’s longtime friend, and who had herself fought a desperate battle against breast cancer. Carson describes her latest symptoms to Crile and courageously asks for the truth from a physician for whom she had great respect and affection.

  There is great irony in the fact that as she was battling the economic power and secret influence of corporate America, Carson was having to fight the medical profession to tell her the truth about her own illness. Even more tragically, Carson correctly understood the need to hide the truth of her cancer from all but a handful of friends, lest the chemical industry use her illness to discredit her scientific objectivity. In the hope of achieving a greater good, she kept silent.

  DEAR BARNEY,

  You have been much in my mind and it was good to have a talk with Kay recently, to hear some of the things I wanted to know. I am glad you have the book [Crile’s book on diving treasures More Than Booty (1965) with Jane Crile] to work on, and above all, glad you and Jane had those months to work on it together, giving it form and substance. It may be emotionally hard in some ways for you to carry it through to completion, and yet I think it will be a satisfaction.

  Jane meant many things to me – a friend I loved and greatly admired, and a tower of strength in my medical problems. When she wrote me, after my visit with you two years ago, that she shared my problem, it was as though a great tide of courage flowed into me. If she, so vibrant, so gay, so full of the love of life, could live with the problem so fearlessly, I could at least try to do the same. Over the months since then the feeling I’ve had could best be explained by an analogy. Once, years ago, my mother and I were driving at night in uninhabited, unfamiliar country near the North Carolina coast. For the 50 or more miles through those wooded lowlands we were able to follow the lights of a car ahead. As long as it progressed smoothly I knew our way was clear. Jane was that kind of reassuring light to me. Now, without that light to follow, I admit my courage is somewhat shaken.

  But you, Barney, for different reasons, are also a great source of strength. So now I’m writing you of my current problems. I didn’t want to bother you while Jane was ill, and for that matter the more important ones have just happened, or at least have just been noticed.

  First: I finally saw a cardiologist, Dr. Bernard Walsh, about three weeks ago. I definitely have angina (even the cardiogram is now abnormal, but he said the diagnosis was perfectly clear from symptoms alone) of the less common type in which the pains come on without physical provocation, the worst ones during sleep. Dr. Walsh said frankly the implications are serious and it is most important to get the situation under control. So – I’m virtually under house arrest, not allowed to go anywhere (except as you will see later), no stairs, no exertion of any kind. I had to rent a hospital bed for sleeping in a raised position. I’m taking peritrate. For the first ten days or so there was a big improvement, but I must admit the pains are sneaking back, though not in the night.

  The second problem is in your department. About two weeks ago I noticed a tender area above the collar bone on the left (operated) side, and on exploring found several hard bodies I took to be lymph nodes. Dr. Caulk was just going out of town for several days and said he would come to the house on his return. By that time I was so sure I was going to need treatment that I just had myself taken down to see him. (This was last Wednesday.) They are definitely lymph nodes “gone bad,” some lying fairly well up in the neck. This is the side opposite last year’s trouble spots and is an area never previously treated. So we have begun – 5-minute treatments 3 days a week to keep my hospital trips to a minimum.

  Now there is a further complication. At the time I went in about my back in December I kept making remarks about having “arthritis” in my left shoulder, but no one paid much attention. It has been increasingly painful, and now there is some difficulty about certain arm movements. I had begun to have suspicions, so now I’ve tackled Dr. Caulk about it again. They took a picture Friday and there does seem to be trouble. He let me see the x-rays. It is the coracoid process of the scapula – the edge of it looks irregular and sort of eroded. For some reason Dr. Caulk seems rather puzzled – says he wants some of his associates to look at it and may want a picture from another angle, but on the whole he does feel it is a metastasis.

  Well, all this brings questions in my own mind, which leaps to conclusions that may or may not be justified. Oh – the back trouble cleared up, but so slowly that Dr. Caulk had about decided it wasn’t a metastasis. Treatment was begun just before Christmas and completed December 31. I was still in considerable pain in mid-January. Then rather rapid improvement set in and now it’s OK. But now this bone deterioration in the shoulder makes me think all the more I had a metastasis in the spine. Dr. C. says not necessarily, but I think he’s just trying to reassure me.

  Barney, doesn’t this all mean the disease has moved into a new phase and will now move more rapidly to its conclusion? You told me last year that it might stay in the lymph nodes for years, but that if it began going into bone, etc., that would be a different story. If this is the correct interpretation I feel I need to know. I seem to have so many matters I need to arrange and tidy up, and it is easy to feel that in such matters there is plenty of time. I still believe in the old Churchillian determination to fight each battle as it comes (“We will fight on the beaches – ” etc.), and I think a determination to win may well postpone the final battle. But still a certain amount of realism is indicated, too. So I need your honest appraisal of where I stand.

  Jane continues to give me courage. Kay told me of her question to the doctors: “Which of you is in charge of not giving up?” How like her! Well, I nominate you to that post. [ … ]

  *George Crile, Jr., was an internationally famous surgeon who specialized in breast cancer at the Cleveland Clinic. His nickname was Barney. Carson also refers here to Kay Halle, who was Jane Halle Crile’s sister, and to Dr. Caulk, who was her radiologist at the Washington Hospital Center.

  30

  [1963]

  The Pollution of Our Environment

  IN EARLY 1963 Carson was invited to present the opening lecture to the Kaiser Foundation Hospitals and Permanente Medical Group in San Francisco at their annual symposium, but when the time neared for the October trip to the West Coast, Carson was debilitated from radiation treatment and frequently in pain. Nonetheless she made the trip, knowing that the symposium presented a unique opportunity to reach an influential audience.

  Her official explanation for the cane she used to get on and off the stage was arthritis. The hushed and riveted audience of 1,500 physicians and health care providers did not seem to notice or care that she sat to deliver her hour-long lecture.

  This was the first speech in which Carson publicly identified herself as an ecologist. Her message emphasized the lin
ks between species and their biological and physical environment, and the dynamic systems that govern the ecosystem.

  There are reverberations of Silent Spring throughout this beautifully crafted speech, the last she gave. Carson expanded her criticism of a society that seldom evaluated the risks of new technology before it was entrenched into social systems. She also included a final warning against making the sea a dumping ground for the “poisonous garbage of the atomic age.”

  [ … ] I SUPPOSE it is rather a new, and almost a humbling thought, and certainly one born of this atomic age, that man could be working against himself. In spite of our rather boastful talk about progress, and our pride in the gadgets of civilization, there is, I think, a growing suspicion – indeed, perhaps an uneasy certainty – that we have been sometimes a little too ingenious for our own good. In spite of the truly marvelous inventiveness of the human brain, we are beginning to wonder whether our power to change the face of nature should not have been tempered with wisdom for our own good, and with a greater sense of responsibility for the welfare of generations to come.

  The subject of man’s relationship to his environment is one that has been uppermost in my own thoughts for many years. Contrary to the beliefs that seem often to guide our actions, man does not live apart from the world; he lives in the midst of a complex, dynamic interplay of physical, chemical, and biological forces, and between himself and this environment there are continuing, never-ending interactions. I thought a good deal about what I could say most usefully tonight on the subject assigned to me – “The Pollution of Our Environment.” Unfortunately, there is so much that could be said. I am afraid it is true that, since the beginning of time, man has been a most untidy animal. But in the earlier days this perhaps mattered less. When men were relatively few, their settlements were scattered; their industries undeveloped; but now pollution has become one of the most vital problems of our society. I don’t want to spend time tonight giving a catalog of all the various kinds of pollution that today defile our land, our air, and our waters. I know that this is an informed and intelligent audience, and I am sure all these facts are known to you. Instead, I would like to present a point of view about pollution – a point of view which seems to me a useful and necessary starting point for the control of an alarming situation. Since the concept of the environment and its relation to life will underlie everything I have to say (and indeed, I think it is central to this whole symposium), I should like in the beginning to remind you of some of the early history of this planet.