Silent Spring - Rachel Carson - Part 5

Silent Spring - Rachel Carson

2017 Reading Challenge - Day 17

 January 17, 2017 

Book 3 - Silent Spring
by Rachel Carson (1962)

 Part 5 - Pages 219-261

Reading Time - 50 minutes

As you might expect, Carson makes the connection between pesticides (or rather biocides) and their carcinogenic effects. Their effect on the liver and other cells in the body can generate tumours. She does admit that the long-term effect of pesticides is, as yet, unknown. It could take decades before the effects will be seen. She points, specifically, to the exponential rise in childhood cancers like leukemia, a cancer which was virtually unknown in the early 1900s. My question would be... perhaps the doctors of the time just didn't recognize it back then? Hard to say. The idea that pesticides can influence an infant in the womb is kind of scary. Nowadays, though, it seems like common sense to recognize that whatever the mother ingests will make its way to the fetus at some point. Its effects will vary depending on the fetal stage of development. Another reason why it's hard to pin down cause and effect.

Carson devotes an entire chapter to the fact that insecticides are worse than useless. In killing all insects, both good and bad, most pesticides actually make the insect problem worse. Nature does a great job of keeping populations in check - through competition, food, climate and predator. When we tinker with that... things get off balance very quickly. She says "chemical control is like a treadmill" because once you start spraying, you can't stop. A great deal for chemical companies... many of whom support the research programs of entomologists (insect researchers).

It seems to me that we humans think we're pretty smart. We think we can fix things in nature, improve on nature. But we tinker with systems that we don't fully understand and therein lies the danger. While we might be able to tweak nature in one direction, what happens if that makes everything worse? Can we put it back the way we found it? It's almost like we are cavemen taking apart a machine. Sure, we can take it apart... but can we put it back together so that it works again? And what if that machine is what is keeping us alive? Nature is an extremely complex, multi-faceted, interconnected organism - which we tinker with at our peril.