Vindicating Rachel
Wednesday, October 31st, 2007May 2007 heralded the 100th birthday of biologist Rachel Carson, author of the seminal 1962 book Silent Spring, which warned of the dangers of synthetic chemicals and helped launch the modern environmental movement. While many media outlets celebrated her life and work with encomiums, other voices (notably contrarian New York Times columnist John Tierney) dismissed her as a fool or even a menace, responsible for countless deaths from mosquito-borne malaria in the developing world. The reason? Carson’s work warned about the effects of pesticides on birds (and humans), which led to DDT’s banning in the United States.
“Rachel Carson: Mass Murderer?,” an article in the current issue of Extra!, the journal of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, documents the sometimes absurd anti-environmentalist attacks on Carson and offers a science-based debunking of her critics.
Making Connections
Two other, unrelated articles appearing over the past month also bolster Carson’s defenders– though that wasn’t their explicit intention.
Marla Cone’s September 30 article in the Los Angeles Times spotlights a new, National Cancer Institute-funded study that found links between early exposure to DDT and breast cancer.
Women heavily exposed to the pesticide DDT during childhood are five times as likely to develop breast cancer, a new scientific study suggests.For decades, scientists have tried to determine whether there is a connection between breast cancer and DDT, the most widely used insecticide in history. The UC Berkeley research, based on a small number of Bay Area women, tested a theory that the person’s age during exposure was critical, and provided the first evidence of a substantial effect on breast cancer.
The piece notes that “The new study looked for the first time at DDT concentrations in women when they were primarily in their 20s, closer to when their breasts developed and during a time of widespread spraying [which ‘peaked in 1959.’]. “
Timing, results suggest, is key: “The women in the top third of DDT concentrations who were exposed before age 14 were five times as likely to get breast cancer as the women with the lowest levels, according to the study. No relationship between cancer and the insecticide was found in the women born before 1931, who would have been older during any exposure.”
The article also notes, “Other evidence also suggests that breast cancer can be triggered early in life. …Japanese females who were younger than 20 in 1945 developed the highest breast cancer rates among those exposed to radiation from the atomic bombs.”
Cone’s piece makes sure to add that the results are preliminary and chemicals are only one factor in developing cancer. Still, the news is exciting progress in the prevention front. (Though it’s too late for Carson, who died of…breast cancer.) And if you’re scientifically minded, here’s the study, published in Environmental Health Perspectives.)
Fighting Malaria without DDT?
And then there was this story: “New Malaria Vaccine Is Shown to Work in Infants Under 1 Year Old, a Study Finds,” by Donald G. McNeil, Jr. of The New York Times.* It reports:
The world’s most promising malaria vaccine has been shown to work in infants less than a year old, the most vulnerable group…The study, being published in The Lancet, a British medical journal, was small, comprising only 214 babies in Mozambique, and intended to show only that the vaccine was safe at such young ages. But it also indicated that the risk of catching malaria was reduced by 65 percent after the full course of three shots. …If it passes much larger clinical trials set to start in seven countries next year, and if it is accepted by national regulatory agencies, it could be ready for distribution by 2012.
McNeil also notes,
In 2004, Dr. Alonso showed for the first time that the vaccine could protect children against infection or death. That study of 2,022 children aged 1 to 4 showed protection from infection about 45 percent of the time.Such a relatively low level of protection would not be acceptable in a vaccine in the West, but malaria is a leading killer of African children, so even imperfect coverage is a major public health victory.
Clearly, new ways to fight deadly malaria are on the horizon – ones that don’t require spraying DDT.
Different articles, different days, different topics — but the dots connect, if you’re paying attention.
*Available in the Times’ archives
