November 24, 2003
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in class today, we made the students watch a video about Rachel Carson and her book Silent Spring. there was in general silence (amazing in a class of 700 students) so i'm unsure if they were sleeping or if they were actually watching. i remember the first time i saw this video, or perhaps one very similar to it...seeing DDT being sprayed on pools, on children running through the streets, on soldiers, on people EATING.... and i remember being horrified. the students made mutters while seeing little girls in their 50s outfits being sprayed down with white clouds of DDT...
and i guess i have to wonder...how stupid were they? or we? if it is that poisonous to insects, what the hell made them think that it wouldn't kill horses? or birds? or humans?
in my mind DDT shouldn't even be produced, though i know it still is...no matter how good the properties for killing insects are. for me, my generation, we never think about DDT as a good thing...we're raised with the bald eagles and Who Really Killed Cock Robin? and we never think of WWII and we only think how stupid history is/was...
but have we really improved beyond this? we now aim for biological controls and release more invasive species to control other invasive species, we have herbicides that are "weed specific" so you can spray them directly onto your crops and not kill your crops...but i don't really fancy eating roundup myself....
maybe we learn, albeit slowly.
people are now aiming for species specific insecticides, to make substances that are tailored to unique sequences of DNA or proteins in a specific species...and kill them all...eradication...and yet, we watch the insects, we see the orkin roach motels fail and fail and fail again...do we really think we'll ever beat the bastards at their own game? when you're small and easy to kill in small numbers, you breed like a mofo and get your genes out there as much as possible, as many times as possible...so single beneficial mutations spread like wildfire...under our massive selection pressure what are we breeding in our resident pest populations? and what will we evolve in the future?
Comments (2)
sometimes kelly you bring up things that really scare me. i don't remember the last time i was in a class where they brought up silent spring. i remember learning about it as early as eighth grade though, and being shocked and scared. i do'nt see where the best solution is - i don't like the idea of genetic engineering or modification, i think there's too many ways for it to be abused or just not the right solution. but what is the solution? i have no idea. and i do'nt want to get rid of all pesticides (i guess) but then what do we do? what's the middle ground? i know some people would shrug it off and say something like, "i'm not a farmer, i dont have to care," and i am not going to say something like that, but reading all the information on it in the world won't get a little english major up there in teh ranks of clever people who will actually know what to do. this is why, kelly, we have you.
I've never heard of Silent Spring...I may have to go look for it now. I avoid DDT like the plague - I figure anything that kills of insects that well can't be good for anything else living either. I'm more of the natural type - using home-made soaps or lotions that contain citronella...nasty as it can smell, it works. AND I could go on and on about benefitial bugs and introducing predators and the like - we, as a nation/culture/people just aren't smart, and don't learn well the first time around...it seems like that in the past, we've tried it, it had adverse effects, but we still do it!! How's that saying go - those who fail to learn from the past are doomed to repeat it? ...
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