Oklahoma senator vows to block Rachel Carson centennial resolution
A resolution honoring this weekend’s 100th birthday of the late Rachel Carson will be blocked if Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) has his way. Why? Because the “now-debunked Silent Spring” was “the catalyst in the deadly worldwide stigmatization against insecticides, especially DDT,” he says. Yes, damn her for pointing out that industrial society is killing itself with toxic chemicals it created. The resolution, sponsored by Sen. Benjamin Cardin (D-Md.), would honor Carson’s “legacy of scientific rigor coupled with poetic sensibility.” But Coburn, a doctor who advocates the use of DDT to combat malaria, terms her work “junk science.” While there’s no shortage of controversy over DDT, even fellow conservatives say slamming Carson is a little … nuts. “A lot of people have used Carson to push their own agendas,” said Roger Bate of the American Enterprise Institute. “We just have to be a little careful when you’re talking about someone who died in 1964,” just two years after her seminal book appeared.
