Tobacco Documents Online

S. .. !l California science writer took time in a recent book review to comment ; .the T'.i.R.'CC program. `NEi1S'CAI.I.-BU,L.BE ZIN ;;San Francisco, California ' September 2!5, 1i962 j,.:. , ~. ~ , . ~ ~ / ent SDrifla Grows. on Other news stories told'of recent Committee grants. •.r.. 1`, ify GEORGE DUSHECK 'Even in advance of its publication this week, ,"Silent Spring," b y Rachel! Carson, h a s aroused a national controversy. This newest book by the author of "The Sea Around Us" is by turns poetic, angry, and lucidl`•y expository. ;=; It does not charm tihe mind like some of her ear- tion's huge chemical man- lier work, but it seeks ufacturers, whom she ac- •'with restrained passion to cuses of putting sales of arouse human fears for lethal poisons above re- '. 'the future of all forms of spect for the subtle, beau- life, of which man is an tiful carpet of' life that ''inextricable part. covers the earth from pole ;' Miss Carson's centrali to pole. ,,thesis is nothing less than Ms: I T E M: The National o That man is devising, i A g'r i culturali Assn. de- manufacturing, and em- voted most of the August ploying chemical poisons issue of its trade jWurnal at a rate that far exceeds Pesticide News to an at- his own capacity to adapt tack on "Silent Spring." --: to the poisoned environ- It has also widely dlistrih- 1 ment uted reprints of a speech o That we are all liti ing, by George C. Decker, C'ni- under a, largely unnoticedl versity of Illinois eco- rain of deadly chemicals n o m i1c entomologist, de- which threaten our food, fend'ing the mass use of' our health, and the beauty poisons toikill insects. and' stability~ o~f~ the nab- , ural world, from which, man sprang, and on whiich he is still totallly de- pendent. •_ That many of these ac- cumulate in our bodies, _with unknown long - term effects. Rirng, the Alarm Excerpts from her book. published in the New York- er Magazine this past sum- mer, have become conver- sation pieces across the •nation. Some alarmedl gardeners h a v e stopped! using poison sprays alto- gether. Others are using, them with new care and' respect. ©n the one handl is the middle-aged Miss Carson, pecking, away at her type_ writer in her home at Sil- ver Sprimgs;, Md: On the other hand are tihe na- ~.,~r y, ~Rp~'VIlgz=; .~o t1.. ei o ,,e i~ To the Ramparts Let me m a k e myself clear: There is n o thi n g. wrong with thechemicale industry seeking to make irts views known. I' l'ist these only to show, hhow thoroughly alarmed this S'I(ht million industry is by "Silent Spring." Iit will he read hx hun- ciireds nf thousands of AmericanF. It is a Book of' ulie 14rnnth Club choiiee,. Conrumers Union is puh• lishing a special' paper. 6ound eauon ($2) for it; members. Hinughton!'Mlifflin'sown first printing for retail store sale (at $5) is more than 100,000 copies. Re- views of "5ilent Spring"' made the front covers of both the New York Tirrtes: and! the Herald Tribune,, the nation's most widely- read newspaper book re-, view sections. The reviews: are favorable. A' Drfferentrmctlc The reaction of the , pesticide industry is in, sharp contrast to that of the t o b a c c o industry, when it faced! what it. feared was an economic threat from the American Cancer Society's report on smoking and lung cancer. The tobacco companies did not panic, did not abuse ACS scientists as writers of science fiction horror stories; did not seek to influence any newspa- per's publication or han- dlling of the story. Thev did create a To- bacco Ilesearch Committee headed by a respected sci- entist, Clarence Cook Lit-< in the air, and oni the earth he shares with them, ' Human life w ithout an- imal, bird, insect, fish, and bacterial life is impossible. If t h e Olin Mathieson .Chemical Corp. should succeed in its grandiose I scheme to eliminate alll mosquitos from the earth (as it' proposes to do in ann adi in the current issue of Scientific American) the results might well be dis- astrous to the food chaini ipf all life, including man. All Miss Carson asks ia ~hat' we think, study,, and I ani before plunging into 1ildi biocidal schenxs. The life we destroy may . be our owni I /t''s a Busiiness Some "scientists^' a i e opposed to even this mod- erate plea from, Miiss Car- son. They are the so-called. t1e, which has worked' ~ economic entomologists- quietly and with adequate I the ones concerned almost funds to get at the cause entirely with the damage l done to man'e, crops, for. of' lung cancer. ests, and gardens by in- In doing so it' has goi secta. its viewpoint before the As aprofeasionalickuCA public without hysteria. writer,, I am only too well ,And it has continued to aware of how insecticide ell! cigarets - more ciga- crowds almost all o t'h e r ets today than in 1954 subjects off the programs vhen the- ACS findings of entomological societies. were lirst_reoortedl Those "economic ento- Mo Abandonment The chemical industry will continue to se1R' pesti- cides;, too. It should be emphasized that Rachel Carson does NOT advo- cate abandonment of their use. . She believes they should be used intel4igentiy, spar- ingly, and with, due re• gard to the hazards they create, not onlv for man, but for all his fellow crea- tures in the soil, in the oceans, strea:ns, and lakes, moltDgists" who do n o t work for pesticide manu- facturers, work in univer- sity laboratories which are largely supported! by in+ dustry grants, fellowships, and subsidies. In the opinion of I this re- viewer, too few of' tliesn des~m•e the name of ento• mologist. They are scien- tists only in the senae tbat Eichmann was an antbao- pologlaL