you have to start with a clear concept of what the threat is. and that is where we still have a lot of work to document thank you very much. [applause] :

>> paul driessen and rachel carson one who wrote the introduction to the fortieth anniversary edition discuss "silent spring," written by a scientist at the 11. the program is an hour. >> paul driessen, who was rachel carson? >> rachel carson was a scientist, fish and wildlife service department of the interior. she was a gifted writer. i read "silent spring" one of was in college and the sea of roundness and captivated me. she is a mesmerizing writer and she is able to take scientific

-- dry scientific information and put it in vibrant color forwards that captivate you. >> was she live before 1962? >> she had the see around us which was a big seller. >> what was the impact of "silent spring" in 1962 when it came out? >> a pretty serious impact. it touched on a lot of teams that had been on people's minds and created alarms and presented in a political way and an alarming way what might be happening out there. it was almost presented as a was happening even though much of it was conjectural land speculation. it was presented as this is

happening, we are using so many chemicals let we are going to kill off our songbirds, we will be left with a silent spring in which there are no songbirds. we are going to kill off the ball eagle with our insecticides. it got people scared. she did a marvelous job of raising people's awareness that a lot of what we were doing was poisoning the environment. the air, water, land. she did it in a way that got people emotional, made them want to get involved, to end the end of the end of spoiling of the environment. >> where insecticide's knew at that time? >> the modern insecticide's where. >> copper sulfate for certain things. >> we don't use those today at

all? >> the use copper sulfate. they can not only control insects but take care of the diseases people had. it would almost be worse than getting rid of it yourself. modern insecticides came about in world war ii. ddt was the first one. we dusted our soldiers with it. in the sicilian campaign in europe, we dusted millions and millions of germans and italians and holocaust survivors to prevent typhus. they produced ddt in the south pacific to kill mosquitoes and after the war, 1945 was the first test case of ddt in the

tennessee valley area. they decided it is so effective against mosquitos we can get rid of malaria in the united states. it was also used a lot for agriculture. >> what are the effects of ddt? >> you want to talk about real scientific evidence, slim rashes on your skin. ddt is the most studied chemical in history. >> because of "silent spring"? >> partly but "silent spring" was following after rachel carson's death by defense fund to launch the environmental movement, to give it a power base of funding that it had never enjoyed before. those things in combination and

the pressure got it banned in 1972 under president nixon but in the meantime it was used all over the world, you can see old video or film footage of people in crowds of ddt being lofted around in picnic tables. it was very widely used and the it was studied and studied nothing more than tangential and speculative links were ever established. there were concerns about eggshells. we can get into that if you wish. a lot of conjecture, no solid proof. >> this is booktv in primetime and it is a live call-in program

about rachel carson and her book "silent spring" published in 1962. we are joined by paul driessen peoples senior fellow for the committee for a constructive tomorrow, and the congress for racial equality. he has a law degree from the university of denver and field economy from lawrence university and this is his book, green power, black death. we are also adorned by linda lear in charleston, south carolina who is rachel carson's biographer. herbal is called rachel carson, witness for nature. she has written an introduction to the new addition of "silent spring" that came out in 2009. what got you interested in rachel carson?

>> i was teaching environmental history at the university level and when we got to talking about "silent spring" in 1962 my students looked at me and said rachel who? and i thought oh my, we have to do something about this. i set about trying to write the biography which had never been done. >> this is a call in program. 202 is the area code if you live in eastern central 0 time zone. seven 370002 in the mountain pacific time zone. send us an e-mail or a fleet at booktv@twitter.com. was a best seller when it came out in 1962? >> it was a blockbuster.

it had been serialized in the new yorker magazine beginning in june and it was nothing but a -- anything but silent summer. it was already a best-seller. john f. kennedy helped a lot to call attention to rachel carson's ideas by commenting on the man oppress conference and setting up a presidential advisory committee to look into her claims about the massive contamination of the environment. >> when you say her claims, where did she get her knowledge? >> carson had studied, a marine biologist and ecologists, she

had impeccable credentials. she did not have a ph.d. degree but she had worked all her life at fish and wildlife service and had read and studied the ocean. subsequently, the edge of the sea. she did impeccable research, she was not a person who was writing for the academic community. the remarkable thing was that carson insisted on writing for the public. she wanted the public to know what was happening in their world. >> she was a marine biologist? and she was writing about non marine issues. >> i was a fresh water ecologist major in college. along with my theology. there is a tremendous cross

over. marine aspects are interconnected. she was drifting a little a feel of where she was trained but not that much. bigger problem is she tended to go on the basis of some speculation and conjecture and anecdotal evidence and not always well backed up and sometimes she was not that familiar with or ignored the good literature about ddt and she made some conclusions that were not based on the science that was available at the time. >> linda lear, what has been the impact of "silent spring" and rachel carson? >> i want to say that i would disagree with what paul driessen said but we can go back to that

later. it was to -- the presidential committee, the public did not know that pesticides were toxic. it was an astonishing statement. and until that book vote public did not understand that following spring for mosquito goes down a path and spraying children might be dangerous to your health or might not be good for children. it was ubiquitous. it was a science that was claiming world after world war ii and the end to insect problems. her book after it came out,

probably a light weight. they consider that she would go away. she didn't. as information gathered and she began to talk further about what she was trying to argue that overusing pesticides, we were misusing them. as that began to roll on and the public took notice, congressional hearings were called, rachel testified before the senate and house in 1963. they held that it would going to the creation of the environmental protection agency. >> let's take some calls but you said you disagree with something paul driessen said.

what was that? >> that rachel carson baster claims on faulty science. information was very hard to get. the agricultural science agency, research agency and department of agriculture was closed. they would not speak to her or what material out. the national cancer institute had similarly closed its doors to anybody who asked questions that might provoke what was happening to people who were subjected to dry cleaning and developed lymphomas and problems with blood diseases of all sorts. carson was up against a wall of silence that people did not want to give her this information.

"silent spring" came after she'd had developed of the book and talk about the air and water and ground pollution and it was only later that she realized she had to talk about human health and the skin of the human body was permeable. it was not as people fought something that would keep chemical's out. >> final comment? >> bear in mind when she was writing that book and the pesticides were ubiquitous it was mostly ddt. there wasn't much else. in terms of toxicity. it caused skin rashes and not much else. there have been scientists who talked about it, take a spoon of

ddt and eat it to make the point that it was not as toxic as it was reputed to be. you have to bear in mind we were also using a lot of other chemicals and still do and there wasn't as much care for the use of those chemicals as there should have been and people were getting sick and there are pesticides. one drop on your skin could kill you but those were not available at the time. >> the road signs were placeds of beauty where countless birds came to feed on the berries and a strange boy crept over the area and everything began to change. some evil spell had settled on the community. mysterious maladies swept the flocks of chicken. the cattle and sheep sickened and died. everywhere with the shadow of death. the farmers' spoke of much illness and there were several sudden and unexplained deaths not only among adults but even

among children. a few birds seen anywhere trembled violently and could not fly. it was a spring without voices. our first call for our two guests, jim in omaha, nebraska. >> i remember when i was a kid and we used to play outside, and when you look at the life expectancy we have right now it is kind of amazing that you could draw a conclusion that it was dangerous and how many deaths can be attributed to rachel carson for not using ddt now? >> excellent points and good question. there are lots of deaths

attributed to not having ddt available mostly malaria. disease that infects five hundred million people year and causes permanent brain damage and makes people unable to work for perhaps five weeks at a time. it is a disease that leaves people permanently brain damaged. it is something you want to get rid of as quickly as you can and the lack of ddt not so much as an inspector side but a repellent to keep mosquitoes out of homes has caused 10 to forty million unnecessary deaths. it is a serious problem. >> i thought your question was very good but i don't think rachel carson was saying that ddt caused deaths or chemical pesticides necessarily cause death. what she was arguing was we were

prolifically ms. using particularly in agriculture when we didn't know the long-term effect of those pesticides. what was just read from the fabled for tomorrow was in the a fable. she had taken many towns and put them together in a compound of evidence to say that some of these incidents happened everywhere and where we aware of what we were doing to the total environment? not just the human environment but the total biology of the environment and what were we thinking? that we could control or not control? >> was it a common misperception that she called for the banning of all pesticides? >> i don't know how that perception came about because that is not in "silent spring" and was never her testimony or idea. her idea was to call attention

to the fact that there was a prolific abuse of pesticides in the environment when we did not know what the total outcome was and when the public did not know that their homes and farms and animals were being spread from the air by airplanes, in their fields, they did know when this was going to happen and it did indeed kill certain wildlife. birds, fish, certain mammals. there was a prolific use of it without the public's permission and we didn't know what the outcome would be. she never called for a ban on pesticide use. >> from "silent spring," the responsible person contends insect born disease, the question that presented itself was either wise or responsible to attack the problem by methods

that are rapidly making it worse. >> one of the hard things to gauge in all of this is what is the difference between the effect that rachel carson had and the environmental books after her death, what they did to campaign against ddt and many other pesticides and chemicals. that is where the misinformation came in. rachel carson 11 did not call for an elimination but she took her speculation beyond where the science really backed it up. she talked about ddt as something that was building huge resistance in insects and early time when she was really talking

about mosquitos' avoiding it much as they do back words, insect repellents. that was ddt's most prominent role. at the time it was the best we had. it is also the most powerful repellant that has ever been developed and the most long-lasting and that is why we want to keep it in the malaria prevention arena now because spring once or twice a year on walls of a house, from ever coming in. >> it was invented by a german chemist back in the early 40s.

[talking over each other] >> the germans had it and the americans got it and we started using it in places where we were confronted with a lot of disease, miskitos and malaria and yellow fever. so he got a nobel prize for his development of this but nobody knew exactly what they have on their hands, good or bad and even though the information was available in the early 1940s, people didn't appreciate that value of it right away and she misinterpreted that as resistance rather than avoidance mechanisms. >> this is for either one of you. i agree with both of you at this point. i am a casual bird watcher and last summer i had words behind

my house which i affectionately call the cesspool. i notice a lot of birds disappearing. i got her book and read it and it made perfect sense to me. i am especially interested in eagles. we had wildlife refuge near beautiful finger lakes that are polluted and it is worse now. i read her book. our lakes are polluted. you can't eat the fish. the birds are diminishing. these and ducks and starlings. i haven't seen one all winter. and i got concerned. >> and you should be concerned. the system is here, it was right

up route 95 from where she was with the fish and wildlife refuge and they were working on feeding it to eagles and pelicans and nesting birds. these birds were showing signs of various reproductive problems. these birds were the tip of the iceberg and then came the robins and whether it can be proven to the ingestion of pesticides i'm not sure has ever been clear but resistance and pesticides are persistent in water, soil and air. they don't go away and that was one of rachel's big points. i'm sure that paul doesn't disagree. you can't wash away so you're

lakes are polluted. they have invested not just ddt but a lot of pesticides of all sorts. there will be a change in what is happening to nature. it was at the door of this barrage of pesticides and chemicals we put into our environment. >> you are dealing with mother nature and a complex ecology. i live along the i-95 corridor we are speaking of. i have seen far more geese in most winters than i remember growing up being around the virginia area when i was first year. they have tended to winter over

because they have a lot more food than they used to. it was a lot colder. our starlings have disappeared from our area. when it warms up a little bit i am amazed at the hundreds of birds that came out of nowhere and last week when we had some patches of bare ground we had problems we had not seen for weeks. we are dealing with complex situation, the reproductive issues, it was important to recognize that we were dumping not just in sec decides, there were synergism is. no one could figure out what was affecting what.

>> a quick question to both of you, is our environment cleaner today than it was in 1962? >> yes. looked at the air quality and the water. you can measure things to the equivalent of one second in the thirty-two years with modern detection technology. that wasn't the case back then. ddt does break down rapidly. not so much in the soil but water and sunlight and breaks down into various other components. but the question is at what level does something like that actually have an affect and what about the oil and other things. >> we are in much worse shape than we were when rachel road. in charleston we are unable to

dredge the river out to where the boats can lay a anchor because of the layers of pollution and toxins that would be released into the water if that dredging occurred. that is just a small example. i don't see the birds i used to see. i think our whole biota has been poisoned. >> we are discussing rachel carson's silent spring on booktv in prime time. >> my question is for paul driessen. the slander against rachel carson in the 60s and 70s by the business industry. ddt is extremely toxic. i spent years with the environmental protection agency. it was a human carcinogen.

the golden eagle, and also has been shown to disrupt mammals. it was a carcinogen. it seems to me this was -- doesn't make any sense. we have this horrendous problem in the environment. >> what you have to recognize is other chemicals are more toxic to some species than others.

more susceptible than others. they attribute that to the fact that it was killing a lot of insects and mosquitos and killing the insects that were eating the birds's food. cut the interesting thing was in 1922 the audubon society and ecology magazine said eagles were threatened with extinction but by the 1960s when it was used at the most, eagle populations were up and what happens, they will stop shooting eagles. we amended it to cover goldenç eagles as well.

>> what about the pelicans? when we finally stopped using ddt, the pelican's began to come back but these were down. there is a difference in the kind of birds and how they lay their eggs and most affected by ddt. when the congress at the hearings, congress didn't ban the production of ddt congressional never banned the sale would distribution of it abroad. we have had almost 50 years of the distribution of ddt and wallets sister chemicals.

the dispersion of multiplicity, accelerated, not decelerated. >> the environmental movement and the effect -- the fog will give to the environment today, removing phosphates from our water and products. would that have occurred without rachel carson's "silent spring"? >> that is hard for a historian to answer. what she was trying to do was to bring an awareness to her readers and world that we need to ask the question, what is the long-term effect of what we are doing to the environment, cumin and nonhuman environment by

putting these chemicals into our biota. that was her primary concern. it was the interlocking ecology of life. what has happened since her death and whether she would approve of various acts of various environmental groups, whether they be pro or con is impossible to conjecture. i think rachel carson would be very concerned about our environment today, that we need to do better than we are doing and she would be pleased with any steps we are taking to make our planet a better place. >> thank you for holding.

>> interesting conversation. the peregrine falcon was in california. >> in the early 70s. really coinciding with news headlines. there are going to make available would make hundreds of compounds that address malaria. these are natural compounds. is everyone's right to make money but why is it the chemical companies can make whatever they want, nobody knows whether or not it is harmful or not and we find out it causes problems and they fled to the numbers.

>> let me jump back to the earlier point, they have a seven months study, it was determined ddt was not causing the problem. he said i have a political problem and i am going to solve it. you were talking about the condor with a 12 foot wingspan. there were a lot of problems with habitat losses. the bird eggshell study concluded it caused a shelf thinning but studies were using diets that were deficient in calcium. he reran his test because he was

a good scientist in the maryland area. there was no impact on the bird eggshell thinning. my concern was ddt and keeping it out there and using it when appropriate and responsibly. that should be done with all chemicals. 25 kids out of 50 died in the course of one year in one school. friends of mine are supporters of the school. imagine in this country 10% of a class of kids being dead from one disease in one year. it is a tragedy we don't want to repeat. >> please go ahead. jonathan cole i would like to challenge a few things paul driessen has said. when ddt was used in the second

world war it was used in a powdered form and is extremely hard to be absorbed through the skin. it was mixed with will and becomes highly toxic. and isolating ddt, linda lear is right, what happens when you are exposed to ddt and you're taking antibiotics and other drugs? what happens in your body when all of this mixes? does it make your antibiotics toxic? that was something, asked a magnificent question. i am probably murdering the pronunciation but there was mandarin and some of those were

highly toxic. >> i agree. those are more toxic and that is why there are more controls on them. when you mix ddt with oil because it is not soluble in water. it was busted as a power on troops and holocaust survivors. there has never been a study that shows any -- toxic effects on human beings. that doesn't say that there's not an impact of some species, certainly all the chemicals including birth control pills into the environment. this was an effect on various

species and the ecology as a whole. >> it depends on whether we are taking an anthropomorphic look at the world war the whole of life. she also observed technology was on a faster trajectory than moral responsibility. what she was hoping was to galvanize people to take more responsibility from the hole of the biota. in this sense, and values of ddt or what ever the best anti malaria chemical might be, the

specific use to prevent diseases like malaria was an important thing. ddt has been used in agriculture. once used prolifically in agriculture and the other was this caller has specified, once you use it in agriculture the instance have a difficult composition. you can use it inside a tent. it is very effective. it isn't just one place. it is the whole world we are talking about. we have to be concerned about the stream of life. >> what do you think about the movement to reintroduce ddt to combat malaria? >> i am not a scientist.

i will put that to paul driessen. he will answer that better. i am not anti chemical and i don't think rachel carson would have been. we need to know what its long-term effects are. we can't be so blind. it came along at the same time. you can't take it back. >> that is my point too. we are handling things in the immediate term with some chemicals or the longer term, can have a serious deleterious

effect on you as a person or the people around you. in terms of ddt for malaria control, what you do know is not to spray the environment. some of the others are used today. what they do is spray the walls so the miscues don't come in. they mostly leave -- they die within a couple minutes. and other chemicals in the united states it is instantaneous. the chemical comes in contact with them and microscopic droplets and the mosquito is a

dead. what i recommend is a broad based approach to malaria control. we need the mosquito killer is to keep them under control. and hospitalization in these countries. we also need ddt to serve as a long lasting whole house bed net you don't have to worry about putting on each night. it is just there and you don't have to hold it only when you are sleeping. >> i have been calling you paul driessen. it is paul driessen? in north carolina, you are on with linda lear and paul driessen. >> caller: thank you for taking my call. i was seven years old when rachel carson's book came out. have more comments than

anything. pesticides and homicides and suicides, in my family's. an interesting thing to think about. there are too many chemicals. mountaintop removal. >> we are going to leave it there. this e-mail came from martha barkley, where you are. if you could respond i have a feeling that rachel carson's love was of the sea and her three see books. my favorite is the see around us and i wanted children to experience a sense of wonder as posthumous book states. please comment on writing being

forced upon her. >> martha is certainly right that rachel didn't come looking for "silent spring" as a book to write. she was hoping to write about evolution and continue, to wonder and therefore to love the natural world and keep it because they loved it because you don't work for something you don't love. she gave up her love of the see -- she didn't. the 1961 preface to the see

around us, she talks about atomic dumping into the oceans. she was one of the earliest people to call attention to what kind of contamination would happen to the ocean and global warming, she wrote something about -- because rachel carson had studied it. would hole oceanographic institute, she had kept up in her research. she talked about the incipient rise in ocean temperatures. it was very speculative back then. certainly had a love of the ocean. she was passionate about the

ongoing as of life. one could not go on without the other. >> here is the postscript. what happened to her fish and wildlife pamphlets for the government? her work was destroyed. >> i don't believe -- i haven't seen that, but her work has been considered some of the best writing fish and wildlife ever had. they may have lost the pamphlets but there in the archives. that is that connecticut college. >> she died in 1964. in north look, nebraska? >> thank you for taking my call.

i was 16 years old in 1962. i grew up on a farm in nebraska. it was very apparent in those days and for year thereafter. all the chemicals used in agriculture, went into the service before i came back when i was in the service. i dealt with agent orange. there was a lot of wildlife lost in nebraska, our streams are void of salamanders, turtles and

frogs and all those things plus songbirds are wiped out here and never have come back. would you mind making a couple comments about agent orange? >> i won't crossing to that because i have not studied that. i have read all sorts of stories about it but i am not an expert on that and wouldn't want -- >> i am not an expert either. several of rachel's scientific experts had been using it on roadsides springs for telephone poles and railroad sidings and so forth. and a grade pennsylvania conservationist and frank kegler

concluded these herbicides which i think our relatives of agent orange were so detrimental to the vegetation and bird life or insect life, they advocated and hoped rachel would advocate against their use. to her it was -- it is clear you are harming the whole of the biota. >> you say you are a former member of the sierra club and why former? >> i've worked in these areas for a long time. much of what they were telling me was not in sync with what i was studying and i was being fed

information that was not correct. i concluded they were misrepresenting the facts about a variety of issues and i had a parting of the ways on many different topics much of it having to do with activities out west when i was living in colorado and wyoming. >> where did you come up with the name of your book? green power, black death? >> i grew up in the environmental movement. rachel carson was a huge information for me. as i travel more and more in the other countries of the world and came in contact with the impoverished and of many communities, i realized as much as the environmental movement

has improved things in many ways some of their anti technology and anti karakul positions are detrimental to the developments of people in a lot of countries. malaria is a good example. the opposition by environmental groups to beç used ofç biotechnology is something i have never been able to understand and my friend and i are on the same page. we don't understand what the opposition is. the opposition to fossil fuel development where they don't have electricity, 90% of people in sub-saharan africa still don't have electricity and i cannot imagine my life without electricity. these are the issues i bring up. >> you are on the air.

>> i am an architect today where i still practice and iç witnesç spraying, frequent spraying. it seems the conversation on both sides here, the theme seems to be anti big business but not holding government to test. we have trusted them with protecting gusts and it seems example after example of businesses trying to do things better, supported or back by government regulations that too quick. >> you say you are a landscape architect. do you use chemicals in your work?

>> i specify them sometimes especially in the golf world. you would be shocked and amazed at how precise and terrific the golf association in particular has studied this carefully because they were put on the rack as bad boys and they come back carefully. the political fix to ban ddt is something that comes too easily and quickly. >> you live in south carolina. a lot of golf courses in your area. do you have any comments about that? >> i am privileged to be in charleston, south carolina and the rest of the time i live where paul is in bethesda, maryland.

i don't have any comment about the golf courses, nor do i know whether they have improved things or not. >> please go ahead with your question. >> the chemicals that we use, just like the medicines we take, they don't care how many people get sick or die as long as it doesn't affect their bottom line. they will not tell you the truth unless they are forced to. as far as chemicals being sprayed from trucks that kill mosquitoes my neighbor was sitting outside last summer with a headache. you have a headache because the trucks parade you. that truck has bug killer in it. people are shocked and don't know. if you try to get information, he won't give you a number.

i tried to get them to stop but it is very hard. >> let's start with you. >> point and agree with you more. we haven't come that far. we care about how green our lawns are as opposed to how many songbirds we have or whether the worms and grub is under the ground are in good health or for health. cars some's point was about humility and arrogance. so long as humans act like they can control nature we can spray and drug. we won't have a clean world that will sustain our planet for very long. humans have to have some humility. we are not in control of nature and can't control where it is

going to go. we have to think about the whole of nature and all the little insects, maybe our green lawns and golf courses can't be so green but we can live happier longer without them. >> the use of chemicals is very important. we have a continuing approach to evaluating the impact and how much you need and how it should be used. whether it is ddt or anything else but there are benefits to having these chemicals in all aspects of our lives. we would still be living -- buying at age 7 if it were not for the chemicals and other things we developed over time. we have to recognize sometimes

things government does are very bad. the ban on ddt contrary to his unscientific advisory panel. it was the worst thing that could happen because it lead to an international ban against using a chemical that could save millions of lives. we want to take another issue where peter brought up the government versus corporations. we do corporate automobile efficiency standards. we do it to save gasoline. where are questions about that but the big question from my perspective is government came along and made some decisions to enact these mileage standards and various people that have studied this say 4,000e