100th Anniversary of Rachel Carson: Remembering the Woman Who Helped Launch the Environmental Movement

One hundred years ago this week, the marine biologist and author Rachel Carson was born. In 1962 she published the groundbreaking work "Silent Spring" that helped launch the environmental movement. It was one of the most controversial books of the 1960s. Her warnings about the dangers of DDT and other chemical pesticides helped launch the environmental movement. At the time, Carson was widely attacked by the chemical industry and much of the press.

Time Magazine claimed Carson's research was filled with oversimplifications and downright errors. That was in 1962.Time Magazine would later name Rachel Carson one of the 100 most important people of the 20th century, largely because of Silent Spring.

She died of cancer at the age of 56 in 1964, just two years after the book's publication. This is Rachel Carson in her own words:

* Rachel Carson speaking in 1964, Courtesy of the Pacifica Radio Archives: "Is industry becoming a screen through which facts must be filtered, so that the hard, uncomfortable truths are kept back and only the harmless morsels are allowed to filter through? I know that many thoughtful scientists are deeply disturbed that their organizations are becoming fronts for industry. More than one scientist has raised the question of whether a spirit of Lysenkoism may be developing in America today, the philosophy that perverted and destroyed the science of genetics in Russia and even infiltrated all of that nation's agricultural sciences. But here, the tailoring, the screening of basic truth, is done, not to suit any party line, but to accommodate to the short-term gain, to serve the gods of profit and production."

For more on the life and legacy of Rachel Carsen, we are joined by:

* Sandra Steingraber, ecologist, author, and cancer survivor. She is an internationally recognized expert on the environmental links to cancer and reproductive health and the author of many books including "Living Downstream: An Ecologist Looks at Cancer and the Environment."

LISTEN ONLINE:
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/05/31/1412219