Global environmentalism has a long history. In the Aztec Empire, the priests convinced the people that severe weather changes and the deaths of plants and animals could be prevented by ritual human sacrifice (see Access to Energy 8/97).

These days, we are not shedding the blood of identifiable individuals on an altar stone to protect the environment. If you dare to ask a park ranger or environmentalist (as one of our members did) how many human babies should be allowed to die of malaria to save a predatory bird, the reaction will probably be a stunned silence. Yet, such a tradeoff is tacitly approved by today's environmental priesthood, and accepted by scientists who should know what they are doing.

The babies are dying in vain. An article from the DDP archives is highly pertinent as the world elite contemplates a total ban on DDT: ``Remembering Silent Spring and Its Consequences'' by J. Gordon Edwards, presented at the 1996 meeting. (Audio and image files available on CD-ROM, $5 postpaid.)

Dr. Edwards writes: ``In 1962, Rachel Carson published Silent Spring, and because of my 25 years of nature study I expected to be delighted....It didn't take long to learn that she had filled the book with great numbers of untruthful things. Vice President Al Gore has stated that Rachel Carson turned his life around. She turned mine around, too, but in the opposite direction,...from an 'environmentalist' to a scientist with a desire to keep truth in science and environmentalism.''

``I discovered,'' Dr. Edwards states, ``that many 'scientists' were going along with the propaganda in order to get paid for tendentious 'experiments' that would support untruthful allegations.'' Audubon refused his offer to write ``the other side of the DDT story.'' Philip Abelson, editor of Science, informed Dr. Thomas Jukes that the journal would never publish any non-antagonistic article about DDT. The New York Times and the Audubon Society asserted that Edwards and Jukes, among others, were ``paid by the pesticide industry to lie about the Christmas Bird Counts showing increased numbers of birds during the DDT years.'' The scientists won a libel suit in federal court.

These are some of the lies that Dr. Edwards refutes:

• DDT caused birds to drop out of the sky or fall out of trees. Just not so. Bird counts in 1960 (after DDT) vs. 1941 (before DDT) showed 12 times more robins, 21 times more cowbirds, 38 times more blackbirds, 131 times more grackles, etc. Possible protective effects: increasing plant yields; increasing protective cover; eliminating mosquito- borne bird diseases; and inducing liver enzymes that break down naturally occurring environmental toxins and carcinogens.

• DDT was especially damaging to predators. Some predators were endangered before DDT and began to recover afterward. Any population declines were likely to be attributed to DDT, when another cause was obvious to a knowledgeable scientist: an oil spill with high mercury levels; egg predation by biologists; disruptions by humans and helicopters; and an epidemic of Newcastle Disease. The bald eagle was on the verge of extinction in the 1920s, long before DDT was discovered. Eagles were shot on sight to collect a bounty or feathers; trapped accidentally; killed by impact with buildings; electrocuted by power lines; or poisoned by PCBs.

• DDT caused eggshell thinning.In a successful effort to convince people that DDT causes thinning of eggshells, scientists also exposed their DDT-fed birds to conditions known to cause this effect, including starvation, reducing dietary calcium to very low levels, water deprivation, decreasing illumination from 16 to 8 hours per day, or mixing dieldrin with their food. When Bitman and coworkers repeated the experiment published in Nature 1969;224:44 and in Science in 1970, this time feeding the birds sufficient calcium, there was no difference in shell thickness in DDT-fed birds. Science rejected this article, which was then published in Poultry Science 1971;50:657- 569.

• DDT undergoes ``biological magnification in food chains.'' The theory is that if a fish eats a large number of crustaceans, the fish will have a higher concentration of DDT than any one crustacean, and the duck that eats many fish, and the hawk that eats many ducks, will have higher and higher concentrations of DDT. To ``prove'' this, propagandists analyzed the DDT levels in hawk brains (where they are highest) and duck fat, which has levels lower than hawk brain but higher than fish muscle. In fact, if one compares the level in muscle from crustacean, fish, duck, and hawk, there is no biomagnification at all. In fact, most of the DDT in fish comes through the gills; most DDT in food passes through the gut and is eliminated.

  Biomagnification of DDT allegedly killed cats in North Borneo, allowing multiplication of rats and threatening an outbreak of plague. Sensational news stories told of cats being parachuted in. But it was dieldrin that killed the cats, not DDT.

• DDT persists in the environment. Dr. Edwards can cite more than 140 articles demonstrating breakdown of DDT. In one experiment, a large amount of DDT was added to sea water in a glass container, which was closed and suspended in the ocean. After 38 days, 92% of the DDT and its metabolites was gone. The persistence myth was based partly on inaccurate measurements by gas-liquid chromatography. Many substances interfere with the analysis, including PCBs in fluorescent light ballasts or in the plastic tubing within the instrument. GLC, for example, ``showed'' five kinds of chlorinated hydrocarbon insecticides in soil samples, even though none existed until 30 years after the samples were sealed.

  Dr. George Woodwell wrote in 1971 that six billion pounds of DDT had been used, but only 12 million pounds could be accounted for in all the earth's plants, animals, fish, and birds. That was less than 1/30 of one year's world production in the mid-1960s. Woodwell theorized that ``most of the DDT has either been degraded into innocuousness or sequestered in places where it is not freely available'' (Science 1971;174:1101). However, he did not include that article in his testimony at the EPA hearings, on his lawyers' advice, lest his entire statement be disallowed.

• DDT causes cancer. In EPA testimony, Dr. Samuel Epstein stated that ``DDT-fed mice developed cancer,'' and a summary of his remarks was published in the News and Comment section in Science. He avoided mentioning the fact that the mice that were not fed DDT developed more cancers (83 vs 68)! Although the omission was criticized, Science never published a clarification or retraction.

  Workers at the Montrose Chemical Company absorbed 400 times as much DDT as the average American, yet 1300 man-years of exposure resulted in not a single reported case of cancer (Arch Environ Health 1967;15:766-775). Dr. Edwards is so convinced of DDT's safety that he used to eat a tablespoon of DDT powder at the beginning of every speech. In 1971, Robert and Louise Loibl took a capsule of 10 mg of DDT (a full year's intake for an average American) every day for 3 months without ill effect.

``Miss Carson knew,'' Edwards states, that ``he was referring to atomic warfare when she quoted that, but she implied that he meant there were deadly hazards from pesticides such as DDT. I got a copy of Schweitzer's autobiography to see if he really mentioned DDT. He did, writing (p. 262): 'How much labor and waste of time these wicked insects do cause us...but a ray of hope, in the use of DDT, is now held out to us'.''

Mark your calendars: the 17th annual meeting of DDP will be held at the San Francisco Airport Marriott June 30-July 2, 2000.