Continuing the discussion from Silent Spring:
Looking through the Linda Lear book, chapter 18. Here are a couple of early selections:
The industry-led attack on Carson began early. Former Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson is credited by some for framing it in its crudest terms in a letter to Dwight Eisenhower, but the remark was repeated so many times that its origin became inconsequential. Referring to Carson’s articles in The New Yorker, Benson supposedly wondered “Why a spinster with no children was so concerned about genetics?” His explanation was that she was “probably a Communist.”
Ok that’s disgusting.
News magazines, reflecting the dominant business culture, generally took a much dimmer view of Silent Spring than biologists, conservationists, book critics, and literary reviewers. A lengthy review in Time magazine’s science section the day after the book’s publication established the tenor of popular reports: “Miss Carson has taken up her pen in alarm and anger, putting literary skill second to the task of frightening and arousing her readers.” Alluding to errors, oversimplifications, and scary generalizations, the Time correspondent concluded, “Many scientists sympathize with Miss Carson’s love of wildlife, and even with her mystical attachment to the balance of nature. But they fear that her emotional and inaccurate outburst in Silent Spring may do harm by alarming the nontechnical public, while doing no good for the things that she loves.”[5]
So Time seems to be denouncing her as an hysterical woman, essentially (they actually use the word “hysterically” in the article, the entirety of which is online in 4 parts). Here’s a sample of their argument (from their article, not the book):
Scientists, physicians, and other technically informed people will also be shocked by Silent Spring—but for a different reason. They recognize Miss Carson’s skill in building her frightening case; but they consider that case unfair, one-sided, and hysterically overemphatic. Many of the scary generalizations—and there are lots of them—are patently unsound. “It is not possible,” says Miss Carson, “to add pesticides to water anywhere without threatening the purity of water everywhere.” It takes only a moment of reflection to show that this is nonsense. Again she says: “Each insecticide is used for the simple reason that it is a deadly poison. It therefore poisons all life with which it comes in contact.” Any housewife who has sprayed flies with a bug bomb and managed to survive without poisoning should spot at least part of the error in that statement.
They also seem to make a big deal of DDT (I only skimmed).
One more:
In the review, which reached thousands of garden club members, Westcott took particular exception to Carson’s evidence of a chemical threat to human health, arguing that it “can only be conjecture; no proof has yet been offered of any link with human cancer or other ailments.” In addition to her monthly columns, in 1963 Westcott produced three bulletins critical of Carson’s ideas for garden writers and club leaders. Along with her review, they were published and distributed by the Manufacturing Chemists Association. Westcott appeared regularly on public television, gardening shows, and produced a “Guide” for readers of House and Garden magazine, all belittling Carson’s concerns. Westcott was bright, convivial, and well connected, exhibiting a sort of Julia Child affability. She always acknowledged Rachel Carson’s service in jolting the public out of its complacency but adopted the NACA line that what was required was a balanced point of view and that Carson was •an alarmist. “Throughout ‘Silent Spring,’” Westcott wrote, “we are given pills of half truth, definitely not tranquilizing, and the facts are carefully selected to tell only one side of the story.”22
Saying Carson hasn’t proven anything yet doesn’t seem like a good rebuttal.
Westcott made a careful distinction between herself as “Dr.” Westcott, a scientist with a degree, and “Miss” Carson. She deliberately misstated Carson’s position, telling her readers that without pesticides the American housewife would find it difficult to feed her family and warned that “unchecked” pests would bring “starvation and death.”
I don’t know enough about Carson’s position to know whether Westcott was mischaracterizing her.
The Federation of State Garden Clubs of Pennsylvania, among other affiliates, endorsed Westcott’s “unemotional and informative answers” to Carson’s claims and praised her column in The National Gardener. There Westcott urged members not to be alarmed by Carson’s unproven examples of chemical harm and admonished them to give “equal time to considering the good results of present programs of pest control.”
I think the default position was that pesticides are good? Arguing for considering the good results of a thing can be a legit point if there’s some bias against the thing, but seems like an evasion if people are already for it and you’re just trying to not address criticism.