I post here a memorial of the children who have died since DDT was banned after bad science was treated as fact. http://www.reason.com/news/show/119786.html To summarize: Silent Spring is not about birds, it was about the so-called carcinogenic effects of DDT, which have been proven unfounded. As a result, DDT was banned in most countries, and countries where it is legal for any use at are under threat of boycott if they actually do so. As a result, roughly 1 million people die of malaria every year, 80% of them children. So here's to them, the 800,000 per year. Their sacrifice has not been in vain, though. They've saved some birds, gotten much more pesticide put on everything, and made environmentalists the world over feel good about themselves, worthy goals if ever there were three.
When the human race finally manages to snuff itself out, it probably won't be because some country lobbed nukes or unleashed biological warfare; it will be because of some peoples' need for self-congratulatory policy. "But we can't wipe out those troublesome alien spores with MaxiKill; it's been known to cause liver cancer in caterpillars..."
It's a hippie habit they developed from celebrating the end of the Vietnam war while 1 million South Vietnamese were being slaughtered for it.
