DDT

On the 55th Anniversary of Silent Spring

By Larry Nielsen / On September 27th, 2017

On September 27, 1962, a highly-anticipated book hit the shelves. Reactions to it were immediate and strong. The author’s best friend called it “the poison book.” A spokesperson for the agricultural chemical industry called it “…gross distortions of the actual facts, completely unsupported by scientific, experimental evidence….” Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas called it “…the most important chronicle of this century for the human race.” Today we call the book—Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring—the origin of the modern environmental movement.

Mosquitoes and Zika Virus: "We Don't Have to Live in Fear"

By Emily Monosson / On February 24th, 2016

Mosquitoes, along with their disease-causing hitchhikers like West Nile, Equine encephalitis, Dengue, and now Zika, are on the move, finding new habitats and naïve populations ripe for infection. Just as Lyme has made tick experts out of us all (no, that one is just a dog tick), we are on a first-name basis with mosquitoes like Aedes and Culex.

Using DDT to Control the Zika Virus: "A Pandora's Box of Problems"

By Andy Dyer / On February 22nd, 2016

The proposal to bring DDT out of the retired arsenal of chemical weaponry to control mosquito vectors carrying the Zika virus is a Pandora’s Box of problems. And these are not hypothetical problems. The mosquitoes and the virus are biological threats that have emerged because of disruptions to the broader environment, all of which are connected to human population growth and simplification of the ecosystems humans live in. While the Zika virus is a very real threat to human health, the answer to this threat is not DDT.