Posted by:
Benvolio
(
)
Date: February 24, 2020 02:06PM
Rachel Carson wrote "Silent Spring" to expose risks of using DDT. There was an aggressive pushback from industry and government.
'Those inconvenienced by the truths Carson exposed immediately attacked her for her indictment against elected officials’ and corporations’ deliberate deafness to fact. They used every means at their disposal - a propaganda campaign designed to discredit her, litigious bullying of her publisher, and the most frequent accusation of all: that of being a woman. Former Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson, who would later become Prophet of the Mormon Church, asked: "Why a spinster with no children was so concerned about genetics?" He didn’t hesitate to offer his own theory: because she was a Communist. '
This was new to me.
https://www.brainpickings.org/2017/01/27/rachel-carson-silent-spring-dorothy-freeman/