This Day in History: 2003-09-15

Environmentalism kills Or at least, so claims “Jurassic Park” author Michael Crichton in remarks to the Commonwealth Club on this day in 2003. According to Crichton: “The DDT ban has caused the deaths of tens of millions of poor people, mostly children, whose deaths are directly attributable to a callous, technologically advanced western society that promoted the new cause of environmentalism by pushing a fantasy about a pesticide.” Actually, the claim was totally  unhinged from fact and reason, and to put environmental science on a par with Attila the Hun is obviously fiction. The unrestrained use of DDT in agriculture was the issue; DDT was never banned for human health uses (such as mosquito netting), and better alternatives are in use anyway.  Histories of science and public health need to be seen in light of the full spectrum of facts, historian Elana Conis says in “Beyond Silent Spring.”