Rachel Carson: Revisiting The Silent Spring

"Will Google be paying similar tribute to any of the other mass killers of the 20th century? Hitler? Stalin? Mao? Pol Pot? Probably not. But then, none of the others have had the benefit of having their images burnished by a thousand and one starry eyed greenies. Nor, unlike Carson – as I note in The Little Green Book of Eco Fascism –  do they have named after them a school, a bridge, a hiking trail, three environmental prizes and an annual “sustainable” feast day (at her birth place in Springdale, Pennsylvania)"
--James Delingpole, Breibart News

"The list of diseases and their insect carriers, or vectors, includes typhus and body lice, plague and rate fleas, African sleeping sickness and tsetse flies, various fevers and ticks and innumerable others.
These are important problems and must be met. No responsible person contends that insect borne disease should be ignored. 
The question that now urgently presented itself is whether it is either wise or responsible to attack the problem by methods that are rapidly making it worse. The world has heard much of the triumphant war against disease through the control of insect vectors of infection, but it has heard little of the other side of the story--the defeats, the short lived triumphs that now strongly support the alarming view that the insect enemy has been made actually stronger by our efforts."
--Rachel Carson, "The Silent Spring."

Reading "The Silent Spring" again, I first read the objections to Ms. Carson's seminal screed upon the industrial, widespread and wanton use of chemical pesticides, but I also saw her argument through the lenses of my latter day education in biology and the environment, chiefly the fantastic TV series narrated by David Attenborough, including "Life Underground" and "Blue Planet." And, with time, I've learned that criticism and analysis ought to be used with equal vigor examining the arguments of those we love as on those we despise. 

Warning: I surely learned more biology from David Attenborough than I ever got from the professors of biology at my undergraduate college. Truth be told, I had four main professors in college biology, and only one was really good. What passed for biology at my college in the mid 1960's was mostly descriptive and "fund of knowledge" stuff which did not allow much for critical thought or, for that matter, for anything really useful. "The Voyage of the Beagle" was superior to most of my courses, though no less descriptive and iterative. Memorize. Regurgitate. Consider yourself "educated."

But back to Carson. 

One might say, if one had no time to investigate further that any woman who could earn the title of "eco fascist" from Breibart must be hero, ipso facto and be believed simply by virtue of the enemies she has made.

Carson makes all sorts of allegations about the destructive effects of DDT, mostly coalescing around the triad of ideas: 1/ DDT destroys birds, their eggs and other unintended creatures 2/ Target insects become resistant and the survivors are even more of a problem 3/ that once DDT kills off the pest at which it was aimed, new insects, mites, spores replace it which are even more destructive to the cows, people or crops the DDT was meant to protect. 
She does not use the standard footnoted references to support each claim so it can be examined based on the source study but rather a "List of Principle Sources" to cover arguments presented over a span of pages. This can be forgiven as this book was intended for the general public. 

A University of Wyoming entomologist, J. Gordon Edwards, goes page by page listing and "refuting" the "lies" he find in Silent Spring, to the effect only of revealing his own psychopathology, but she does leave herself open to this sort of thing by publishing as she did, a layman's book about science. But these attacks are trivial and often driven by other agendas.

The real problem I have with Ms. Carson is her proposed solution for malaria and other problems is in no way proven to be less potentially havoc wrecking on the environment than the pesticides she decries: namely genetically manipulated mosquitoes who are released into selected biological systems to breed in sterility, resulting in a decline of the mosquito targeted, mostly Anopheles.  

She says,  "Examples of successful biological control of serious pests by importing their natural enemies are to be found in some 40 countries distributed over much of the world. The advantages of such control over chemicals are obvious: it is relatively inexpensive, it is permanent, it leaves no poisonous residues."

Defending the biological warfare she likes: "To some the term microbial insecticide may conjure up pictures of bacterial warfare that would endanger other forms of life. This is not true. in contrast to chemicals, insect pathogens are harmless to all but their intended targets...outbreaks of insect disease in nature always remain confined to insects, affecting neither the host plants nor animals feeding on them."

Oh, Ms. Carson, beware that word "always."  In science, "always" always calls for the exception to always.

The other operative word here is "pests."  What is a "pest"? I would have to imagine a pest is some insect, plant or organism people, or at least some people do not like or consider harmful to a human enterprise or offensive to someone's taste.

(In New Hampshire, the horticulture department at the University of New Hampshire does not like, aesthetically, purple/ maroon leafy maples, the Norwegian maple. The UNH department prefers green. The faculty testified before a committee of the New Hampshire House of Representatives the Norwegian maple, with its dark leaves of deep maroon is "an invasive species" [another choice phrase.]You cannot legally buy, import or plant a Norway maple in the state to this day, unless, somehow, you plant them around the Hampton Academy school grounds, which, somehow, is exempt from the problem of an invasion by Norway maples. It might be noted, you rarely find a Norway maple growing wild in the woods and forest around Hampton or anywhere along the Seacoast--they are almost always ornamental trees planted by some stealthy gardener, likely before they were outlawed--Except when it comes to governmental planters.)

The most famous example of biowarfare run amuck, of course, was the effort to rid the Hawaiian islands of rats by importing mongoose. Turns out, rats being nocturnal, were not much bothered by the mongoose, which likes to hunt by day and wound up killing a lot of lovely Hawaiian birds but few rats. Best laid plans oft' do go astray, or at least occasionally. It doesn't take much googling to discover other misadventures:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_pest_control

The problem for Ms. Carson and for all of us, is biology is interwoven and like that wonderful Simpson's Halloween episode, when Homer goes into the past, where he steps on a butterfly and thereby changes evolutionary destiny for the planet, over and over and in unpredictable ways is worth re watching. This "butterfly effect" was not original with the Simpsons, which only made it most entertaining, but is a cautionary tale we ought not forget. 

Ms. Carson spends chapter after chapter, citing example after example of how ridding a micro-environment, a field, a state of one insect, one mite results in the emergence of another, even more troublesome insect, mite, fungus, cautionary tale after cautionary tale, only to then lay out for us a fool proof, trouble-free solution of competitor based, predator-under-our control solution.  She does strike the refrain that the whole notion of "nature under our control" is an exercise in hubris, but she cannot help herself.

Obadiah Youngblood "Church"

Ms. Carson alerted us to the problem; she was not as strong on the solution. 

Defund Police v DeFang Police: Right Idea, Wrong Marketing

Recently, on Twitter, Mad Dog received a reply to a posting pointing him to a newspaper report from a London paper showing unarmed Bobbies having been beaten by a crowd, and forced into retreat.

This Tweeter's photo shows a Marine in dress blues with his medals displayed across his chest saying that police cannot be cowards, implying, of course, that police who do not mow down demonstrators with bullets and clubs are cowards as they are caught in flight by photographers.

Mad Dog suggested the police who confronted the crowds, outnumbered and unarmed showed far more courage than their helmeted, shielded, club and gun toting American counterparts.

Those Ohio National Guardsmen who shot unarmed demonstrators at Kent States never took a step backward, but were they not cowards?

The two men in the famous flower power poster showed one brave man and another with a gun.

But to market the idea of disarming police as "defund police" telegraphs a message of anarchy. Of course we need police. We just need the right sort of police.

That Marine might well join a police force after he leaves the Marine, precisely because they will give him a gun to brandish, to show all the ladies and his buddies how brave he is.

But men who are brave when they have the gun and the firepower behind them, facing only unarmed civilians are, to Mad Dog's mind, phony tough guys.

Somehow, the idea of American Bobbies, braver than Wyatt Earp, has got to be marketed. Defund is not that.

Modern American Wimpdom

Yesterday,  a motorcycle decked out with a huge American flag, big enough to act as a mainsail on a frigate, roared past me.  Also smaller flags, Don't Tread On me, maybe a Stars and Bars--I don't recall.  It was loud as a freight train and its rider's hair, what there was of it, mostly gray, streamed in the wind. 

There you had the essence of American manhood, New Hampshire style.  You knew this freedom fighter would be heading to a gathering of like minded patriots, to drink beer and smoke and laugh about all the snowflakes out there who wear masks to grocery stores.

Ms. Maud has recommended John Steinbeck's "East of Eden,"  and though I did not think I liked Steinbeck much, Ms. Maud is of such discernment, I figured I give Steinbeck another try. After all, beyond bike rides, what else to I have to do now in the lock down Covid day?

But before I got to Eden,  I discovered a slim volume of his war correspondence "Once There Was a War."  Each little dispatch is a gem, but two have stayed with me and bubbled up behind my eyes, watching that red blooded American easy rider rumble by down Route 27 on his way toward Exeter.  

One was a report of a movie theater in a suburb of London, where children, soldiers, nurses watch a Veronica Lake movie and the children thrilled to her blond glamour and took what they saw on the screen as absolute truth about life in America, and the soldiers stared numbly and the nurses laughed, until a German bomb collapsed the roof and set fire to the building and the kids, or parts of them were extracted, methodically, by rescue teams and hauled off to hospital.

Another dispatch, titled simply, "Chewing Gum" described a line of children held back near the gangplank of an American ship, holding out their hands for chewing gum from the disembarking GI's. 
"When you have gum you have something permanent, something you can use day after day and even trade when you are tired of it. Candy is ephemeral. One moment you have candy, and the next moment you haven't. But gum is really property."

But the real moment occurs when a bag of orange peels is dropped on the dock from the ship, "Golden with squeezed orange skins. The children hesitate, because it is against all their training to break the rules. But the test is too great. They can't stand it. They break over the line and tumble on the garbage box. They squeeze the skins for the last drop of juice that may conceivably be there."

A bobby comes along and shoos them off, desultorily.  He has to do his job but his sympathy is with the children. They get very hungry for oranges, he says. Nobody over 5 years of age is allowed oranges in England. The bobby hasn't had an orange in 4 years.

Reading the New York Times about the deprivation of Americans locked down in their apartments or homes, unable to go out to restaurants or to bars, or swimming pools or country clubs, I marvel at the fortitude of my fellow countrymen, who have suffered so much with this COVID19 pandemic.

Those who have lost jobs, yes. They are hurting as Americans did during the Depression--although now we do have unemployment insurance, at least temporarily for many.

But when it comes to deprivation, everything is relative. 

What is this Trump Thing?

I am no historian, but at least in my lifetime, I cannot recall a President who inspired local people to fly flags with his name on them outside their homes. 

Some of this may have to do with the ease of printing and design in the 21st Century, but this really is something new. At least I've never seen anything like it. 

After Lincoln died, people displayed Lincoln likenesses, and that long train ride from Washington, D.C. back to Illinois--people lined the route and people wept openly after FDR and Kennedy died, so there was a personal connection for many with the President. But this is different. Nobody's died. 

This Trump flag thing is something different in my mind. 

Hitler inspired the Germans to public displays of affection, and, for all I know, Franco and Peron may have as well. There was a time after World War II when German magazines were not allowed to run Hitler's photo on their covers, for fear people would frame them and hang them in their homes and businesses. 

But these are flags outside homes, on porches. In America. 

I saw them on a car ride through Buck's County Pennsylvania last Christmas, along with rebel flags, but mostly alone, just flags with Trump 2020.

Is this simply brilliant marketing? But no, you can send a man a Trump flag; that doesn't mean he'll fly it.

On my bicycle rides through Hampton Falls, I see the flags.  On Hidden Pasture road, on other roads.

The man can barely parse a sentence.

At least with Hitler, you could understand: he gave long, rousing, coherent, if vile, speeches and he appealed to something.  Racial pride. Fear. Loathing of the other in a country defeated, humiliated. The Germans, one might imagine, had a sense of grievance. But where does that sense of grievance in America come from?

During Vietnam, in the 60's, we had the same thing: That hate which stoked the murders at Kent State, a class hate really. That was palpable. There was racial hatred, as colored people confronted institutionalized racism and Southern whites saw their privileged status challenged. There was the "moral majority."

Trump fans are no more loathsome than the "patriots" who hated the anti war demonstrators, who hated the hippies or hated the "Freedom riders." But at least, when George Wallace "with hate dripping from his lips" cried out, "Segregation now. Segregation tomorrow. Segregation forever!" you knew what that was. 

I don't really know what Trump love is. 
I talk with folks every day from Haverhill and Methuen, Massachusetts and Salem, New Hampshire.  On many topics, they seem normal.  But then, you stray a little, and you discover they love Trump and they hate something, someone, but their hate and bitterness and resentment remain inchoate. 

In some ways it's like those scrawls you see on walls: "Fuck you!" But you don't see those so much any more. You see more Trump signs than "Fuck you!" signs. Or maybe they are just the same thing.

In some ways, one has to believe this is just fate playing out the hand.  If Gavin Newsom were the presumptive Democratic candidate, you could say, okay, now the pendulum is swinging back. There's going to be a real chance. But with Biden, a vessel so fragile one can hardly imagine his making it across a calm sea, much less a rough and tumble campaign--you have to be able to see what is coming.

I can make it to Canada on a single tank of gas, is all I'm saying. 

The Weirdness of American Hate

Reading an article about natives in the American South, I used to get angry, frustrated, rage. 

The people of "To Kill A Mockingbird" who would convict an obviously innocent Black man because it was unacceptable to accept a white man had raped his step daughter, but a Black man would be expected to rape a White Woman. But I figured, that is the Old South. 

Now, in a no nonsense, just the facts style Eyal Press, an Israeli, a stranger in a strange land, slogs through that bizarre state of Alabama, interviewing white and Black women who are dying of cervical cancer, one of the few cancers no human being needs to even acquire, much less die from. A single vaccine against the HPV virus can prevent most of it and a Pap smear detect it early enough to cure, but the women of Alabama get neither and so they die agonizing deaths in higher numbers than in Biafra.

Along the way Mr. Press listens to the good folks of Alabama tell him why they reject the idea of extending Medicaid, of embracing Obamacare, two moves which could pay for themselves, if only the state of Alabama and its people would accept them. 

He describes a man who hobbles about with an amputation, a portable oxygen tank in tow, who rejects extending medical care to the whole population:  [he] "complained that people on welfare with 'ten and twelve kids' were abusing the system. 
Another claimed that 'illegal motherfuckers' received all the benefits and that ordinary Americans were subsidizing them."

Press talks to an Alabama academic-yes, there is such a thing--who published a book "Dying of Whiteness" in which he quotes a white man: "No way I want my tax dollars paying for Mexicans or welfare queens...Ain't no way I would ever support Obamacare or sign up for it. I would rather die."

In fact, he was dying of liver failure.

This is not exclusively a White attribute. A Black pastor reported one of his congregants in South Carolina told him he would not vote for Bernie Sanders because, "I earned my Medicare. Now you want to give it away for free to just anyone."

How many bitter residents have I spoken with in Haverhill and Methuen Massachusetts, who describe the $600 they had to spend on their insulin when their Hispanic neighbor, on Mass Health, gets his insulin for free?

I've asked a number of these resentful citizen who they are angry at, about this and they always say, "The government, of course. They give him the insulin for free!"
And then I ask: But why are you not angry that they don't give you your insulin for free?  Would it bother you if he got free insulin if you got free insulin?

I find myself staring into blinking, uncomprehending eyes.

Americans, apparently, are not Danes.

Notes from COVID19 Frontlines

Nobody wants to have a kid go to war, but sometimes it happens.

My brother got sent off to Vietnam, and while our family opposed that war, his choice was a Hobbesian choice, which is to say, not much of a choice.

With respect to NYC right now, doctors who are employed by any of the major hospital health care systems  are more or less conscripted, but they have more choices to avoid service, if they wish.

As the email below mentions, if you are employed as a physician by a hospital system, you can choose not to report for duty--you simply won't be paid. For those who had enough financial cushion, that is an option.

But unless I miss my guess, I am betting even doctors with a lot of cushion will not leave town.  I can think back to docs I knew in NYC and I can name those who have likely already decamped to their places in the Hamptons. Medical practice  for them was never about anything but the money, so hazardous duty makes no sense for them.

But for a lot of docs, like the 60 year old with two coronary stents, he will not fail to step up--he will not fade from the firing line, because if you are a doctor, you show up.

A check out clerk at Market Basket told me, "I did not sign up for this. If I didn't need the money, I wouldn't be here."  I can see that.  She felt that simply standing across the checkout counter was too big a risk. Some grocery stores are installing plexi glass panels to protect the cashiers now.

There are no plexi glass barriers for the doctors and nurses in NYC now.

But for many doctors, they just could not face their colleagues later on, if they were not visibly present now.

Nurses, too.  Nurses especially. Nurses are closer to the patients than doctors mostly.

And it's the innoculum, the number of virions, viral particles, that likely determines who gets the overwhelming infection. 
Also the host. 
The author of this email has underlying asthma. A respiratory infection for him is a far more dangerous thing than for his non asthmatic colleagues.

But there he is.

He is writing his uncle, who is a doctor at Duke, replying to his uncle's inquiry about how things are going in NYC.

On Fri, Mar 27, 2020 at 2:14 PM 

Hi,
How are things going for you in NYC? The evening news makes it look pretty bleak - but hopefully they are exaggerating a bit for effect.

So far Duke Hospital has no cases of COVID-19, although there are two hospitalized at Duke Raleigh Hospital. Only a matter of time before the virus makes its way to Durham.

Hey Unc, (added dad as well)

Things are pretty much at capacity in NYC with the smaller satellites starting to get overwhelmed. I think that trend will progress to our main hubs by next week. As an example, at Brooklyn Kings Highway (a sinai affiliate near cony island) 146 of 220 beds are currently occupied with covid patients, their ICU expanded into their ORs and PACUs. Our colleagues there paint a pretty grim picture, the morgues are only used to about 5 deaths a day, so there is a refrigerated truck taking bodies away.  We have many more covid  patients in Manhattan but obviously way more capacity. As of last count, there were about 50 open ICU beds system wide. 

Surgeons were first told we could volunteer for "platoons" consisting of 2 surgeons and 4 mid levels/ trainees. These platoons would be sent to hot spots to help out in ICUs and ERs system wide. We will be functioning as whatever they need, ICU attending? ER? whatever. We were then told today that these platoons were only voluntary in the sense that we can also choose not to get paid. My immediate boss is in his mid 60s and has multiple coronary stents, and he will go to the front lines with the rest of us. 

A bright spot is it sounds like there is a decent amount of PPE to go around in manhattan, and have not heard stories like they are sensationalizing on the news. 

But yeah, all in all, we are in for a dark couple weeks. I plan on doing what I can on my platoon and being extremely paranoid with PPE. I also think it is quite possible [his wife] had and convalesced from it, so hopefully I already had an asymptomatic case. No way to know without serology (not available)

Bernie Sanders: When Fantasies Crash and Burn

Contemptible you are in your wealth,
You kings of coal and steel!
You had your thrones, parasites,
At our backs erected.
All the factories, all the chambers –
All were made by our hands.
It's time! We demand the return
Of that which was stolen from us.

--The Internationale

The collapse of Bernie Sanders' campaign came as no surprise to Mad Dog.
Had Bernie been more successful, Mad Dog would have been astonished.

Whenever Mad Dog saw Bernie, the words of Mad Dog's father echoed in his ears from years ago:  The NFL players had gone on strike and these players, who were paid millions, were organizing as a brotherhood of workers.  

"I'm all for the workers," my father said. "My parents were union, through and through. But these are not WORKERS."

By which he meant, millionaires are not workers.  Working class people who live in working class homes in working class neighborhoods are workers. These were millionaires complaining about their ill treatment by billionaire owners.

Workers just aren't what they used to be.

In fact, likely, workers haven't been "workers" likely since the end of the Great Depression, or at least since the late 50's.

Workers of the world unite!

But, as Sanders himself as noted, sadly, the Democratic party is no longer the party of the working class. "The Democratic Party has become the party of the more affluent people, while the Republican Party has become the party of the white working class."

Bernie sought to rally all those idealistic young people who reminded him of his own youthful group, the kids who marched against the war in Vietnam, against "The Man" against the controlling, soulless Wall Street rich.  And he would bring them out to vote in numbers un-imagined. Well, not un-imagined, because Bernie imagined them, but the fact is, there were never enough of them.

An African American minister spoke of one of the members of his congregation who told him, "My Medicare isn't for all. I worked for it; it's mine. And now you want to give it away to someone else who hadn't earned it."

There you have in a nutshell, in a single congregant's confession, the nub of the problem: These workers are not singing kumbaya, locking arms with other workers, marching arm and arm for the greater good of the working man, singing "We Shall Overcome," or The Internationale.

This is a man who is not amenable to the idea of supporting someone else, when it comes to health care. He's got his. He earned it. He doesn't want to help deadbeats or people who didn't work as hard as he did.

It's the same thing we heard when a Danish woman was asked by her friend how she could stand to live in America, where they don't have universal health care and the Danish woman asked her friend, "Well, wait a minute. How would you feel if your taxes went to pay for the medical care of an Italian?"
Her friend started, blinking, a deer in the headlights. "Well, but that's different."
"No," said the Danish woman. "The white guy in Wisconsin doesn't want to pay for the healthcare of the Black guy in Kentucky. Same thing."

When Bernie was mayor of Burlington, Vermont, demonstrators picketed the factory which made Gatling guns which were sold to Central American dictators who mowed down demonstrators seeking  democracy. Bernie chose to side with "the workers" who were making the guns, but these weren't really "workers" by my father's definition: Real workers would never have made guns used to suppress other workers by autocrats.  "Remember," Lenin said, "A boyonet is a weapon with a worker at either end."

Workers who are despoiling the environment by fracking  in Pennsylvania or drilling in the Gulf of Mexico aren't dreamy eyed workers dreaming of a workers' paradise.  Bernie had to face the roles these workers played in destroying the climate and his response was "We'll retrain them and pay their salaries while they learn something new."

But that was just a dodge. That was like saying, "We'll convert them to Christianity" and once they have accepted the Lord Jesus, or the environment, they'll want to do good.

Bernie was beaten by the very working class people he claimed to want to fight for and liberate. 

Trouble was, they didn't want to be saved. They just wanted what they thought belonged to them.