No one would be less surprised than Rachel Carson to discover
that on today's 100th anniversary of her birth she is still
stirring controversy. Her 1962 book Silent Spring, which
awakened the nation to the dangers of indiscriminate use of
pesticides, brought swift retaliation from the chemical
industry, including legal threats and personal demonization.
Efforts to discredit her rage on. Inadvertently, though, the
Oklahoma senator who blocked a proposal by Maryland lawmakers to
formally honor Ms. Carson today has simply called greater
attention to her role in helping Americans understand how human
activity affects their surroundings. A Johns Hopkins-trained
scientist who spent most of her career working for the federal
government and lived in Silver Spring, Ms. Carson was an early
skeptic of DDT and other pesticides that were so effective in
eradicating disease-bearing insects that they were widely
sprayed with no thought of adverse effects. Her four years of
research produced an alarming account of how pestic