Since Silent Spring?

    The Sacramento County public health officer's bizarre statement that "Even with DDT they did not find major problems for humans . . . It was lots of problems with birds and other things but not with humans,"conjured up some images from the past, so we dug out the book Since Silent Spring, by Frank Graham, Jr.  How far have we come on pesticide issues since Rachel Carson's warnings?  At one point he describes the climate surrounding the use of DDT to control Dutch elm disease in Iowa (pp. 235-236):

    “I believe our greatest problem in the state is the policy of Iowa State University at Ames,” writes Mrs. Darrel M. Hanna, a conservationist who lives in Sioux City, Iowa.  She refers to a local campaign (eventually successful) in 1967 to establish a sound program for the control of Dutch elm disease. 

    “The University has actively promoted the use of DDT for Dutch elm disease all over the state and they have unlimited outlets for their propaganda,” she continues.  “They have come out with a brand new film which advocates the use of DDT and they are booking it all over the state.  The worst part of it is that the people of our cities and towns believe and accept their advice.”

    The men who direct state agriculture departments, extension services, and agricultural colleges often share the . . . zeal for preparedness.  These men offer advice throughout their state to anyone who wants to grow green things – from thousands of acres of corn to small garden of roses.  And their advice is spray!  Be careful, of course, but spray.  Spray before the plants emerge; spray at this stage of growth; spray at the first sign of a bug.  Inevitably, the spraying conforms to the calendar rather than to need.

    Here, on the local level, where they most concern the majority of people, we are apt to find pest control programs at their worst.  These programs usually are based not on scientific principles but on pork barrel politics and an aggressive sales pitch.   Arboriculturists and professional spray applicators have been saturated by chemical industry literature . . .  The applicators, in turn, expert pressure on town managers before each “spraying season.”  . . .  Town officials, in their turn, shop around to find the most spray for their money. 

    The greatest advocates of promiscuous spraying are the boys coming out of school, and their knowledge is usually confined to what their professors told them,” one city forester says.  “I think that some of these professors either must be lazy or too close to the chemical companies to give their students proper views of the control of plant diseases and insects.  I heard one young graduate tell a group that you did not have to know much about disease and insects – just contact a chemical company and they would set up a [spray] program for you.”

    Indeed they will!

    The programs thus conceived are carried out haphazardly, and with no notion of their ultimate effect on the environment.

    That is quite a litany: the greatest problem is the state university, there are unlimited outlets for propaganda, the programs are based on pork barrel politics and an aggressive sales pitch, the programs are not based on scientific principles, the professors are too close to the chemical companies, there is no need for students to know much about diseases and insects, and there is no notion of the ultimate effect on the environment.  If you have followed the West Nile virus controversy closely, do you notice any similarities?

    The sexist language (the men who direct . . . , these men, the greatest advocates . . . are the boys) gives a hint at the timing of this publication -- 1970.  DDT was already known to pose problems, yet official entities across the country, including those in our supposedly independent universities, hopped on the spray bandwagon and even led the charge.

    Cut to 2007 and West Nile virus.  The CDC says spray (as a last resort).  The California Department of Public Health says spray.  Vector control officials insist that state, county, and local health departments across the United States say spray, though many do not.  UC Davis entomologists on the SYMVCD Board say spray.  UC Davis entomologists appear on public radio, make false statements, refuse to produce data to support the statements, and say spray.  Glennah Trochet, whose sentiments about using pesticides have just been exposed, says spray.  The list goes on and on.  Yet, the stunning lack of evidence supporting the spray for West Nile virus is just as glaring as were the known dangers of DDT nearly 40 years ago. 

    It sounds as if the "credentials game" was being played back then, with pronouncements from agriculture departments, extension services, and agricultural colleges, just as it is playing out in this region now.  It goes like this -- "my experts have better credentials than yours, so everybody should listen to what I say about this issue."  As their experts vector control officials cite the agencies who say we should spray, but they cite little evidence.  The Davis mayor plays it as well as anybody, as she cites her secret panel of distinguished experts, who have handed down the truth behind the scenes, in addition to the formal agencies.  The experts are not identified, yet again no evidence is offered, and we are expected to accept the mayor's conclusions as the final word because she assures us that they have top credentials.  In absence of any evidence we would hope that people are not willing to do so.

    In fact, we know one of the mayor's experts on this issue, our discussions with him and the mayor leave us with the conclusion that he understands that adulticiding is not effective, but on political grounds rather than scientific ones he was unwilling to advise the mayor to take a position against it.  He was keenly aware of the political pickle in which politicians find themselves when an issue has been badly sensationalized and they then perceive the need to be seen as doing something about it.  Aerial adulticiding is highly visible; whereas water management, larvaciding, etc., are almost entirely hidden.  Indeed, because we have openly asked for decisions based on the science and the facts, he explicitly advised us that we simply "did not get it."  Perhaps not, from a political perspective, but we still have hope that the facts and science will prevail in the end and policies involving safe and effective means of mosquito control will be implemented.

    The "credentials game" is typically very successful for public officials and very hard to overcome even when a citizens' group is right on the issues.  In this case, SYMVCD officials get tons of newspaper, radio, and television time; officials address town and county councils; their moves are covered extensively by the media; the issue is sensationalized to the hilt; events such as finding one infected dead egret make the main headline in the local paper; officials are given far more time in public meetings to make their case than are spray opponents; etc.  Then, when opponents of the spraying can manage to wangle some time out of a newspaper for an op-ed, spray proponents are given equal time to be sure there is "balance."  In actual fact, it would take many months of regular coverage for spray opponents alone before there would be any semblance of overall balance.

    And, what is the upshot of all of this?  Watch any news report and you will see people begin from the assumption that the spray slows the transmission of WNv to humans and go from there.  With that assumption firmly in mind, and without a scintilla of evidence to support it, people who urge caution and using effective means of combating West Nile virus are portrayed as not caring if people die from WNv, which could not be further from the truth.  We would love to see vector control officials implement very effective and very safe means to combat the virus.  Reporters also assume that the spraying is safe and fail to do any investigative reporting.  They focus on immediate effects for healthy individuals and completely ignore the special susceptibilities of at-risk groups in the population and long-term effects on all of us.  And, we wonder how people develop the unsupported views about this issue.

    As we puzzle over the apparently widespread acceptance of the assertions of vector control and public health officials based on a paucity of good scientific evidence, some words of George Bernard Shaw come to mind:

There is no harder scientific fact in the world than the fact that belief can be produced in practically unlimited quantity and intensity, without observation or reasoning, and even in defiance of both, by the simple desire to believe.