Two kids on a playground, one runs past a little girl and knocks her lollipop right to the ground. The other child starts running and trips unfortunately taking down another little girl’s lollipop. Both children committed the same poor action that ended with the same result; however, only one of them was premeditated. How do you punish the two children? Do they deserve the same scolding for their similar actions?
After reading Silent Spring written by Rachel Carson, the line between good and bad, wrong and right becomes less clear. What if you are doing something to help an entire community, but as a result, in the end it becomes more harmful than good? That is the central idea for Carson’s book, specifically focused on the DDT pesticide. In the late 1950’s the use of pesticides was increasing, because the benefits were very successful in the short term. The pesticide was originally created in order to control diseases spread by insects in 1939 by a chemist named, Paul Hermann Müller. “Müller was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine “for his discovery of the high efficiency of DDT as a contact poison against several arthropods” in 1948.”
After the use of this highly dangerous pesticide was becoming increasingly more common, Rachel Carson had her book published, which pressured the idea of looking into the long term effects of the chemical DDT. She shared facts about the bird population as well as the tree’s in the United States while using DDT. In addition to showing the dangers of DDT to wildlife in our environment she also gave examples, with human health including human pesticide poisoning as well as cancers caused by this chemical. In 1972, the use of DDT for agricultural use was banned in part thanks to this specific book.
Even now in our generation, there are many modern technologies that have at first been seen to be evolutionary in our society. A bit further back in history, was the creation of the tanning bed. The tanning bed was created in 1906 in Europe was individual UV lamps in order to help those with vitamin D deficiencies as well as those suffering with a bone disease known as Ricketts. Over time specifically in 1970’s a German scientist, Friedrich Wolff, wanted to further investigate this technology and decided to do so on athletes. After using an increased amount of UV ray he saw the results were a golden glow of the skin. After years of thinking cosmetic self tanning was safe and even healthy, new news has come to light. It is said that UV tanning excessively can increase one’s chances of getting skin cancers like melanoma. This is just one example of a technology like DDT.
Carson, Rachel. Silent Spring. N.p.: Mariner (Houghton Mifflin), 2002. Print.
The Silent Generation and Beyond 