Word: ddt
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...rise from house painter's son to millionaire accountant. He gladly took up the cause of almost any businessman who was unhappy with Washington. As an influential Cabinet member, Stans argued strongly against federal adoption of a no-fault auto-insurance plan, against the ban on DDT and against a presidential commission's advice to junk the oil-import quota system. He also led the battle to impose trade quotas on foreign-made textiles. His job as keeper of the party war chest will undoubtedly include reminding many favored industrial leaders of their debt...
...comments of Norman E. Borlaug [Nov. 22], endorsing the use of DDT and other insecticides "until cheap, safe and efficient substitute pesticides are produced and made easily available," made me wonder what would happen if insecticides worked too well. Hindsight might reveal that an insect species, after the last of its kind had been killed, was valuable or even necessary for some ecological function. What would we do then? Breed another similar species...
Borlaug has a point. The probable hazards of DDT poisoning are a proper matter of concern for a society like the U.S., which is so well fed that many of its people spend much of their time dieting. But peoples on the borderline of starvation are more interested in simply getting enough to eat, and the possibility of getting poisoned by accumulated DDT is the least of their worries...
...stark contrast, he continued, "the so-called environmentalist movement" is endemic to rich nations, where the most rabid crusaders tend to be well-fed urbanites who sample the delights of nature on weekend outings. Borlaug feels that campaigns to ban agricultural chemicals-starting with DDT-reveal a callous misordering of social priorities. If such bans become law, he warned, "then the world will be doomed not by chemical poisoning but by starvation...
Mayor Julio Rodrigues used his meager municipal funds to send two DDT sprayers through the town. The spray made some people vomit, but the crickets "just licked it off and kept on coming," said Schoolteacher Mariestela Barros. Some Altinhos thought the plague was a sign that God was displeased with long hair, miniskirts, rock music and the decrease in churchgoing among Altinho's youth. But Dona Nina Lemos, another of the town's schoolteachers, questioned that notion. She wondered: "If God were going to punish clothing styles, wouldn't he send a plague...