Rachel Carson: Hero or Villain?

Rachel Carson has long been praised for her novel Silent Spring.  This novel informs the world of the dangerous potential of the pesticide DDT.  After the book was published, the chemical was widely banned and cannot be legally produced in the United States, Europe, or Japan.  As with all issues, there are two sides to this story.   When banning the use of DDT and condemning it as a terrible, harmful chemical one can't help but wonder if Ms. Carson stopped to consider all the lives that could be saved by using this inexpensive, long-lasting pesticide. Malaria kills more than 2,800 children a day on the African continent.  Most of these children have yet to reach the age of four, and, in fact, some places are so plagued by the mosquitoes that carry the disease that toddlers have a 40% chance of dying before the age of 5! If those who champion Carson's book and the environmental idealism it sparked truly cared about saving the planet and bettering the lives of its inhabitants, they would do well to fully examine the benefits of this cost-efficient solution to the spreading of malaria and think of the millions of lives and billions of dollars that could be spared by its use.