IT'S NOT ABOUT RESULTS (via Uncle Bill):

Scientist Who Warned Against DDT Ban Dies (Steven Milloy, August 06, 2004, Fox News)

Millions in the third world die from malaria every year in large part because of a virtual ban on the controversial insecticide DDT.

The removal of the unwarranted stigma from DDT and the saving of many future lives is now nearer at hand than it has been in the last 30 years thanks to the efforts of Dr. J. Gordon Edwards, who passed away on July 19 at the age of 85.

Though Dr. Edwards is best known to the general public as the author of the now-classic 1961 book "A Climber's Guide to Glacier National Park," his work as an entomologist and professor at San Jose State University may prove to be his most important legacy.

Dr. Edwards led the opposition to environmental extremist efforts to ban DDT in the wake of Rachel Carson's infamous 1962 book "Silent Spring." The testimony of Dr. Edwards and others during Environmental Protection Agency hearings in 1971 on whether to ban the insecticide led to an EPA administrative law judge ruling that, "DDT is not a carcinogenic hazard to man. DDT is not a mutagenic or teratogenic hazard to man. The uses of DDT under the regulations involved here do not have a deleterious effect on freshwater fish, estuarine organisms, wild birds or other wildlife."

Inexplicably — or so it seemed — DDT was nonetheless banned by EPA administrator William Ruckleshaus. Dr. Edwards investigated and uncovered disturbing statements and troubling connections between Ruckleshaus and anti-DDT environmental extremist groups.

In a May 1971 speech before the Wisconsin Audubon Society, Ruckleshaus acknowledged being a member of the anti-DDT National Audubon Society and to have "streamlined" EPA procedures so that DDT could be banned even before the administrative hearings had been completed.

After Ruckleshaus left the EPA, he began fundraising for the Environmental Defense Fund, a spin-off of the National Audubon Society and the lead petitioner to have EPA ban DDT.

The probability that Ruckleshaus had made up his mind to ban DDT regardless of the facts is increased by his refusal of requests made under the Freedom of Information Act and by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to turn over the documentation on which the ban was based.

That Rachel Carson died a hero, rather than in prison for crimes against humanity, and Dr. Edwards's passing went relatively unnoticed tells you all you need to know about how PC modern science is.

Posted by Orrin Judd at November 18, 2004 8:39 AM