"In the late 1960s, two chemists began to argue head to head in newspapers, journals, and courtrooms about a pressing question inspired by Rachel Carson's Silent Spring: ... namely, should the pesticide dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT) be banned in the U.S.? The protracted debate between Stony Brook University professor Charles Wurster and University of California at Berkeley professor initially concerned the pesticide's effects on nontarget wildlife, including robins, hawks, salmon, and crabs. As the debate gained momentum and visibility, however, it became clear that it concerned DDT's effects on another species as well: humans. Jukes argued that few technological breakthroughs had done as much as DDT to save human lives, by protecting millions from malaria, typhus, and starvation. Wurster, on the other hand, maintained that DDT threatened the lives of millions more by destroying the ecosystems on which humanity depended for its well-being. Wurster argued that DDT's effects on wildlife were a harbinger of what was to come for humankind. Significantly, he also denounced the chemical as a pervasive likely carcinogen."
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Elena Conis
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/DDT
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DDT
is an , first synthesized in 1874 by . In 1939 discovered that DDT is an effective . In WW II, from 1943 to 1945, DDT was used to kill mosquitos and lice to effectively limit the spread of and . In the 1950s and 1960s, DDT was widely used to control insects. However, DDT is a — harmful to birds and mammals and readily by s and s. During the 1970s and 1980s, many countries banned the agricultural use of DDT.
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