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Follow-Up on Silent Spring 
By Mrs. Arthur M. Jens, Jr. 
For those of us who have been working on the pesticide problem for a 
number of years, this is an exciting time. We used to be elated when we 
could find one good article on the subject in a month; now we can hardly 
keep up with the clippings. 
Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring has inspired innumerable talks, panels, 
forums, and living-room discussions, as well as articles in many leading 
magazines and newspapers. No doubt many Audubon members saw the 
fine CBS television program, which showed that there is an “appalling 
scarcity of facts,’ and which ended with the following statement: ‘‘Man’s 
war against nature is war against himself. We must learn to master not 
nature but ourselves.” 
In January 1963, members of the I. A. S. Pesticides Committee in 
this area attended a panel on pesticides presented by the Garden Club 
Council of Evanston. Two members of this panel were invited to participate 
by the committee itself. They were Dr. Alfred G. Etter, Assistant Professor 
of the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife, Michigan State University, 
and Mr. Roland Eisenbeis, Superintendent of Conservation of the Cook 
County Forest Preserves. The third member of the ‘‘pro-Carson” side was 
Mrs. Hadley Abernathy, President of the Evanston Bird Club. The other 
side of the panel was represented by Dr. H. B. Petty, entomologist with 
the Illinois Natural History Survey; Dr. Milton Carleton, Research Direc- 
tor of the Vaughn Seed Co.; and Dr. W. Hartstirn, asst. plant pathologist, 
linois Natural History Survey. 
Dr. Etter has taken a firm stand on the misuse of pesticides. He is 
known to many Aubudon members for his sensitive “A Protest to Spray- 
ing,” which appeared in the National Audubon Magazine in 1959, and, more 
recently, his delightful article on the red fox. He stated: ‘Professors of 
agricultural chemistry and entomology are to a great extent underwritten, 
while professors of ecology and zoology have a hard time finding funds 
for research.” 
In a recent hearing conducted before a proposed treatment with three 
pounds of dieldrin per acre on 3,000 acres within the Norfolk, Va., city 
limits for white fringed beetle control, Dr. Etter warned: “Modern man, 
no matter how scientific he claims to be, is capable of making serious mis- 
takes.” He wrote a letter last fall to the editor of the Michigan State 
News about bird mortality and elm spraying, in which he states: “ ... Each 
year the birds have died in large numbers. After this length of time, I 
consider this slaughter a willful destruction of life — life which is legally 
protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty. In my own estimation, the 
University is subject to prosecution under this law, if not under a more 
universal moral law which frowns on needless killing of defenseless and 
guiltless creatures of any kind.” 
Mr. Eisenbeis is also well known for his outspoken views on pesticides, 
which he has been courageously voicing since long before Silent Spring. 
As he put it, in speaking of the fight against insects “Man is the constant 
loser, although it may seem that he is winning the battle.” He is a vigorous 
champion of the orderliness of nature, and points to the alarming increase 
of immunity to chemicals by insects, and to the destruction of natural 
enemies. He says: Whenever the hand of man falls upon the landscape 
in such a destructive manner, there can be no benefit so great as to offset it.” 
