Die sA UD UB ON BU DOE TIN 31 
BOOK REVIEWS 
SINCE SILENT SPRING. By Frank Graham, Jr. 
Fawcett Publications, Greenwich, Conn., 1970 
For those of us who are perennial fighters against the indiscriminate use 
of pesticides, Frank Graham’s book will save hours of digging in back files 
for facts when writing letters to congressmen or speeches for appearances 
before garden clubs. 
It concentrates and serves up the meat of a myriad of government 
reports, scientific interviews, letters, articles, and events centering around 
the controversy, now known even to third graders, as the pesticide prob- 
lem. Anyone caring about his world should read it carefully and 
thoughtfully. 
The only real adverse criticism I have of the book is that too often 
it quotes “an entomologist,” ‘one scientist,” “a prominent member of the 
scientific establishment.” Quotes without sources are really not very use- 
ful. And they are like those cowardly anonymous letters to the editor. Is 
this the old problem of possible loss of research grants from chemical 
companies? 
The use of pesticides has been an intervention in the nature of things, 
as Barry Commoner points out in the book, “without prediction and con- 
trol.” Graham gives frightening examples of unwanted side effects, such as 
the evidence that DDT inhibits photosynthesis in phytoplankton which are 
responsible for half of the photosynthesis in all of nature (photosynthetic 
organisms utilize sunlight to provide, directly or indirectly, energy for all 
living organisms). The DDT taken in by this algae is passed up the food 
chain, and it is this process that many believe is responsible for the decline 
of the bald eagle in the Great Lakes and Atlantic coast regions. Such 
interference in nature could have, according to Charles F. Wurster, Jr., 
internationally known authority on pesticides, worldwide complications. 
Mr. Graham’s book abounds in excellent examples of pesticide acci- 
dents, and cases where the circumstantial evidence against the chemicals 
is strong. One of these is the Case of the Bolivian Cats. In 1965, an 
epidemic of Bolivian hemorrhagic fever took the lives of 300 residents. 
The vectors proved to be the mouse-like lauchas which had invaded the 
town after its ubiquitous cats had for the most part died of.a “neurological 
disease,” the description of which sounded just like typical symptoms of 
DDT poisoning and which hit hard after DDT was used on the walls of 
homes to control malaria. One of the cats’ bodies was examined in the 
United States Public Health Service’s toxicology laboratory, and concentra- 
tions of DDT in the brain “were consistent with a finding of death by 
DDT poisoning.” j 
Most alarming of all is the possibility of genetic damage by chemicals. 
According to the author, this threat is denied by no geneticist, but these 
scientists do not agree on how much evidence should be provided to take 
a chemical off the market. Mutagens may not show up for several genera- 
tions. Damage to the germ plasm is much more hazardous to the animal 
kingdom than damage that cannot be reproduced. Disastrous as is the threat 
