Fascinating little known fact: Rachel Carson's last great book was called "Silent Spring," but the title she first chose for it was "The Control of Nature." She believed that humanity was making a huge mistake when it came to the world around us, applying chemicals recklessly to the natural world and to our foods, and, sick with cancer, she didn't hold back.
Along with the possibiilty of the extinction of manking by nuclear war, the central problem of our age has therefore become the contamination of man's total environment with such substances of incredible potential for harm — substances that accumulate in the tissues of plants and animals and even penetrate the germ cells to shatter or alter the very material of heridity upon which the shape of the future depends.
Carson was thinking of DDT, but she could easily have been describing the endocrine disruptors of today, many of which we consume in our food, and which are believed (by researchers such as Bruce Blumberg) to have a generational effect. Our consumption of substances such as BPA, for instance, could mean permanent alternation of the genetic code of our grandchildren. Think of it!
[from a compelling new biography, On a Farther Shore, by William Souder]
Kit Stolz 