Tom Coburn Blocked Bill to Honor Rachal Carson

By David A. Fahrenthold at The Washington Post

Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn has effectively blocked a resolution to honor environmental author Rachel Carson on the 100th anniversary of her birth, saying that her warnings about environmental damage have put a stigma on potentially lifesaving pesticides, congressional staffers said yesterday.

Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin (D-Md.) had intended to submit a resolution celebrating Carson, author of the 1962 book "Silent Spring," for her "legacy of scientific rigor coupled with poetic sensibility." Carson, a longtime resident of Silver Spring who died in 1964, would have turned 100 this Sunday.

But Cardin has delayed the legislation, a spokeswoman said, because Coburn (R) has signaled that he will use Senate rules to halt it...

In a statement on his Web site yesterday, Coburn (R) confirmed that he is holding up the bill. In the statement, he blames Carson for using "junk science" to turn public opinion against chemicals, including DDT, that could prevent the spread of insect-borne diseases such as malaria, which is spread by mosquitoes...

Carson's book, which begins with a scene of a town in which all of nature is silenced by pollution, examines the effects that industrial-age chemicals were having on human and animal health. She focuses particularly on the effects that DDT, a pesticide used to kill mosquitoes and other insects, appeared to be having on the reproduction of birds.

Her book is credited with inspiring the formation of the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970 and the banning of most uses of DDT in the United States in 1972. Since her death from cancer, she has come to be celebrated as a hero by the environmental movement and as the inspiration for the modern, aggressive strain of advocacy for nature...