April 15, 1964
OBITUARY
Rachel Carson Dies of Cancer; 'Silent Spring' Author Was 56
By THE NEW YORK TIMES
Rachel Carson, the biologist and writer on nature and science, whose book
"Silent Spring" touched off a major controversy on the effects of
pesticides, died yesterday in her home in Silver Spring, Md. She was 56
years old.

Her death was reported in New York by Marie Rodell, her literary agent. Miss
Rodell said that Miss Carson had had cancer "for some years," and that she
had been aware of her illness.

With the publication of "Silent Spring" in 1962, Rachel Louise Carson, the
essence of gentle scholarship, set off a nationally publicized struggle
between the proponents and opponents of the widespread use of poisonous
chemicals to kill insects. Miss Carson was an opponent.

Some of Miss Carson's critics, admiringly and some not so admiringly,
compared her to Carrie Nation, the hatchet-wielding temperance advocate.

This comparison was rejected quietly by Miss Carson, who in her very mild
but firm manner refused to accept the identification of an emotional
crusader.

Miss Carson's position, as a biologist, was simply that she was a natural
scientist in search of truth and that the indiscriminate use of poisonous
chemical sprays called for public awareness of what was going on.

She emphasized that she was not opposed to the use of poisonous chemical
sprays--only their "indiscriminate use," and, at a time when their potential
was not truly known.

Quoting Jean Rostand, the French writer and biologist, she said: "The
obligation to endure gives us the right to know."

On April 3, 1963, the Columbia Broadcasting System's television series
"C.B.S. Reports" presented the program "The Silent Spring of Rachel Carson."
In it, Miss Carson said:

"It is the public that is being asked to assume the risks that the insect
controllers calculate. The public must decide whether it wishes to continue
on the present road, and it can do so only when in full possession of the
facts.

"We still talk in terms of conquest. We still haven't become mature enough
to think of ourselves as only a tiny part of a vast and incredible universe.
Man's attitude toward nature is today critically important simply because we
have now acquired a fateful power to alter and destroy nature.

"But man is a part of nature, and his war against nature is inevitably a war
against himself. The rains have become an instrument to bring down from the
atmosphere the deadly products of atomic explosions. Water, which is
probably our most important natural resource, is now used and re-used with
incredible recklessness.

"Now, I truly believe, that we in this generation, must come to terms with
nature, and I think we're challenged as mankind has never been challenged
before to prove our maturity and our mastery, not of nature, but of
ourselves."

3 Earlier Works
Miss Carson, thanks to her remarkable knack for taking dull scientific facts
and translating them into poetical and lyrical prose that enchanted the lay
public, had a substantial public image before she rocked the American public
and much of the world with "Silent Spring."

This was established by three books, "Under the Sea Wind," "The Sea Around
Us," and "The Edge of the Sea." "The Sea Around Us" moved quickly into the
national best-seller lists, where it remained for 86 weeks, 39 of them in
first place. By 1962 it had been published in 30 languages.

"Silent Spring," four-and-a-half years in preparation and published in
September of 1962, hit the affluent chemical industry and the general public
with the devastating effect of a Biblical plague of locusts. The title came
from an apocalyptic opening chapter, which pictured how an entire area could
be destroyed by indiscriminate spraying.

Legislative bodies ranging from New England town meetings to the Congress
joined in the discussion. President Kennedy, asked about the pesticide
problem during a press conference, announced that Federal agencies were
taking a closer look at the problem because of the public's concern.

The essence of the debate was: Are pesticides publicly dangerous or aren't
they?

They Should Be Called Biocide
Miss Carson's position had been summarized this way:

"Chemicals are the sinister and little-recognized partners of radiation in
changing the very nature of the world--the very nature of life.

"Since the mid-nineteen forties, over 200 basic chemicals have been created
for use in killing insects, weeds, rodents and other organisms described in
the modern vernacular as pests, and they are sold under several thousand
different brand names.

"The sprays, dusts and aerosols are now applied almost universally to farms,
gardens, forests and homes--non-selective chemicals that have the power to
kill every insect, the good and the bad, to still the song of birds and the
leaping of fish in the streams--to coat the leaves with a deadly film and to
linger on in soil--all this, though the intended target may be only a few
weeds or insects.

"Can anyone believe it is possible to lay down such a barrage of poisons on
the surface of the earth without making it unfit for all life? They should
not be called 'insecticides' but 'biocides'."

The chemical industry was quick to dispute this.

Dr. Robert White-Stevens, a spokesman for the industry, said:

"The major claims of Miss Rachel Carson's book, 'Silent Spring,' are gross
distortions of the actual facts, completely unsupported by scientific,
experimental evidence, and general practical experience in the field. Her
suggestion that pesticides are in fact biocides destroying all life is
obviously absurd in the light of the fact that without selective biologicals
these compounds would be completely useless.

"The real threat, then, to the survival of man is not chemical but
biological, in the shape of hordes of insects that can denude our forests,
sweep over our crop lands, ravage our food supply and leave in their wake a
train of destitution and hunger, conveying to an undernourished population
the major diseases scourges of mankind."

The Monsanto Company, one of the nation's largest chemical concerns, used
parody as a weapon in the counterattack against Miss Carson. Without
mentioning her book, the company adopted her poetic style in an article
labeled "The Desolate Year," which began: "Quietly, then, the desolate year
began . . ." and wove its own apocalyptic word picture--but one that showed
insects stripping the countryside and winning.

As the chemical industry continued to make her a target for criticism, Miss
Carson remained calm.

"We must have insect control," she reiterated. "I do not favor turning
nature over to insects. I favor the sparing, selective and intelligent use
of chemicals. It is the indiscriminate, blanket spraying that I oppose."

Actually, chemical pest control has been practiced to some extent for
centuries. However, it was not until 1942 that DDT, a synthetic compound,
was introduced in the wake of experiments that included those with poison
gas. Its long-term poisonous potency was augmented by its ability to kill
some insects upon contact and without being ingested. This opened a new era
in pest control and led to the development of additional new synthetic
poisons far more effective even than DDT.

As the pesticide controversy grew into a national quarrel, support was quick
in going to the side of Miss Carson.

Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, an ardent naturalist, declared,
"We need a Bill of Rights against the 20th century poisoners of the human
race."

Earlier, an editorial in The New York Times had said:

"If her series [then running in part in The New Yorker publication of the
book] helps arouse public concern to immunize Government agencies against
the blandishments of the hucksters and enforces adequate controls, the
author will be as deserving of the Nobel Prize as was the inventor of DDT."

Presidential Report
In May 1963, after a long study, President Kennedy's Science Advisory
Committee, issued its pesticide report.

It stressed that pesticides must be used to maintain the quality of the
nation's food and health, but it warned against their indiscriminate use. It
called for more research into potential health hazards in the interim, urged
more judicious care in the use of pesticides in homes and in the field.

The committee chairman, Dr. Jerome B. Wiesner, said the uncontrolled use of
poisonous chemicals, including pesticides, was "potentially a much greater
hazard" than radioactive fallout.

Miss Carson appeared before the Senate Committee on Commerce, which was
hearing testimony on the Chemical Pesticides Coordination Act, and a bill
that would require labels to tell how to avert damage to fish and wildlife.

"I suggest," she said, "that the report by the President's Science Advisors
has created a climate in which creation of a Pesticide Commission within the
Executive Department might be considered."

One of the sparks that caused Miss Carson to undertake the task of writing
the book (whose documentation alone fills a list of 55 pages of sources),
was a letter she had received from old friends, Stuart and Olga Huckins. It
told of the destruction of aerial spraying had caused to their two-acre
private sanctuary at Powder Point in Duxbury, Mass.

Miss Carson, convinced that she must write about the situation and
particularly about the effects of spraying on ecological factors, found an
interested listener in Paul Brooks, editor in chief of the Houghton-Mifflin
Company, the Boston publishing house that had brought out "The Edge of the
Sea."

As to her own writing habits, Miss Carson once wrote for 20th Century
Authors:

"I write slowly, often in longhand, with frequent revision. Being sensitive
to interruption, I write most freely at night.

"As a writer, my interest is divided between the presentation of facts and
the interpretation of their significance, with emphasis, I think toward the
latter."

"Silent Spring" became a best seller even before its publication date
because its release date was broken. It also became a best seller in England
after its publication there in March, 1963.

One of Miss Carson's greatest fans, according to her agent, Marie Rodell,
was her mother. Miss Rodell recalled that the mother, who died of pneumonia
and a heart ailment in 1960, had sat in the family car in 1952 writing
letters while Miss Carson and Miss Rodell explored the sea's edge near
Boothbay Harbor. To passers-by the mother would say, pointing, "That's my
daughter, Rachel Carson. She wrote 'The Sea Around Us.'"

People remembered Miss Carson for her shyness and reserve as well as for her
writing and scholarship. And so when she received a telephone call after the
publication of "The Sea Around Us," asking her to speak in the Astor Hotel
at a luncheon, she asked Miss Rodell what she should do.

The agent counseled her to concentrate on writing. Miss Carson nodded in
agreement, went to the phone, and shortly came back and said somewhat
helplessly: "I said I'd do it."

There were 1,500 persons at the luncheon, Miss Carson was "scared to death,"
but she plunged into the talk and acquitted herself. As part of her program
she played a recording of the sounds of underseas, including the clicking of
shrimp and the squeeks of dolphins and whales. With the ice broken as a
public speaker, Miss Carson continued with others sporadically.

Did Research by Herself
Miss Carson had some preliminary help in researching "Silent Spring" but
soon found that she could go faster by doing the work herself because she
could skim past so much that she already knew.

Miss Carson had few materialistic leanings. When she found "The Sea Around
Us" was a great financial success, her first extravagance was the purchase
of a very fine binocular- microscope, which she had always wanted. Her
second luxury was the summer cottage on the Maine coast.

Her agent said that Miss Carson's work was her hobby but that she was very
fond of her flower garden at Silver Spring, Md., where she also loved to
watch the birds that came to visit.

Miss Carson had two favorite birds, a member of the thrush family called the
veery, and the tern, a small, black-capped gull-like bird with swallowlike
forked tails.

She once told an interviewer that she was enchanted by the "haunting,
mystical call" of the veery, which is found in moist woods and bottomlands
from Newfoundland to southern Manitoba, and in mountains to northern
Georgia.

In manner, Miss Carson was a small, solemn-looking woman with the steady
forthright gaze of a type that is sometimes common to thoughtful children
who prefer to listen rather than to talk. She was politely friendly but
reserved and was not given to quick smiles or to encouraging conversation
even with her fans.

The most recent flare-up in the continuing pesticide controversy occurred
early this month when the Public Health Service announced that the periodic
huge-scale deaths of fish on the lower Mississippi River had been traced
over the last four years to toxic ingredients in three kinds of pesticides.
Some persons believed that the pesticides drained into the river from
neighboring farm lands.

A hearing by the Agriculture Department of the Public Health Service's
charges ended a week ago with a spokesman for one of the pesticide
manufacturers saying that any judgment should be delayed until more
information was obtained.

Miss Carson was born May 27, 1907, in Springdale, Pa., the daughter of
Robert Warden Carson and the former Maria McLean. She was brought up in
Springdale and in nearby Parnassus.

She owed her love of nature in large measure to her mother, who once wrote
in The Saturday Review of Literature, that she had taught her daughter "as a
tiny child joy in the out-of-doors and the lore of birds, insects, and
residents of streams and ponds." She was a rather solitary child. She never
married.

After being graduated from Parnassus High School, she enrolled in the
Pennsylvania College for Women at Pittsburgh with the intention of making a
career of writing. First she specialized in English composition. Later
biology fascinated her and she switched to that field, going on to graduate
work at Johns Hopkins University.

She then taught for seven consecutive sessions at the Johns Hopkins Summer
School. In 1931 she became a member of the zoology staff of the University
of Maryland. She remained five years. Her Master of Arts degree was
conferred by Johns Hopkins in 1932.

Meanwhile, a childhood curiosity about the sea stayed with her. She absorbed
all that she could read about the biology of the sea and she undertook
post-graduate work at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Mass.,
at Cape Cod.

In 1936 she was offered a position as aquatic biologist with the Bureau of
Fisheries in Washington. She continued with the bureau and its successor,
the Fish and Wildlife Service. In 1937, an article, "Undersea," in Atlantic
led to her first book, "Under the Sea Wind," in 1941, and this was followed
by her appointment as editor in chief of the Fish and Wildlife
Service--blending her two worlds: biology and writing.

"The Sea Around Us," published in 1951, made her world famous, and she
received numerous honors. They included the Gold Medal of the New York
Zoological Society, the John Burroughs Medal, the Gold Medal of the
Geographical Society of Philadelphia and the National Book Award.

Meanwhile, in 1952, she resigned from her government post to continue her
writing. She was no armchair naturalist. To gain experience the hard way,
she once sailed in a fishing trawler to the rugged Georges Banks off the
Massachusetts coast. "The Edge of the Sea" was published in 1955, and before
long she was at work researching material for "Silent Spring."

Miss Carson leaves a brother, Robert M. Carson, and an adopted son, Roger
Christie, who was her grandnephew.

Funeral plans were incomplete last night.