Rachel Carson: Environmental Savior or Doombringer to Africa

Rachel Carson's book "Silent Spring" brought environmental concern to the American public like never before.  It explained the consequences of the overuse of synthetic pesticides.  While it was good to bring concern of overuse to the public it also brought panic.  The result was the disbanding of the use of DDT for pesticide control.
With DDT out of the picture, arguably one of the most effective chemicals to get rid of mosquitoes, diseases carried by mosquitoes continue unchecked in third world countries.  Around 2 million people in Africa die every year from malaria.  I think that her raised awareness for the environmental cause showed the American people that we need to preserve our planet.  But at what cost?  Millions of deaths could be prevented if DDT were put in use.

What is Life

As medical technology gets better our techniques for eliminating disease gets better.  Pathogens such as bacteria or fungi are not as deadly as they were in the past.  As we fight other pathogens such as viruses or prions the definition of living is brought into question.  How does one kill something that is not living?  Viruses, infectious strands of DNA or RNA, and prions, infectious proteins, do not follow the typical parameters for a living organism.  They ca not reproduce on their own and they do not have a typical cell structure with a metabolic cycle.  They are just chemicals that react with our bodies in negative ways.  If these pathogens are considered living then dead cells  should be considered living too.