On a Farther Shore (42 page)

It’s not clear why Carson believed the public was indifferent to the hazards of pesticide use—and, in fact, the recent “cranberry scare” offered evidence to the contrary.
In early November 1959, cranberries grown in Washington and Oregon were found to be contaminated with a weed killer called aminotriazole—which was known to cause thyroid cancer in laboratory rats. Although the risk to humans remained unknown and the cranberry crops in the major producing states of Wisconsin, Massachusetts, and New Jersey were thought to be uncontaminated, the government advised consumers not to buy or consume cranberries unless they knew where they had been grown. Panic ensued.
Grocers across the country pulled cranberries off their shelves, restaurants stopped selling menu items containing cranberries, and millions of families started getting ready for a Thanksgiving feast without one of its essential ingredients. Angry cranberry growers feared their record $50 million crop was likely to turn into a substantial loss and called for the resignation of Arthur Fleming, the secretary of health, education, and welfare, who had made the
original announcement of the contamination. The general manager of Ocean Spray Cranberries, Inc.—a cooperative that marketed about three-fourths of the U.S. cranberry crop—accused the government of overzealousness and said the public should instead be told that there was “not a shred of evidence” that any person had ever suffered ill effects by eating contaminated cranberries.

Aminotriazole had initially been tried as a weed control in cranberry bogs in 1957—prior to its approval by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. About three million pounds of cranberries from that experiment were later destroyed, and the following year the government decided to permit the use of aminotriazole on cranberry bogs only after the harvest was in. But in early 1959, one of the principal manufacturers of aminotriazole submitted its safety testing on the pesticide, which included its connection with cancer in rats. The company insisted these findings could not be used to interpret human risk, but the FDA banned the use of aminotriazole on food crops anyway.

Efforts mounted to reassure the public about the safety of cranberries.
In Massachusetts, a crowd of nearly ten thousand people drank a thousand gallons of cranberry juice in a stunt organized by a local radio station. Cranberries figured in the developing presidential campaign, too.
In Wisconsin, Senator John F. Kennedy drank a cranberry juice toast in the town of Marshfield. A few days later and just thirty miles away in Wisconsin Rapids, Vice President Richard Nixon ate four helpings of cranberries—despite the advice of Arthur Fleming, who told him not to. Two days after that, the Chicago Board of Health seized a shipment of cranberries from Wisconsin after tests showed it was contaminated with aminotriazole. Cranberry sales were halted in Chicago. The ban spread across communities in every part of the country. The growers continued to argue that the government’s position was a hysterical response to a nonthreat.

In 1959—as now—the regulation of pesticides and other potentially dangerous chemical products defied common sense in an important way: Safety testing is performed not by the regulatory authority,
but by the chemical manufacturers. The government specifies which tests are required and how they are to be conducted, then carefully reviews the findings that the companies submit. The party with a vested financial interest in the data is the same entity that supplies the data—a fact that would likely unnerve the public if many people understood that this is how things are done.

Not surprisingly, agricultural chemicals companies reacted heatedly to what came to be known as the “cranberry scare.”
One senior chemical executive complained that it could take as many as five years and perhaps $2 million to bring a new product to market. All pesticides then being sold had been rigorously investigated and could be reliably considered safe, he said, and any further restrictions would make the development of new products prohibitively expensive. The value of this industry—about $278 million in sales in 1959—was not lost on anyone, including politicians eager to choke down tainted produce. In late November the
New York Times
reported that the cranberry scare was only one problem facing the agricultural chemicals industry. The panic had come at the same time as criticism from “
wildlife and conservation groups and from pure food enthusiasts who believe that chemical residues on agricultural products pose a threat to health,” although the
Times
did not pursue such concerns beyond this brief mention.

For Carson, the cranberry scare was a preview of coming attractions—a glimpse of how a battle would be waged over this evolving general concern for the total environment. Conservationists had long run into trouble with corporations and other vested interests, usually over the allocation of resources and land. But this was different. Any challenge to the safety of a pesticide was a direct threat to somebody’s bottom line. An entire industry—with all its associated business entanglements, shareholders, scientific departments, and political allies—depended on the ever-expanding sale and use of chemical poisons. The suggestion that a company would put expediency and profits ahead of public safety was accusatory on its face, which only inflamed passions on both sides of the issue.

But a fight over pesticides would be not only about safety versus economics, but also about patriotism. “Wildlife and conservation groups and pure food enthusiasts” could easily be characterized as “nature lovers and organic faddists,” and from there it was easy to believe that they must be in league with political extremists—people who were likely to be, on some fundamental level, slightly un-American.

February 1960 came and went.
Carson’s progress slowed at least in part because of her pursuit of the complicated link between pesticides and cancer—a topic she once planned as only a small section of one chapter but now intended to devote two whole chapters to. And she was again experiencing a string of health issues. Early in the year she had developed a duodenal ulcer. She told Marie Rodell she’d have to subsist on baby foods for a while. While she was still being treated for it, she came down with a bad case of the flu that progressed to pneumonia. This was followed by another sinus infection—Carson was terribly prone to these.

In March she wrote to Brooks, telling him about all of this and saying that while she continued to make headway on the book she had to ration how much time she spent on it, as only rest would ensure the complete healing of her ulcer. She tried to make light of her health issues, telling Brooks that it would be easy to assume the topic of her book had given her the ulcer, but that that was not the case at all. She said she found the whole subject of pesticides—though of utmost concern—completely fascinating. Carson did sourly allow that any fair-minded ulcer should have waited to strike until she was done with the book. Still, as unsatisfying as her current pace was, she said she truly felt as if the hardest parts of the book were now done.

But there was something else Carson did not tell Brooks—either because she didn’t want to worry him further or because it would be a few days before she discovered it herself—but two masses had developed
in her left breast. Within a week of her letter to Brooks, Carson had scheduled surgery to find out what they were. Carson wrote again to Brooks—
who had expressed sympathy over her health issues and told her not to worry about the slow progress she was making on the book—and this time she hinted she might be seriously ill.
She said she was going to have surgery that she hoped would not be “too complicated,” but admitted that she couldn’t count on it. Enclosed with this disturbing news were Carson’s drafts of the two chapters on cancer for “Man Against the Earth.”

Paul Brooks had begun to sense the extent of the material Carson was trying to manage as she researched the book.
He told her that, unlike a historian who could let a story unfold over the course of multiple volumes, she had the harder job of culling and compressing everything into just one book with a “larger and larger background behind it.” He said “Man Against the Earth” would be like an iceberg, and when it was published Houghton Mifflin would do everything it could to let readers know how much of it lay beneath the surface.
Carson wrote back to say that she liked this metaphor and that it reminded her of something she wanted to take up with him.

She had been thinking about how best to list the many sources she had relied on and felt sure that nobody wanted to see the book “sprinkled with footnotes.” Instead, she said she wanted to include an appendix listing her principal sources for each chapter—something she thought would be useful to anyone interested in pursuing the subject in more detail, and would also refute any suggestion that the book was composed of “ill founded” personal views. She thought—probably correctly—that most readers don’t care about these things and would simply ignore the bibliography.

Carson also told Brooks of her unhappiness with their latest working title—and said Marie Rodell in particular hated it. Rodell thought the title was misleading. Carson said she understood that using the word “earth” not in the usual sense—meaning dirt—but rather to encompass the totality of an interdependent global ecosystem,
was problematic and that “non-ecologically minded people” would likely be baffled by it. She thought the word “against” was almost as wrong—it suggested the “horrid concept” of humanity as a kind of overlord, which was, of course, the sort of problematic thinking that the book was meant to point out. She didn’t yet have a better title but thought the best thing would be for everyone to keep an open mind and “pray for inspiration.” She had been thinking about how the problems with pesticides and radiation were similar, and said perhaps this would lead to an answer:

Carson said she also wanted to consider including drawings or photographs—maybe both—to help illustrate some of the more technical concepts in the book. She ended this letter with a gloomy note about her impending surgery, telling Brooks her trip to the hospital was now set for the following Sunday. She said that “with luck” she would be home by Wednesday, but added ominously “otherwise at the end of the week.”

The operation had been delayed a week while Carson’s sinus infection cleared up. In a letter she wrote to Marjorie Spock on April 1, 1960, Carson mentioned that she would shortly be entering the hospital “for a few days.”
A couple of weeks later Carson wrote again, telling Spock that her “hospital adventure” had turned into a “setback of some magnitude” that had dashed her hopes of sticking to a “tight work schedule” that spring. Carson explained that two tumors
had been found in her left breast, one that was benign and the other “suspicious enough” that a radical mastectomy had been performed.

Carson, worried about Roger, “talked her way out” of the hospital after only a week and went home to recuperate. Her surgeon had given her the impression that the mastectomy had been precautionary and told her no additional treatment was warranted at the time. In her letter to Marjorie Spock, Carson made it clear that she believed she had been cured. Thankfully the cancer had been caught early and there “need be no apprehension for the future.”

Carson’s usual desire for privacy was now heightened. She could imagine what a cancer diagnosis might suggest to critics about her motivation in writing a book that would implicate pesticides as cancer-causing agents. She told Spock she planned to provide details about her illness to only a few special friends like her—though she admitted it might be hard to prevent the world from learning of it. “I suppose it’s a futile effort to keep one’s private affairs private,” Carson said. “Somehow I have no wish to read of my ailments in literary gossip columns. Too much comfort to the chemical companies!”

Spock, desperate to help and captivated by alternative ideas, urged Carson to see a “Dr. Pfeiffer,” who according to Spock had discovered an unusual treatment using mistletoe to counteract a “gravitational drag” that he believed caused cancer.
Carson tactfully avoided a direct response and later suggested that Pfeiffer might do some assays on pesticides for her, but nothing came of it and Carson let the matter drop.

Paul Brooks, who apparently did not know the exact nature of Carson’s surgery or its result, wrote to say that he liked the cancer chapters. He added that the similarities between radiation and pesticides deserved the emphasis she had given them, and that current events were in their favor on this matter. “In a sense, all this publicity about fallout gives you a head start in awakening people to the
dangers of chemicals,” he said. He agreed they should keep thinking about the title, and hoped Carson’s hospital stay had been brief.

Weak and in pain, Carson had gone up to Southport Island with Roger in June 1960. She hoped to make headway on the book while Roger was occupied at a day camp. But it was hard going.
She and Brooks arranged for him to visit her in Maine toward the end of August, and as the time for their meeting approached it was clear that Carson considered it more of an editorial consultation than a casual visit. She sent Brooks more pages through the summer—along with her overall outline for the book so he could see how everything fit together—but admitted more than once to needing his help.