by Lisa Mayo

n September of 1962, naturalist Rachel Carson delivered to the world a book that would forever alter the way human beings relate to their natural environment. Working out of her home in Silver Spring, Maryland (now a National Historic Landmark), Ms. Carson wove together a flawless expose of the pesticide industry and, in the process, energized the forces that would later become the modern environmental movement.
As a former biologist and chief editor of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Rachel Carson followed the actions of the pesticide industry for a good part of her career. Unable to find anyone else who was willing to write the story she felt needed to be written, she took on the daunting challenge herself. "Silent Spring" took four long years and was produced under the most arduous conditions (she was losing her battle with cancer at the time), but Ms. Carson endured, determined to expose the misinformation campaign the pesticide industry was foisting on the public.
The response from the industry upon "Silent Spring's" publication in 1962 was swift and, by all accounts, ruthless. In an attempt to undermine the book?s credibility, the industry poured large sums of money into attacking the author, both personally and professionally. But despite this intense pressure, and the close scrutiny of President Kennedy's specially-appointed Pesticides Committee, Rachel Carson's science held up and "Silent Spring" went on to become one of the most influential books of the 20th century.
What drove Rachel Carson, by nature a shy and private person, to take on one of the most powerful industries in the world was her deep concern over the pesticide industry's misrepresentation of scientific facts. Almost four decades after "Silent Spring" the manipulation of scientific data is now commonplace, and the corporate world has grown even more organized and sophisticated in its techniques. Although some industries chose to go it alone in their battle with environmentalists, many more are combining resources with other industries to form one of today's most powerful political tools - the industry coalition.
Industry groups with deceptive names, such as Citizens for a Sound Economy and the Air Quality Standards Coalition, take data from scientists with ties to industries and use their financial resources to pepper the airwaves and newspapers with their version of environmental "science." Several weeks ago the Washington Post featured an article on one of the coalitions' latest projects. The Post reported that Ford Motor Company chief Alex Troutman, upon hearing of President Clinton?s plans to educate the public about the threat of global warming, promised that the industries would mount their own education campaign with "eminent experts...to present very forcibly our version of the science."
But can we trust Corporate America?s "science"? Rachel Carson addressed this dilemma in a 1962 speech when she asked, "Now when the scientific organization speaks, whose voice do we hear? The voice of science or the voice of industry? "... Is industry becoming a screen through which facts must be filtered so that the hard uncomfortable truths are kept back and only the harmless morsels are allowed to filter through?"
The controversy that motivated Rachel Carson to pen her environmental masterpiece has not faded with time. The lesson we can take from "Silent Spring? is that we must remain vigilant in our scrutiny of the "science? we receive from industry, whether it is in the form of corporate science publications distributed to schools, industry-funded research, or expensive newspaper and television campaigns.
Despite its age, "Silent Spring" still has much to teach us, and it is that "timelessness" which sets it apart as one of the true classics of American literature.