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Rachel Carson should be granted a retroactive Nobel prize for her 1962 work Silent Spring. And Silent Spring should be required reading by every high school or secondary school student

and to your question - yes, I first learned of this book only through the book The Three-Body Problem by Chinese author Liu Cixin, published in 2008

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Paul Hermann Müller's Nobel Prize should in turn be revoked & granted to Carson (in addition to her 1981 Presidential Medal of Freedom). Müller was awarded Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1948 "for his discovery of the high efficiency of DDT as a contact poison against several arthropods" in 1939. What he neglected to recognize until at least 1972 when DDT was banned, was that these biocides -

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...chlorinated hydrocarbons (DDT, dieldrin, aldrin, endrin, heptachlor, and chlordane) and organophosphorus insecticides (malathion, parathion, diazinon) discovered their biocide properties incidentally during WWII in the search for chemical agents - have implemented a legacy of biocide throughout the food chain as these chemicals accumulate in all living creatures

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Trophic pyramids destroyed by our fear of insects and distaste of weeds; nervous system toxin and genetic damage to all life; distributed throughout our soil and waterways: leading to widespread death of birds, bees, fish, livestock, crops, and humans; accompanied by cellular and chromosome destruction, mutagenic and chromosomal abnormalities, and massive increases in cancer -

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...in an endless and escalating battle against insects that evolve towards resilience against these same chemicals - ultimately heading towards making our planet unfit for all life, "living in a sea of carcinogens"

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@thomoco _Silent __Spring was on our summer reading list in high school, 1970 or 71