2021年10月 / 马哥(Marlin)整理

16. The Rumblings of an Avalanche / 雪崩的隆隆声

(部分节选 - 可能不完整)

As Charles Darwin predicted with his theory of evolution, the fittest have survived: pests are getting stronger and more resistant with incredible speed. Many of the insects developing immunity to pesticides carry infectious diseases. Awareness of this problem has been slow to spread, but resistance among insect populations has not. Dr. Charles Elton called this issue “the early rumblings of what may become an avalanche …”

This chapter outlines a new aspect of Carson’s argument against pesticides: the rapid development of immunity to the pesticides among insects. Nature has trumped man’s reckless attempts at control, so that the ‘new era’ in which man can influence his environment has developed almost into a war, as Carson will demonstrate here.

Organizations combating disease-carrying insects are acutely aware of the problem. Carson lists cases of resistance among mosquitoes, ticks, house flies, rat fleas, lice, and many more, each of which can carry a different infectious disease. This issue must be dealt with, but it seems questionable to choose a solution that seems to be rapidly worsening the problem instead of a more natural option.

In areas where control is necessary because of disease, the use of pesticides has backfired as insects gain immunity to more and more chemicals. Underestimating the power of nature to adapt has led man into a situation where escalation of the ‘war’, that is, the development of more and more dangerous chemicals, seems necessary.

Cases everywhere from Egypt to the United States demonstrate that pesticides are in nearly every case only a temporary solution to a serious problem. Perhaps the first medical use of pesticides occurred in Italy in 1943, when DDT dusting was used to control against typhus-carrying mosquitoes. Within one year, mosquitoes of a particular genus had begun to show resistance to DDT. In 1948, chlordane was added to the chemical cocktail, and achieved good results - until flies and mosquitoes developed resistance to it two years later.

Since the very early days of pesticide use, the development of immunity in targeted insects has been observable. But rather than stopping to question how this cycle will end, scientists and controllers have created and used increasingly toxic chemicals in an attempt to overcome the immunities – only to see nature respond with more resistance. Caution, rather than automatic escalation, is required.

This pattern is repeated around the world. In Korea, and many other countries, lice have become completely resistant to DDT. In fact, individuals tested in Korea actually had more lice after the application of DDT. The rate at which insects develop resistance is also remarkable.