Portside

DuPont Has DDT to Sell and Won’t Let Anyone Stand in Its Way

OCTOBER 22 IS THE 80TH ANNIVERSARY of a warning about environmental damage that was ignored for far too long. 

It was in 1945, only six years after DDT had been discovered to be a “miracle” insecticide, that biologists discovered that it was also highly toxic to beneficial insects such as pollinators, as well as to birds, fish, and amphibians. On this day a symposium of the National Audubon Society heard several presentations that included powerful evidence about the environmental damage DDT was beginning to cause.

The warning was not heeded for many years, thanks largely to a disinformation campaign that cost  chemical manufacturers and the agricultural industry many hundreds of thousands of dollars. As a result, not only was DDT not restricted, it was widely used in residential and institutional settings where humans, pets and other organisms were needlessly exposed to it.

DDT’s advocates not only ignored and denied evidence of harm, they used every possible political or legal means to prevent or delay government regulation. In 1962, when Rachel Carson’s book, Silent Spring, was published, including a detailed examination of DDT’s dangers, the chemical industry and its allies attacked Carson's credibility, saying she was "hysterical" and a "fanatic".  https://www.dollarsandsense.org/industry-attacks-on-dissent-from-rachel-carson-to-oprah  

Women Would Have the Right to Vote If Only They Could Persuade Half the Male Voters

OCTOBER 23 IS THE 110TH ANNIVERSARY of a red-letter day for the campaign to make it possible for U.S. women to vote.

Woman suffrage advocates had succeeded in putting constitutional amendments that would give women the right to vote in three of the country’s largest states, New York, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts. Ten days before election day in 1915, woman suffrage organizations staged the largest-ever equal-rights demonstration, a parade of some 30,000 people marching three miles up Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue while being cheered all along the route by a crowd of spectators that was estimated to total a quarter million.

The marchers were highly organized, representing groups of women from each borough, from cities and towns all over New York, and from other states.  There were also groups organized by profession, including teachers, medical workers, religious workers, garment workers and culinary workers.

Sadly, the enormously impressive demonstration did not have its desired effect. Each of the three state ballot measures was defeated by a large margin by the all-male electorate on November 2. https://feminist.org/news/today-in-1915-over-250000-suffragists-took-over-fifth-avenue/

Icelandic Women Defeat Gender Discrimination with a General Strike

OCTOBER 24 IS THE 50TH ANNIVERSARY of a hugely successful 1-day general strike by Icelandic women, who were demanding an end to the country’s 40 percent pay gap.

An estimated 90 percent of women in Iceland refused to perform both paid and unpaid labor for the day in 1975, with the result that most offices, factories, schools, hotels and other businesses could not function, and many men were prevented from working by the lack of transportation and child-care. It was also a day when most meals were eaten cold if they were eaten at all.

Some 25,000 (mostly) women (more than 10 per cent of the nation’s population) brought traffic to a complete standstill by rallying in Iceland’s capital. Seven months later Iceland’s parliament passed the Gender  Equality Act, which sharply reduced gender discrimination in workplaces and schools. It was not everything the strikers demanded, but it was a good start. https://libcom.org/article/iceland-womens-strike-1975

Many Million Killed by Lung Cancer, and the End Is Not in Sight

OCTOBER 25 IS THE 85TH ANNIVERSARY of a day when a brave doctor tried to sound the alarm about the growing epidemic of lung cancer and the tobacco industry dug in its heels to protect its profits. 

On that day in 1940, at the annual meeting of the American College of Surgeons in Chicago, Dr. Alton Ochsner delivered a research paper that he summarized this way: “Smoking cigarettes is a cause of cancer of the lung.” Not a possible cause or suspected cause, but a cause. 

Ochsner, who had been studying lung cancer for two decades, had discovered the causal connection between the disease and cigarette smoking by carefully observing his patients’ health and their smoking habits. In many cases, he had only been able to definitively diagnose lung cancer by means of autopsy. He was not the first to suspect that smoking was not a healthy habit, but he was the first scientist to prove the link between smoking and cancer. 

His reward for what ought to have been considered a major contribution to the cause of public health was to become the target of bitter vituperation and ridicule by professional colleagues, many of whom were either financial beneficiaries of the tobacco industry or addicted to tobacco themselves. 

The tobacco industry, which spent hundreds of millions of dollars to “prove” that Ochsner and those who agreed with him were wrong, was completely successful until 1964, when the accuracy of Ochsner’s discovery was certified by the Surgeon General of the U.S. 

It is conservatively estimated that more than 40 million people in the US and Canada have died from smoking-related disease, including lung cancer, since 1970. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12061630/

Happy Birthday, Mike Doonesbury, and Many More!

OCTOBER 26 IS THE 55TH ANNIVERSARY of the very first appearance of Doonesbury, by master satirist Gary Trudeau.

Before the feature was five years old, it became the first daily “comic” strip to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning (which was re-branded Pulitzer Prize for Illustrated Reporting and Commentary in 2022). When Trudeau was honored, he joined an elite crew that included Rube Goldberg, Herblock, Bill Mauldin, Paul Conrad and Patrick Oliphant.

Here’s to Mike Doonesbury, 55 years young and still going strong! (But only on Sundays, now.) https://www.npr.org/2010/10/26/130809883/doonesbury-decades-a-timeline-of-turning-points

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