Rachel Carson, the author of the book Silent Spring, is often credited with having started the modern day environmental movement. Her work with the United States Government from mostly the 50’s through the 60’s was primarily researching the effects of pesticides on both humans and wildlife alike. And her findings were what she used to write her book.

     If you have any interest in a quick, about an hour, video about her life then I would encourage you to check your local library for the film, Rachel Carlson’s Silent Spring. The film touches briefly on her work in the government but is more about her own life though I think it is still worth seeing. In fact I was so impressed with her work overall that I think Earth Day should be renamed Rachel Carson’s Earth Day and be recognized around the world as a holiday and certainly a national holiday here in the US. And how many women’s holidays do we now celebrate?

     Now what does this have to do with multiple sclerosis? The pesticides that are used today are mostly created to sterilize the females of whatever insect you’re using it on unlike those first generation pesticides that were developed to attack the insect’s nervous system. And with that in mind I would love to see most peoples faces as they watch one scene in particular from the film where a pesticide truck is actually fogging several tables full of kids and there parents while they are eating lunch outdoors. The foggers clearly are telling these folks that this is a completely safe practice with no adverse health effects to worry about. And this just kind of makes me wonder, since I was a kid through all of those years, if perhaps my own eventual diagnosis of MS might have in some way been a direct, or indirect, result of this kind of thinking. Especially when you consider that many researchers today believe that some kind of environmental factor could be at least partially to blame for the onset of many autoimmune diseases including multiple sclerosis. They don’t actually think that these kinds of events cause the disease in question but they are starting to seriously consider if environmental issues like this may kick start the immune system into an adverse reaction to other factors such as a gene irregularity. We may never know, but I think it’s worth considering!

Bill Walker

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