Guinstasia. try this infoplease link: http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0762136.html . But here’s the reveleant part(s).
399 men were involved in “the longest untheraputic medical experiment in medical history.” Even when penicillin was created it was denied to these men. This legacy of this experiment is one of the main reasons millions of black Americans are still distrustful of medical authority and prone to believing conspiracy theories.
Ah, so she used the old, “Just following orders!” routine.
RickJay, perhaps that’s true. But I remember watching footage of DDT being sprayed willy-nilly EVERYWHERE, with reckless abandon. Perhaps there was a better usage of it?
Besides, she did have a point that you have to be careful when fucking with the eco-system.
Rickjay – honestly – Africa’s genocidal ethnic wars in Rwanda, Congo, periodic droughts in Ethiopia and the AIDS pandemic there throughout the continent have caught my attention much more than deaths by malaria. Seriously, I had no idea the numbers were that high and your 40,000,000 deaths seemed outrageous, which is why I asked for the cite. That said, the differences I’m reading is that DDT in Africa is used for careful controlled spraying indoors, whereas its use in the U.S. was outdoors and more volumious and indiscriminate, causing the environmental damage to plants and wildlife cited by Carson. It doesn’t seem to be a case of “banning DDT to save the environment OR Using DDT to save African children,” so much as it apparently is a case of “allowing controlled DDT use indoors, since nothing else seems to work as well and it doesn’t harm the environment in this fashion.” That said, I’m curious to know about the worldwide DDT ban.
Thank you for that link, Askia. That is so incredibly horrifying. Now I see where the conspiracy theories about AIDS and crack cocaine come from. Jesus wept.
Some of the footage I saw of DDT spraying involved some kids at a local swimming pool, sitting at a picnic table eating hot dogs for lunch. They were absolutely drenched with the stuff. Ew.
In fairness to Carson:
#1) She was a scientist.
#2) Silent Spring was published in 1962
#3) Carson died in 1964
There is just no way to know what Carson would have advocated if she had lived longer, and concluded the benefits of DDT WRT malaria outweighed the risks. Perhaps she would have concluded that DDT was worthwhile for use in countries where malaria was a significant problem.
Like I said, I’m not nominating Carson. I think she’s connected with a lot of unnecessary deaths, but it doesn’t really make a whole lot of sense to blame her for something that,when you get right down to it, other people did.
Phyllis Schlafly?
She springs to mind because I just saw some footage of her on the Daily Show.
not a serious contender, really.
It’s interesting to know that there are still old-style socialists in Britain. Regarding equality, do you favour equality of outcome as Lord Young (the architect of Britain’s social welfare system) did? His arguments were summed up by his son Toby as follows:
Would you agree that equality of opportunity is a snare and a delusion?
I would vote against Riefenstahl. Her pro-Nazi propaganda piece Triumph of the Will was released in 1935, after the Nazis had consolidated power over all facets of German government. Emergency laws were passed following the Reichstag fire in 1933; the state legislatures had been disbanded; the offices of president and chancellor had been combined; and the enabling law had been passed which allowed Hitler unilateral power to make laws without asking the Reichstag. If Triumph of the Will had been a total flop, it would not have made an iota of difference in the amount of power Hitler and the Nazis yielded in Germany — they had already grabbed it all.
Triumph of the Will was the only major piece of pro-Nazi propaganda that Riefenstahl did. (And no, I do not consider the documentary Olympia to be a pro-Nazi propaganda piece. To the contrary, it shows black American athlete Jesse Owens and Asian athletes winning at the 1936 Olympics, in contravention to Nazi racial ideals.)
The crimes of Jiang Qing and the Gang of Four in leading China’s Cultural Revolution for ten years were enormous; millions died. No, she didn’t single-handedly lead the Cultural Revolution; neither did Hitler single-handedly lead the Holocaust.
I would like to nominate these three pillars of society.
**Carla Homolka[/b[
Susan Smith
Pamela Smart
Not worst in the world affecting sense but evil on a much more common scale since these were just seemingly normal people down the street.
What about Diana Mitford?
Vacuous interbred social treacherous parasite who was an ardent admirer of Hitler and subsequently married Oswald Moseley.
I honestly can’t understand why she isn’t more roundly condemned today - surely it can’t just be because she was a natural blonde.
I’ll second the nomination of Georgia Tann … her crimes were despicable … but let’s not forget her partner in crime, Judge Camille Kelly, who misused the power of her office so thoroughly. Both of these women are stinking blots on the escutcheon of humanity.
I am sorry to say that I do not know the two women named in the previous post.
Off to google, if I have time.
Unbelievable.
Georgia Tann stole some 5,000 babies and sold them for adoption on the black market. It sounds to me that Kelly was her accomplice - she was the judge who legally approved most of Tann’s requests to take custody of the children.
Sister Gertrude Mukangango and Sister Maria Kisito Mukabutera have to be up there. They were the nuns convicted of taking part in the massacre of 7,000 refugees hiding in their convent. Being nuns just makes it worse.
Sister Gertrude Mukangango and Sister Maria Kisito Mukabutera have to be up there. They were the nuns convicted of taking part in the massacre of 7,000 refugees hiding in their convent. Being nuns just makes it worse.
How unbelievably cruel. How horrid. It is hard to belive that such a system could be so entrenched and not stopped.
I have no words at all for the “nuns”–I do wish that the article had included some concrete info. I ahve no doubts that they participated–I guess I am just looking for some type of logic or rationale on their part(there isn’t any, but my mind boggles at what they did).
I’ll second Anita Bryant. An incredible lot of today’s anti-gay bullshit started with her “Christian values.” Her support of gay bashing and murder is inexcusible.
Then she complains in her book about how “the homosexuals got my proposed TV show to be scraped.” No, your own stupidity was responsible for that. Accept the consquences of your actions.
I can see why her husband later divorced her. Christian values indeed.
Anita Bryant supported murdering gays? Cite please?
On that note, how about the Magdalene Sisters in Ireland, who basically worked all those poor girls to death because they had been ‘promiscuous’?