Pesticides seem to have become nearly as indispensable to the modern practice of agriculture as antibiotics have become to the modern practice of medicine. Bringing higher yields to the farmer and better profits to the chemical industry, they have also meant delivery of much high-quality produce to the American consumer at lower cost. Other uses in disease vector control, forestry, and urban structural pest control have yielded benefits in health, comfort, and property protection to millions of people. The full impact of categorical removal of all such chemicals from our economic system is difficult to contemplate.
Nonetheless, in the past decade, public interest has been directed more toward the hazards of "treatment" (pesticides) than to the inroads of the original disease (pests). Insecticides and herbicides, only recently considered miraculous for their effectiveness and persistence, are now condemned for essentially the same qualities; no one can predict with certainty what ill