Hillary Clinton: The stealthy, crippling hazards of 'Silent Spring'

From a speech given by the junior US Senator from New York State to the National Press Club Luncheon in Washington

Nearly 40 years ago on the pages of The New Yorker, after being rejected by Reader's Digest, a biologist by the name of Rachel Carson, wrote these words: "For the first time in the history of the world every human being is now subjected to contact with dangerous chemicals from the moment of conception until death."

That seminal work, titled Silent Spring, launched the modern environmental movement, and it encouraged government, science, industry and citizens to look at the inner relationship of our environment and our health in a whole new light.

Silent Spring is really a story about a silent century, because throughout the 1900s, a time of great industrialisation and economic and population growth, we had small regard for what we were doing to our air, our land or our water. We really didn't know any better. Much of the activity that created the environmental changes that concern me started as a result of war efforts, when it was absolutely essential that the entire country get behind preparing us to take on the threats that we faced in the Pacific and in Europe. And so we were doing a massive job of creating new products, new chemicals, and we really didn't have time to stop and think about what the impact might be.

And yet now, in the beginning of the 21st century, I think it's time for us to stop and take stock, so that we have a better understanding of what we have done, and are continuing to do, and can take appropriate measures to deal with any of the potential hazards that are created.

Chronic diseases like asthma, heart and lung disease and others are caused by three factors: genetics, behaviour and the environment. Now, we are making great progress in mapping the human genome. And some of you who followed me on the campaign trail throughout New York know that I talked incessantly about the human genome. I just couldn't get enough of what it is we were discovering, because I found it one of the greatest accomplishments of humanity. And it is going to give us tremendous amounts of information that will help us better prevent and treat the problems that we may have inherited, or the susceptibilities that we carry.

As for human behaviour, each one of us I am sure makes our New Year's resolutions, and swears to do better, because we have a lot of information about what we do to ourselves. We know we shouldn't smoke, we shouldn't drink too much, we should eat the right foods, we should exercise.

But today let's talk about another, silent factor, the hidden health hazards that are in the world around us that currently we have so little knowledge of or control over, dangerous conditions that threaten our lives, and particularly the lives of our children, that we often cannot hear or see or smell or touch. But it is the stealthy, crippling nature of these hazards that manifest themselves in unexpected cancers, brain tumours and other diseases that I think we have to address. We are only beginning to understand their nature and their scope and the relationships between them and us.

In recent years, mostly through the study of twins, researchers have shown that our behaviour and our environment play a much greater role in causing chronic disease than we thought. As researcher Judith Stern put it so vividly, "genetics loads the gun, but the environment pulls the trigger."

We have to co-ordinate pollution and disease data so that when we get this information, we can integrate it and draw conclusions about what is happening. We need the facts to replace the fear. A lot of the anxiety people express to me is based on their concern, but there is no factual basis to either prove or disprove that concern, which is what I think we need the science to begin to prove so that we can answer the questions that people legitimately have.