17. The Other Road
WE STAND NOW where two roads diverge. But unlike the roads in Robert Fros t’s
familiar poem, they are not equally fair. The road we have long been traveling is deceptively
eas y, a s mooth s uperhighway on which we progres s with great s peed, but at its end lies
dis as ter. The othe r fork of the road—the one ‘less traveled by’—offers our las t, our only chance
to reach a des tination that as s ures the pres ervation of our earth.
The choice, after all, is ours to make. If, having endured much, we have at las t ass erted our
‘right to know’, and if, knowing, we have concluded that we are being asked to take senseless
and frightening ris ks , then we s houl d no longer accept the couns el of thos e who tell us that we
mus t fill our world with pois onous chemicals ; we s hould look about and see what other course
is open to us. A truly extraordinary variety of alternatives to the chemical control of insects is
available. Some are already in use and have achieved brilliant success. Others are in the stage
of laboratory testing. Still others are little more than ideas in the minds of imaginative
s cientis ts , waiting for the opportunity to put the m to the tes t. All have this in common: the y are
biological s olutions , bas ed on unde rs tanding of the living organis ms they s eek to control, and of
the whole fabric of life to which thes e organisms belong. Specialists representing various areas
of the vast field of biology are contributing— entomologists, pathologists, geneticists,
physiologists, biochemists, ecologists—all pouring their knowledge and thei r creative
ins pirations into the formation of a new science of biotic controls.
‘Any science may be likened to a river,’ says a Johns Hopkins biologist, Professor Carl P.
Swans on. ‘It has its obs cure and unprete ntious beginning; its quiet s tretches as well as its
rapids ; its periods of drought as well as of fullness. It gathers mome ntum with the work of
many inves tigators and as it is fed by other s treams of thought; it is deepened and broa dened
by the concepts and generalizations that are gradually evolved.’
So it is with the science of biological control in its modern sense. In America it had its obscure
beginnings a century ago with the first attempts to introduce natural enemies of insects that
were proving troubles ome to farme rs , an effort that s ometimes moved s lowly or not at all, but
now and again gathered s peed and mome ntum unde r the impe tus of an outs tanding s uccess. It
had its period of drought when worke rs in applied entomology, dazzled by the s pectacular new
ins ecticides of the 1940s , turned thei r backs on all biological methods and s et foot on ‘the
treadmill of chemical control’. But the goal of an ins ect-free world continue d to recede. N ow at
las t, as it has become apparent that the heedles s and unrestrained use of chemicals is a greater
menace to ours elves than to the ta rgets , the river which is the science of biotic control flows
again, fed by new s treams of thought.
Some of the mos t fas cinating of the new methods are thos e that s eek to turn the s trength of a
species against itself—to use the drive of an insect’s life forces to des troy it. The mos t
spectacular of these approaches is the ‘male sterilization’ technique developed by the chief of
the Unite d States Department of Agriculture’s Entomology Res earch Branch, Dr. Edward
Knipling, and his associates. About a quarte r of a century ago Dr. Knipling startled his colleagues
by propos ing a unique method of ins ect control. If it were possible to sterilize and release large
numbe rs of ins ects , he theorized, the s terilized males would, under certain conditions , compete