QJM Advance Access originally published online on March 24, 2009
QJM 2009 102(9):669-670; doi:10.1093/qjmed/hcp031
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Red–green blindness
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Philosophers have pointed out that many areas of moral and political dispute relate to arguments not between good and evil but between two conflicting goods. This of course gives the protagonists a firm belief that they are right. I became aware of this in the 1960s when Rachel Carson published ‘Silent Spring’, the book that became the bible of the Green movement. My father, a specialist in tropical medicine, pointed out that the banning of DDT meant the continued deaths of millions of children world-wide from malaria. To some, DDT was an obvious good; to others its banning was equally so. Green is good but nature is red in tooth and claw.
As a schoolboy I found that I was red–green blind, something