You've included so much information - it will take me some time to absorb it so - on DDT and eggshell thinning, I will need to look up some more.
But...on this question: would saving raptors been worth etc.....
I'm going to post this in a series of thoughts...
Lets look at long term vs. short term: DDT is a sort term solution to the mosquito problem - the end result of which is always the development of resistant species. The indiscrimminate and wide spread use of DDT (as opposed to limiting it's use to the most needed areas) would hasten this.
In fact, although the publication of Silent Spring definately influenced the 1972 U.S. ban on DDT - reductions were aleady taking place ini its usage over a decade before due to the emergence of DDT-resistant mosquitoes.
According to Garrett's 1994 book: The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance - Paul Russell, a former head of the Allied Anti-Malaria campaign, observed that eradication programs had to be wary of relying on DDT for too long as resistance had been found after only six or seven years.
Here is another example of "unintended consequences" of the liberal overuse of things like pesticides (or, going further antibiotics which is causing a current crisis).
According to Wikipedia:
DDT is a persistent organic pollutant with a half life of 2-15 years, and is immobile in most soils. Its half life is 56 days in lake water and approximately 28 days in river water. Routes of loss and degradation include runoff, volatilization, photolysis and biodegradation (aerobic and anaerobic). These processes generally occur slowly. Breakdown products in the soil environment are DDE (1,1-dichloro-2,2-bis(p-dichlorodiphenyl)ethylene) and DDD (1,1-dichloro-2,2-bis(p-chlorophenyl)ethane), which are also highly persistent and have similar chemical and physical properties. These products together are known as total DDT. (thus the problems isn't DDT alone but all it's metabolites)
DDT and its metabolic products DDE and DDD magnify through the food chain, with apex predators such as raptors having a higher concentration of the chemicals, stored mainly in body fat, than other animals sharing the same environment. In the United States, human blood and fat tissue samples collected in the early 1970s showed detectable levels in all samples. A later study of blood samples collected in the latter half of the 1970s (after the U.S. DDT ban) showed that blood levels were declining further, but DDT or metabolites were still seen in a very high proportion of the samples. Biomonitoring conducted by the CDC as recently as 2002 shows that more than half of subjects tested had detectable levels of DDT or metabolites in their blood,[23] and of the 700+ milk samples tested by the USDA in 2005, 85% had detectable levels of DDE.[24]
(I am not going into the human health aspects here because it seems it is contradictory and unclear in part because it is not uncommon for effects to take many years of accumulation to show symptoms and cause/effect relationships may not always be so clear).
DDT is also highly toxic to aquatic life, including crayfish, daphnids, sea shrimp and many species of fish. DDT may be moderately toxic to some amphibian species, especially in the larval stages. In addition to acute toxic effects, DDT may bioaccumulate significantly in fish and other aquatic species, leading to long-term exposure to high concentrations.
So you are saving all these people in the short term at what long term cost for the environment, an environment our children will inherit and have to deal with? When you look at how intricately species of animals/plants/insects/even bacteria are interdependent and interconnected can you justify the senseless destruction of a species - particularly a major group of species - and what unintended consequences might result? Who here is not looking at the big picture?
