Weeds, weeds, weeds! - SciForums.com

Edufer

04-10-04, 04:17 PM

I cannot but disagree with you on this, Starthane. I don’t know if your membership to Greenpeace is limited to just donating $5 or more every month, or if you are an active member (that is, and activist taking part in GM crop sabotage, or anti-nuke demonstrations, or stop-whaling shows in Zodiac boats, or devising Greenpeace policies and tactics).

The real stereotype is the one depicting Greenpeace as “saving the planet” – from alleged threats and risks, real only in their minds and their political agendas. No wonder Greenpeace has been stripped from its “non profit organization” in the USA, Canada, and Brazil, and recently also of its “charitable organization” status.

Here in Argentina, Greenpeace is noted for its anti-Argentinean activities, trying to stop the completion of our badly needed Atucha II nuclear station, campaigning against our CGM soybean crops (presently our major source of national income), against high power lines, electric equipment with PCB, against new industrial development; they oppose spraying insecticide against malaria and dengue carrying mosquitoes, they oppose the use of chlorine for sanitary use, and potabilization of public water supply (they advised Lima’s, Peru, authorities against water chlorination back in the 80s, bringing to the American continent the worst cholera epidemic since the 19th century, that took about 10 years to eradicate.

Their insistence on sustainable agriculture is, unfortunately, not based on sound scientific research, but on flawed studies, or outright distortion of facts. Modern agriculture technology has managed to save forests by tripling crop yield while reducing crop areas to half, and allowing more people to get food by lowering costs and market prices. Farms are not being created. On the contrary, farms are being cloesed down and left by farmers who move to cities where they live better (or they think so).

Biological pest control means there must be always a pest present in order for the "biological control" to work, or the "pest control" will die of starvation. That kind of bio-pest control has failed miserably back in 1984 when the medfly infestation in California. Scientists learned a lesson then and know that the only way to get rid of any pest is by total annihilation. Only one egg is enough for the pest to make a return, and start all over again.

E, Bennet Metcalfe, an environmentalist from British Columbia in Canada, one of the original founders of Greenpeace, the same one who hired David McTaggart and his “Rainbow Warrior” in Auckland, back in 1985, for interfering with the French atomic test in Mururoa, says in a documentary by Magnus Gudmundsson (“A crack in the Rainbow”), the following statement regarding Greenpeace: “By the way we started then and the way it is now, I see myself as a kind of Dr. Frankenstein that created a monster that now has a life of its own.”

That same documentary shows Frans Kotte, the former head of accountants in Greenpeace International, giving the secret Swiss bank account numbers of Greenpeace directors, and declaring that they “skim away millions from donations received from all over the world”. The documentary was aired by Denmark’s official TV network, TV-2 in 1989.

Then comes what Bjorn Oekern, former President of Greenpeace Norway said when resigning his position back in the early 1990s, as a result of Gudmundsson’s exposè of the fraud committed by Greenpeace in its documentary on seal hunting in the High North. He said “Nothing of the money collected by Greenpeace was used for conservation of the environment,” and that “Greenpeace is a fascist organization”.

If you jumped on Greenpeace’s bandwagon recently, it is clear you didn’t know anything about their background – beyond the romantic and false idea created by Greenpeace propaganda and press releases.

Starthane Xyzth

04-13-04, 04:53 AM

Wow! I'll seriously have to follow up those points you just raised, Edufer!

My membership of Greenpeace is, in fact, limited to support by donation - but I jumped on the bandwagon around 1990. If the organisation has gone bad since then, I must find out just what my donations have funded.

I admit, the uncompromising campaigns against GM crops have seemed paranoid and unscientific to me. GM is, after all, just a more efficient way of modifying plants than traditional selective breeding.

When I referred to clearing forests for farmland, few people would deny that this is still happening on a massive scale in the tropics. In developed countries, you're correct that yields have multiplied; surplus farmland isn't usually just left to go back to nature, though. Government subsidies (in th UK, certainly) have encouraged farmers to produce more food than the country needs, and relatively little of this excess is shipped to famine regions where people would welcome it.

Edufer

04-13-04, 12:24 PM

Starthane, you seem to be a sensible and reasonable person, so I think we can talk about the matter. One of the few people that would deny forests are being cleared on massive scale in the tropics, is me – and some thousands of people living there, and some specialists in forestry as L.S. Hamilton. I have been exploring the Amazon jungle since 1970, when I made my first expedition to the jungle for filming a documentary on a trip from Iquitos, Peru, to Ciudad Bolivar in Venezuela, in a Zodiac rubber boat, going downstream the Amazon River until Manaus, Brazil, then going upstream by the Río negro, then the Casiquiare and finally downriver by the Orinoco.

You can have a glimpse of what was all about in this small webpage: http://mitosyfraudes.8k.com/PhotoEng-2.html

We couldn’t pass beyond Manaus, because our Zodiac broke and left us on foot. But I stayed for about 8 months in the jungle, getting enough experience and desire to keep doing trips to the jungle. So after many (yearly trips to different countries) I came to know the Amazon region quite well, and saw what was going on there, how things progressed, and how they are right now. I even moved and settled in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia, when I decided I could install an Adventure Travel agency for taking tourists in expeditions into the jungle – and bring them back safely. I did it for three years, in a region known as Guarayos, southeast of the Beni region, near Mato Grosso, Brazil.

The area has huge forest reserves that are being logged commercially by private contractors, under governmental concessions, and have traveled extensively through the logging area. So here is what I saw: loggers in Bolivia (and Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, and Venezuela too), are interested in expensive wood (mahogany or “mara”, oak, or “roble”, and many others with fancy local names as “paquió”, “cuchi”, “urunday”, etc). You’ll never find in the jungle a forest of mahogany or any other species. An hectare of jungle normally has about 220 trees, from many different species. So we can find there about 10, or 12 mahogany trees, where you can cut only those whose trunk has a diameter superior to 90 centimeters. If a logger cuts a narrower trunk goes to jail and pay huge fines. Controls on this are quite rigid, and governments do it because it was a great source of income for local authorities.

So, when loggers take away all “commercial grade” trees from an hectare, they have chopped down about 35 to 40 trees in each hectare, and the average number of trees per hectare goes down from 220 to 180 or 190. This is not massive deforestation. Commercial logging also helps surrounding, smaller trees, to have access to more sunlight and develop faster. They way logging is being practiced, at least in Bolivia and Brazil, can be considered “sustainable”, because loggers move on to newer areas and don’t return to the old ones before 10-15 years.

Then there is the other deforestation: tearing down forest for making room for grassing land for cattle – some ONGs say for McDonald’s hamburgers. What about Burger King? The CO2 balance here remains unaltered: they are exchanging one green cover by another green cover. Runoff and leaching of nutrients do not apply here, as the new covering (grass) prevents the rain from taking away nutrients better than the jungle. But this practice is fading because people are moving out from the jungle to more comfortable regions near cities. The vast richness of the Amazon is a fable belonging to Jules Verne books. The lateritic soils are not good for agriculture (only good soils are in the varzea area of flooding of the Amazon river, that as the Nile used to do, deposit huge quantities of nutrients on the coast when the yearly flood goes down).

I would suggest you visit the UN FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization) website, in its Forestry pages at. http://www.fao.org/forestry/index.jsp where you could have more updated information.

But I would strongly advise you to read here: http://www.fao.org/docrep/u3500E/u3500e05.htm#tropical%20forests:%20identifying%20a nd%20clarifying%20issues an article by Lawrence S. Hamilton, “Tropical forests: Identifying and clarifying issues”, Research Associate at the Environment and Policy Institute. East-West Center, Honolulu. Hawaii. Note: This article is based on a paper prepared for a meeting of the Tropical Forests Task Force of the Pacific Economic Cooperation Council, Kuala Lumpur, 25-29 September 1990.

It will give you a wider view on the forestry issue. We’ll keep talking about this, once you have gone through the recommended reading (not too long and highly clarifying).

guthrie

04-13-04, 04:23 PM

"If you are lucky, you'd get a decent yield (about 10% of what you'd get in the US), if pests have not taken most of your crops away. Then you can store your grain for some weeks, hoping molds will not add too much aflatoxin B1 to your food."

Or alternatively, Edufer, you can use modern organic farming techniques, which last I read have as a maximum about 10% lower yield than "conventional" farming methods. Which was also roughly the area the UK had in set aside land a few years ago.

Edufer

04-13-04, 06:10 PM

Guthrie, the trouble with real organic farming is that it takes us back to the 1800s. Real organic farming abhors any chemical use on the crops, although present organic farming uses a lot of chemicals under other names or forms. Aa an example, approved pesticides for organic farmers include:

• Rotenone, recently shown to induce Parkinson´s disease.
• Copper sulphate, which has caused liver damage in vineyards workers, kills worms and is persistent in soil and produce (banned by the EC after 2002).
• Bacillus thurigiensis, causing fatal lung infections in mice

Another drawback organic crops have is the fact that they use manure for fertilizing, and manure is well known vehicle of all kinds of parasites, bacteria, and other things not too healthy for humans, as Escherichia coli, food-and-mouth disease, (perhaps mad cow disease?).

Organic foods have also less nitrates and protein content than their counterpart in conventional crops. But this may be not the whole story: toxins from contaminating fungi (which can be controlled by specific fungicides) contribute to cancer rates -fumonisin and patulin are both reported to be higher in organic products, and failure to use effective fungicides has led to organic farms as repositories of disease. Indeed, conventional farmed food seems better for children. Cancer rates have dropped 15 per cent during the era of synthetic pesticide use; stomach cancer rates have dropped 50-60 per cent, probably an effect of plentiful, cheap conventional fruit and vegetables.

Two principles distinguish organic farming: soluble mineral additives are banned, and synthetic herbicides and pesticides are rejected in favor of natural pesticides. The reduction in pesticide use does lead to higher levels of some insects and birds on organic farms. But currently synthetic pesticides are very unstable and only short lived declines of most field insects are reported, even when the maximum dose is used. Lower levels of aphids on organic farms could reflect lower nitrogen and protein content of crops, and lower yield -there are fewer plants for the pests to eat. Indeed, when we look at the ratio of crop yield/aphid population, the difference between organic and intensive farming is negligible.

Competitive organic farmers keep fields clear of weeds using frequent mechanical weeding, which harms nesting birds, worms and invertebrates. They use more fossil fuels, which greatly increases pollution from nitrogen oxides. A single treatment with innocuous herbicide coupled with no-till conventional farming avoids this damage.

The use of soluble mineral salts prohibited by the organic regulations is also contentious. Minerals taken out of farmland as produce must balance those put back by other means; organic farmers typically rely on legume nitrogen fixation, rain water or mineral recycling in the farm. The few detailed accountings suggest slow but accumulating mineral deficits, particularly of potassium and phosphate, in organic farmlands. This I saw clearly in the Bolivian potato fields, in the Andes hillsides. Indians there practice a real organic agriculture, but the soil degrades fast to a point where potatoes are as small as nuts. The indians must switch then to other crops as maize, corn, pumpkin, and other plants.

If we wanted to be rational, there are lots more against the use of organic agriculture, besides the horrible look their produce have in the supermarket. If you want to hear more about it, just ask!

But I am sure you wouldn't like to hear about Australian environmental laws that converted Australia from a food supplier to a net food importer. The "Back to Wilderness" laws in Australia allow any organization, or even individuals, to propose any piece of productive land to be sent back to wilderness - no matter if in that land there is an ancient well established and properous farm or cattle ranch providing jobs and food for many.

"Catchment laws" in Australia are also ridiculous, as many Australians in this sciforum know. In catchment areas you cannot modify anything, make no dams or channels, etc. Progress and advancement are outlawed. As "catchment area" is any area where it rains, the whole continent is a Catchment area! :o Unbelievable!

Starthane Xyzth

04-14-04, 10:02 AM

Thank you for the links, Edufer: I'll read them ASAP. It would be nice indeed to know that tropical forests are not so endangered as most people believe. What motivates most concern, of course, is the statistics about how many species are steadily wiped out as old-growth forests fall. Do you believe that such ecosystems can be developed, sustainably or otherwise, without sacrificing some of their biodiversity?

I'll confess that I've never SEEN a rainforest, except on TV. You clearly know what you're talkng about.

It's different with temperate woodlands, of course, often dominated by 1 tree species. The biodiversity in Britain, for example, is probably greater now - with a manmade mosaic of habitats and successional stages - than it would have been when the country was virtually all climax forest. Then again, we don't really know how many species were lost by breaking up the continuous European forests of prehistoric times.

Edufer

04-14-04, 10:52 PM

Something that worries many people is the “extinction” issue, because ecologists give a variety of figures that scare everybody. They claim that the rate of extinction will wipe thousands of species every year, claiming the there are about 40.000 species extinct in the last 20 years or so. Actually, these figures are projection from extrapolations from assumptions made 20 years ago, in a study plagued by methodology errors and false assumptions, calculating the rate of extinction in function of square mile of habitat, and many other variables that were impossible to calculate accurately, or even prove the existence of such variable.

Actually, the recorded extinction amount to very few species, relating to animals, because vegetables, fish, and insects are extremely difficult to prove there has been an extinction. The Dodo bird, from Mauritius Islands, and the Tasmanian “tiger” are the only two well documented extinct species: the dodo back in the 1700s, and the Tasmanian tiger back in the 1930s. They say the mergus octosetaceus, or “Pato Serrucho” (saw duck) living in the Iguazú Falls area in Argentina was extinct in the 70s, (although I filmed a big flock of them in the Uruguaí river back in 1972). But recently the saw duck was taken out of the endangered list. It was a lie, part of a campaign to stop the building of a hydroelectric dam in the Uruguaí river.

As it seems you live in England, I will point you to a nice website (not being updated, though) http://www.probiotech.fsnet.co.uk/ with very useful and enlightening information about rain forests, savannahs, biotechnology, and other environmental issues. It belongs to an emeritus professor from London University, Philip Stott, who now runs another website at http://greenspin.blogspot.com/

Professor Stott has published a small booklet, downloadable free from
http://www.iea.org.uk/files/upld-publication2pdf?.pdf where he gives a lot of information on the subject of rain forests, savannahs, global warming, etc. The introduction may interest you, so I quote from it::

‘Tropical rain forest’ does not exist as an object; it is a human construct and is thus subject to myth making on a grand scale. According to the ‘Worry Index’ issued at the end of 1998 by the Infratest Institute, the biggest anxiety in Germany is the perceived destruction of tropical rain forest, a fear shared by 86 per cent of the German population. The aims of this booklet are to deconstruct such Northern ‘Green’ neo-colonial concerns about the entity ‘tropical rain forest’ and to analyse critically the myths employed to add legitimacy to such concerns. It is argued that these myths have become examples of what are termed ‘hegemonic myths’, which exclude other myths from world policy debate.

http://www.probiotech.fsnet.co.uk/trfseminar.html

guthrie

04-16-04, 03:13 PM

oohh, persuasive. But this:
"Cancer rates have dropped 15 per cent during the era of synthetic pesticide use; stomach cancer rates have dropped 50-60 per cent, probably an effect of plentiful, cheap conventional fruit and vegetables."
Cant be right, because, simply put, all the information ive ever seen says that cancer is on the increase.

"Another drawback organic crops have is the fact that they use manure for fertilizing, and manure is well known vehicle of all kinds of parasites, bacteria, and other things not too healthy for humans, as Escherichia coli, food-and-mouth disease, (perhaps mad cow disease?). "
And as for that, thats why you let it decay and do whatever it does first. or even better, let it sit and collect the gas off it, burn that, and you end up with decent fertiliser. (i forget what the process is called.) And mad cow disease is more likely either a result of careless use of organophosphates and feeding cows bits of other cows, than of organic techniques.

Edufer

04-16-04, 06:47 PM

Guthrie: "Cant be right, because, simply put, all the information ive ever seen says that cancer is on the increase."

Then you haven't been getting the right information. Don't believe ME, just pay a visit to sites at the American Cancer Society, American Cancer Institute, the World Health Organization, and other health related issues, and see cancer statistics. It is a fact. You'll see for yourself.

As mad cow disease, I did not imply it was caused by organic farming, but that manure is a likely vector (or vehicle) for transmission to humans. You seem to jump into conclusions too fast.

Mr. Chips

04-16-04, 07:27 PM

I have seen rain forests. I've also seen the cleared fields where rain forests once stood. I looked into the natural history of a tree that remained growing, isolated and uncut on one otherwise cleared field in Costa Rica. It is expected to go extinct because they are now too few and far between. Apparently according to satellite data recently reported, the rate of rain forest destruction has increased dramatically over the last couple of years. Do a little searching and you can see the data yourself and other studies which can only be discounted by the insane.

But I should bite my tongue and it's skeptical utterings. Edufer is the champion of truth and I should just learn to stop worrying and be happy. Heck, why should I want to breath anyways and want other species and habitats to survive. Sheesh, I need to get real egotistical and learn to love small things, preferably dead.

Edufer

04-16-04, 09:16 PM

Mr Chips: “I looked into the natural history of a tree that remained growing, isolated and uncut on one otherwise cleared field in Costa Rica. It is expected to go extinct because they are now too few and far between. “I would like to know if you could give me more details of such tree. Perhaps you can find its species? It is an interesting case, because a tree species don’t usually go extinct just because it disappears from a given area.

If that tree grew in Costa Rica, then it has also grown in neighboring countries, but surely under other local name. But perhaps this is just the only recorded case of a tree species going extinct – something I find extremely unbelievable, as there are many organizations that would take the appropriate measures for preventing it. They would take its seeds, and seeds from other far apart trees, or pollen from their flowers and get the trees on producing seeds for continuing the species.

But then, I don’t fully understand your sarcasm. You have made me the champion of truth, and I am grateful for that, but I don’t see what’s the point you want to make. Perhaps you resent my being optimistic, based on the observation of scientific facts and past experience. The data I manage is the one provided by the World Forestry Association, whose link I have provided. Perhaps some study from your part on the reports they provide may give you a different, less pessimistic view.

I think that all of us in this thread, and most of the people on Earth share your desire of breathing and letting other species to live, but I cannot share your intentions of loving things, big or small, preferably dead. I rather love while they are living things. And that’s what we are working for in our Foundation for a Scientific Ecology, here in Argentina. We want to save as much people from dying from diseases caused by sheer poverty around the world, poverty caused by greed and political ambitions displayed by so many governmental aid agencies and non-governmental organizations. A very simple example is their stubborn refuse to bring back and use DDT for fighting malaria, the biggest killer in poor countries. You should read the article published in The New York Times on April 10th, 2004, “What the world needs now is DDT”, at http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/11/magazine/11DDT.html

Perhaps you didn’t know that malaria kills about 5000 children and youngsters every day, according to the WHO statistics. I care and resent a lot about that, but perhaps you care more about trees and butterflies.

Mr. Chips

04-16-04, 11:05 PM

I would have to register with the NYT to get that article. You want to post some salient parts? I do believe there are other ways to kill mosquitos and this would first of all mean getting the information and the tools to do so to the people in these areas. We also need to create decent housing in more hospitable areas and help people move there en masse. Once they learn of the dangers they would probably be willing if we could truly promise better living conditions. I am of the opinion that if humans get their information handling togethor enough to survive the information explosion, we will be leaving many occupations behind. I suspect, as Buckminster Fuller did, that all of those skycrapers for banks and insurance companies and many other companies that lie idle every night will be turned into apartment complexes as we lose the use of token economics.

We are destroying rain forests now quicker than they can recover and that is based on some pretty extensive and sound data. Species are being lost and this is not on the basis of projection. Appears to me that you have a general over-all opinion that doesn't challenge the status quo to which you bend and slur the facts. You would have us raze the forests, burn more fossil fuels, spray and use known carcinogens just because you can't face that which will require some change in the distribution of power on the planet.

You have no real answers so you are claiming there are no real problems. Seems to me I am witnessing another victim of anomie. Your lofty sounding desires haven't a chance in hell of being realized if you must disagree with predominant science but then many a road is paved with good intentions.

Whether or not global warming is happening I am of the strong opinion that we need to keep the oxygen producing plants and carbon dioxide sinks healthy and plant more like our lives depended on it. We live in a space colony. We either start acting in tune with that reality or we are going to lose the ability to act at all.

Mr. Chips

04-16-04, 11:11 PM

BTW, I have had many gardens. First of all, investigate every so-called weed. People don't realize we have nutrituious, beautiful medicinal herbs all around we callously call weeds. Plant ones that get along togethor well in close proximity (companion planting) and use well formed compost to mulch heavily. If done properly, you can have a relatively weed free garden with only minimal hand weeding necessary. Planting native species can help.

Sounds like food crops are not being considered as the subject for this thread but check out http://www.motherearthnews.com/menarch/archive/issues/061/061-092-01.htm

Edufer

04-17-04, 09:10 AM

Dr. Chips: “Species are being lost and this is not on the basis of projection.”

The claim of species extinctions are based solely in statistical projections you like it or not. Name me JUST ONE species in the world (animal, fish, plant, bacteria) that has gone extinct in the last 100 years – besides the Tasmanian tiger.

How can they know if a species has gone extinct if they have not surveyed the whole Earth? And that is an impossible task. Species might “disappear” from one area, because they moved to a neighboring one, as the “yaguareté”, the american jaguar that once reached down to Patagonia, and now is confined to the jungles in the north part of Argentina, the jungles areas of Paraguay, Bolivia, and the rest of countries in the Amazon basin. But the fact of moving to newer, less habitated areas concentrate the species, and jaguars abound so much in their newer habitats that have become a threat to villagers in the Amazon.

I can assure you that if you go into the jungle for a walk, without taking along a carbine or a shotgun, you will not return home. There is no need to hunt or kill the jaguars; they simply don't attack people carrying a carbine, or what looks like a carbine. Why is this, nobody knows, but jaguars know why they must refrain from attacking people with guns.

As I said, I have traveled and lived for years (1970-2001) in the Amazon jungle, from Venezuela to Paraguay, Brazil and Ecuador, to Peru and Bolivia, and have seen everything is there to see. See here: http://mitosyfraudes.8k.com/photoEng-2.html

The article in the New York is quite long and I have uploaded it to our foundation’s server for you to read. The link to it is this: http://mitosyfraudes.8k.com/Pesti/DDTNow.html

The link is to our page “Chemicals and Pesticides”, where there is a fairly large amount of material on the DDT subject, as well as other chemicals and health related risks. I am sure you will disagree with all we publish there. But, who knows, perhaps you will get in touch with material you didn’t know it existed – and that’s dangerous, because the sound of a different bell might get you into deep trouble with yourself.

Mr. Chips

04-18-04, 12:14 AM

Well, without doing any extensive searching, I'll post just one of many sites that lists species considered extinct within the last 100 years. http://midwest.fws.gov/endangered/lists/extinct.html

Edufer, your persistence and volume can win debates in online forums despite any truth. Such a ploy is really quite repugnant. I'm afraid it is more the norm than the exception. This venue favors the adamant and irrational. So it goes. I don't feel entirely compelled to visit your listed URLs on the basis of the unworthiness of the quite obviously mistaken claims you make.

Mr. Chips

04-18-04, 12:53 AM

Wow, I checked out your foundation's site. Incredible. I see you guys have some favoirte sources to site for supporting information. Gee, you guys got all the answers to many controversial subjects. Outrageous!

No matter what I asked you I can not trust your response to be honest but I will give you a chance to come clean but I doubt if you can. Where does the funding come from? Could that or those be front organizations for many corporations, biotech, depleted uranium, nuclear power, organic chlorinated chemicals and more, all defensive of what many people find to be the desired weapons of choice for the oligarchies of today? You have some rather shallow and little cited data there that ignores most of the other scientists on the planet. You have lost any credibility in my eyes.

Edufer

04-18-04, 01:47 AM

To find it outrageous when you get answers to many controversial things indicates you are against knowledge and debate. Good for you. You qualify for the Green Hall of Shame.

I feel I don’t have to give reasons of what I think, say or do, to someone hiding behind a nickname and the description of “just a guy in the planet”, with no other information. If you are afraid of letting other people know who you are, you are simply a coward. An as such, you might be a member of Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth or Earth First!.

As usual, instead of discussing the scientific bases of arguments, or the flaws you discover in them, you greens always go by the “straw man” fallacy, kill the messenger, forget the message. You dismiss my arguments accusing me, the dissenter, of being “paid liar”, as if you were working for free – and telling the truth.

For what I care, you can think, say, and do whatever you want, but try not to drown in your own poison. But if you do, you’ll do all of us a favor, by contributing to control the population explosion.

Mr. Chips

04-19-04, 06:08 AM

What, no explanation for that site that lists extinctions in the last 100 years? Guess you had to use your time to rant, you know, kind of like "to drown in your own poison."

DDT use has resulted in the eventual arise of DDT resistant mosquitos. Though there are more specific papers about this on the web and the specific epithets of the resistant strains, existing now almost everywhere there are mosquitos, it is useful to cite one that points out some other myths of DDT use proponents. http://info-pollution.com/ddtban.htm

There are also many sites that explore and exhaustively list alternatives to DDT. Funding for research and development of some appears to be lacking. Besides implementing the known safe methods, which requires raising the living standards and education of people so they are capable of dealing with their own situation most intelligently, we should fund the research into other effective and safe means.

I don't feel like taking the time to list all of the resources around this issue and the appropriate technology that exists and the ones that can be feasibly developed fast. There are many, just as there are many on the plants and animals that have become extinct within the last 100 years.

Here's a power point presentation where it is claimed that 599 animal extinctions and 73 plant extinctions have taken place within the last 500 years with a vast majority within the last 100 years. Edufer, if you are to support your claim, you will have to visit each case and argue why the researchers reporting the extinction are mistaken. Looks like the following was or is for a class at UCSB: http://mentor.lscf.ucsb.edu/course/winter/eemb133/Lecture%20Notes/Lecture9Extinction.pdf You don't have to pick on them or them all. Find a more detailed list from one of the many sites and start explaining why so many knowledgeable people are trying to dupe the public.

There is a plus to your web site. The causes you support all seem to be linked as to being things power elites would rather people accept rather than question. Seems you have provided a list of things that should be questioned from the stand point that they all are morose and viable alternatives are probably availble. Maybe I haven't looked hard enough but seems you are giving selective ignorance and bias a run for its money and they all seem quite suspect to me.

Kill the messenger? I see only one here who has suggested death to another as a favored choice.

You start one paragraph "I feel I don’t have to give reasons of what I think, say or do" and then some derogatory remarks and wild speculation about myself that I don't care to repeat and then start the next paragraph with "As usual, instead of discussing the scientific bases of arguments, or the flaws you discover in them, you greens always go by the “straw man” fallacy, kill the messenger, forget the message." and then some easily discernible misinformation. Do you not see that you are doing exactly what you claim I am doing when the evidence is right here that I am not doing this? I did not call you a "paid liar" though I intoned that from what can be observed it is a reasonable suspicion. I did call you "adamant and irrational" and I remain more convinced of that finding by this last post of yours.

I am aware that sometimes violent people are agressive with some they have met on the web in face to face encounters or via proxy. With your expression of ill will towards me, I think I'll just keep my alias, thank you, and not add to the little information about me I have posted. That is an accepted choice for participants here and if you don't like it, then I suggest you go elsewhere. I prefer to weigh information on its own merits rather than on the self indulgent claim to expertise that any one can manufacture.

Seems you may ascribe to Christianity. Care to tell me if that is the case?

Edufer

04-19-04, 05:20 PM

No, I do not ascribe to any religion, as I am, among other reasons, against the commercial exloitation of beliefs. I do believe in God but has nothing to do with any god depicted in any religion.

But going to your post. You are becoming increasingly delirious. I have not threatened anyone with death, nor have I wished death to no one. But my sincere advice to you, that you should take good care in not drowning in your own poison, (because I think your words and message are full of it, so must be you) is just a proof that I want every body to stay alive and healthy, no matter how poisonous he might be. I made an additional comment that, in case you failed to take enough care and got drowned nonetheless, your disappearance from this planet would mean a contribution to the population explosion, something that you frown upon. By the way, your departure from this world would not make me any happier at all. If you cannot take a discussion with a pinch of humor, then you should stick to your UCS meetings, where humor is never present.

But the reasons you gave to remain anonymous reveal some paranoia that should be treated. Get help and get better. Now down to business.

Your link to Good Old Jim Norton is a classic! It is so full of outright avoidance of scientific facts that the sole reading dismisses its contents. It looks more as a Greenpeace pamphlet than a well informing report. In the same manner it avoids telling the reader that DDT was responsible for saving more than 500 millions lives (Thus declared by the WHO “the most saving lives chemical ever created”), Jim Norton carefully avoid the mention of flawed, almost fraudulent research by DeWitt and others that were the “pièce de resistance” of Rachel Carson fraudulent book – studies that eventually were proved wrong, and dismissed because of fundamental scientific methodological flaws.

The following is solely intended to inform other people in this board that may be fooled by your misinformation. I know you are aware of the information I will post here now, and this shows that you are in a hypocritical attitude. You know about it, but you rather look in the opposite direction because it does not fit into your agenda.

But Jim Norton and you, both imply that DDT was banned because mosquitoes developed resistance against it. That would have been a reason to ABANDON its use, but not for BANNING IT! But the issue of resistance goes beyond science, and enter the vast field of scientific fraud. The unscientific claim is disproved one we see that, after being banned in South Africa since the 1970s, which provoked the return of malaria to previous murderous levels, they started using it again in 2000, and have stopped malaria in its track.

So other countries that were forced to stop using DDT (arm-twisting policies used by so called "aid" agencies) are now returnig to DDT for trying to stop the murderous malaria levels in their countries. Did you read the New York Times article, or it was too big to swallow? Something new is going on, as this is the first time in 40 years that the Times said anything favorable to DDT. New, interesting times seem to be ahead for mankind!

The development of "resistance" to insecticides by insects has been thoroughly studied. Individual insects can not develop resistance. They are just as easily killed after they have been exposed to doses of DDT as they would have been before such exposure. Some mosquitoes, however (perhaps 1 in 1,000), do not die after being sprayed, because they produce enzymes that break down DDT. Other mosquitoes have enzymes that break down other insecticides or inherit behavioral traits that help them avoid enemies or conditions that could threaten their survival.

The ability to produce enzymes is inherited, and the genes responsible for destroying DDT probably regulate functions of other sorts (that is, they were already useful, and were not just awaiting the development of DDT or other insecticides).

If a mosquito with a gene for the enzyme that detoxifies DDT mates with another mosquito possessing the same gene, their offspring are likely to inherit that gene. If the population is sprayed frequently with DDT, an increasing proportion of insects with that gene will survive. Those without the enzyme will perish before they can reproduce. In time, the surviving population will be genetically different from the original population, and will be “resistant” to the insecticide.

The DDT on the inside walls of houses caused the death of most mosquitoes that rested on those walls. If a single mosquito happened to be “resistant” to DDT, it might not die, but it was highly unlikely that it would encounter another resistant one, and especially not one of the opposite sex (males are not blood-suckers and thus are not attracted to humans). If resistance to DDT were to develop, however, another, unrelated, insecticide could be applied to the walls to kill the mosquitoes that were resistant to DDT – if any other effective insecticide were still available.

Unfortunately, DDT was so inexpensive that it was also used in the fields near the houses harboring malaria victims. As a result, resistance to DDT did develop among some populations of Anopheles mosquitoes and other insecticides had to be used for any further mosquito control. This was not a huge problem: ln 1970, the director general of the World Health Organization wrote, <dir>“The areas in which technical problems (resistance) have arisen represent only 1 percent of the total territory in which eradication measures are being applied but (because of adverse propaganda) those areas have had an influence on the global programme out of all proportion to their size. ”</dir>Of the 107 malarious countries, 62 reported resistance in populations of one or more Anopheles species to one or more common insecticides.

And now, I would like to ask you two very simple questions:

1) Has been DDT proved – beyond doubt – to be carcinogenic to man at doses found in the environment? If so, by whom?

2) Was DDT proved to be responsible of thinning eggshells? If so, by whom?

river-wind

04-19-04, 05:35 PM

It is an interesting case, because a tree species don’t usually go extinct just because it disappears from a given area.

Usually, no. Unless it is an endemic species, and only exists in a very small, locallized area.There are birds that only live in certain islands, fish that are only found in certain lakes.

You, a person who has spent much time in the Amazon, must know about local populations of specific species, and how easy it would be for them to disappear.
The effects that oil pipline installations are having on howler monkey populations in Ecudor, and the effects those same pipelines are having on the last cloud forests in the world.
Despite the philosophical argument of "a negative result is not a result" when searching for existing members of a species, there is a point where you need to assume that extinction is not only possible, but that it occurs.
If you accept the extinction of the marsupial tiger, then why not insects, plants, birds, etc; species that don't get as much public recognition than top-level preditors?

As for species that have become extinct over the past 100 years, what about the Carolina Parakeet - the last sighting was in the 1930's - it's long been considered extinct.
Or the more famous example, the Passenger Pigeon.

Not as many famous species are going extinct these days, thankfully; people have put alot of effort into protecting species from extinction over the last 150 years. However, there are many, many species of less-well-liked and less-well-known species of plants and animals around the world which disappear with no more than a note in a scientific text stating that no one has seen an example of the species in over 30 years.
Don't ignore a real threat to this planet, we are in the midst of one of the greatest species die-off in thousands of years - and we have more than just statistical evidence to support that idea!

as for Amazonian farming techinques; no they are not as effective in the sort-term production of food volume. However, assuming proper fallow time, they can produce food continuously. Western methods, while effective in producing food in volume, also have the problem of quickly depleating the land. While current farming methods have greatly reduced the impact o the land, they have also increased the amount of effect on the surrounding environment. The Rio Grand and the Colorado rivers don't even run all the way to the ocean anymore! too much water is being diverted to modern SW US farms. Fish species whi rely on that freshwater input are suffering.
The aquifers under the S/mid-west are running out faster than extpected...
What do you want, high volume turn around in your food production now, or long-term stability in that food production.
Currently, you can't have both.

back on topic,
Go with pulling the weeds if possible, herbicide is more of a problem than it is worth in small gardens. Not to mention the increasein herbicide resistance in weeds over the past 50 years - we need to come up with alternate weed comtrol mechanisms - herbicide is only a temporary solution.
So is pulling the weeds, but at least the long term effects of pulling are much less, *and* much more well known.

edit: thanks for the prompt to look into DDT again - it's something I haven't read up on in a long time. There appears to be *alot* of information supporting the idea that DDT was not having much of an effect on bird's eggs; in fact birds eggs in the UK were thinning for 40 odd years before the introduction of DDT!
Fascinating.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDT
lists the only things still and issue with DDT is the high rates of genital deformation, appearently due to DDT.

Mr. Chips

04-19-04, 10:12 PM

I sauntered over to pub med and did a search first for DDT and then for "DDT Cancer." There is evidence that a higher concentration of DDT is associated with breast cancer. There is also evidence that it is not. There is also studies of rats showing increased susceptibilty to a specific cancer with synergistic effect of DDT and a common bacteria metabolite which is often in developing countries food stuff. There is also evidence that DDT concentration in men is associated with prostrate cancer.

Concerning the effects of DDT on preterm births and shorter lactation, one researcher states "we estimated the increase in infant deaths that might result from DDT spraying. The estimated increases are of the same order of magnitude as the decreases from effective malaria control. Unintended consequences of DDT use need to be part of the discussion of modern vector control policy."

I also saw a study that stated the greatest success with mosquito abatement took place before the use of DDT using various methods to kill mosquito larvae rather than targeting the mature insects but were abandoned for the less effective DDT. I also see a report of a Mexico community who voluntarily rejected the option of using DDT and were successful in their mosquito abatement program.

I ran accross a method of ridding a house of the insects that is cheap and apparently quite effective that uses the volatizing of pyrethrin based substances, magnitudes less than the amount of DDT that is sprayed for the same effect. I also noted that pesticide resistance appears to occur faster for DDT than for the pyrethrins. From what I see, the citation of just 1% DDT resistant malaria vectors seems to be quite far fetched.

Doing some google searching, I notice that many are on the bandwagon you are riding, Edufer. Generally, they do not list the other exemplified dangers of the toxin and categorically deny any danger whatsoever on the basis of some studies while disregarding others.

As far as egg shell and reproductive dangers to birds, there were a number of in depth studies reported on pub med both recent and past that seem to be quite conclusive.

If you want to see any of this data for yourself, head on over to pub med and do a little searching, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi It is really quite a valuable resource for those who want to know science rather than widely proflagated myths.

I'm still waiting for you to explain why so many find that hundreds of extinctions have happened within the last 100 years. I begin to surmise that if you can't back your claims, you ignore discussing them in keeping with the crass characteristics you would attribute to me.

What are these UCS meetings you speak of that you say I participate in? It doesn't help any one to have trust in your posts when you include obvious misinformation. Is that your idea of humor? I think you are quite sick.

Altogethor, I continually downgrade my opinion of your integrity, Edufer. I generally don't attribute innate evilness to any human but the insanity that leads people to do violence as I see as your agenda, tells me we better find a way to cull out the most benevolent and informative understandings for formulating policy right quick or us humans are gonna blow our responsibilities as thinking life.

I am extremely disgusted by you, Edufer. I have hardly witnessed such an attitude against science and intelligence than that which you demonstrate here.

Edufer

04-20-04, 01:48 AM

Yes, river-wind, In general I tend to agree with you on many things you are saying, and dissenting on others, but an explanation on why and where i think differently will be delayed somewhat - I must go to sleep (2:40 am down here).

Yes, the alligator “smoking gun” of Lake Apopka, Florida in the earlies 80s, was blamed on DDT, in spite of DDT being banned for all uses in the USA in July 1, 1972. This is a brief summary of the case, excerpted from many websites, arranged in way as to provide a clear picture:
- - - - - - -
Ten years ago a pesticide spill of kelthane in Lake Apopka, Florida (close to Orlando) contaminated the lake. DDE is a break-down product of kelthane, and is an estrogenic compound. The water today tests clean as far as toxins are concerned. But the estrogenic compounds are stored in fat, not water, and they are being stored in the animals who live in Lake Apopka. Because of a concern about the decline in alligators in Lake Apopka, scientists began tests.
- - - - -
Reproductive Toxins and Alligator Abnormalities at Lake Apopka, Florida,

famous study by Jan C. Semenza, 1,2 Paige E. Tolbert, 2,3 Carol H. Rubin, 2 Louis J. Guillette Jr., 4 and Richard J. Jackson 2) – (easily found in the web)

In the following commentary, we draw attention to two nematocides that are established reproductive toxins in humans, dibromochloropropane (DBCP) and ethylene dibromide (EDB), which could also have played a role in the reproductive failure observed in alligators from Lake Apopka in the early 1980s.
- - - - - -
PALATKA -- The St. Johns River Water Management District accepted blame Tuesday for the deaths of hundreds of birds, including 43 federally protected woodstorks that were p o i s o n e d in the late 1990s after the district inadvertently flooded Lake Apopka with harmful pesticides.

The St. Johns River Water Management District has adopted amendments to its ERP rules in Chapters 40C-4, 40C-41, 40C-42, and 40C-44, F.A.C., and the associated Applicant’s Handbooks: Management and Storage of Surface Waters, Regulation of Stormwater Management Systems, and Agricultural Surface Water Management System. Section 373.461, F.S., requires the District to adopt by rule discharge limitations for all permits issued by the District for discharges into Lake Apopka. The purpose of the amendments is to limit phosphorous loads to Lake Apopka.
- - - - - -
Chemicals known to disrupt the endocrine system and act as estrogen-like hormones include: DDT and its degradation products, DEHP (di(2- ethylhexyl)phthalate), dicofol, HCB (hexachloro-benzene) kelthane, depone, lindane and other hexachlorocyclohexane congeners, methoxychlor, octachlorostyrene, synthetic pyrethroids, triazine herbicides, EBDC fungicides, certain PCB congeners, 2,3,7,8,-TCDD and other dioxins, 2,3,7,8-TCDF and other furans, cadmium, lead, mercury, tributyltin and other organo-tin compounds, alkyl phenols (non-biodegradable detergents and anti-oxidants present in modified polystyrene and PVCs), styrene dimers and trimers, soy products, and laboratory animal and pet food products. (Reference: Advances in Modern Environmental Toxicology, Vol. 21, Chemically-Induced Alterations in Sexual and Functional Development: The Wildlife/Human Connection, 1992, Princeton Scientific Publishing Co.)
- - - - - - -
It is well known that thousands of chemicals of every variety were used over the last 50 years - pesticides, herbicides, fungicides and the list goes on. There may very well have been test plots - with chemicals still unknown.
- - - - - - -
A serious contamination occurred just a few short years ago. This was Benlate, one of the most costly man-made agricultural disasters in Florida. The public documents made available state that this fungicide was badly contaminated with over 80 contaminants, including Flusilazole - a product not ever registered for use in the United States. Yet, neither Benlate nor Flusilazole are on the list to be tested.

* * * * * * * * * * *

As you see, in Lake Apopka they have dumped a cocktail of chemicals that miraculously has not killed all kinds of living creatures there. You already read the large list of disrupters above, most of them dumped into the lake, which must have played a role in the alligator’s penises. However, many people are putting the blame solely on DDT, because DDT is the “meanest kid on the block”, and will attract more attention if they said kelthane, lipone dieldrin, or whatever. More on this matter of scientific studies in my next post.

MacZ

04-20-04, 01:58 AM

Sorry to interject, but... there's something disgustingly decadent ... disgustingly trivial? ... almost insane? ... insanely unreal? ... blinkered, anal? ... about people getting bothered, so very very bothered sometimes, about ... weeds.

Don't take it personally, SamLuc. Bug bear of mine.

Edufer

04-20-04, 02:03 AM

Blaming DDT for every conceivable disease is “fashionable” – it has been for years, and pays good dividends to researchers looking for more grants and funding. And what’s worse, besides the “pork barrel” funding that wastes taxpayer’s money in useless studies, is that each new study blaming DDT for anything, makes the headlines, and help the persistence of the DDT myth.

The DDT myth persists in the news as well as in the scientific literature. On April 21, 1993, Mary G. Wolff and colleagues published a study on DDT residues in blood and breast cancer in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. [1] They reported that 58 patients with breast cancer had blood serum levels of 11.0 + 9.1 nanograms (ppb) of DDE per milliliter of blood serum, compared with 7.7 + 6.8 nanograms (ppb) of DDE in the control group of cancer-free patients. No further tests were made for other possible variables such as medication with estrogens. PCB concentrations were also higher in the breast cancer group than in the controls, with lower margins of error than in the DDE groups (8.0 + 4.1 ppb vs 6.7 + 2.9), suggesting that compounds stored in blood fat were mobilized in the cancer patients.

The findings were seized on by the media, including Associated Press and Time magazine, with headlines "DDT Linked to Risk of Breast Cancer" and "Relentless DDT." The New Yorker, which had launched Silent Spring in 1962, exulted on June 6, 1993, that "Rachel Carson Lives."

One year later, a new study to correct the fiist was published by N. Krieger and coworkers in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, [2]covering a much larger group of subjects (150 vs. the 58 breast-cancer patients in Wolff's report) and drawing on thousands of blood samples collected and frozen during the late 1960s, when average DDE levels were four to five times higher. The 1994 report showed no association between serum levels of DDE and the risk of breast cancer.

This disproof of the earlier claims did not make the headlines. There were no stories about "DDT Not Linked to Breast Cancer," or "DDT Relents." The New Yorker has not said that "Rachel Carson no longer lives, after all."

Many activists may be expected to ignore the disproof of the 1993 claims and to link DDT falsely to cancer. The first, desired report is now "locked in" and has become a part of the evaluation of DDT by critics. The British historian H.R. Trevor-Roper wrote in 1962:[3]<dir>"Whatever else history may say of Dr. Goebbels, it must credit him with one positive contribution to the science of politics – a terrible but a positive contribution: he created a system of propaganda, ironically styled public enlightenment, which persuaded a people to believe that black was white."</dir>Rachel Carson has made the same contribution. Joseph Goebbels is disbelieved and discredited today, but Carson's Silent Spring is still believed and widely revered, even though its message on DDT is an example of "the Big Lie."

So I think I will continue my posts regarding Rachle Carson's lies, as there is ample material to talk about.

But when peer-reviewd studies by renown scientists present different results, they never reach the media, even as a brief press release. This is the case, among some hundreds, of the following:

The California Department of Health was concerned about the effects of DDT on reproduction, and Dr. Alice Ottoboni, the department's toxicologist, consequently carried out extensive studies with rats and dogs during the 1960s and 1970s. [4] Rats were fed levels of DDT of 0, 20, and 200 ppm in the diet. There was no apparent effect on fecundity of dams or viability of the young. The females receiving 20 ppm DDT had a significantly longer average reproductive life span (14.55 months) than did their littermate controls (8.91 months).

Ottoboni's studies with beagle dogs were through four generations, and 650 pups were born to parents that received 1, 5, and 10 milligrams (mg) of DDT per kg of body weight per day. There was no effect of DDT on survival, growth, and sex distribution of pups, nor was there any influence on morbidity or mortality or gross or histologic findings in any of the dogs. DDT-treated females had their first estrus cycles two to three months earlier than the control dogs. The highest level of DDT, in contrast to the control or 1 mg groups, was associated with freedom from roundworm infection in the pups.

More recently, Unnur P. Thorgeirsson and coworkers reported in the Journal of Regulatory Toxicology and Applied Pharmacology[5] on a 32-year study of chemical carcinogenesis using Old World monkeys, who live about 30 years, to test a variety of chemicals, including DDT. In this DDT study, 25 monkeys were fed 20 mg/kg of DDT by mouth five times per week for 11 years. So far, 10 monkeys have died of various causes, and the other 15, ages 19 to 25, are in good health. The single cancer that occurred in a 20-year-old monkey cannot be attributed to DDT because of the monkey's age and the fact that these monkeys have a spontaneous cancer rate of 3.2 percent. On the other hand, the common fungal food contaminant, aflatoxin B, and a compound produced in cooked meat, IQ, induced cancers in more than 60 percent of the animals.
<OL>
<LI> Mary S. Wolff et al., 1993. "Blood Levels of Organochlorine Residues and Risk of Breast Cancer," Joumal of the National Cancer Institute (April 21), Vol. 85, No. 8, pp. 648-652.
<LI> Nancy Krieger et al., 1994. "Breast Cancer and Serum Organochlorines: A Prospective Study Among White, Black, and Asian Women," Joumal of the National Cancer Institute (April 20), Vol. 86, No. 8, pp. 589-599.
<LI> H.R. Trevor-Roper, 1962. The Last Days of Hitler, 3rd edition (New York: Collier Books).
<LI> Alice Ottoboni, 1969. "The Effect of DDT on Reproduction in the Rat," Toxicol. Appl. Pharmacol., Vol. 14, pp.79-81; also Ottoboni, et al. 1977. "Effects of DDT in Multiple Generations of Beagle Dogs," Arch. Environm. Contam. Toxicol., Vol. 6, pp. 83-101.
<LI> Unnur P. Thorgeirsson, et al., 1994. "Tumor Incidence in a Chemical Carcinogenesis Study of Nonhuman Primates," Reg. Toxicol, and Pharmacol., (April), Vol. 19, No. 2, pp. 130-151.
</OL>
As you can see, while chemicals in the environment can play havoc in some well studied cases as the Lake Apopka and its alligators, and Bhopal accident in India, exaggeration also plays havoc on much more well know and studied cases as Love Canal, Times Beach, and Sevezo (Italy), for giving just a few examples.

Unfortunately, DDT will carry his undeserved bad fame into the future, until something happens that makes people to realize the mistake committed when DDT was banned in 1972.

Mr. Chips

04-20-04, 04:34 AM

The multiple studies I looked at on Pub Med were only for the last two years. I did not go back as far as 1994. I did not see any reports citing Goebbels. The abstracts are apparently copyrighted so I do not reprint them here but, people, go and do a search at pub med, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi and read the abstracts and the reports for yourself if you are interested.

What about the most recent research? A couple give a bit of creedence to some of your biased presentation but a vast majority do not.

Oh, I could cite names and times and places of publication but, go get it yourselves if you want it. It all comes up quite readily. Since 2002, I counted 14 studies that appeared to apply to countering your claims.

A vast majority of the most recent research appears to support the idea that DDT is carcinogenic, neonatal compromising and Central Nervous System disruptive. Giving birds DDT directly compared to control groups in a few studies just within the last two years shows direct correlation to egg shell thinning, reproductive tissue damage and increased bird mortality, matching in the field studies that correlate DDT and DDE concentrations in bird populations and observed reproductive failure.

There is really no reason to shout. I do see that you seem incapable of a two sided conversation and maybe you need to shout to keep yourself from thinking or seeing anything contrary to your desired findings but, it really does not give you any more credibility than you already do not exhibit.

Yup, your credibility has sunk entirely into a cravass of apparent ill will.

Mr. Chips

04-20-04, 03:14 PM

Oops, sorry goofyfish. I don't recall what the offending statement was and if you could PM me with it I will take efforts to avoid such in the future.

This 1997 study was conducted on 14,000 women over a ten year period http://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/8.30/helthrpt/stories/s205.htm
This 2003 study is based on observation sample size of 250 women: http://www.healthscout.com/news/68/512873/main.html
This one is from a study of mice done in 2003 http://www.cbcrp.org/research/PageGrant.asp?grant_id=1811

Amazing how far up the subterfuge goes, for example, the following Cornell University associated report makes specific allegations of the history of DDT and DDE research that is false, lies, misinformation, about crucial data that gives more credibility to the converse hypothesis than their findings of no association and their review of the studies that denounce any other finding. http://envirocancer.cornell.edu/FactSheet/Pesticide/fs2.ddt.pdf

Here is another official looking site that does the same misinformation promulgation, http://www.realage.com/Health_Guides/BreastCancer/topics/topics.asp?topic=22&navtopic=rf&memberId=&cbr=

I believe what we see here is where potentially high profile major institutions of research (or at least reports that are made to look that way) are corrupted into presenting highly biased and misrepresenting disinformation for the furtherance of big money interests. I don't know how but there must be a reason behind the scenes for this manufactured propaganda with high credentialed individuals showing that credentials do not dictate authenticity. The first study I link to above included many more case studies than any to date (at least ones that report the sample sizes unlike the Cornell propaganda) and did find a direct correlation between incidence of breast cancer and at least DDE concentrations, a direct breakdown product of DDT. The study done on mice in 2003 also suggests a greater carcinogenicity of DDE.

Here is a site that summarizes research up to 1993 with the finding that there is indeed risk of cancer from DDT and its progeny, DDE. http://seer.cancer.gov/publications/raterisk/risks99.html

Shesh, here is a reporting of the study also reported in the second URL above with the opposite conclusions: http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/1997/10.30/StudyFindsNoInc.html The same research results in opposing views? Which is correct? This latest one says its study of 250 women is the largest to date, this is three months after that first study reported above with a sample size of 14,000. I would suggest that the misinformation in this last article can act as a guide to see that it is most likely spin, in fact, right around to 180 degrees opposed to how the data is reported in the second URL of this post.

Interesting, appears that there is a real effort to corrupt the findings and their reports towards the blanket denail of cancer being possibly caused by DDT and DDE.

No wonder crusaders such as Edufer can not only be adamantly confused but pointedly so. There has got to be something though that spurs Edufer on to see things only in a black and white context, completely exonerating the big money. Maybe it isn't religious fervor though that is still not clear. Maybe it isn't from direct monetary reward for the lying though that too can not be ruled out. Can't really trust anything Edufer posts now. I don't think he can offer the base reason for his bias voluntarily. Appears to be married to his psychological make-up which must be fairly twisted and convoluted to be such a spokesperson of misguidance.

More than enough for now.

Skylark

04-20-04, 05:45 PM

1) Has been DDT proved – beyond doubt – to be carcinogenic to man at doses found in the environment? If so, by whom?

No.

DDT is listed as a Group 2B chemical in the IARC Carcinogen Classification system. Group 2B is characterized as "Agent is possibly carcinogenic". Human carcinogenic studies have been reviewed and determined to be inadequate to surport the classification of DDT as a "known human carcinogen", however sufficient data from animal and genotoxicity studies has been shown to give DDT a Group 2B classification.

Classification as a "known human carcinogen" requires a large degree of unequivocal evidence. As such the list of "known human carcinogens" is quite small compared to what common sense would lead one to expect. You either have to have thorough epidemiological studies with large numbers or well-defined doses (ex. smoking) or the chemical has to cause an extremely rare cancer (ex. vinyl chloride).

That DDT has not been shown beyond any doubt to cause cancer in humans does not mean, nor even imply that it is not carcinogenic to humans simply because the bar for getting into the "known human carcinogen" club is set so high.

The second part of that question, depends on the first part. If DDT is carcinogenic to humans it is carcinogenic at levels found in the environment as modern risk assessment assumes no threshold for carcinogenic action.

Edufer

04-21-04, 07:03 PM

Mr. Chips, if you are disgusted by my way of saying things, it is your decision. It is you who have convinced yourself to be disgusted with dissenting opinions, and have chosen to take it as a personal attack or offense. I could not care the less about the decisions you make to rise your own stress levels. If I were to take offense from everything people say – including you - about my opinions, I would have had my blood pressure skyrocketed many years ago. I just take notice, and learn from the mistakes I do. One of my mistakes is believing I have met reasonable people, when they are not, as the case of another member of sciforums, the famous “David Mayes”, whom you all remember.

Regarding the US Fish & Wildlife Service page on extinctions, there is a lot to be discussed, as if what they list as “extinct” really are species, the way they have been looking for extinct species, and if they are really extinct. The statement, “not seen since 1932”, is not scientific. It is merely anecdotal. Let me quote what Dr. J. Gordon Edwards, famous entomologist from San José University in California, with more than 60 years dealing with species said in an article, some years ago (“Malaria: The Killer that Could Have been Defeated”).

According to Dr. Edwards:<dir>“There are dozens of kinds of birds, mammals, fish, amphibians, insects, spiders, and plants in marshes that could be officially designated as "endangered species" on the same questionable basis, and any one of those could then force the halting of all human activities in or near the marshes. It is doubtful that there is any currently undeveloped parcel of land in the United States without at least one animal or plant that might be listed as "threatened" or "endangered."

”The reason that "endangered species" are so vulnerable to political definition is the serious discrepancy between the scientific, or biological "species" and the political "species" promulgated by environmental activists – a difference that has been ignored by politicians and pseudo-environmentalists. The biological definition strictly adhered to by the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature requires that to be a species, an animal must be "reproductively isolated" – that is, capable of breeding with others of the same species, but not capable of naturally breeding successfully with members of other species.”

”Political "endangered species" seldom meet this requirement and thus cannot legitimately be defined as "species." Populations of animals either are a distinct species or are not. More than 60 percent of the populations that have already been officially designated as "endangered species" do not even qualify as biological "species"! “

”The Endangered Species Act appears to have been devised simply to provide a ruse that can be used by the environmentalists to prevent development or any other activity on any area of land or water in the United States or abroad. lf a legitimate species is in danger of extinction, biologists should be concerned, even though countless millions of the Earth's species became extinct through natural causes long before humans appeared. The mere presence of insignificant local populations (or even legitimate "subspecies") of birds, mammals, salamanders, fish, clams, slugs, or insects, should not be used simply to halt human progress. Neither should it prevent the control of nuisances, destructive predators, or disease-carrying insects.”

”The worst may be yet to come. Environmentalists are now proposing that "entire environments" be protected as "endangered," so that all of the populations of animals and plants living in them will be protected, before any have begun to decline in numbers. That procedure could prevent the use of all "natural enemies" against mosquito larvae. The "natural enemies" of pests could not be introduced into such environments, because they might also attack other insects or in some way have an impact on other animals or plants in the habitat. In fact, some environmentalists have already objected to the use of the Gambusia minnows that so frequently control mosquito larvae.”</dir>(End of quote)

According to ornithologist, Carlos Wotzkow, member of our foundation and author of our section “La Ecología en Cuba”, (The Ecology in Cuba, in Spanish, although some articles are in English), taxonomists, or “systematics”, as are usually called those who describe new species, or are busy studying them, are divided in two big groups. One of them, the less serious one, call themselves “splitters”, are the ones who “discover” and name species and subspecies by the thousands, while the other group, more serious and willing to investigate everything thoroughly, are called “lumpers”.

“Lumpers” walk the trail opened by “splitters” cleaning up the garbage, deliriums and raving they have made. This is, demonstrating genetically or by other more concrete means, that their species or subspecies are the same one with differences in feather, fur, hair, coating, coloring, etc. One example is the “cernícalo cubano”, (Falco spareverius) that has about 6 subspecies very closely related, that all “splitters” stubbornly keep separating at the race level. I do no deny that there are differences in color and, to a lesser extent in size, in all these races – but even so, the term “subspecies” y too subjective that I would leave it only for those wanting to make things easier in the face of zoological studies.

With this I want to say that if the “Falco spareverious sparveroides” (from Cuba) is a “valid” subspecies (scientifically speaking) of the “Falco spareverious dominiscencis” (from Dominican Republic, or Island La Española), then black people from Nigeria are a different species from Caucasians or Mongoloids. There is much politics and human hypocrisy involved at the time of classifications, and under that same hypocrisy now they are declaring local species “endangered species” locally. It is trick conspiring against the extinction process - that is, a natural mechanism occurring much before man existed, (called the “biochron”, the span of time for a species to exist, survive and disappear naturally), that many people guided by deep emotional feeling (in some cases), and strong political interests (in some other cases), want to prevent.

As an example, Switzerland killed this year 35,000 foxes. This created many problems because pseudo-ecologists protest because they say that elimination is not natural. The truth is, if some epidemic of hydrophobia unleashed in Malaga, Spain, within less than a month it would reach the Urals fro the huge amount of these canidae in the European continent. Thus, man has to interfere, not just for saving a locally threatened species that would detract the natural appeal of the region (which is justifiable), but for eliminating other that could bring serious epizootical problems, product of a protection linked to sentimentalism in some people.

The perfect example is koalas. Who would like to shoot these lovely animals? Well, if the environmental authorities didn’t do it, botanists would have to deal with them with machetes, because with so much protection and abundance of the koalas in Australia, they are wiping out forest of eucalyptus – their own feed grounds!

Conclusion: “splitters” will try to sell as species everything they like us to believe to be a species. Extinctions, any – except the human species. This is all about, to afford somehow the high price of having a brain that thinks and reasons. Examples abound of overprotected species that have become detrimental to the environment, other species and the man.

Mr. Chips

04-21-04, 08:12 PM

Rather than use the claims of others with no supporting citations of the science they may have used or abused to formulate their opinions, could you please cite direct links to scientific studies that have led you to believe your own opinions? The more recent and larger sample size studies will hold more weight than others. If you can give a direct link to the original researchers' findings, that is best.

Thank you.

Edufer

04-21-04, 08:37 PM

All “studies” purporting to show DDT as a carcinogenic in humans, are wiped out and put to shame by the biggest ever epidemiological study conducted by Dr. Edward R. Laws, from the US Department of Agriculture, and the US Public Health Service.

Dr. Laws et al., studied the workers of the Montrose Chemical Co., in California, producers of DDT for more than 30 years. Workers wore no special clothes, masks, or gloves, and were breathing DDT dust the whole day long, and taking DDT dust to their homes. The study found that workers had collected in their fat tissues DDT and its isomers varying from 38 to 647 ppm. At that time, DDT levels in fat tissues in the average US citizen was barely 6 ppm. In a publication in the American Medical Association, Dr. Laws stated. “It is really noteworthy that, after 10 to 20 years of exposure to DDT, there was not a single case of cancer among this group of individuals, in an exposure statistic of 1300 years/man, which is an event statistically impossible.” (E.R. Laws, Jr. et al., Archives of Environmental Health, Vol. 15, pp. 766-775 /1969), and Vol. 23, pp. 181-184, (1971) )

As it is widely known, cancer attacks 25% of the world's population (aprox.) independent of color, race, social group, economic levels or occupational sectors. From any group chosen in the world, with very little variance, 25% will develop cancer, and 50% of them will get cured. So, finding an occupational group as the Montrose Chemical Co containing not even a single case of cancer, is a statistically impossible event, as stated by Dr. Laws.

Later, Dr. Laws made experiments feeding rodents levels proportionally 10,000 times higher than those ingested by human beings, and then transplanted malignant cancerous tumors directly into the rodent's brains. Controls without DDT in their food, had a mortality rate of 100%. But cancer disappeared in 22 of 66 rats on trial that had been ingesting DDT during 6 months. A 30% remission in brain cancer is something that ought to be studied further.

Other scientists reported that DDT ingestion reduced the mammary cancer and leukemia rates, chemically induced in rats. Dr. Charles Silinskas and Allan E. Okey said: “If estimates prove to be correct – that 80 – 90% of human cancers are caused by chemical substances (as many experts suggest), the proposed mechanisms of protective effects of DDT in rats could be as well applied to man.” (C. Silinskas and A.E. Okey, 1975, “Inhibition of Leukemia by DDT”, Journal of the Cancer Institute, Vol. 55 (Sept.) pp. 653-657.)

Writing in the British Medical Bulletin in 1969, Dr. A.E. McLean, a prominent pathologist, and his coauthors cited the increase in the induction of enzymes by the livers of animals that had ingested DDT. They described in their paper that the acute toxicity of aflatoxin (a powerful carcinogenic produced by molds in grains and seeds) was increased in rats with protein deficiency but, “the effect was reverted if the rats had previously ingested moderate amounts of DDT…” The authors conclusions: “it seems that aflatoxin B1 and perhaps other flatoxins, that are among the most carcinogenic substances known, are converted into non-toxic metabolites in the liver by means of the hydroxylation process.” (A.E.M. McLean, and E.K. McLean, 1969, “Diet and Toxicity,” British Medical Bulletin, Vol. 25, pp. 278-281.

The US National Cancer Institute reviewed all available studies on the issue – pro and con – and in 1978 declared that DDT is not a human carcinogenic. It is quite suggestive that during the years of heavy use of DDT in the US (1944-1972) liver cancer rates in the US decreased by 30%

There are carloads of similar information available, to Mr. Chips dismay, but this is enough for the moment.

Sorry, there are not web links to these studies, so you must take a subscription to the journals database. In the quest for thruth, the price is cheap.

Edufer

04-21-04, 09:26 PM

The article linked by you said: “May issue of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, do not prove conclusively that DDT or HCB actually cause breast cancer. It's also not clear if they add to the case implicating pesticides in human cancer. “

Then, why they claim it does? Why do you claim it does? This is a kind of Goebbelian technique: “Lie, lie, lie… something always remains…!”

Mr. Chips said: <dir>“Interesting, appears that there is a real effort to corrupt the findings and their reports towards the blanket denail of cancer being possibly caused by DDT and DDE.

No wonder crusaders such as Edufer can not only be adamantly confused but pointedly so. There has got to be something though that spurs Edufer on to see things only in a black and white context, completely exonerating the big money.”</dir>Now we are reaching to bottom of the can of worms. Every institution or individual that opposes Mr. Chip’s view that DDT is a terrible poison is a source of misinformation, and they must be paid by the Indian and Chinese factories manufacturing DDT. Thus, institutions as the US Cancer Institute, US Cancer Society, the US Department of Agriculture, the US Public Health Service, the FDA; Cornell, Harvard, and California at Berkely Universities, and many scientific journals, are then being funded heavily by the Hindus and the Chinese for selling DDT to South Africa (and who else?) – under the very nose of the FBI and the CIA. I have seen levels of paranoia and delirium before, but this is too much.

Mr. Chips

04-22-04, 01:32 AM

Edufer: "Every institution or individual that opposes Mr. Chip’s view that DDT is a terrible poison is a source of misinformation, and they must be paid by the Indian and Chinese factories manufacturing DDT. "

If you put obvious misinformation into your posts it does not help your crusade (shouting, the use of a large font, doesn't either). I only cited two studies that showed direct misinformation about what had been done to date. I posted the links so people could check it out themselves. I made no mention of what or who might have prompted these researchers to miss the other research done close to and well before those studies. This is what I find to be repugnant. The ad hominem extremist attempt at ridicule. The shouting doesn't help either. I am using Mozilla more now and find it doesn't show the font size changes people incorporate into their posts and I copied your two posts to a text file so I could look at them with more semantic content rather than having to do all that scrolling. Just to begin to understand what you are trying to say takes a bit of effort. Not a very civil way to go about communicating. Talk down to me or others and you are liable to get some acquiescence by those who are discomfited by such but me, I just lost more trust in your statements as designed not to communicate or inform but rather to cajole and force compliance. I don't think that is an extreme assesment of what you have done here.

I see speculation of why different results have been found, including the thought that exposure may need to occur at young age which would explain Dr. Laws different findings, based on exposure of individuals during employment at a DDT factory. I tried to find more data, but alass, looks like you are correct, it would require a subscription perhaps. I don't subscribe to anything right now that requires payment. The magazines I do get are from gifts and most of my periodical reading is done in libraries. Maybe if you got it you could post more details as long as it doesn't infringe on copyrights. I am a bit suspect of information brokers.

If you want to promote understanding you should look into claims by researchers that show opposing conclusions. If you want to promote misunderstanding, then just continue as you are doing, sharing only the studies that support your emotionally charged beliefs. I don't believe that is an extreme assesment based on what you have done here.

Interesting stuff about the liver cancer and brain cancer possibly being lessened by DDT exposure. The studies I've seen to date mainly seem to center on the possibility that DDT and DDE levels correlate with greater chances of getting breast and prostate cancer as well as the impairment in child development.

Edufer: "The article linked by you said: 'May issue of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, do not prove conclusively that DDT or HCB actually cause breast cancer. It's also not clear if they add to the case implicating pesticides in human cancer.' Then, why they claim it does? Why do you claim it does? This is a kind of Goebbelian technique: “Lie, lie, lie… something always remains…!”

See SkyLark's informative post above.

The rest of that second post is hardly worthy of any reply. Again, if you must post extreme false allegations, I would suggest that it does not help your position. I do still wonder why you present only very biased information as well as resort to the false ad hominem slurs.

I see from Dr. Edwards writings he believes that DDT does not undergo biological magnification. Hmmm, that seems to fly in the face of some pretty well trusted observations. Unlike cancer, one can express a fair degree of conclusiveness about the falllacy of that claim. The only two studies with pub med I find immediately claim conclusively that observations of incidence show bio-accumulation into higher concentrations in accordance with trophic layer. I could go find such on the web in general also, I'm sure. Why would Dr. Edwards want to go and put that highly dubious claim into his writings if he wanted any one to take him seriously? I see that some do despite the apparent erroneous claim.

I know of another entomologist that does not share the same opinions as Dr. Edwards, my dad. He managed mosquito abatement programs in various places around the world for a couple of decades. He basically got black listed from the industry when he spoke out about some injustices that were being done by his parent organization, basically the laundering of money for the project into private hands. Another of his team who also spoke up was incarcerated and tortured. Unlike my dad, he wasn't American and subsequently had less rights. My father wrote a book about the failure of United States' foreign aid at that time, when DDT use was acceptable. I wont give the title of it here but only share this to suggest that this subject is not new to me.

That 1978 NCI study apparently was the lumping togethor of statistics from a number of smaller studies to result in comparative analysis of some 269,000 individuals, an impressive number indeed. I see no details on the time span involved. Still, the claims that cancer ocurrence correlated with DDT and DDE concentrations in the much more recent studies of 14,000 and number of smaller sample sizes should not be discounted. There are many variables which appear to be coming into understanding with the observational results over time. The more recent studies have the advantage of being more aware of these and adjusting analysis to compensate and present a more fair assesment.

I watched a couple of Quetzals flying back and forth to their nest in Monte Verde in Costa Rica. Have you got them there in Argentina? A flock of large green parakeets flew into the trees outside of our home last summer and I thought I saw them later in another part of Silicon Valley here. I was surprised to see tropical birds in our area near San Francisco. Hope you don't mind the inconsequential small talk. I'm kind of hoping you can cool down a bit and maybe talk rather than extol.

Skylark

04-22-04, 12:20 PM

2) Was DDT proved to be responsible of thinning eggshells? If so, by whom?

DDE is produced in the liver from the dehydrodechlorination of DDT. DDE is further metabolised to DDMU, however, this step a very slow process. As such the majority of DDE will be sequestered into adipose tissue and easily bioaccumulates up the food chain.

Many species birds exposed through their diets to DDT and DDE in captivity exhibited egg shell thinning. These included the barn owl, American kestrel, mallard duck, black duck, Japanese quail, bobwhite quail, and Ringed turtle doves. Reviews of this body of literature (with the inclusion of field studies) invariably note that there is a tremendous variability across species with respect to egg shell thinning. Raptors, waterfowl, passerines, and nonpasserine ground birds are more susceptible than domestic fowl and other galliformes.

Just because this occurs in the lab does not mean it is occurring the field though.

LINCER, J.L. (1975) DDE-induced eggshell-thinning in the American
kestrel: a comparison of the field situation and laboratory results.
J. appl. Ecol ., 12: 781-793.

A Cornell University grad student fed captive Kestrels varying amounts of DDE in the diet; 0.3, 3, 6, or 10 mg DDE/kg each day. This diet then correlated with the residue of DDE found in the eggs these kestrels produces; 1.9 mg/kg wet weight for the lowest dose to 245 mg/kg wet weight for the highest dose. While there was no statistical difference in the thinning of the eggshell in the lowest dose, the other doses yielded thinning of 15%, 23%, and 29% respectively. A linear relationship was then seen by plotting the log of the DDE concentration within an egg shell and the degree of eggshell thinning.

Lincer then went out and collected eggs from wild Kestrels. He measured the amount of DDE in the egg shells and the degree of eggshell thinning. Plotting this data yielded the same linear relationship.

So what you have is lab data showing DDE causing egg shell thining. Field data showing the same level of exposure to DDE and the same level of egg shell thining in the same relationship as seen in the laboratory experiments. Similar studies by other researchers with other species of birds yielded the same results.

If you know a level of chemical exposure causes an endpoint, and you know that wild animals are being exposed to that level of chemical, I think it's pretty reasonable to assume that that endpoint is occuring within those wild animals.

If people are seriously interested in the toxicology of DDT, I would not suggest randomly looking up sites on the web or primary research papers on a library database.

Very few web sites are objective. During the initial boom of the internet I naively thought that would usher in a greater understanding of the world as people could access a wealth of information. To my dismay there seems be far more disinformation on the web than I ever dreamed possible and I fear we may be moving backwards instead of forwards.

Primary research papers will offer scattered still frames, but one really needs to see the whole movie to get a clear understanding. I suggest looking for review articles and reports instead. The Department of Health & Human Services puts out Toxicological Profiles for the more commonly studied xenobiotics every three years or so. The one for DDT/DDD/DDE is one of larger tomes and one of the more exhaustive of reports that I have read.

Edufer

04-23-04, 12:36 AM

OK, Mr. Chips. Let us bury our war axes. Of course I rather talk about things I like instead of discussing about things I dislike.

No, we have not Quetzals down here, as they exist only in Costa Rica, and some neighboring areas. A beautiful bird, indeed, resembling too much birds from New Guinea. It makes me wonder how it got onto Central America and when. I live in open country (an “Estancia”, or ranch), and have thousands of birds around us, especially parakeets. But lately I have discovered a new species is singing in our garden: I have not been able to spot it yet, but I recognize the singing as belonging to a bird found in the southern part of the Amazon jungle, in the north of Bolivia – the region where I lived for three years. It seems our “Environmental Patrol” seized a cargo of “exotic birds” years ago and freed them in our area. They stayed in here because they have lots of food (our ranch is a big soybean producer) and soybean seeds are all over the place.

As a matter of fact, I love birds a lot (an inheritance from my father), and when I had my adventure travel small business in the Bolivian Amazon, we collaborated with a program of conservation of macaws, “guacamayos” or “parabas”, as they are called there. In Brazil they are called “araras”, perhaps that's the rason for their taxonomic name “Ara”. Macaws make their nests in dead palm trees, inside hollow trunks. There is a region in Bolivia where there grows the “Cusi” palm, a species know only in that part of the world. It does not grow anywhere else, not even inside Bolivia. This region is a rectangle of about 200 km long (south-north) and about 40 km wide, where about 80% of palm trees are “Cusis”. And macaws make their nest on Cusi's trunks, and not in other palm trees. Why? I don't know, and I think nobody but macaws know why.

Back in the 60s and 70s, there had been a terrible macaw trafficking in Bolivia, and the Bolivian government called in (to make a thoroughly study) two Argentinean ornithologists, Dr. Manuel Nores and Dr. Yzurieta, (from Cordoba national University) who happened to be good friends of Prof. Miranda, emeritus profesor there, and one of the members at our Foundation. Their two-year work was finally handed to the government, that implemented measures that resulted in an almost complete stop of the trafficking and the recovery of the macaw population (and other species too). Our foundation published their work (we had some money then) in a beautiful booklet, with the paintings made by Dr. Yzurieta, who was a terrific artist, of all Bolivian macaws found in the study. This booklet became a collector's item because of the paintings.

Here is a link to what I consider the best site on birds ever, and I know you and other members of this forum will enjoy.

http://www.birdlife.org.uk/datazone/search/species_search.html

It is the link to the “search for species page”, but from there you can browse the entire website. But I would like to point out something that could give you some insight of how information is not too well managed in some scientific fields. This link takes you to the Blue throated macaw (Ara glaucogularis), http://www.birdlife.org.uk/datazone/search/species_search.html?action=SpcHTMDetails.asp&sid=1548&m=0 and the bird's description says this:

Range & Population Ara glaucogularis is known from the Llanos de Mojos in north Bolivia, being concentrated east of the upper Mamoré Beni, where the wild population was rediscovered in 1992. Population and range estimates vary from 50-100 individuals within an area of c.18,000*km 3 to c.200 birds in 8,000*km2, with 54 individuals the only recent count. An estimated 1,200 or more wild-caught birds were exported from Bolivia during the 1980s, suggesting that the population was formerly much higher.”

Here is the macaw: <img src=http://mitosyfraudes.8k.com/images-8/paraba1.gif>

And this is the location map: <img src=http://mitosyfraudes.8k.com/images-8/mapa.gif>

The map in the page show in red the area of these macaws' habitat – it is precisely the area where my adventure travel lodge is. In the referenced studies on these macaws, there is not a single mention of Nores and Yzurieta study, by far, the most extensive study ever made in this region of Bolivia. They also say the species was “rediscovered in 1992” – but had they read Nores and Yzurieta work, they would have known the species was abundant by the year 1989, when our friends made their survey.

I could take you in a two day journey downriver by the Río Blanco, to a location in the jungle known locally by guarayo indians as the “dormidero”, or the “sleeping place”, an area of the jungle where they say ALL birds in the region gather to spend the night. In fact, every afternoon, when the sun is going down, you can see flocks of every species flying in that direction (northwest from our lodge). When we visited the place by the first time in 1987, we were amazed because the noise of millions of birds singing, chirping, or yelling, made it impossible to hear if somebody spoke at your side. You must yell directly into your friend's ear, for he to be able to hear you.

No way you could camp and sleep near the area. The noise makes it impossible, and too a long stay there could drive you crazy. The region is almost uninhabited, and you could navigate for several hours in a motor boat and find just two or three shacks in a full day's trip.

But the amount of these “blue throated macaws” is not 50-100 as the website report states, but they are in the order of several thousands – only in our region, where we can see hundreds of them (they are hard to mistake with other macaws, because their greenish-blue throat) flying every afternoon over our heads towards their sleeping site. I guess some ornithologists could be downplaying the number of birds they see, or most probably are getting their estimates by the means of “projections” on the number of birds sighted in some specific day. Anyhow, the website is still terrific.

Mr. Chips

04-24-04, 09:40 PM

Some small talk is nice, gets us more in tune with our shared agreements rather than disagreements and it is good to establish that we are all on the same side, all us humans, but that last post of yours was entirely off subject.

Do you have access to any of the evidence that Dr. Edwards used to draw the conclusion that biological magnification of DDT does not happen?

Edufer

04-25-04, 01:14 PM

In fact, both of us are entirely out of subject, as "weeds elimination" is the subject.

I think my post was not entirely out of "our" topic, as you mentioned birds extinctions, and I told about some work we did about macaw endangered species, showing a good website that gives incorrect information – at least on the macaw species known by me, and seen by me that there are much more than they claim. If this happened on macaws in Bolivia, then it could happen in other species too, perhaps in a global scale.

It follows that it could be that the number of bird species in the verge of extinction is not as high as they claim. The next consequence of seeing inexactitudes in claims, is that some species claimed extinct could not be extinct, but merely moved to other environment, or most probably, they were not even a species at all, but a work of “splitters”, seeing species where there are not but simple differences in feather colors, distribution of colors, etc.

As to Dr. Laws works, I have tied to get the studies, but they are not online. As I live in Argentina I have not access to the US Department of Agriculture where Dr. Laws worked, nor to Archives of Environmental Health, whose old editions are not in internet. Perhaps getting in touch with Dr. J. Gordon Edwards, in San José University could be a way of getting your hands on Dr. Laws study, or through the US US Department of Agriculture.

Also, there are studies made by renown Dr. Wayland Hayes dating back from 1956 (“Effects of Known Repeated Oral Doses,” Journal of the American Medical Association, Vol. 162, pp. 890-896), giving reports of human volunteers ingesting 35 mmg of DDT during a period ranging from 21 to 27 months, without observing deleterious effects then – nor after 30 years of the experiment. It has been medically established that DDT is metabolized in the liver and discarded in urine, and there is no significant “biological magnification”.

Regarding the DDT action on thinning eggshells, Rachel Carson based her 1962 claim in Dr. James De Witt experiment on quails and pheasants, back in 1956, published in the Journal of Agriculture and Food Chemistry. Here is the table from DeWitt study, and you can see there is something that does not match between observed results and Carson’s claims:

<CENTER>Table 3EFFECTS OF DDT ON REPRODUCTION OF QUAIL AND PHEASANT<TABLE width="90%" border="1" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="2" bgcolor="#80ffff" bordercolor="#ff0000"><TR><TD align="center">               
Level in diet              
</TD><TD align="center">            
</TD><TD align="center">            
</TD><TD align="center">                                       % Chlcken surviving                                         at end of</TD></TR></TABLE><TABLE width="90%" border="1" cellspacing="1" cellpadding="4" bgcolor="#ffffff" bordercolor="#ff0000"><TR><TD bgcolor="#ffff00" align="center">In winter (ppm)</TD><TD bgcolor="#ffff00" align="center">During reproduction (ppm) </TD><TD bgcolor="#ffff00" align="center"> Number of blrds </TD><TD bgcolor="#ffff00" align="center"> Mortality </TD><TD bgcolor="#ffff00" align="center"> Eggs/hen (Average) </TD><TD bgcolor="#ffff00" align="center"> Hatch </TD><TD bgcolor="#ffff00" align="center"> 2 weeks </TD><TD bgcolor="#ffff00" align="center"> 6 weeks </TD></TR><TR><TD align="center"> Quail</TD></TR><TR> <TD align="center"> 0 (control)</TD><TD align="center"> 0 (control)</TD>
<TD align="center"> 32 </TD><TD align="center"> 6.25</TD><TD align="center"> 52 </TD><TD align="center"> 83.9</TD><TD align="center"> 88.9</TD><TD align="center"> 83.3</TD></TR><TR>
<TD align="center"> 100</TD><TD align="center"> 0 </TD><TD align="center"> 8 </TD><TD align="center"> 0 </TD><TD align="center"> 61 </TD>
<TD align="center"> 75.7</TD><TD align="center"> 86.2</TD><TD align="center"> 64.3</TD></TR><TR><TD align="center"> 100</TD><TD align="center"> 100</TD><TD align="center"> 12 </TD><TD align="center"> 25.0</TD><TD align="center"> 65 </TD><TD align="center"> 75.3</TD><TD align="center"> 67.7</TD><TD align="center"> 7.1</TD></TR><TR><TD align="center"> 0 </TD><TD align="center"> 200</TD><TD align="center"> 12 </TD><TD align="center"> 25.0</TD><TD align="center"> 55 </TD><TD align="center"> 80.0</TD><TD align="center"> 32.3</TD><TD align="center"> 12.9</TD></TR><TR> <TD align="center"> Pheasants</TD></TR><TR><TD align="center">0 (control)</TD><TD align="center">0 (control)</TD><TD align="center">28 </TD><TD align="center">0 </TD><TD align="center">48 </TD><TD align="center">57.4</TD><TD align="center">94.8</TD><TD align="center">89.7</TD></TR><TR> <TD align="center">0</TD><TD align="center">50</TD><TD align="center">10</TD><TD align="center">0</TD><TD align="center">31</TD><TD align="center">58.6</TD><TD align="center">100</TD><TD align="center">86.0</TD></TR><TR> <TD align="center">50</TD><TD align="center">50</TD><TD align="center">10</TD><TD align="center">0</TD><TD align="center">18</TD><TD align="center">80.6</TD><TD align="center">100</TD><TD align="center">93.3</TD></TR><TR><TD align="center">0</TD>
<TD align="center">100</TD><TD align="center">10</TD><TD align="center">0</TD><TD align="center">19</TD><TD align="center">52.0</TD><TD align="center">100</TD><TD align="center">82.4</TD></TR></TABLE> Source: James DeWilt, Joumel of Agricultursl and Food Chemistry, 1956. </center> <BLOCKQUOTE>These is the published data from which Carson characterized the guail and pheasants fed DDT by stating falsely: "... few of the eggs hatched. " The dosage given to the quail was 100 parts per million DDT in all their food every day – about 3,000 times the daily DDT intake of humans during the years of greatest DDT use.

We should acknowledge that there are many studies on both sides of the issue that deserves careful attention and investigation on how these studies were conducted, because DDT is of such importance for fighting malaria, West Nile virus, dengue, yellow fever, and many more insect borne diseases.

Then there is the “circumstantial evidence” (if we could call it that way) about the US Department of Agriculture confirming the results on human exposure to DDT (E.R. Laws, A. Curley, and F.J. Biros, 1967 Environmental health, Vol. 15, pp. 76-775) and Editorial in Agricultural Age, Dec.1983. In Pulikhanuri, Afghanistan, where the population was 5000 before DDT use, it went up to 20,000 in few years. Madagascar population, as an example, doubled from 1947 to 1960, when it had been stationary during previous decades. This is the main problem with DDT, as seen by environmentalists: it contributes to the population explosion, but they had to resort to scaring people from alleged harmful effects on the environment and man for pushing its ban.

I will tell you something that I have been doing since January 1996, (I told this several times in the past in sciforums) after I got rid of a malignant prostate cancer (radiation by lineal accelerator - 5 days of whole-body low doses exposures (for strengthening the immune system) followed by 30 sessions of highly localized irradiation of high level doses, for killing cancer cells. After that, I followed Prof. Gordon Edwards’ example (in his annual opening class on entomology, during the last 30 years) he ingests in front of his students a spoonful of DDT for showing how harmless it is. So I have been ingesting a solution of DDT (15 mg a day) since then, with the following medical results: the prostate gland is smaller than it was in 1995, my prostatic antigen level was kept around 0.1- to 0.8, when a normal level for my age (66) would be above 10.0