May Their Plane Go Down In The Andes*

Insufferable Twits 43 Comments

To that end…

… the [Canadian Cancer Society] is holding a conference starting today at which it has assembled experts to advise it on whether cosmetic-pesticide restrictions, which now exist in Ontario, Quebec and many municipalities, should be followed by tougher action against the use of the sprays in agriculture.

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43 Replies to “May Their Plane Go Down In The Andes*”

  2. Social Enginerring, they are on the front line. Still waiting for the cure, the crickets chirp….

  3. If a ban on agricultural chemicals is implemeted about all that will be available to eat is roots….organic of course. Hand picked by virgins.
    And what about imported foodstuffs? Will they have the same no-pesticide rule applied to them before they are allowed on Canadian soil? Hell no.
    Does it make sense to cripple your own industry with regulations and allow China-crap in laced with Lord knows what.

  4. First energy and now the activists want to mess around with the stability of the food supply. Great idea. I can’t see how anything could possibly go wrong with that. These guys must really hate the world’s poor. Modern farmers can protect themselves with better handling and safety procedures but the poor old villager in Africa will be SOL. I guess it’s one way to the greenies dream of a “sustainable” population.

  5. What they don’t want to admit is that you cannot have your cake and eat it. If you want to reduce pesticide use in agriculture then you’d better find a way to provide farmers with a source of low-income workers, and lot’s of them.
    If you don’t, then food will get much more expensive. I don’t view that as a big problem myself, but the left will.

  6. I wonder if any of the scientists have calculated the trade-off in fewer cancer deaths compared to increased starvation deaths? I mean, the ignorance of the average urban dweller is amazing. How do they think Western agriculture doubled and tripled food production to the point where we not only feed ourselves but every Starvin’ Marvin in Africa? I guess it’s the same morons who do the 100 mile diet.

  7. I heard about this on the radio this morning. I was disgusted. I will not subscribe to their next $100 lottery. I will now go over to their web site and tell them.

  9. From Junkscience.com I’ve read that Japan uses 4 times the amount of pesticides that the U.S. uses. My own addition to this is that Japan is praised by Western greens etc. as a role model for long life and healthy living. Doesn’t this mean that the Cancer Society et al. are demonstrably full of it?

  11. The Green Revolution is here to stay, and fiddling around with it, especially now, won’t get much traction methinks. We rely on pesticides and fertilizers, as others have intimated, and that’s the way it is.
    Remember how the environment used to be the #1 election issue? Nobody bothered to even pay it lip service in the US election. Everyone is worried about their jobs, their retirement money, their future.
    Man, I just wish I could worry about BS stuff again, my life would be a lot easier.

  14. Can anyone say, “Falling dominos”?
    Farmers throughout Canada have been worried as hell that bans on cosmetic use of pesticides would be the opening gun on a war against pesticide use in general. Anyone with more than a couple of brain cells could see it coming.
    I’m with Kate. May their plane go down in the Andes, and I would add, “And may they never be found.”

  15. Exactly why I continue to refuse to donate to the Canadian Cancer Society. Long ago the light finally came on this my donations were not helping cancer patients as much as they were paying for junkets for a bunch of control junkies.

  16. DaninVan, I don’t trust Monsanto anymore than the other special interest groups. But there is a place for properly applied and proven chemicals. Without Roundup I don’t know what I would do. Ever try to rid a field of quack grass without deep plowing it a dozen times? 😛
    but yes Orthene, nasty stuff.. expensive, extremely hard to apply, and doesn’t even work worth sh!t, but out of desperation I was forced to try it twice, from fear of loosing 900 Saskatoon seedlings and 4 years hard work. It was a hard choice but can you blame me? After loosing 50% of my plantings anyhow I’ve concluded I’m better off just charging more later and using “organic” as a marketing tool. Unfortunately others whose livelihood depends on wheat, barely, etc. they don’t have much choice. Who would pay extra for those and who would market them?

  18. 2,4-D has been around for a long time and has allowed much more efficient production of cereals to be achieved. Here is the title and abstract of an article which studied workers that produced it — guess what, there fewer deaths overall compared to the general population. By the way this is only one of many articles and reviews which show the same thing.
    Occup Environ Med 2001;58:24-30 ( January )
    Mortality in chemical workers potentially exposed to 2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4-D) 1945-94: an update
    C J Burnsa, K K Beardb, J B Cartmilla
    a Department of Epidemiology, The Dow Chemical Company, 1803 Building, Midland, MI 48674, USA, b Department of Industrial Hygiene
    Correspondence to: Dr C J Burns cburns@dow.com
    Accepted 1 September 2000
    OBJECTIVETo update and add to a previously identified cohort of employees potentially exposed to the herbicide 2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4-D). The putative association between 2,4-D and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma has been debated for more than a decade.
    METHODS Cohort members were male employees of The Dow Chemical Company who manufactured or formulated 2,4-D any time from 1945 to the end of 1994. Their mortality experience was compared with national rates and with more than 40 000 other company employees who worked at the same location.
    RESULTS 330 Deaths were observed among 1517 people compared with 365 expected (standardised mortality ratio (SMR)=0.90, 95% confidence interval (95% CI) 0.81 to 1.01). There were no significantly increased SMRs for any of the causes of death analyzed. When compared with the United States rates, the SMR for non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma (NHL) was 1.00 (95% CI 0.21 to 2.92). The internal comparison with other Dow employees showed a non-significant relative risk of 2.63, (95% CI 0.85 to 8.33). Death was attributed to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) for three cohort members. Compared with the other company employees, the relative risk was 3.45 (95% CI 1.10 to 11.11). The cases were employed in the manufacture or formulation of 2,4-D at different periods (1947-9, 1950-1, and 1968-86), and for varying durations of time (1.3, 1.8, and 12.5 years).
    CONCLUSIONThere was no evidence of a causal association between exposure to 2,4-D and mortality due to all causes and total malignant neoplasms. No significant risk due to NHL was found. Although not an initial hypothesis, an increased relative risk of ALS was noted. This finding is unsupported by other animal and human studies.
    Keywords: 2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid; phenoxy herbicide; occupation; non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma

  19. I ignore anything from the cancer society as they are irrevocably wedded to linear no-threshold models of carcinogenesis which have been proven to be false. The cancer society seems to have never heard of hormesis even though experimental evidence for hormesis is getting stronger every year.
    A linear no-threshold model assumes that a chemical is carcinogenic regardless of the dose and that is how one gets the estimates of “radiation induced cancers” from Chernobyl. When one looks at very low dose exposures to either carcinogens or radiation, one gets a U-shaped curve where very low doses behave quite differently than high doses. In the case of radiation, living at sea level is associated with a higher risk of developing cancer than if one lives at say 8000′ altitude. Radiation hormesis has also been shown in studies of low-dose radon exposure.
    If we have evidence that pesticides are carcinogenic at some high dose, then the extremely low doses found on produce should protect against cancer. Herbicide hormesis has been observed in plants where very low doses of herbicides stimulate growth.
    Unfortunately people who are attracted to “environmental” and “public health” causes seem to be incapable of concieving of anything more complex than simple linear relationships. Biology is far more complex than the cancer societies simple linear models and I’ll take the results of properly performed toxicology studies over flawed epidemiologic studies anyday. Mathematical ecology is a fascinating and highly non-linear system which has little relationship to the romanticized view of nature held by self-styled “ecologists”.
    Epidemiologic studies just show correlation which, more often than not, is spurious. If the cancer society wanted to do something usefull it could start advertising the benefits of taking vitamin D3 supplements in a country where huge numbers of city dwellers are vitamin D deficient (and thus more susceptible to a host of cancers) as a result of hysteria over skin cancer prevention.

  20. Most urbanites consider weed killers to be pesticides. Roundup , the most common and heavily used herbicide can be injested by humans with no adverse effect. It systemically kills plants by stopping their ability to carry water and nutrients from the roots to the upper plant. It disrupts the circulation system!
    2-4D was developed as a fertilizer for corn and in small concentrations will make plants grow rapidly. In stronger concentrations the plant overgrows and ruptures killing most broadleaf weeds.
    Farmers use very few pesticides but tons of herbicides which most urban dwellers use 2-4D {killex} to stem the tide of yellow lawns which is pretty
    harmless and has little or no residule effect.

  21. Silent Spring is no longer because we stopped wholesale use of DDT here in Canada.
    I am sure everyone has noticed that the Canada Geese have come back. Kate may not realise because the first free flying loose Canada Geese I ever saw was in Wascana Park in Regina in 1965. It was such a novelty that I wasted a roll of slide film on them. They have now repopulated the continent with some chagrin by many.
    Has anyone noticed all the hawks out there. They almost disappeared too. Someone recently decried the dearth of Red Winged Blackbirds. Blame that on the hawks perhaps.
    I am pleased that some are questioning the use of chemicals but let us not throw out the baby with the bathwater. The ban on DDT payed off here in Canada but perhaps not in the malarial swamps of the tropics. Some cities and towns are tackling a problem that may not exist and are wasting our tax dollars. I would ask that they know and understand the problem before acting so irrationally.

  23. Agree with Kate. Hope plane goes down in the Andes BUT I hope they all survive and wind up eating each other. In a healthy way of course. On the same subject…There will never be a cure for cancer as it would be a absolute disaster of the Pharmaceuticals who make billions every year pushing cancer related medicines. What there may be hope for is 3 pills (expensive of course) a day to keep the cancer in check. All Pharmaceuticals are on the stock market. Stock markets only purpose is to make money for investors. Who would be stupid enough to throw away billions with the developement of a one shot cure ??. Not in our lifetime.

  24. Can we at least agree to stop referring to herbicides as “pesticides”? I think the frightened, bumbling intelligensia of Toronto keeps confusing 2,4-D with malathion, and I feel their fear. Instead of banning everything out of ignorance, perhaps we can take this one small step toward clearing up all the consumer confusion.

  25. Can we at least agree to stop referring to herbicides as “pesticides”? I think the frightened, bumbling intelligentsia of Toronto keeps confusing 2,4-D with malathion, and I feel their fear. Instead of banning everything out of ignorance, perhaps we can take this one small step toward clearing up all the consumer confusion.

  27. Question: Why has the average life span increased so dramatically the last fifty years or so?
    Heavens ! we should not be making mid twenties with all the man-made harm out there !
    Pesticides
    Carbon Dioxide
    Bottled water
    Preservatives
    Global Warming
    Antibiotics
    Growth hormones
    Chemical fertilizer
    Sun tans
    Microwaves
    Chlorine
    DDT
    Genetic enhancement
    Ozone
    Mad cow

  28. This “plane go down in the Andes” thing is just a little over the top. Kate could surely come up with something a little less graphic, no?

  29. Over the top, eh ? How many millions would an agricultural crop protection ban starve to death !?
    If Farmers are not allowed to use crop protection chemicals, do you know who will eat your food before it even leaves the field ?
    Grasshoppers
    Fungi
    Viruses
    Weeds
    Army Worms

  30. hoarfrost – not too sure about your claims regarding ddt, my dad said the goose hunting around Kerrobert in the 60’s was amazing. “nothing like now” as in the 80’s & 90’s. According to an environmental tech that I hunt with the vast majority of geese nest in the Arctic NOT in the lower climes across the prairies. Also, he says that Ducks Unlimited has had more to do with the recovery of birds than anything. All they’ve been doing is improving nesting habitat by increasing the “safe” zone around water bodies since ducks in particular will nest 800-1000m from the shore! (hey I didn’t know that til this fall either). The recovery of the duck pop is a result of the PHYSICAL protection of nesting sites!

  31. Have you ever seen a forest that a bazillion army worms just went through? Stripped bare everywhere. Couple of weeks and it’s all bare.
    Weird to see in the summer; almost all the trees bare of leaves, save for a few they don’t touch.
    None replaced their leaves that year.
    Was in a forest fully infested with them and you can actually hear them eating! Must have umbrella or some form of head shoulder covering, as they drop on your left right and center.
    What a stupid idea, to me it’s like not using vaccinations for your child(ren).
    When oh when, can we ban stupidity.

  32. A local interest group brought this issue up in the municipal debates. And what a public service that was. What quicker way to establish which of my potential representatives is friggin’ nuts?
    Freedom of speech: it makes it easier to spot the idiots.

  33. N. American Cancer rates are higher than elsewhere. So are allergy rates. Cancer is but gene mutation. The human body is being bombarded with chemicals that it has only had to face in the last century or so. Evolution is a slow process. Genes are mutating.
    Countries that use less chemicals in food production have lower cancer rates. The EU is rather sensibly watching the North American experiment with GM food from afar. In the UK, premium food providers are actively trying to remove pesticides completely from food production (M and S).
    Japan has the highest rate of aggressive no-cure cancers.
    Keep blaming the CCS for trying to point out the linkages of things you don’t want to see. Some like attributing cancer to increased lifespans, conveniently ignoring hte growing incidence of virtually every type of cancer in the younger population. These are inconvenient truths.
    Genes and cells mutate when they are subjected to chemicals. It really is that simple.

  35. As a worker in the Cancer treatment field, I think some here are missing the point when they are declairing they will not donate to the CCS because “paying for junkets for a bunch of control junkies.” While it is true that there are some “control junkies” who will try to marry their ideology (i.e. greenie) to their jobs, most of the Cancer Society’s donations actually go to good use. Don’t let the social engineers deter your support. There are over 200 types of cancer and there is never going to be one magic pill or cure for all.
    One can always direct their donation towards a specific target like a new machine, building fund or a research project.

  36. The vast majority of people refuse to buy any fruits or vegetables in the store that have blemishes on them.
    Because as we all know, Mother Nature only produces perfect products all the time.
    I think some people really, really need to spend
    a summer in a garden or orchard to see the reality of growing food.
    And the world population has gone from 4 billion in 1975 to over 6 billion now.
    So the farmers are doing something right.

  38. “Exactly why I continue to refuse to donate to the Canadian Cancer Society. Long ago the light finally came on this my donations were not helping cancer patients as much as they were paying for junkets for a bunch of control junkies.”
    How much has been wasted on the ongoing recreational fad of bullying and harrassing smokers ad nauseam? Smoking rates have proven this approach to be almost useless. However, many rely on this unrelenting “war on tobacco” to provide a very good income.
    As with most things in life … follow the money.

  39. “In terms of any risk, health risk, Health Canada will only approve pesticides that do not pose a health risk, provided that the label directions are followed,” said Connie Moase, a director in the Pest Management Regulatory Agency, Health Canada’s watchdog.
    But pesticide opponents, including some respected public-health groups, argue that pesticides are strong poisons designed to kill if used as directed. They contend that Health Canada and industry play down research linking occupational exposures to bug and weed sprays..”
    Since these pesticide opponents don’t believe the arms of government which are responsible for our safety why shouldn’t we down size these govt departments and agencies completely. What’s the use- might as well save our taxpayer dollars…
    They insist we have a nanny state to “look after us” and then ignore them when they don’t like what they hear.

  41. RACHEAL CARSON lied about DDT it was not harming the birds and we wouldnt have WEST NILE VIRUS now if we still used it

  42. “Since these pesticide opponents don’t believe the arms of government which are responsible for our safety ”
    The problem may well be that people realized the “experts” don’t know what the hell they are talking about. Coffee was bad, then good. Eggs were bad, then good. Butter was bad , then good. Impending Ice age, now global warming.Arctic ice expanding, arctic melting.On and on and on.All by “experts”. All these studies are about as valid as the studies on second hand smoke. In other words…all bullshit. Thats why “experts” love computer simulations. Garbage in…Garbage out. Just keep those grants going. They stop as soon as you say”everything is fine”. Dr.Spock was a “expert” on raising children. His son commited suicide. “experts will never replace common sense.

  43. Organic farmers make more money per capita than non. That’s the truth. And spraying crops is less work. I know of organic farmers. It’s more work but can be done. Keep promoting chemicals and Europe and other contries will ban our food like they did with Mad Cow. There is still Mad Cow in Alberta. Be careful we don’t get cut out of export markets. Another example is Country of Origin labels your American buddies brought in.

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