Pesticide-Superweed Treadmill Hot Topic at Chemists Convention

Rady Ananda 
Activist Post   09/09/2013 

Superweeds are dominating the discussion at the American Chemical Society (ACS) symposium, being held in Indianapolis through Sept. 12. Not surprisingly, the solutions proposed include different toxic brews in tandem with stacked genetic traits in a never-ending chemical arms race with Mother Nature.

Currently, 218 different plant species are herbicide resistant, two dozen specifically resistant to glyphosate, the killing agent in Monsanto’s Roundup, Bayer’s Garden, Syngenta’s Touchdown, and in Dow’s Durango. It’s used ubiquitously on lawns, gardens and farmland. Superweeds infest over 14 million acres in the US.

Though superweeds have been a growing problem for several decades (with the advent of chemical farming), the transition to genetically modified crops and the requisite reliance on glyphosate has turbocharged the problem. Chemist Harry Strek of Bayer CropScience explains:

Beginning in the mid-to-late-1990s, crops containing genetically-engineered glyphosate resistance exploded onto the market and rapidly became the dominant and then the only weed control measure in the majority of American cotton, soybean, and corn crops. The number of alternative products used for weed control dropped significantly and resulted in a high level of selection pressure for resistance.”

ACS member Bryan Young disagrees. “We must remember that herbicides or herbicide resistant crop traits don’t create herbicide-resistant weeds.”

Young must have missed those classes explaining how bio-resistance works. Repeated use of the same class of pesticides to control a pest (whether weed or insect) can lead to artificial selection for pesticide resistance in the gene pool. Those whose genes allow them to survive the pesticide reproduce. It’s simple and undeniable. You wouldn’t have herbicide resistant superweeds without herbicides.

Citing a recent study out of the University of Washington, filmmaker Zofia Hausman told me, “Herbicides do in fact create herbicide resistant weeds!” In the final stages of production, the documentary, The Agtivists, should be released Spring 2014.

WHO Refuses to Publish Report on Cancers and Birth Defects in Iraq Caused by Depleted Uranium Ammunition

By Denis Halliday

Global Research, September 13, 2013

The World Health Organisation (WHO)  has categorically refused in defiance of its own mandate to share evidence uncovered in Iraq that US military use of Depleted Uranium and other weapons have not only killed many civilians, but continue to result in the birth of deformed babies.

This issue was first brought to light in 2004 in a WHO expert report “on the long-term health of Iraq’s civilian population resulting from depleted uranium (DU) weapons”. This earlier report was “held secret”, namely suppressed by the WHO:

The study by three leading radiation scientists cautioned that children and adults could contract cancer after breathing in dust containing DU, which is radioactive and chemically toxic. But it was blocked from publication by the World Health Organization (WHO), which employed the main author, Dr Keith Baverstock, as a senior radiation advisor. He alleges that it was deliberately suppressed, though this is denied by WHO. (See Rob Edwards, WHO ‘Suppressed’ Scientific Study Into Depleted Uranium Cancer Fears in Iraq,  The Sunday Herald, February 24, 2004)

Almost nine years later,  a joint WHO- Iraqi Ministry of Health Report on cancers and birth defect in Iraq was to be released in November 2012. “It has been delayed repeatedly and now has no release date whatsoever.”

To this date the WHO study remains “classified”.

According to Hans von Sponeck, former Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations,

“The US government sought to prevent the WHO from surveying areas in southern Iraq where depleted uranium had been used and caused serious health and environmental dangers.” (quoted in Mozhgan Savabieasfahani Rise of Cancers and Birth Defects in Iraq: World Health Organization Refuses to Release Data, Global Research, July 31, 2013

This tragedy in Iraq reminds one of US Chemical Weapons used in Vietnam. And that the US has failed to acknowledge or pay compensation or provide medical assistance to thousands of deformed children born and still being born due to American military use of Agent Orange throughout the country.

The millions of gallons of this chemical dumped on rural Vietnam were eagerly manufactured and sold to the Pentagon by companies Dupont, Monsanto and others greedy for huge profits.

Given the US record of failing to acknowledge its atrocities in warfare, I fear those mothers in Najaf and other Iraqi cities and towns advised not to attempt the birth of more children will never receive solace or help.

A United Nations that is no longer corrupted by the five Permanent Members of the Security Council is what is needed.

How Genetic Engineering May Have Created E. Coli Outbreak

June 27, 2011    Institute of Science in Society 

Greatly assisted horizontal gene transfer and recombination turned previously harmless bacteria into dangerous pathogens Dr. Mae-Wan Ho

Rapid decoding in the new scientific commons

The E. coli O104:H4 genome was rapidly decoded within days of the initial outbreak in Germany by Beijing Genomics Institute (BGI)’s third generation technologies, and the raw data promptly uploaded to a public database (ftp://ftp.genomics.org.cn/pub/Ecoli_TY-2482) so geneticists all over the world could analyse and annotate the sequences and share their findings quickly in a new scientific commons on the internet.

It was clear that the outbreak E. coli O104:H4 is a new strain with a genome size of about 5.2 Mbp (million basepairs), which unusually, has both the properties of enteroaggregative E. coli (EAEC) that cause diarrhoea and enterohaemolytic E. coli (EHEC) that cause haemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS, or bloody urine), along with resistance to the widest range of antibiotics [1].

The outbreak strain is most similar to EAEC 55989, previously isolated in the Central African Republic from an HIV-positive adult, and since emerged as a major cause of diarrhoea in children and adults worldwide [2].  EAEC carry small extra units of genetic material called plasmids; the German outbreak strain has the typical plasmid genes of EAEC bacteria, as well as the Shiga toxin genes of EHEC carried on prophage (genome of bacteria virus) integrated in the bacterial chromosome.

Rampant horizontal gene transfer

Preliminary analyses using an algorithm that searches for protein similarity to define genes based on known proteins in E. coli and other bacteria, detected 6327 genes in all, 6156 coding for proteins and 171 coding for ribosomal and tRNA.

Of the proteins identified, 33 genes are toxins, 3 suspected haemolysins (proteins causing haemolysis), a putative hemolysin expression modulating protein, and a channel protein of hemolysin III family. In addition, 31 predicted genes are related to specific antibiotic resistance: beta-lactamic, aminoglycoside, macrolide, polymyxin, tetracycline, fosfomycin and deoxycholate, novobiocin, chloramphenicol, bicyclomycin, norfloxacin and enoxacin and 6-mercaptopurine [3]. The strain is also rich in adhesion, secretion systems, pathogenicity and virulence related proteins. It seems to have a restriction-modification system, many proteins involved in Fe transport and utilization (siderophores as aerobactin and enterobactin), lysozyme, one inhibitor of pancreatic serine proteases, proteins involved in anaerobic respiration, antimicrobial peptides, proteins involved in quorum sensing and biofilm formation that could confer competitive advantage to the strain. There are genes for tellurium resistance and resistance to other metals including mercury, nickel, copper, zinc and cobalt, and more than 170 phage proteins.

The proteins are from all major classes of E. coli, pathogenic and otherwise, and at least 21 bacteria of other genera. Most of the proteins (2810) are from E. coli O26:H11 (strain 11368/EHEC), while the second largest contribution (1166) are from E.coli O44:H18 (strain 042/EAEC). Only 51 proteins are recognizably from E. coli K12, the laboratory strain originating from the original ‘wild-type’ isolate, a harmless strain. Other bacteria with major contributions include Salmonella typhi (54 proteins), Yersinia pestis (29 proteins), Shigella dysenteriae  (16 proteins) S. flexneri (20 proteins), S. boydii (9 proteins) and Bacillus cereus.

Judging from the fact that only 51 of 6156 proteins in the outbreak strain are identified with E. coli K12, the degree of divergence from the harmless ‘wild-type’ is more than 99 percent, and much of that could be due to horizontal gene transfer.