-Caveat Lector- [HardGreenHerald] # 9 "Unless someone like you cares a whole lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not." --Dr. Seuss, 'The Lorax' --A RadTimes production-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Contents: --------------- --Rocketdyne's Radioactive Rock & Roll --Industrial farming practices spread disease and concern --Genetically Modified To Kill Its Own --Selling tiger parts - real and fake --Forum on Human Cloning Turns Raucous --Human clone lab is in Caesarea --Senator Calls For Moratorium On Livestock and Meat Imports =================================================================== Rocketdyne's Radioactive Rock & Roll Protesters gathered last week at the gates of Rocketdyne's Santa Susana Field Laboratory as trucks rolled out, hauling 14,000 tons of radioactivity-contaminated soil from the military contractor's site above the San Fernando Valley to a dump in Kern County. Over residents' objections, the Department of Health Services had approved dumping the hot soil at a landfill near Buttonwillow, a town heavily populated by migrant workers. Two years ago, Health Services objected when Buttonwillow received radioactive waste from an old Manhattan Project bomb facility in New York state, saying the gunk should go to a licensed facility. Now the department has reversed position, declaring that radioactive waste can go anywhere - a municipal trash dump, a chemical-waste facility - as long as its radiation dosage is calculated at less than 25 millirem per year, the equivalent of 170 additional chest X-rays over a lifetime. That level is estimated to increase the cancer risk to one death for every 1,000 people exposed - a standard about 1,000 times more lax than is permitted for other carcinogens, the nuclear-watchdog group Committee To Bridge the Gap says. The Kettleman city dump refused the Rocketdyne shipment, but Buttonwillow let it through. Rocketdyne's own tests showed that seven out of eight radionuclides in the Rocketdyne soil emitted radiation above normal background levels. One radionuclide, plutonium 238, was measured at 13.5 times the background level. Health officials and Rocketdyne portrayed the radiation as negligible. "We live, whether we like it or not, in a sea of radiation," Health Services official Robert Gregor said. The soil also contains PCBs, dioxin, mercury and the highly toxic rocket-fuel oxidizer perchlorate. The dumping is expected to continue for up to five months. "The trucks have started rolling out of Rocketdyne, creating the precedent for free release of radioactive material throughout the state," said Dan Hirsch, president of Committee To Bridge the Gap. "If you thought deregulation of electricity hurt California, just wait until you see the consequences of deregulating radioactive waste." -Michael Collins "We're all downwinders!" Check out http://www.downwinders.org =================================================================== Industrial farming practices spread disease and concern <http://www.enn.com/news/enn-stories/2001/03/03102001/suzuki_42404.asp> Saturday, March 10, 2001 By David Suzuki Burning pyres of dead animals are once again dotting the British countryside as the nation is gripped in another livestock crisis. This time it's foot-and-mouth disease, and across the water Europe is holding its breath, hoping the highly contagious illness does not get a foothold on its shores. It's a chilling reminder of the BSE epidemic that swept through Britain just a few years ago. Unlike BSE, foot-and-mouth disease is not dangerous to humans, but it is highly contagious and devastating to cattle, pigs and sheep. So far, North America has been spared this sort of disaster. Foot-and-mouth disease has not been reported in Canada since the 1950s, and there has never been a reported case of BSE in the country. But intensive, industrial farming practices that gave rise to the outbreak of BSE and have likely contributed to the spread of foot-and-mouth disease clearly show the need to reform the way we produce and consume meat. Cattle in Britain likely developed BSE because they were fed the rendered carcasses of dead sheep that were infected with the disease known as scrapie. The public was told that this was not a problem because scrapie did not infect cattle. Eventually, however, those cattle developed BSE, which spread because infected cattle were, in turn, rendered into food for other cattle. Then the public was told that BSE was not a problem because it did not infect humans until people began to die from variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, a human version of BSE. In continental Europe, leaders insisted their nations were BSE-free, a claim that was later disproved. Now they are insisting again that their beef is safe, but that assertion is questionable given that there is no reliable way to test live animals to see if they are harboring the disease. North American regulations prevent cattle from being fed to other cattle (although enforcement is difficult), but other questionable practices in the meat industry continue. As Eric Schlosser points out in his new book "Fast Food Nation," dead pigs, horses and poultry are still fed to cattle, along with sawdust, old newspapers and anything else that might contain a bit of cheap protein to help cattle pack on the pounds. Essentially, we've turned herbivores into carnivores. Furthermore, the continued use of antibiotics in cattle, pig, chicken and fish feed to increase growth rates and reduce infections has long been cited as a probable source of antibiotic resistance. I did a television program pointing out the hazards of using antibiotics in animal feed in 1975. Since then, the European Union has banned several antibiotics from animal feed and Denmark, Finland and Sweden have stopped using them as growth promoters. But a quarter of a century after my program, the practice is still widespread in many countries such as Canada and the United States. In January, Donald Kennedy, editor-in-chief of the prestigious journal Science, and Stanford University professor Stanley Falkow wrote an editorial in which they pointed out that "nearly half of all antibiotics used in the United States are fed to animals, and this practice continues despite a strong scientific consensus that it is a bad idea." In spite of scientific consensus, four years ago the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved use of fluoroquinolines in poultry, even though this class of antibiotics is extremely valuable in the fight against North America's most common forms of food-borne illnesses such as Campylobacter. By 1999, 30 percent of Campylobacter coli isolated from human patients showed resistance to fluoroquinolines. The continued use of these sorts of antibiotics in animal feed over time will reduce their effectiveness in humans and could eventually render them useless. Dealing with one crisis after another in livestock management without looking at overarching practices that may be leading to these crises is not acceptable practice, especially when it affects human health. It's time we had a good hard look at this industry. =================================================================== Genetically Modified To Kill Its Own Deadly fly to aid farm crops The Mirror, 10 March 2001 http://www.mirror.co.uk/ BRITISH scientists have developed the world's first unnatural born killer - a genetically modified fly that seeks out and destroys its own species. It will be used to wipe out the larvae of moths and flies which attack crops mirroring a story in cult sci-fi series The X-Files. Geneticist Dr Luke Alphey, who heads the project, said: "It's a bit like that episode where Mulder and Scully discover a swarm of bees used to spread an alien virus." The GM flies are created by inserting a normally fatal strand of DNA into insect eggs before adding an antidote. When the genetically modified swarm is released, the insects seek out a mate and unwittingly pass on the deadly gene to their young. With no antidote available in the wild, the next generation dies ensuring the eventual extinction of the species. Dr Alphey said: "The advantage is you can target one species very precisely because your killers will only mate with their own kind. "That means you can keep going until you get the last one and basically wipe them out. "At the same time, other species are not harmed as they could be by using chemical sprays so it is environmentally friendly."" Dr Alphey's project follows the American Sterile Insect Technique which releases billions of irradiated insects. The sterilised insects find mates but are unable to breed so the population is gradually reduced. The United States has used SIT to wipe out the cow-eating New World Screw Worm Fly across much of Central America. Dr Alphey's experiments on the harmless Drosophila fly have proved successful and the first pest on the hitlist is the cotton-eating bollworm larvae. His American colleagues will next month release a swarm of bollworm moths in Arizona modified to glow in the dark. Researchers will monitor their breeding patterns and movement before deciding whether to breed and release killer bollworm moths. =================================================================== Monday, March 12, 2001 Selling tiger parts - real and fake <http://inq.philly.com/content/inquirer/2001/03/12/national/TIGER12.htm> Experts are alarmed by China's busy and brazen trade in the endangered animals. By Michael Dorgan KNIGHT RIDDER NEWS SERVICE SHENZHEN, China - Buyers rarely prefer fake goods to real ones. But wildlife advocates hope that some of the things for sale here aren't real - body parts from one of the world's most endangered species. Tigers are fast disappearing from India's forests, and pieces of them appear to be ending up on the sidewalks of Shenzhen, a booming new city near Hong Kong. One recent afternoon, there were nearly 70 purported tiger paws and several dozen of what were said to be tiger penises for sale at several places in the city's central business district. Appearances can be deceiving, however. China is the world capital of counterfeiting, knocking off everything from software to CDs to sneakers, and wildlife experts say fake tiger parts have become common because real ones are highly prized for use in Chinese medicines and virility tonics. The sale of tiger parts is banned in China, as it is in most other countries. The fake tiger parts often are so well made that it takes laboratory tests to distinguish them from the real thing. Experts argue that selling them helps fuel a market for exotic animals that is pushing some species to extinction. They say China's failure to crack down on the sale of fake body parts reflects the government's lack of interest in protecting endangered species, and leaves intact a marketing network through which real parts also can be sold. "Some could be fake, and some could be real," said Allen Thornton, president of the Environmental Investigation Agency in New York, which promotes more vigorous enforcement of international agreements against trafficking in tigers and other endangered species. "Just the presence of such a large, open and brazen trade in one of the most endangered species in the whole world is obviously deeply alarming." Most of the tiger parts for sale in Shenzhen looked real, and some smelled real. But that could be because fake tiger paws often are made from real animal bone, tissue and fur. Fake tiger penises often are dried bull penises sculpted to resemble the real thing. Typically, one or two purported tiger paws or penises were laid out on a bright cloth on a sidewalk, sometimes alongside what the vendors claimed were rhinoceros horns and other parts of rare animals. Some merchants offered single-dose packets allegedly containing tiger bone and penis mixed with other ingredients for as little as 20 yuan, about $2.50. The asking price for a complete paw was 6,000 yuan, about $732. Almost every part of the tiger has value on the black market, especially the hides. But experts say tigers are hunted primarily for use in Chinese medicines and tonics. Tiger bones are used in wines and broths to treat rheumatism and other joint ailments. Eyes are made into pills that supposedly calm convulsions. Penises are cooked in soup that men believe bolsters their sexual stamina. It can sell for as much as $300 a bowl in China, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea or the United States, all major markets for tiger parts. Several of the more than two dozen sellers spotted in Shenzhen's downtown area identified themselves as Tibetan. Almost all the others appeared to be ethnic Tibetan as well. The merchants interviewed, all of whom refused to give their names, said their contraband goods had been smuggled from India into Tibet, a Himalayan region ruled by China. Tigers, which once roamed throughout the region, remain one of the most majestic symbols of Asia. But their population has been greatly reduced by hunting and loss of habitat. India is home to about half the estimated 5,000 tigers left in the wild, and its government has come under sharp criticism for not protecting its rapidly declining tiger population from poachers. Wildlife experts have warned that India's tigers could be wiped out in a few years if trafficking in body parts is not curtailed. One of the merchants in Shenzhen answered with a Chinese proverb when asked his thoughts about trafficking in an endangered species. "If you live next to the mountain, you eat the mountain," he said. "If you live next to the river, you eat the river. We are nomads in Tibet. We are dependent on the animals." Wan Ziming, the deputy director of the government's national agency for protecting endangered species, said his office had conducted numerous investigations into street-vendor sales of purported tiger parts and had always found them to be fakes. He said the sellers were all Tibetan and moved from city to city. They faced little risk of prosecution, he said, because of a glitch in China's endangered-species laws. It is illegal to sell pharmaceuticals in China that claim to contain tiger parts, whether or not those parts are included. But Wan said the law did not support prosecuting those who sell fake tiger parts. China has tough laws to protect tigers, but enforcement has slackened in the last few years despite major seizures of exotic animal parts in several provinces, said Thornton of the Environmental Investigation Agency. In bustling Shenzhen, everything seems to be for sale, often at bargain-basement prices. Tens of thousands of Hong Kong residents flock here each morning to buy furniture, food and clothing much more cheaply than they could across the border. Thousands more arrive at night to seek illicit pleasures in its discos and massage parlors, where designer drugs and commercial sex are cheap and bountiful. The city's thriving sex industry appears to be linked to its thriving trade in purported tiger parts. Several sellers said most buyers were Hong Kong men, many of whom might feel the need for a tonic after a long night or two in one of Shenzhen's pleasure palaces. ------- Michael Dorgan's e-mail address is [EMAIL PROTECTED] =================================================================== Saturday, March 10, 2001 Forum on Human Cloning Turns Raucous <http://www.latimes.com/news/science/science/20010310/t000021106.html> Europe: Doctors say they're forging ahead with plan to create children for clients. The idea draws criticism on ethical and scientific grounds. By RICHARD BOUDREAUX, Times Staff Writer ROME - In a scientific forum punctuated by shouting matches, three doctors from the United States, Italy and Israel told critics Friday that nothing can stop their plan to create cloned children and said that more than 600 infertile couples have already signed up with them. The would-be pioneers disclosed little new information about their semisecret project, announced six weeks ago, and spurned the idea of submitting to ethical or scientific oversight by any government. Instead, they spent four polemic-filled hours either belittling rival researchers and wary politicians or trying to convince them, and a skeptical public, that science is ready to move on to cloning humans despite a disturbing rate of disease and deformities in similarly reproduced animals. "Some claim that we're moving too fast. They are right," Dr. Avi Ben-Abraham, an American Israeli biotechnologist, told a packed lecture hall bristling with TV news cameras from around the world. "We are moving as fast as we can think, as fast as we can imagine, [but] we are proceeding with the utmost responsibility." The team is led by Dr. Severino Antinori of Italy, who has already pushed the boundaries of fertility treatment by helping women become pregnant in their late 50s and early 60s. He and Dr. Panayiotis M. Zavos, an American reproductive physiologist who has just left the University of Kentucky, announced their project Jan. 25, apparently becoming the first specialists in reproduction to publicly set the goal of cloning a human being. At Friday's forum in Rome, organized to publicize and advance the project, Ben-Abraham introduced himself as the third member of the team. He is a practitioner of cryonics, which involves freezing people at death in the hope that science will one day be able to afford them resurrection, and lost a race for Israel's parliament in 1999. Cloning is a process for creating a genetic twin of an individual. Scientists start with an egg cell, remove the egg's DNA, then insert DNA or even a whole cell from the adult being duplicated into the egg. When the process works, the egg cell begins dividing and grows into an embryo, which is then transferred to a natural or surrogate mother and grown to term, just the way human "test-tube" babies are produced at fertility clinics. In the four years since the arrival of Dolly, the famous sheep and the first cloned mammal, scientists have cloned cows, pigs, mice and other animals. But for every successful birth, they have lost dozens who fail to grow in the womb, don't survive birth or die soon after birth from deformities. Driven by fear of similar risks to human clones or ethical objections to the idea of reproducing humans in such a manner, many governments have moved to restrict or ban human cloning. Opposition echoed Friday inside and outside the narrow lecture hall at Umberto I Policlinic, Rome's largest hospital. "How can you take the destiny of the human race into your hands?" Fabrizia Pratesi, a leader of Italy's Green Party, asked from the audience. "No provocations, please," the moderator warned her. "Just scientific questions." "I'm going to be very provocative!" Pratesi shouted, seconds before her microphone went dead. "All the major organizations of human society oppose human cloning. It's unthinkable." The proceedings were disrupted again when a doctor in a white coat rose, over the moderator's objections, to read a disapproving letter from the head of the hospital's obstetrics and gynecology department. He branded the event "inopportune and reprehensible." Amid the disorder, a Harvard-educated scientist, Dr. Richard G. Seed, got up and said he wanted to clone his wife. Organizers of the forum had billed it as an ethical discussion that might help guide their work and would include participation by an unnamed Roman Catholic cardinal. No church official came, but Bishop Elio Sgreccia, head of the John Paul II Institute for Bioethics in Rome, assailed the project from a distance. "Those who made the atomic bomb went ahead in spite of knowing about its terrible destruction," he said from his office in Rome's Gemelli Hospital. "This doesn't mean it was the best choice for humanity." Antinori, the project leader, spent part of the question-and-answer session fending off such criticism. He shouted down visiting researchers and reporters who raised ethical questions about the project. Referring to opposition to cloning in Germany and Japan, he told a Japanese reporter: "Germany did horrible experiments during World War II, so they probably have a sense of guilt. Japan has psychological problems." The Italian fertility specialist and his colleagues tried to shift the focus of debate to the quiet desires of infertile couples. Zavos said they have received "thousands and thousands" of e-mail messages since their January announcement, and "99.9% of them are positive." Infertile couples in Japan, Argentina, Britain, the United States and elsewhere want to take part in the cloning effort, he said, and the list of volunteers is growing. "They come to us and they don't call you names, they don't cuss you out, they don't say, 'You're unethical,' " Zavos said, pacing the lecture hall like an evangelist giving a sermon. "They just say, 'Help me, please.' " The scientists said they would work only with couples who cannot bear children by other means. They said they expect to produce a viable embryo for cloning within 18 to 24 months but wouldn't disclose where they will set up their lab. Zavos said the group is looking at "around six countries," including some in Europe. He said the group has "unlimited" funding from unidentified private sources and would handle its own quality control. "We don't want the government involved in this project," he said. Other scientists argue that the results of animal cloning so far underscore the need for more research on animals before cloning is tried on humans. Dr. Ian Wilmut, for example, says he lost 28 embryos from 277 eggs before creating Dolly the sheep. On Friday, Zavos denounced Wilmut's method as "irresponsible," saying the Scottish scientist failed to screen his embryos properly before planting them in prospective mothers. Drawing on techniques used during the 23-year history of test-tube babies, Zavos said, his team is perfecting a screening method to identify which embryos will grow successfully and which are bound to fail. "Before Columbus reached America, a lot of shipwrecks took place," he said, acknowledging that there will be failures. But he said the failure rate should be in line with that of test-tube babies, one successful birth for every three or four tries. Dr. Robert P. Lanza, vice president of scientific development of Advanced Cell Technology Inc. in Worcester, Mass., which has cloned cows and goats, disputed the claim that Zavos and his team can screen for healthy embryos. "That's absolute nonsense. No one knows what's causing the problems, let alone how to screen for them," he said. The statement that embryos can be screened and the healthiest picked out "is insulting. The world's top cloning experts have spent years trying to do exactly that." =================================================================== Sunday, March 11, 2001 Human clone lab is in Caesarea <http://www3.haaretz.co.il/eng/scripts/article.asp?id=112970&wordd=cloning&mador=14&se=true&datee=3/11/01> The first cloned human baby is supposed to be born in Israel, says a Der Spiegel report to be published tomorrow. Italian gynecologist Severino Antinori, who has helped post-menopausal women conceive, is leading a team in Caesarea working on the human cloning project. Antinori has said a human would be cloned within a year. The Israeli member of the team, Dr. Avi Ben-Avraham, told the German news magazine that, "Unlike Catholicism, Judaism does not rule out cloning." He said, "It's time to set the laws of nature aside." He refused to name the project's investors, according to the French News Agency (AFP). Meanwhile, yesterday in Rome, a day after researchers met and vowed to clone babies, Giovanni Bianchi of Italy's Popular Party condemned the team as "Frankenstein doctors" and urged Italy's parliament to ratify an international pact banning human cloning. A prominent Catholic cardinal and head of Italy's national committee on bioethics also condemned the team. Italy has no law against human cloning. The international ban, ratified by the Italian Senate, is part of a protocol to the European Council's Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine. The Council calls the protocol the first and only binding international pact on cloning. Five of the council's 43 member nations have ratified it. =================================================================== R-CALF Ranchers-Cattlemen's Action Legal Fund For Immediate Release Contact John Lockie, Executive Director March 7, 2001 406-252-2516 Senate Minority Leader Calls For Moratorium On All Livestock and Meat Imports "It is imperative that in addition to enforcing the strictest food safety controls, we protect the health of our domestic livestock herds with equal vigilance." (Billings, MT) Senator Tom Daschle (D-SD) announced Tuesday, March 6th that he is calling for an immediate moratorium on all imports of cattle and beef, sheep and hogs into the U.S. In his statement Daschle said, "In light of recent events in the European Union, South America and other countries, we have been very fortunate in the U.S. to not have any reported cases of BSE or Foot and Mouth Disease. However, we should not take the health of our domestic livestock herds for granted. It is imperative that in addition to enforcing the strictest food safety controls, we protect the health of our domestic livestock herds with equal vigilance." Daschle stipulated that his moratorium should become effective immediately, and outlined three steps he wants to see the Federal Government take to address the problem: 1) Clarify standards for certifying animals from other countries are disease-free before they can enter the U.S. because current protocol is considered ambiguous; 2) Impose consistent requirements and timeframe standards for disease-free status, that demonstrate with certainty that imports into the U.S. are safe; 3) Convenes a blue ribbon commission to consider whether the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) has adequate funding and other critical resources to control these situations, and increases resources to that agency, and other agencies, if needed. "Additionally, the U.S. should be pushing for an international standard for Country of Origin labeling, starting at the animal's point of birth. This would assure our ability to prevent unapproved co-mingling of product from countries that may not be disease-free," said Daschle. News of Daschle's announcement fell on the welcome ears of R-CALF members. Herman Schumacher, R-CALF director from Herreid, SD said Daschle's actions are warranted and timely. "Approximately one in every fifteen feeder calves placed in feedlots during the past year were from foreign countries," he said. "One in 30 were from Mexico. Imported cattle and beef products into the U.S. have steadily been increasing which opens the window for consumer risk and herd contamination. I think Senator Daschle is to be congratulated, and we now need to put our shoulder behind the wheel to support him." Leadership of R-CALF's newest affiliate, South Dakota Stockgrower's Association also expressed their gratitude. Bill Hutchinson, SDSGA Vice-President, White River, SD said, "Senator Daschle's call for a moratorium arrived not a moment too soon. We have a food crisis waiting at the door with the spread of FMD in Europe and South America. I'm pleased and proud the Senator sees fit to put the interests of U.S. consumers and ranchers first." Rick Fox, SDSGA Region 3 Vice-President, Hermosa, SD echoed those comments. "I know how critical these issues are to SDSGA members, and we look forward to working to support Senator Daschle's call for a moratorium. I am particularly pleased that he is pushing for meaningful country of origin labeling. This is a huge step forward for American ranchers." Leo McDonnell, R-CALF President, Columbus, MT praised Daschle's efforts. "Currently, there's an international catastrophe going on and we need to put Americans first. That's exactly what Senator Daschle is moving towards, and it's what R-CALF has been calling for. We must adopt a 'zero tolerance' approach when it comes to protecting our domestic markets and supply." =================================================================== "Treat the Earth well. It was not given to you by your parents. It was loaned to you by your children." -Kenyan Proverb ====================================================== "We cannot solve the problems that we have created with the same thinking that created them." -Albert Einstein ====================================================== "The idea of wilderness needs no defense, it only needs defenders." -Edward Abbey ______________________________________________________________ To subscribe/unsubscribe, send appropriate email to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. ______________________________________________________________ <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. 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