[ExI] bees again

Sun Mar 20 00:29:21 UTC 2016

On Sat, Mar 19, 2016 at 6:55 PM, John Clark <johnkclark at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Thu, Mar 17, 2016  William Flynn Wallace <foozler83 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > 
>> Just got a Sierra Club letter advising that there is a bill in Congress
>> to stop using neonicotinoids (supplied by Bayer - coating of soy and corn
>> seeds) which kill bees.
>>
>
> 
> The Sierra Club
> 's advice on what substances to ban has not been very good, they
> pushed hard to ban DDT but they ignored the
> 
> consequences.
> 
> In the 1940s in Sri Lanka they had 2.8 million cases of malaria a year,
> then they stared to use DDT to kill mosquitoes and by 1965 there were only
> 17 cases, but then DDT was banned and just 5 years later there were 500,000
> cases. In 1953 in India 800,000 people die
> d
> from malaria, that same year they started to use DDT and by
>  
> 1966 NOBODY died from malaria in India. In 1955
> t
> he World Health Organization
> 
> concluded
> 
> that the complete elimination of malaria
> by using DDT 
> was feasible
> ,
> but then DDT was banned and in
> 1
> 976 they gave up on
> the idea of 
> eradicating malaria
> 
> . Today malaria kills 880,000 people
> 
> , mostly children, EACH YEAR.
> 
> I like birds and I'm sorry DDT makes the shell on their eggs thin, but I
> like kids too.
>
> No doubt some will say
> that by now there must be a
>  better way to get rid of mosquitoes than DDT and it's true there
> is
> , genetic drive implemented
> with
>  CRISPR
>  technology, but I expect even more ferocious opposition of CRISPR than
> DDT from environmental groups drumming up fears of 50 foot long mosquitoes
> like something from a 1950s monster movie. And so next year yet another
> 880,000 people will die, but bird eggs will have thick shells and I must
> admit there is not a single
> 50 foot long mosquito
>  in sight.
>   
> 
>
>  John K Clark
>

Nobody is stopping other countries, that I know of (did not Google it)
from using DDT or anything else that we have banned.  I have often wondered
why they haven't.  And surely there are alternatives to coating seeds other
than chemicals that kill bees.  

Cut the profits a bit, perhaps, and save the bees.

You raise a moral question:  how many bird or other species is it
acceptable to make extinct to save humans?

bill w

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