Sunday, August 12, 2007

Pesticide use linked to autism--how long before corporate bioterrorism is stopped?


On July 31, the Los Angeles Times published the following info:


Women who live near California farm fields sprayed with organochlorine pesticides may be more likely to give birth to children with autism, according to a study by state health officials to be published today.

How much more likely? 6 TIMES MORE LIKELY.

So let me ask a question.

Let's say evil foreign terrorists invade
an American school and
take a classroom full of kids hostage.
And let's say that the manical terrorists
are so hell bent on destroying all that is
good and true about America that they
inject 8 of the 28 kids
with a neurotoxin so potent
that it causes permanent brain damage

How long before the SWAT team gets there?

15 minutes?
20 minutes?
Anyone bet 30 minutes?
Is your highest estimate under 1 hour?

Let's go a step further:
Imagine the terrorists start injecting additional kids
with the heinous poison
every ten minutes.
The authorities, through the use of video surveillance,
know this is happening.

How long before the SWAT team storms the building and
kills every single terrorist even at the risk of
losing some of their own members?

1 minute?
5 minutes?
Is your highest estimate under 10 minutes?

Okay, now, new question:
A study by the California Department of Public Health
finds a link between the use of 2 pesticides and autism.
(The 2 pesticides are endosulfan and dicofol which are already banned
in several countries.)

How long before the state of California bans the pesticides?

5 YEARS?
10 YEARS?

How long before the federal government bans these pesticides?

10 years?
20 years?
Never?

Is your lowest realistic estimate under 5 years?

Here we have 2 different scenarios
(terrorists take over a school and
corporate farmers spraying their fields with
endosulfan and dicofol)
with roughly the same outcome for kids
(permanent brain damage)
but 2 radically different responses from government authorities.

When the harm is caused by a brown man with a gun
the reaction is swift, violent, and total.
When the harm is caused by a poison
sold by a nice white guy in a suit who
goes home to his nice suburban house every evening,
too often the responds is years of study
(or no study at all)
blaming of the victims,
and then halting half measure that
'attempt to balance the interests of both sides.'

If you think I'm kidding check out this quote from the California Department of Pesticide Regulation about the link between these pesticides and autism:
Glenn Brank, spokesman for the pesticide agency, said officials there are "very interested" in the new autism data but say that "more work" on the potential link is needed before it can carry much weight in assessments of the chemicals' risks.
Makes you wonder if the terrorists
(the brown ones with the guns)
just need better lobbyists.
Then they could make some vague claims
about creating jobs and the importance of free enterprise.
If terrorists (the brown ones with the guns)
had better lobbyists
it might take the SWAT team years
to arrive at the school
and then they would study the problem of the school children
looking at every possible alternative explanation
before politely asking the terrorists to cut back on
the number of children they are poisoning.

By the way, endosulfan is manufactured by:
Bayer CropScience,
Makhteshim-Agan, and
Drexel Chemical Company.
Dicofol is manufactured by:
Rohm & Haas,
Hindustan Insecticides Ltd,
Lainco, and
Makhteshim-Agan.
Just thought I'd give ya'll a shout out so that the SWAT team
will know where to find you.

Post Script: Dicofol is used on cotton, oranges, beans and walnuts. Endosulfan is used primarily in tomato processing and on lettuce, alfalfa and cotton crops. Even people who are not a farm workers can be exposed to these poisons through food, water, air, and non-organic household cotton products.

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