Dear Crop-Duster:

 

I am posting your e-mails and have asked anyone who wishes to comment on them, to do so directly to you.  Malaria was here in the Colonial and Pioneering days and was basically eradicated in the USA because of agricultural drainage, screening, better hygeine and common sense.  It is not our job to prove your pesticide POISONS are "safe" - it is yours.  You are the one who is using/misusing these POISONS.  Have you ever bothered to read a Material Safety data Sheet or MSDS?  What part of the MSDS did you not understand was dangerous?  Do you realize that only the active ingredient in the pesticide formula is considered?  I am sending your "unbiased" comments that there are no deaths "proven" from the use of agricultural pesticides; to the people at Migrant Legal Aid, in care of Shelly Davis, Esq. and various other toxiclogists, lawyers, epidemiolists, scientists, etc.  Talk about biased fallacies!  That one is truly amazing!

I would like to remind you that all “registered” volatile, synthetic pesticides are poisons and should only be used as a last resort.  These poisons do not stay in one place...they drift or volatilize and contaminate everything.  Your most important responsibility is to cause as little harm to everything except the pest.  Natural forces, e..g., climate, natural enemies, geographic barriers, shelter and food/water availability, act on all organisms, causing their populations to rise and fall naturally.  You have a brain over 200,000 times as large as your enemy; if you bother to use it, you will win; if you continue to use your “registered” pesticide poisons, we all will continue to lose.

 

TRUE IPM SUMMARY
The Art of War

 

In any war, one must have a sword (an offensive weapon) and a shield (defensive protection) - with volatile, synthetic pesticide poisons we (who are not spraying these POISONS) have no shield, no protection and your only “weapon” is attacking us and not our enemy.

 

In 1993, 140,000 pesticide exposures, were reported nationwide to poison control centers - about 25% had (acute) pesticide poisoning symptoms (over half involved children under 6).

 

The poison industry is also very aware that volatile, synthetic pesticide poisons kill beneficial insects and fungus better than they do the pests.  One University that tests pesticides on pests wrote me how they use synthetic insecticides and fungicides to protect their resident pest populations!  An example of predator-prey relationships that are adversely affected by pesticides is a black fly predator, the caddisfly, which is susceptible to permethrin at rates lower than those necessary to control blackfly.  The phytoseiid mites have an LD50 15 times lower to permethrin than the spider mites on which they prey.  Obviously, many beneficial insects, e.g., bees, are also killed when one "treats" pests with your volatile, synthetic pesticide poisons!

 

The Chinese Sage, Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War” written in China 500 B.C. clearly warns: “There has never been a protracted war from which a country has benefited.” 

 

Since the 1940’s advent of volatile, synthetic pesticide poisons we have waged a protracted war against pest populations and now our air, water, food, mother’s milk, blood, and adipose tissue all “normally” contain residues of many of these "protective" poisons, their metabolites and contaminates!  We have suffered an ever-increasing array of health effects, damages, and death - yet our pest “enemy” continues not only to flourish, but to increase.  We have continually killed our own allies (the beneficials), poisoned our own wells, air, and food and, thereby, sickened, wounded or killed ourselves and our own forces and continually ignored our enemy’s natural weaknesses and engaged in warfare using only one (useless) weapon!  We have totally forgotten how to protect ourselves and how to successfully wage war on our pest enemy.  In 1950 fewer than 20 species of insects showed signs of pesticide resistance.  In 1960 Rachel Carson had documented 137 species resistant to at least one pesticide poison and noted it was the early rumblings of an avalanche of synthetic pesticide resistance.  By 1990 the number of documented pesticide-resistant insect and mite species was 504 and, obviously, is still increasing.  In addition, we have many other pesticide resistances developing, e.g., bacteria, fungus, weeds, etc.

 

In 1993, 1 in 7 Americans got cancer.  We now have spent $25 billion on cancer research (a river of gold), now 1 out of every 2 Americans will get cancer and it was earlier projected that by the year 2000, breast cancer will be the #1 killer and prostate cancer will be the #2 killer of Americans! At present, at least one in eight women will get breast cancer.  Since 1960, more than 950,000 have died from breast cancer - almost half of these deaths have occurred in the last 10 years!  Putting this in perspective - only 617,000 Americans have died in all the wars our country has fought this century!  Unless we desire death of our own race, we must stop releasing tons of virtually untested, unstable, synthetic pesticide poisons that are creating a synergistic contamination that no one can honestly say they can truly assess all of the human health risks for and which still does not even control our pest enemy!  Some of the "inerts" can continue to contaminate for much longer than the active ingredients, e.g., some "inerts" have a half-life of greater than 880 years!  As you well know, we can not and will not test your various POISONS on groups of innocent people, so, we will never be able to conclusively PROVE that your various toxins are the chronic cause of any of their deaths.  I would only note that if you combine the exposures of bleach and ammonia together the resulting toxicity will kill people.  There never have been any tests done on your "registered" POISONS (and their various interactions) to determine any of their synergistic health effects!

 

Yet, the U.S. annually still blasts itself with about 4.5 billion pounds of volatile synthetic pesticide poisons which  provide fewer and fewer benefits.  Despite a ten-fold increase in the U.S. use of chemical insecticide poisons since World War II, our loss of food and fiber crops to insects has risen from 7 to 13 percent!  By 1964 2/3’s of all U.S. insecticides were used on only 3 crops: cotton, corn, and apples per the Mrak Commission (In 1969, the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare prepared a landmark report on the environmental health consequences of pesticides - The Mrak Commission).  Pimental et. al., in Environmental and economic impacts noted that despite a thousand-fold increase in the U.S. use on insecticides on corn-losses to insects have an increased 400%!  Cornell University researcher, David Pimental in Silent Scourge, Audubon, Jan./Feb. 1997 estimates that of the roughly 672 million birds annually exposed to pesticides in the U.S. - 10% - (at least) 67 million - of our allies are killed annually!  (Note: In the 1990s over 5 to 6 billion pounds of insecticides, herbicides, fungicides, rodenticides, and other biocides were added to the world’s environment.)  The concepts of synthetic pesticide resistance, pest resurgence and the development of secondary pest problems have been taught (and then ignored) in introductory science classes for literally decades!  Since synthetic pesticide poisons were introduced into agriculture at the end of World War II, total crop losses due to insect damage has almost doubled - from 7% in the 1940’s, when all agriculture was essentially organic, to 13% by the end of the 1980’s.  In 1945 almost no insecticide use was used on corn and the USDA noted insect damage averaged about 3.5%.  Entomological Journals are filled with pesticide resistance problems developing all over the world - synthetic pesticides quickly create resistant or immune pests. 

 

In the 1990s approximately 5% of all farms controlled over half of the Nation’s agricultural production and our smaller farmers were going out of business by the thousands, all while economic consolidations using mergers, takeovers, and conglomerations in the food industry are being magnified a hundred-fold - we now are almost totally dependent on the poison industry - and your resulting "protective" contamination is now universal. .

 

The clarity of Sun Tzu’s thought is still acted upon by Chinese generals of today; it is “The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.”  This supreme art is what I have continually developed upon in my intelligent pest management manual entitled:  The Best Control©.  I, like Sun Tzu, believe “The skillful strategist should be able to subdue the enemy’s army without engaging it, to take his cities without laying siege to them, and to overthrow his State without bloodying swords”.  One of Sun Tzu’s admirers was Mao Tse Tung - in Chiang Kai - Shek’s army - most of the younger officers considered Sun Tzu’s thoughts to be out-of-date and hardly worth study in the era of mechanized weapons.  Chairman Mao Tse-Tung disagreed with his enemy and in May, 1928 wrote “on protracted war”, selected works Vol. II page 156 that “The object of war is specifically to preserve oneself  and destroy the enemy” (to destroy the enemy means to disarm him or “deprive him of the power to resist”, and does not mean to destroy every member of his forces physically.).

 

This “truth” taken from the “Little Red Book”, contains the essence to true IPM.  To use your toxic poisons that do not preserve us, but rather destroy our own people, pets, and natural allies without even diminishing, much less destroying our pest enemy, but which in truth actually preserves our pest enemy and even prospers our pest enemy is to insure the annihilation of those things (including yourself) you are supposedly trying to "protect and preserve"!

 

All of the guiding principles of military operations grow out of this one basic principle: to strive to the utmost to preserve one’s own strength and destroy that of the enemy . . . to release toxins nerve gases, carcinogens, mutagens, etc. (poisons) into one’s own ambient air, food, or water is to insure our own defeat or destruction - while preserving that of our resistant pest enemy, and totally ignores the basis of all successful military principles!  The communist Chinese Red Army defeated General Chiang Kai-Shek using this very principle and Mao noted that “without preparedness - superiority is not real superiority and there can be no initiative either.  Having grasped this point, a force which is inferior, but prepared can often defeat a superior enemy by surprise attack.”  I warn you our “inferior” pest enemy is already resistant to your “superior’ pesticides and is already winning the war - common sense (which is not too common) and the use of true IPM as written in The Best Control© will yet turn the tide in our favor.