THE WESTERN CANADIAN LUMBER WORKER >. es Rt rad ics 5 di Bins ie have begun to solve our problems. At last we can control infectious diseases. At last we can conquer the major crop pests. At last we can control malaria, the locust, the rat, the flea, the louse. Fortunately we had time to discover these things before reading in Blueprint for Survival that man’s refusal to share his food supply will jeopardize his future. We have a constant battle against the crueller side of nature and the battle is not over. Two thirds of the world’s population does not have enough food in its belly, and about 30 per cent of food crops are still destroyed by pests. Medical problems remain — one in every five people in the world today suffers from hookworm. Dr. Norman Borlaug, 1970 Nobel Peace Prize winner for his plant breeding work, spoke out recently against the “‘hysterial environmentalist.” He said, “The green revolution is not a breakthrough — it is.a temporary success in man’s war against hunger and deprivation. Its continued success will depend on whether agriculture will be allowed to use fertilizers and pesticides. If denied their use. . . then the world will be doomed, not by chemical poisoning but from starvation.” Dr. M. E. D. Poore, Director of Nature Conservancy, put it even more crisply, . “Countries which are banning the use of certain pesticides cannot ban the pest as well.” The next breakthrough in prolonging human life or reducing hunger will not come from a computer or a pompous biological best seller. It will come from an ordinary research worker at some laboratory bench. If such a man is made to feel an outcast of society by all he reads and all he sees, then he could possibly get up and slowly walk away, leaving the ecologists’? beloved Nature to find the cure for can- cer. SHOULD JOHN Q. PUBLIC -DECIDE MAJOR SCIENTIFIC ISSUES? Fourthly, and perhaps my most serious concern, is the present trend to allow public and political pressures to decide the major scientific issues. Now of course the public have a right to know where they stand, the good things and the bad things, in any situation. They have this right whether the issue is a pain in the chest or pollution in the rivers. But the public cannot be expected to decide what to do about it — they have neither the expert knowledge nor the time to sort and weigh up the available evidence. And yet Dr. Commoner, one of the ever growing army of American ecological activists, says that the public must decide the major technological issues. The way this has been taken to excess in America would be funny if it was not so serious. Last Christmas there were $10 environment kits for the youngsters, including a set of pre-printed pollution complaint forms. — Fortunately this has not yet spread over the Atlantic, but there is the Sunday Times project for schoolchildren to monitor river pollution. Now I don’t know what they will find or how they will interpret the results, but I do know’ that 119 children died through playing near water in 1969. In 1967 it was 159. Just think of it — every two days another tragic death could be reported! One could start a movement to have adults patrolling the rivers to save the children who are trying to save us all. As I said earlier, it would be funny it it was not all ' So tragic. But perhaps the ultimate crystallization of this whole do-it-yourself approach to destiny is the headline of the advertisement for. the Conservation Society. It says “Write a Slogan and Save the World.” I wish it was that easy. ~ Professor Francis Camps, our leading forensic scientist, said a little while ago, “Some watch-dog must exist, but it must be scientifically and non- emotionally critical and not be stampeded by public or political outcry.” But we do have the shame of the cyclamate farce. In 1969 these sugar substitutes were banned in this country with great haste, and the public were left with the impression that they had been slowly poisoned for years. And yet here is what a govern- ment spokesman said about the ban. ‘‘Public opinion wanted an answer straightaway. We’d have been caught very much with our head in the sand if we didn’t do anything.” __“MAN THE FORGOT] aan There is no suggestion that the cyclamates have harmed anyone. Fifteen years of careful study has revealed that the most harmful thing they ever did was cause a mild rash, but down came the ban... because America had banned it, for reasons we won’t go into. And now saccharin could well go the same way in the U.S., and for the same reason. This will leave us with just natural sugar, and everyone will be happy. - Well, not everyone. There is a strong experimental link between sugar and heart disease, and obesity is the strongest single factor likely to lead to an early death. HASTY POLITICAL ACTION A much more serious example of public pressure and hasty political action is the banning of DDT, and this one involves me personally. In December 1969 the government banned DDT for all garden and most agricultural uses as a result of the Wilson Report. But the Wilson Report showed that it had never -harmed man and had not harmed our wildlife. -But down came the ban anyway, ‘‘because DDT wasn’t really necessary any more.”’ On the day of the ban I spoke out against the Government’s action. I felt and still feel it is wrong for bans to be imposed as a sop to public opinion. It was a case of ‘‘everybody knows.’’ Everybody knew that DDT killed birds and thinned eggshells and was found in penguins and so on. So the partial ban on our paltry 200 tons was our contribution to the world- wide problem. ' The fear I expressed was that we were forgetting that DDT was one of the most man-needed chemicals in the world. Never had a single death or case of cancer been attributed to DDT, even though 130,000 peoople were employed each year to spray it. It was also cheap, which meant vast areas could be treated for malaria control. In India alone deaths from the disease fell from 750,000 each year to 1,500. And yet everything was at risk because someone shouted ‘‘penguin’’ and ‘‘eagle.’”’ I was afraid that our ban would result in a chain reaction which could lead to a world ban. Fortunately this did not happen, and now two years later we can review the scene. Let us listen to Dr. Borlaug again: ‘‘As more and more scientific evidence accumulates, the charges against DDT become less and less convincing.” We hear of the residues found in soil and animals, but Nature reported recently that ‘“‘samples of soil sealed since 1910 were recently tested for DDT and other organo-chlorine residues; 32 of the 34 tested samples showed trace residues, yet DDT and other pesticides of its type were not in use until well into the 1940’s.”’ Also there is no scientifically acceptable evidence to show that very low levels of DDT cause the thinning of eggshells. And hunting in the midwest has killed far more eagles than all the DDT in America. But everyone knows. a SHARP RISE IN MALARIA —— On the world scene there was a sharp rise in malaria in those countries where DDT spraying stopped. In Ceylon malaria had been eradicated. With the ban the papers got a story, the activists got at industry, and two million Singhalese got malaria. In Sweden, DDT was quickly reintroduced when insects started to destroy her forests. According to a survey recently presented. by Robert Gair of the Agricultural Development and Advisory Service at Cambridge, pest control in Britain is now more expensive and often less effective than in years when organo-chlorines were in common use. The confident prediction was that the removal of DDT in Britain would cause no problems. If we have anything to learn from all this, it is that laws asa result of public pressure are suspect, and it is im- possible to predict the result of pulling out a technological prop from under the structure of modern life. My fifth point is one which is hardl discussed. It is that there is a very real derives that certain industries, notably pesticides, could be forced into an economic wilderness if the flow of half- baked criticism is not balanced with reasonable commonsense. It is appropriate that I should be speaking from this hall tonight, because the best ence of pesticides I have ever read was written by pet a W. F. Fletcher, Professor of Biology at the University of Strathclyde. I should like to quote a few lines: “One is left with the impression of Rachel , son’s followers fighting a holy war for the survival mankind against the pesticide manufacturers he are intent only in becoming rich at the expense of f) health and welfare of the human race. — * “J would submit that the true picture is a ver different one, and it is time that the records were § straight . . . the pesticide. manufacturer is possibly one of the great benefactors of mankind. Millions of people now living in India should certainly think sé and so too should housewives when they buy foodstuffs from the shops. He is a technologist wh¢ has produced chemicals that have made the world better place for mankind.”’ But companies and their workers and their i vestors have souls too, and if you criticize enough you could end up with a seriously redu industrial scene. And whilst a few individuals mi rub their hands with glee, countless millions cou die. This is no Carsonesque prediction — in United States the following large companies ha recently pulled out of pesticides — Olin, Hook Chemicals, Allied Chemicals, International Miner and Chemicals, Standard Oil of New Jersey American Oil. World DDT production has drop from 400,000 tons in 1963 to 200,000 tons in 1970, an remember that nothing else can take its place i malaria control. OUR MAIN DANGER IS FROM THE NATURAL WORLD My final point, which I have kept to the end, is a particular bee in my own bonnet. I feel that our main danger, as ever, is from the natural world, and w must check upon and be on our guard against unexpected natural dangers as well as obvious technological ones. Now let me say straightaway that Iam not a hater of my fellow species on this earth. I am a trained biologist and I have never fished or hunted in my life. But I feel no guilt over the destruction of man- harming pests of diseases, and I am sickened by the growing mawkish love affair with Sweet Nature and every one of her creatures. The Blueprint for Survival looks forward to a new age in which Man will learn to live with the rest of nature. What new age? We tried it for nearly a quarter of a million years. The trouble is that nature forgets to live with us. While we are billing and cooing, in sweeps Cholera, Bubonic Plague, the Black Rat, the Locust, the Flea and so on. The Irish in the 1840’s left their potato crop to nature, and one million died of hunger when it was swept away by blight. In Africa and Asia today they know all about living with nature. The guilt feeling amongst conservationists for disturbing the order of things has reached a new peak in the book The Deadly Feast of Life by Donald Carr. In this he raises the theory that it was one of man’s ancestors who exterminated the great reptiles by eating their eggs . *. “It makes man through his skulking ancestors responsible for the fall of a magnificent dynasty.” But we began 2 million years ago and the dratted dinosaur disappeared about 70 million years ago. ; : Now to products rather than species. To me both natural and man-made materials have a place. Whether they are good or bad, beneficial or harmfu depends on their properties not on their source. Bul there are some who have double standards, who insist that the man-made must be bad, and the natural must be good. We have writers recor mending gardeners not to use artificial fertilizers bu recommending soot and bonfire ash. Sulphate 0 ammonia is certainly not carcenogenic, and yet soo! Contains cancer-forming chemicals, and a sled burning bonfire contains 350 times as much bel pyrene as is found in the same volume of cigal smoke. What else have we got in the poison line? We there is cyanide in cherries, plums and peas. There caffeine in coffee and tea, and of course oxalie cid in rhubarb and solanine in potatoes. None of thes SEE “SPECIES” — PAGE