Pesticides & disease quotes
Quotes  Pesticides

 Tvedten explained how he first became aware of the way this works when he was still in his twenties, starting to spray the six acre pond on his farm with DDT. That was the 60s and the awareness that would be spawned by the environmental movement was still in the future. Each year the mosquitoes that assailed his guests when he entertained in the evening got worse. He found himself spraying massive amounts of DDT several times a night....Tvedten realized that there were no longer any dragonflies darting over the pond. DDT hit them also, destroying the natural predators that had kept the pesky mosquitoes at bay. So he bought some dragonflies and released them into the area around the water. It worked.
       Every year, as soon as the dragonflies hatch, the mosquitoes disappear. That was the beginning of many changes on his farm and in his work as a pest control professional.
     “There was a time when I loved to go out and smell the earth; you could smell the life it it. That has changed. Today food is really grown hydroponically. The soil holds it up but no longer nourishes it. That means that we are also dying, slowly, of malnutrition. The people who would do this to children, to all of us, have no souls. I have looked into their eyes and seen that.” Poisoning The Earth For Profit - DDT, A Vaccine For Mosquitoes? by Melinda Pillsbury-Foster

One of the things that I found very distressing, both in the farmers, the 800 farmers who are on our database of Organophosphate Information Network, and the 5,000 suffers from Gulf War Illness, is that they went from doctor to doctor, sometimes ending up with a psychiatrist who did not understand what had happened to them, did not understand the toxicology and began to conclude that this was mental stress more than anything...  It was very interesting that the British Medical Association wrote a report in 1992 called Pesticides, Chemicals and Health, in which they did a survey of medical schools in Britain asking what toxicological training they gave to their young doctors, and the answers were, some of them did none, the majority between one and 12 hours – 12 was quite exceptional – which in a modern society, where we are subjected to chemicals all the time did not seem to the BMA, or indeed to me, to be enough…
  This is from the University of East Anglia Medical School:  “Clearly organophosphates are an important source of problem at present, but one can concede that good sense will prevail and the organophosphates will disappear from use in due course. The information the students have on OPs will therefore become redundant”.  That has not happened yet.  He goes on to say:  “We therefore attempt to teach the students principles of recognising when there is a problem which they do not understand, and tracking down reliable information on it rapidly and efficiently.  I am therefore comforted by the thought that doctors contact your organisation for up-to-date information.  I would regard this as a minimum best practice.”  That is very flattering to us in one sense, but I still find it rather alarming that everyone from birth to the grave is subjected to high levels of chemical exposure in our society, and so one understand there is not time to educate doctors in everything, but certainly there should have been more education of doctors who were going to be looking at people exposed.  Elizabeth Sigmund, since 1967 and for some years secretary of the Working Party on Chemical and Biological Weapons 28, July 2004. http://www.refusingtokill.net/disability/inquiryMedicalprofession.htm

A victim of the Spanish "toxic oil syndrome" disaster, interviewed on the admirable Yorkshire Television documentary Poisoned Lives in 1991 expressed her disillusion: When I hear the word 'scientist', it's as if I get an allergic reaction. And the word 'expert', well, I go cold whenever someone says 'an expert says this', I worry that it is not true. It's something that was said in the interests of some economic pressure group. I think science is a fine thing, it's a shame that it can be corrupted like this."[Media Aug 21, 1993] Poisoning the wells of science. Pesticides may be behind many ailments, but the government will not investigate

"A group of 30 British families who blame a controversial pesticide for causing their babies to be born without eyes have won a historic breakthrough in their quest to get justice and multi-million pound compensation." Media

Cancer:
"Tessa has recorded 38 incidents of cancers, strange blood disorders and health complaints linked to the effects of chemical exposure within a two-mile radius of her home.  ..... Generations of agricultural workers have been struck down with health complaints ranging from fibromyalgia to rare health disorders. One previously healthy girl, who lived near an orchard, has been struck down with a rare blood disorder, lupus. Her father died from stomach cancer.   Tessa has recorded a cluster of breast cancers in the village as well as several brain tumours, one in a man who used to watch the farmers crop-spraying when he was a boy.    Others who, like Tessa, worked at the local fruit farms orchards, suffer from ME and breast cancer. Other illnesses linked to pesticide poisoning include arthritis, with some villagers requiring hip replacement operations in their forties."--[Media April 2003, Pesticide poisoning] Suffering and tragedy in a Kent village

Heart disease:
"There is no doubt in my mind that the widespread use of the new insecticides is implicated in the alarming rise in the incidence of deaths from heart attacks and other forms of vascular disease, especially in relatively young persons.   That exposure to the newer insecticides actually causes a rise in blood  cholesteral in human beings, both Dr. F. M. Pottenger, Jr. in California and I have repeatedly observed. Dr. Pottenger informs me that the general level of blood cholesterol in his patients in 1950 is much higher than in 1945. He has seen variants of the syndrome I have described in about one third of his patients.   In addition to this effect DDT is known to increase the excitability of the heart muscle in animals, and it causes disturbances in heart rate and blood  pressure in man, effects we have repeatedly observed. The combination of a  narrowed coronary artery and the latter effects make DDT even more potentially disastrous."   Morton S. Biskind, M.D.---Presented before the Select Committee to Investiate the Use of Chemicals in Food Products, United States House of Representatives, U.S.  December 12, 1950.  www.geocities.com/harpub/biskclin.htm

Legionaires disease:
"In 1915 Hooker Electrochemical began massive, unprecedented production of chlorobenzene (8,200 metric tons per year) and Dow Chemical .... soon thereafter.   Chlorobenzenes are the basis for picric acid explosive used in World War I. They have also been used in the manufacture of wood treatments, war gas, herbicides, insecticides, bactericide, moth control, and polymer resins. (Mono)chlorobenzene is the base compound for DDT production. Currently in the U.S., 15 million pounds of p-dichlorobenzene production goes into room deoderants. According to Duesberg, CDC's investigation into Legionaires disease ignored toxic cause and created a new false field of study regarding the Legionella bacterium.
    The sudden surge of chlorobenzene production coincides in time and place (1915, Niagra Falls) to be considered as probable cause for the epidemic of central nerve system diseases that followed the next year in the New York City region. This epidemic lasted only six months, June to November, with 82% of the cases occuring in just 8 weeks. While polio literature terms this a world-wide polio epidemic, it was peculiarly a phenomena of the U.S. and was especially prominent in the New York City region. This is strange behavior for a supposedly predatory poliovirus, in an era, a continent, wholly unprotected by miracle vaccines."--Jim West  http://www.geocities.com/harpub/pol_all.htm

Polio [See: Polio]

DDT is good for me!

"Today, various other forms of the the word "polio" are still used to describe the effects of poisoning, though usually with regard to paralysis in animals. A search of Medline ("polio" and "poison") finds about 45 contemporary articles where poisoning causality is attributed to polio. The terminology found was: "polioencephalomalacia", "poliomyelomalacia", "polyradiculoneuritis", "neurological picture similar to that of poliomyelitis", "polioencephalomyelomalacia", "lumbal poliomyelomalacia", "cerebrocortical necrosis (polioencephalomalacia)", "Lead poisoning in grey-headed fruit bats (Pteropus poliocephalus)", "multifocal-poliomyelomalacia", "spinal poliomalacia", "Polio and high-sulfate diets", "Atypical porcine enterovirus encephalomyelitis: possible interraction between enteroviruses and arsenicals", "Polioencephalomalacia and photosensitization associated with Kochia scoparia consumption in range cattle", "bovine polioencephalomalacia". ---Jim West, Health and Research Publications,    http://www.geocities.com/harpub/

"They sprayed towns, crops and orchards with deadly poison DDT insecticide, suggesting that polio might be caused by flies. The chemical companies reaped the benefits but the orchards were seriously damaged, crops were ruined and people were killed by this wild and unwarranted experiment. An article on polio in "Your Health" magazine (1954, Fall Quarter, p. 69) comments on the fly situation by saying that in "Iceland where there are no flies . . there have been polio epidemics. Experiments on eliminating flies by spraying whole communities with DDT have not had any effect in combating epidemics."---Eleanor McBean

"A quarter-century ago, I began my doctoral research in a lab that studied how to create poliomyelitis in mice without any poliovirus: by manipulating the junk DNA with toxic chemicals or radiation. GWS has convinced me that these same interactions of toxic exposures and chronic diseases occur in humans as well. So, the clues are now telling us that the cause of chronic diseases is the JUNK genome, not the germs."--Testimony of Howard B. Urnovitz, Ph.D. (1/24/02)

"When the population is exposed to a chemical agent known to produce in animals lesions in the spinal cord resembling those in human polio, and thereafter the latter disease increases sharply in incidence and maintains its epidemic character year after year, is it unreasonable to suspect an etiologic relationship?"---Biskind.

Polio question re DDT

Dr Kumm's (suspicious) conflict of interest

First polio epidemic--1887 Sweden.  Patent of first pesticide sprayer---1873.

Pesticides and Polio    http://www.geocities.com/harpub/

Common chemical poisons that cause polio by Eleanor McBean

"Dr. Abraham Gelperin, director of the Bureau of Communicatable Diseases and assistant Clinical Professor or Public Health at Yale University stated flatly that he believes many ills to be the result of these poison insecticide and that large numbers of what are believed to be polio are in reality cases of poisoning, possibly caused by something like parathion."--E. McBean

Citation with OPs as risk factor for GBS/polio
Third of ME cases are pesticide-related

[Media April 2002] Study finds DDT may spur disease

BSE, CJD, Alzheimer's:
"There are more explosive implications to his -and other's latest research.   Purdey says similar organophosphate-induced protein deformation could also underlie Alzheimer's and related diseases. If that were true, the litigation fallout would destroy some pharmaceutical giants, and a lot of very influential noses would be out of joint.  In 1996, leading Alzheimer's researcher Tsunao Saitoh, 46 and his 13 -year-old daughter were killed in La Jolla, California, in what a Reuters report described as a "very professionally done" shooting.  What Alzheimer's Disease, Mad Cow Disease, and CJD have in common, is abnormal brain proteins and a putative link to organophosphates."---Fintan Dunne http://www.cjdalert.com/

"I found one organophosphate — poured on cows to counteract warble fly and on humans for headlice — which bonded with copper in the brain, starving the prion protein of its copper partner. When this happens, foreign metals, such as manganese, are more likely to bond with prions, which can have devastating consequences. Manganese is increasing in the environment due to its use as a fertiliser and fungicide, a lead substitute in petrol, and emission from factories. It was fed to UK cattle in calf milk replacement powder (at levels up to 1,000 times higher than in normal cow's milk) and as supplements for bone growth. Manganese is also fed to humans (in health food supplements), deer (for antler growth) and cats —and all have had prion disease. The totalitarian mindset about the origins of prion diseases betrays an agenda. It's more about global profits for the GM soya protein empires than about the illusory health risks of animal proteins to humans."--Mark Purdey Dec 2002

Sterility
In the mid-1950s, Shell and Dow conducted animal studies that found that exposure to DBCP led to sterility, as well as liver, kidney, and lung damage. The companies chose not to limit production of DBCP but instead started exporting it worldwide. In 1977, after learning that the chemical also caused workers at an Occidental Petroleum factory to become sterile, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency prohibited the use of DBCP in California. In 1979, the EPA banned DBCP in the continental United States. Because other nations had less stringent labor and environmental regulations, however, chemical companies continued to export DBCP, possibly as late as the mid-1980s.  Media