Or just Science News reporter Janet Raloff’s?
Raloff rails against the over-reliance on Bt corn which alarmists say is leading to pest resistance.
Raloff likens the situation to the overuse of DDT in the 1950s.
But of course, unless pests and other contagion are entirely wiped out, resistance can be expected to develop.
Raloff says that pest control technology must be carefully regulated lest resistance develop.
The solution, however, is not more regulation; it’s less.
Our regulatory system should facilitate development of pest control products, rather than stifle it.
Anyone who remembers the Bt corn wars of the 1990s knows how tough and expensive it was for Monsanto to bring the product to market.
Of course, significant resistance to Bt could eventually develop from over-reliance. But that over-reliance is caused by the reality of the expense and hassle of bringing an alternative product to market.
Hear Hear!
This resistance argument is touted unendingly by people who aren’t just drinking the Kool-Aid…they are swimming in it. The resistance argument is a red herring fallacy. Those who tout this claptrap about resistance are those who have done their best to eliminate pesticides, restrict their use, and retard new development and introduction of new pesticides.
We reduce antibiotic use in order to keep using it over a longer period of time. These people want to stop using these products entirely. So what are we saving them for if we are never to use them? They really don’t care about resistance; they care about elimination, and this concern about resistance is a red herring fallacy they use to attempt to seem rational. Those who decry pesticides are irrational and misanthropic!
Resistance will develop in any product that is currently being used and every product that ever will be used in the future. Why? Because that is the pattern that is already set in nature. Plants develop their own chemical arsenal to defend themselves against pests and pests will develop resistance to each and every one of them. The plants then switch chemistry when that happens. If at some point they can no longer develop chemistry to defend against pests they will then become biologically incompetent. When that happens mankind must step in or they will simply disappear, or be seriously reduced as with American elm trees as with the Dutch elm disease.
The difference between plants and people in this case is that plants can’t choose to be incompetent, but people can by eliminating products that work and increasing the cost of development of new products. We need to expect resistance and prepare for it be developing new technology. We need to choose competence or face the consequences.
We really need to get this. Along with genetically modified foods, without extensive and consistent use of pesticides of every ilk we will starve. Without the development of new products we will starve. Dystopia follows the green movement like Sancho Panza followed Don Quixote. We really do need to get that!
There are two sides of a coin. It is for the best interest of the public to hear both sides of the argument. And the international scientific community must be faithful and honest about their findings on Bt corn.
It is not about the pesticide, or the resistant corn, it is about creating artificial shortages in food and energy to drive up cost and increase government control over the economy in order to impose the lefts idiotic zero growth agenda.