Pubdate: Fri, 25 Aug 2000
Source: Texas Observer (TX)
Copyright: 2000 The Texas Observer
Contact:  307 West 7th Street, Austin, Texas 78701
Website: http://www.texasobserver.org/
Author: Jim Hightower

A FUNGUS AMONG US

Have you had your fusarium oxysporum today?

Its a powerful herbicide developed from a fungus, and assorted 
authorities from on high are proposing that it be sprayed on some of 
the food and around the habitats of us humans.  Has it been tested for 
its impact on our health and our environment?  No. If the idea of 
spreading this stuff around seems stupid to you, that's because the 
fusarium oxysporum project comes from America's drug czar, General 
Barry McCaffrey, who specializes in stupidity.  

The New York Times reports that the Little General, backed by the 
Clinton white house and republican congressional leaders, wants to use 
this fungal pathogen against coca, marijuana, and poppy fields, since 
it can cause a wilt that kills these drug plants.  Problem is, it can 
also kill tomatoes, potatoes, grains, and other crops, as well as who 
knows what other unlucky plans and animals that get doused by it. 
Problem number two is that once you turn the fungus loose, it has a 
life of its own, mutating, moving from plant to plant and living in the 
soil for years.  For most living things, fusarium oxysporum is a 
disease, and it's rarely good policy to spread disease.  

Yet no risk is too silly for the General's maniacal crusade to halt the 
production of all drug crops everywhere.  Therein lies problem number 
three - there's no evidence that this microbial fungus will even work, 
since scientists note that the narcotraders will simply breed their 
coca plants to be resilient to the disease.  

Nevertheless, the hapless peasants of Colombia are about to become the 
unwilling guinea pigs of McCaffrey's fusarium experiments.  As part of 
the $1.3 billion Washington recently approved to prop up the 
beleaguered Colombian government, officials there had to agree to field 
tests of what amounts to a biological weapon.  

Imagine how that makes the people there feel about us.  Uncle Ugly goes 
to Colombia.  
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