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Thank you, Sanho. Good
afternoon. The issue of mycoherbicides is of special relevance today
because the proposed use of these fungi against coca and poppy plants in
Colombia has been a much overlooked element of the proposed US aid
package.
While the House version of Plan Colombia
contains language that makes the use of mycoherbicides mandatory in
exchange for granting US military aid to the Colombian government. The
Senate version, which just came out – stipulates that any herbicide to
be used in Colombia be tested and approved by the U.S. Surgeon
General,
and also the EPA. The final compromise language of the Bill will come out
of Conference Committee at some point in the near future.
So, where did this idea of using fungi
against drug plants come from? Certain fungi – mainly rusts and molds
have had a long history of killing food crops and causing sometimes deadly
intoxication of animals and humans. Most of the research on these fungi
has attempted to find a way to kill them or a way to protect agricultural
crops against them. Some research, however, has been a little more
devious: it was to extract the toxic chemicals of these fungi so that they
could be used as biological warfare agents, which we can talk about at
some other time, but which is relevant to this topic only in that some of
these biowarfare toxins are produced by the same species being proposed to
be used as mycoherbicides against drug plants. The present research goes
against all of the previous work: the idea of these mycoherbicides is to
kill crops.
In the US, the idea of using some kind
of living organism to attack drug plants stems from Richard Nixon’s war
on drugs. At that time, work was done on a plant-eating worm, and other
organisms, but, as Cannabis-disease researcher John McPartland has pointed
out, cooler heads prevailed at the time, and the research went nowhere.
Indeed, during the early 1970's there was a world-wide shortage of legal
medicinal opium production, and the idea of wiping out the rest of the
world’s supply through some disease or pest was unnerving to many.
The discovery of a coca killing fungus
came about by accident. During the 1960's a major soft drink company –
you can guess which one– cultivated coca plants in an experimental
station in Hawaii. These plants mysteriously started to wilt and die. More
plants were imported, and these also died. At the time, Harvard Botanist
Tim Plowman, who was writing the monograph on the Coca family -Erythroxylaceae- thought that the coca plants were dying from some kind of
fungal or bacterial disease that was soil-bound, native to Hawaii. But,
instead of attacking native Hawaiian plant species, it started to "chew" on
the transplanted coca, a process that may or may not have involved
mutation. More seeds were imported, and these also showed signs of
necrosis and wilt, and eventually succumbed to the disease.
Sometime during the 1970's and early
1980's, government agencies undertook classified research on the disease
and isolated a strain of fungus called Fusarium oxysporum from
dying coca plants. One of these agencies was the USDA’s Agricultural
Research Service, known as ARS, which duplicated some of the research and
isolated pathogenic strains from Fusarium oxysporum f.sp. erythroxyli.
The best known strain was called EN-4 and was isolated by a Dr. David
Sands.
During the 1980's similar research,
often by the same scientists, focused on using other fungi to kill other
drug plants, including marijuana, opium, ephedra, and khat. Another variety
of Fusarium oxysporum was chosen for use against marijuana, and
another fungus from another genus was chosen for use against the opium
poppy. While the US government was doing this research, it is also true
that the Soviets, the British and probably others were also involved,
especially in the research against opium poppy.
And, as General McCaffrey would say:
"and... oh, by the way" some of the early research by ARS showed
that strain EN-4 killed other plants completely unrelated to coca. But,
such findings were ignored.
During the late 1980's, as if by magic,
an epidemic of Fusarium wilt attacked the coca-growing area of the
Huallaga Valley in Peru. Many reports from campesinos in the area claim
that it was preceded by US helicopters or small planes applying a
substance to coca fields. But because of the difficulty of getting into
the area during that time – this was during the civil war – it was
very difficult to get solid information on what was really going on.
However, my colleague, Sharon Stevenson was able to publish an article on
this issue in the Miami Herald in1991citing numerous interviews.
The US Embassy, however, proclaimed the
disease to be a "natural" outbreak of the fungus and criticized
those who believed otherwise. The embassy did follow the development of
the disease, through local newspapers and through US-funded human rights
organizations and other informants. For instance, they noted that in area,
Leonicio Prado, 3,000 peasant families could no longer grow any food crops,
because the blight had not just killed the coca, but everything else.
After the disease hit, the entire population had to pan for gold in order
to survive – a very unstable existence.
The Agricultural Research Service also
contacted local scientists in Peru, one of whom wrote a report funded by
the USG clearly implicating the fungus in the death of other plant
species, including native food crops. In spite of his honest reporting, he
was run out of town because he was found out to be working for the US, and
the locals thought that he was actually spreading the fungus!
Was this original Peruvian epidemic a
"natural" occurrence, or was it part of another US clandestine
program? I don’t know.
Two years ago, the concept of using
mycoherbicides against coca was a key element of The Western Hemisphere
Drug Elimination Act, though it got little mention in the media. Why would
there have been so much faith in a mycoherbicide if it had not
successfully been used somewhere?
The mainstream media finally picked up
on the story last year when Florida almost got doused with it. Colonel Jim
McDonough left his job at ONDCP under the tutelage of General McCaffrey
for greener pastures – as the head of the Florida Drug Control Office.
Apparently, the first thing he proposed was to spray Florida with Fusarium
in an attempt to kill off all of the outdoor marijuana grown there.
However, this idea was not well-received by Florida’s Department of
Environmental Protection. In fact, it created quite a stir when the head
of that Department, a Dr. Struhs, wrote a well-publicized letter to the
Colonel explaining that Fusarium will attack other crops and mutates.
Moreover, it will stay in the ground for some 40 years. The man behind the
Colonel, was Dr. David Sands, the same scientist who had first isolated
EN-4 for the Agricultural Research
Service, but was now representing his
own company, Ag/Bio Con – which was marketing an anti-marijuana version
of Fusarium.
After Struhs’ letter was published,
many Floridians got very upset about the idea of bringing a new pathogen
into the state, and the idea was nixed. The issue is now
"moribund", according to one source close to the Colonel. Indeed, Sands and the Colonel did not even get a couple of plants to set
up a controlled experiment in a secure laboratory!
Dr. Sands then set his sights on
Colombia. He was down there last March, threatening scientists not to talk
to the press, and spinning his story about the safety of EN-4. Scientists
in Colombia who attended his presentation then investigated Fusarium
oxysporum and found out that in humans who are immunocompromised, the
rate of death from Fusarium infection can be as high as 76% – and this
is from peer-reviewed medical literature. In the Colombian setting, after
US approves military aid, we can expect massive amounts of displaced
campesino families who will be on-the-run in the jungle fleeing our
escalation of their civil war. In the 1980s in El
Salvador, I escaped with
civilian populations in "guindas" which are long journeys to
outflank and evade army offensives. If one is not immunocompromised from
the bad food that one must live on in jungle hamlets, one would be after
days of walking, stumbling, and providing iron and protein to the insect
life of the area. To then apply a mycoherbicide from the air that has been
associated with a 76% kill rate in hospitalized human patients would be
tantamount to biological warfare.
After Dr. Sands left Colombia, Colombian
officials and scientists came up with a counterproposal to study natural
pests and plagues that attack coca, in the hopes that they can ameliorate
or slow down the North-American attack by taking it into their own hands
and finding less dangerous native pathogens to kill coca. They know that
if their counterproposal doesn’t work, there will be no stopping the
Americans with all of their money, especially in a wartime situation where
criticism of the US is viewed as sympathy for the enemy, and may result in
a visit by the paramilitary death squads. *
Even before Sands’ visit, the US had
already been pressuring the United Nations Drug Control Program to conduct
a mycoherbicide project in Colombia. In fact, Madeleine Albright herself
wrote an "Action Request" to UNDCP head
Pino Arlacchi to set up
testing for "large-scale implementation" of Fusarium on coca in
Colombia. Why did the US want the UN to do it? For political cover.
The US
did not want to appear as the pusher behind the project. The US also
handed over all of its mycoherbicide technology to the UNDCP, as well as a
large amount of money. Coincidentally, Pino Arlacchi, the UNDCP head,
needed money at the time. His office was small, with little influence.
However, others within the UN were less than happy with this idea. If
UNDCP was seen to be a part of US/Colombian counterinsurgent strategy,
then how could the UN possibly mediate a negotiated solution to the
Colombian civil war? And, if not the UN, then who? So, it was without great zeal that the
UNDCP office in Colombia proposed to the Colombian
government that they sign on to this project. The draft contract itself
stated that the Colombian Government would be held responsible for any
problems arising from the use of mycoherbicides, and that the project
would be "Colombian, " although the intellectual property rights
of the mycoherbicide would stay in the US, meaning that the Colombians
would get burned.
The draft contract and the communication
between the State Department and the UNDCP also alleged that Dr. Sands’
strain of Fusarium, EN-4 had already been "found" in southern
Colombia and was spreading north, thereby obviating the need to pass
through the international legal hoops of exporting a new pathogen to
Colombia. How convenient! In my copy of the draft contract – which was a
photocopy of the one ARS had sent around their office, one of the top
researchers at ARS had scribbled a note
doubting EN-4's presence in
southern Colombia.
Sharon and I decided to check this out,
since it was a critical point: if the State Department and the UN were
lying, and there was no EN-4 in Colombia, Sands’ product could not be
legally applied in Colombia. To do so would be in violation of
International Law. In late March we went to southern Colombia.
We asked
the FARC rebels, we asked agronomists, we asked the Catholic church.
Back
in Bogotá, we asked the spraying expert recommended
by the Embassy, we asked Klaus Nyholm, the head of the
UNDCP in Colombia,
Ministers of this and that, lots of people from NGOs, and the answer was a
resounding "NO" – there had been no outbreak of Fusarium of
any kind on coca in southern Colombia. No EN-4 in Colombia. This meant
that Sands’ product could not be used there legally.
The UN draft contract for Colombia was
based on yet another proposal, this one made with the government of
Uzbekistan. The UNDCP-Uzbekistan contract was signed two years ago, and
was funded by the US and the UK, and based upon old Soviet mycoherbicide
work against opium poppy. Documents we obtained show that the Uzbekistan
research station is a far cry from an environmentally-secure testing
ground. It is a rudimentary Rube Goldberg version of a lab, with not even
the most basic amenities such as large autoclaves for sterilization, or
even running vehicles for transportation. While the Uzbek station is
focusing its research mainly on another mycoherbicide called Pleospora
papaveraceae containing yet-unknown mycotoxins, the following quote
indicates that there are serious problems for the workers: "Staff
have already complained of symptoms of dermatitis and respiratory
difficulties after exposure to the high concentrations of the fungus which
occur in the presently unsafe working conditions. A laminar down-flow
biological safety cabinet will eliminate this problem."
Where is all of this going? Right now
everything depends on whether mycoherbicides get a legal foothold in the
international scene, and the most important test of this right now is the
Colombia aid bill being considered in the Senate.
Postscript: * Another version of a Colombian counterproposal emerged
in late May, and divisions are now showing among the ranks of Colombian
scientists, between those desirous of a piece of the US "Plan
Colombia" pie, and those who
are more concerned about Colombia's environment (June 3rd, 2000). |
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