Food, Sex and Salmonella by Waltner-Toews David

Author:Waltner-Toews, David
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook, book
ISBN: 9781926685182
Publisher: Greystone Books, a division of D&M
Published: 2010-07-04T16:00:00+00:00

10

ONE PERSON’S

CURE,

ANOTHER PERSON’S

COFFIN

ANTIBACTERIALS, PESTICIDES,

AND PRESERVATIVES

SO YOU WANT to grow lots of wholesome food, undamaged by fungi or insects? You want to prevent suffering and death in millions of people and animals? You want to save tons of food from spoiling, food that could be used to feed hungry people the world over, food that, if it does spoil, will have to be replaced, thus putting greater, potentially environmentally destructive demands on farmers? Welcome to the world of pesticides, antibacterial drugs, and preservatives.

The motivation to produce these chemicals is much more complex than that. It includes greed and power and all the usual frailties that masquerade as wisdom and philanthropy. But underlying the normal human vices are the more lofty goals I have stated. Does that mean we are stuck with agricultural chemicals? Are there no alternatives? The people who make their living selling the chemicals will tell you that the alternatives are utopian or ignorant, but they have a vested interest in keeping things as they are. There are intelligent alternatives; we can learn from history.

An antibacterial drug is a chemical that works against bacteria, either by killing them or by stopping them from multiplying. Antibacterials include both mineral-based chemicals, such as sulfa drugs, and antibiotics. Antibiotics are antibacterial drugs that are naturally produced by living things, usually fungi. They include some of our most common chemicals, like tetracycline and penicillin. In using them, we are simply carrying on a long evolutionary tradition of producing substances that help us to stay alive. In that, at least, we are not different from the black mold in the leftover yogurt at the back of the refrigerator.

The world market for antibacterial drugs is in the tens of billions of dollars (U.S.). These drugs have come a long way from the early part of the twentieth century, when they were viewed by many as a utopian dream. Today we hardly realize how miraculous their discovery was, how many millions of lives they have saved. Like prodigal children, we have taken this precious inheritance for granted, and squandered it, and we may yet live to regret it.

In a talk he gave in Australia in the summer of 2006, Peter Daszak, executive director of the Consortium for Conservation Medicine, highlighted Western Europe and the northeastern United States as major hot spots for emerging infectious diseases. When some of us in the room expressed surprise at this news, having been conditioned by media reports to think of Southeast Asia as the most worrisome spot on the planet, he pointed out that many of the most serious emerging infections were antibacterial-resistant strains of bacteria. And these bacteria were appearing where antibacterial drugs had been used most intensely.

When I wrote the first edition of this book, in 1991, antibacterial resistance was considered important scientifically, but the “resistance sceptics,” much like those who claimed that cigarettes were nonaddictive, or those who claim that global warming is a controversial issue among scientists (it is not), seemed to hold the public’s attention. Today antimicrobial resistance is considered one of the most important medical issues in the world.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.