Bees are Dying as are Palestinians and Soon it Will be Our Turn

At a certain point during the day on Thursday the realization dawns on me that I am going to make it through another week. Friday is on the horizon, and with it the promise of a bit of rest and relaxation. When I realize I am going to make it I feel relief. The repetition of the rat race becomes less demanding. It seems as if I have a little more room to move.

But yesterday, let me just say this about yesterday before moving to a brief treatment of the hollowness, the stupidity of John Kerry's ceasefire negotiations. I can't get out of my head this OpEd I read a few weeks back by Mark Winston, a Simon Fraser University professor, "Our Bees, Ourselves: Bees and Colony Collapse." I was telling a coworker about it. Honeybee colonies are collapsing because of mono-crop agriculture, overuse of pesticides, overwork due to being hauled by tractor trailer from one field to the next to perform pollination duties. And this Simon Fraser University professor thinks the same thing is going to happen to us homo sapiens because the same basic conditions apply: We are basted in chemicals, sustained by mono-crop agriculture, and we are overworked:

Honeybee collapse has been particularly vexing because there is no one cause, but rather a thousand little cuts. The main elements include the compounding impact of pesticides applied to fields, as well as pesticides applied directly into hives to control mites; fungal, bacterial and viral pests and diseases; nutritional deficiencies caused by vast acreages of single-crop fields that lack diverse flowering plants; and, in the United States, commercial beekeeping itself, which disrupts colonies by moving most bees around the country multiple times each year to pollinate crops.

The real issue, though, is not the volume of problems, but the interactions among them. Here we find a core lesson from the bees that we ignore at our peril: the concept of synergy, where one plus one equals three, or four, or more. A typical honeybee colony contains residue from more than 120 pesticides. Alone, each represents a benign dose. But together they form a toxic soup of chemicals whose interplay can substantially reduce the effectiveness of bees’ immune systems, making them more susceptible to diseases.

These findings provide the most sophisticated data set available for any species about synergies among pesticides, and between pesticides and disease. The only human equivalent is research into pharmaceutical interactions, with many prescription drugs showing harmful or fatal side effects when used together, particularly in patients who already are disease-compromised. Pesticides have medical impacts as potent as pharmaceuticals do, yet we know virtually nothing about their synergistic impacts on our health, or their interplay with human diseases.

Observing the tumultuous demise of honeybees should alert us that our own well-being might be similarly threatened. The honeybee is a remarkably resilient species that has thrived for 40 million years, and the widespread collapse of so many colonies presents a clear message: We must demand that our regulatory authorities require studies on how exposure to low dosages of combined chemicals may affect human health before approving compounds.

Honeybees are ancient and very stable. So much so that Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe hypothesize that they came fully formed from outer space. The fact that honeybees are dying now in great numbers is a very bad sign not just for them but for all life on the planet. Humans will not be spared. A great die off is coming our way.

Winston's solution is let some things return to the wild. Capitalists will actually make more money:

Bees also provide some clues to how we may build a more collaborative relationship with the services that ecosystems can provide. Beyond honeybees, there are thousands of wild bee species that could offer some of the pollination service needed for agriculture. Yet feral bees — that is, bees not kept by beekeepers — also are threatened by factors similar to those afflicting honeybees: heavy pesticide use, destruction of nesting sites by overly intensive agriculture and a lack of diverse nectar and pollen sources thanks to highly effective weed killers, which decimate the unmanaged plants that bees depend on for nutrition.

Recently, my laboratory at Simon Fraser University conducted a study on farms that produce canola oil that illustrated the profound value of wild bees. We discovered that crop yields, and thus profits, are maximized if considerable acreages of cropland are left uncultivated to support wild pollinators.

A variety of wild plants means a healthier, more diverse bee population, which will then move to the planted fields next door in larger and more active numbers. Indeed, farmers who planted their entire field would earn about $27,000 in profit per farm, whereas those who left a third unplanted for bees to nest and forage in would earn $65,000 on a farm of similar size. 

Such logic goes against conventional wisdom that fields and bees alike can be uniformly micromanaged. The current challenges faced by managed honeybees and wild bees remind us that we can manage too much. Excessive cultivation, chemical use and habitat destruction eventually destroy the very organisms that could be our partners.

And this insight goes beyond mere agricultural economics. There is a lesson in the decline of bees about how to respond to the most fundamental challenges facing contemporary human societies. We can best meet our own needs if we maintain a balance with nature — a balance that is as important to our health and prosperity as it is to the bees.

But any such common sense has difficulty gaining traction in a world dominated by greed, lies, vanity and stupidity. Case in point is the U.S. Secretary of State's shuttle diplomacy to secure a ceasefire between Israel and Gaza. As Michael Gordon and Rick Gladstone report, "Kerry Claims Progress Toward Gaza Truce, but Hamas Leader Is Defiant," he is only talking to, on the Palestinian side, the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas. Abbas will be able to deliver nothing:

But even as Mr. Kerry pressed his case with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, a defiant note was struck by one figure whom the secretary of state has conspicuously not talked with: Khaled Meshal, the political leader of Hamas. 

“Everyone wanted us to accept a cease-fire and then negotiate for our rights,” Mr. Meshal said at a news conference in Qatar, his home in exile, taking aim at the very approach Mr. Kerry has sought to nurture. “We reject this, and we reject it again today.” 

Mr. Kerry has emphasized that his immediate goal is to obtain a cease-fire, after 16 days of fighting that has killed nearly 700 Palestinians, 32 Israeli soldiers and three Israeli civilians.

Kerry is trying to secure an immediate ceasefire with only a promise to address substantive issues later. We know what some of those issues are -- an end to the Israeli blockade of Gaza, open borders and ports, release of Hamas political prisoners, etc. -- and we also know that Israel has no intention of budging on any of them without some form of Gaza demilitarization backed up by intrusive inspections. Hamas will not agree to this. Furthermore, Israel has stated there will be no ceasefire until leadership is satisfied Hamas' tunnels have been identified and destroyed.

Israel got a big boost late last night when the FAA lifted its flight ban. No doubt a lot of pressure was placed on the Obama administration. But Meshal is resolute. There will be no ceasefire without a lifting of the blockade:

In Doha, Qatar’s capital, Mr. Meshal outlined his own demands. While Mr. Meshal said that Hamas would not “close the door” for a brief truce to evacuate the wounded and deliver humanitarian aid, he stressed a more lasting agreement would not come until some of the group’s demands were met. 

“We will not accept any initiative that does not lift the blockade on our people and that does not respect their sacrifices,” he said.

So the slaughter will continue. The United States' days as a leading power are over. It no longer commands any moral force. Europe is moving away. Eventually, hopefully soon, the American people will move away as well. By this I mean smash Washington. This will take a new political formation, which, given all the election and campaign finance law revisions of the last twenty years, will basically require a revolution.

Where Monsters Dwell #18: Lee-Kirby Take Us to Mars

After a hiatus of many weeks due to the NFL playoffs, I am returning to my Where Monsters Dwell project. I began this last October by happenstance. I reached into the closet where I keep an old comic collection and grabbed out a handful at random. What I grabbed was Where Monsters Dwell, a Marvel title from the Bronze Age that reprinted classic Silver Age science fiction from Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, usually as the feature story, and then filled the rest of the book with toss-off horror (though sometimes interesting work by Steve Ditko is included). What makes this an interesting exercise is that these Lee-Kirby sci-fi stories directly precede or appear at the same time that Marvel recreates the modern superhero as a member of a dysfunctional family (Fantastic Four), a troubled teenage nerd (Amazing Spider-Man), a Norse god (Mighty Thor), an angry green giant who shares an identity with a scientist (Incredible Hulk), and a playboy industrialist who hides behind a high-tech mask (Invincible Iron Man).

What stands out the most about the Silver Age Lee-Kirby sci-fi is Cold War paranoia. Everything is a monstrous outside threat. Outer space is a minefield of death and destruction. Every alien is bent on domination and annihilation. The people, except for communists and the occasional escaped convict, are decent and simple and know their place in a cohesive society.

Where Monsters Dwell #18, with a cover date of November 1972 (the month Nixon shellacs McGovern, putting an end to the Hippie fantasy of having a president who listened to what they had to say), reprints "The Sacrifice!" from Strange Tales #91 (December 1961). In it, an astronaut, Colonel Chuck Dawson, in the future (1981) travels to Mars, where he encounters a plant creature who has previously wiped out the advanced civilization of the planet. The plant creature captures Dawson and makes him transport them back to Earth where the plant creature plans to repeat what he did to Mars -- annihilate all life on the planet. But the astronaut foils the creature's plans by blowing up the spaceship in outer space. He sacrifices his life so Earth might live. Lee-Kirby play up the bitter irony in the last two panels with man-on-the-street commentary decrying Dawson's incompetence for costing the taxpayers billions of dollars.

According to a good article, "Beings Not Made for Space," by Kenneth Chang that appeared in last Tuesday's New York Times, NASA expects to have a manned mission to Mars by the 2030s. Before blastoff some significant problems must be solved that relate to how human beings survive in the weightless environment of outer space. A mission to Mars is expected to take two-and-a-half years, much longer than the record 438 days Dr. Valery Polyakov spent on the Russian space station Mir in 1994.

At least loss of bone density seems to have been tackled:

NASA turned to osteoporosis drugs and improved exercises, like having the astronauts run while strapped to a treadmill. The up-and-down pounding set off signals to the body to build new bone, and NASA scientists reported that astronauts then came back with almost as much bone as when they had left. 

“That was huge,” said Scott M. Smith, a NASA nutritionist. 

Because both the formation and destruction occur at accelerated rates, “we don’t know if that bone is as strong as when you left,” Dr. Smith said. But the scientists now feel that bone loss is not a showstopper for a long-duration mission.

But a new trickier problem has cropped up recently -- squashed eyeballs:

NASA officials often talk about the “unknown unknowns” — the unforeseen problems that catch them by surprise. The eye issue caught them by surprise, and they are happy it did not happen in the middle of a mission to Mars. 

In 2009, during his six-month stay on the International Space Station, Dr. Michael R. Barratt, a NASA astronaut who is also a physician, noticed he was having some trouble seeing things close up, as did another member of the six-member crew, Dr. Robert B. Thirsk, a Canadian astronaut who is also a doctor. So the two performed eye exams on each other, confirming the vision shift toward farsightedness. 

They also saw hints of swelling in their optic nerves and blemishes on their retinas. On the next cargo ship, NASA sent up a high-resolution camera so that they could take clearer images of their eyes, which confirmed the suspicions. Ultrasound images showed that their eyes had become somewhat squeezed. 

NASA is now checking astronauts’ eyesight before, during and after trips to the space station.

The issue turns out not to be new. Many space shuttle astronauts had complained of changes in eyesight, but no one had studied the matter. 

“It is now a recognized occupational hazard of spaceflight,” Dr. Barratt said. “We uncovered something that has been right under our noses forever.” 

Dr. Barratt said the vision shift had no effect on his ability to work in space. The concern, however, is that the farsightedness may be just a symptom of more serious changes in the astronauts’ health. “What are the long-term implications?” he said. “That’s the $64 million question.”

Then there is the issue of radiation exposure. We are protected from high-energy radiation found in space because of Earth's magnetic field. Scientists don't know what years of cosmic rays in outer space will do to the human body. (It turned Reed, Sue, Johnny and Ben into the Fantastic Four and birthed the Marvel Universe.)

Regarding radiation, NASA operates under a restriction that astronauts should not have their lifetime cancer risk raised by more than three percentage points, but that is an arbitrary limit. Mark Kelly, for one, said he would be willing to accept twice that if he had a chance to go to Mars. 

There may be other complications, though. At Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island, scientists are bombarding mice with radiation that mimics high-energy cosmic rays that zip through outer space. Those mice take longer to navigate a maze, suggesting that the radiation may be damaging their brains.

Scientists say it may damage other organs, including the heart, nervous system and digestive system. “Those could be acute effects,” said William H. Paloski, the head of NASA’s human research program. “We just don’t know. It’s one we’re looking at.”

Finally, there are the mental health issues. Being confined for years in a small space with coworkers, always on the clock, will, according to studies -- guess what? -- drive you crazy.

So interplanetary spaceflight seems like a tall order. No wonder in the movies the problem is dealt with by putting the crew in neat, clean, high-tech suspended animation pods.

One way that "The Sacrifice!" is visionary is the way that it articulates, albeit in clunky movie monster fashion, a version of panspermia, the idea that biological material -- life! -- exists throughout the Universe, traveling on asteroids, meteors -- like the 120 meteorites from Mars found on earth -- and other forms of conveyance. Sir Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe, hypothesizing in their book Evolution from Space (1981), think that large clouds of viruses exist in outer space, and that when the Earth travels through one it can explain such devastating pandemics as the 1918 influenza outbreak that killed an estimated 50 to 100 million people.

Maybe comic-book kings Stan Lee and Jack Kirby are not far from the mark in the last panel of "The Sacrifice!":

Meanwhile, out in the vast expanses of space, remnants of the deadly plant creature float along aimlessly!