Thread Rating:
  • 0 Vote(s) - 0 Average
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5

Neonic Ban: A Scientific Fraud Becomes Enshrined In EU Regulatory Law

#1
C C Offline
http://www.science20.com/henry_i_miller/...law-232399

EXCERPT: Five years after the European Union imposed a temporary ban on neonicotinoid pesticides, an “experts committee” of the member states has now finally voted to make the ban permanent. This was hardly a surprise. The vote followed shortly after the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) published their advisory opinion that neonics “represent a risk to wild bees and honeybees,” a finding that got banner headlines across Europe and the U.S.

Any reporter who actually read the report, however, would have discovered that EFSA found nothing of the sort. What they actually found was that it’s very difficult in the real world of science to prove a negative, which is why the most repeated phrase on the inside pages was that a “low risk could not be confirmed.”

The distance between saying something “represents a risk” and the peculiar assertion that a “low risk could not be confirmed” is quite wide, of course. In criminal law, it’s the difference between how we do things in democracies, where the government is required to prove your guilt, and Soviet-style justice where you have to prove your innocence.

[...] Usually, when people cheat, they try to hide it. [...] however, EFSA’s “cheat sheet” [...] is available for all to see on the EU’s website, here. Known as the Bee Guidance Document, or BGD for short, it created the regulatory framework that EFSA used to make its assessments.

[...] EFSA needed to provide the veneer of a scientific rationale for the ban – i.e. to find some excuse to ignore the field studies and base their finding on inapposite lab experiments instead. That veneer is just what the BGD provides. How? Simply by creating requirements for field studies that are literally impossible to meet, allowing EFSA to dismiss or heavily discount the results of every single field study ever conducted....

MORE: http://www.science20.com/henry_i_miller/...law-232399
Reply
#2
Syne Offline
Same way DDT got banned. Useful pesticides that wipe out malaria-spreading mosquitoes or help produce more food are banned, because the political elite (especially unelected regulators) don't care how about death and deprivation in third-world countries.
Reply
#3
confused2 Offline
The Bee Guidance Document ( https://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/efsajournal/pub/3295 ) is certainly one huge document. It is always going to be difficult to find pesticides (insecticides) that kill insects without killing bees which are also insects. The document does highlight some features of social bees which can be used in their favour. If a crop that is attractive to bees is also immediately fatal then no bee will return to the hive to report the resource and the losses will be minimal - this is obvious but (to me) also non-obvious. A complicated document about a complicated subject. The ld50 dose normally used for rats isn't going to work here.


Syne Wrote:Same way DDT got banned. Useful pesticides that wipe out malaria-spreading mosquitoes or help produce more food are banned, because the political elite (especially unelected regulators) don't care how about death and deprivation in third-world countries.

DDT stopped working...

--> https://sites.duke.edu/malaria/4-gene-en...esistence/

Resistance is one of the greatest problems opposing the control of vector-borne diseases around the world, particularly in developing countries.  Late in the 1940s, the World Health Organization (WHO) initiated programs to eradicate malaria around the world with the use of DDT.  Eventually the targeted anopheline mosquitoes, which are vectors of malaria, grew resistant (Georghiou, 1986).  Fifty-one of these species are resistant; 47 resistant to dieldrin, 24 to DDT, 10 to organophosphates, and 4 to carbamates (Georghiou, 1986).  By 1984, DDT resistance in Anopheles culcifacies was found over much of India (Georghiou, 1986).  [figure 8, pg. 28]   The number of Anopheles albimanus in Guatemala that are responsive to DDT has declined from nearly 100 percent in 1959 to approximately 5 percent in 1980.  In areas of El Salvador, the susceptible gene in the same species of anopheles was reduced by 52 percent by 1972 (Georghiou, 1986).

https://sites.duke.edu/malaria/4-gene-en...esistence/ <--

I think the concern was that DDT was long-lived and tended to concentrate in animals at the top of the food chain. We have the potential to eliminate ourselves (as pests) before we develope resistance.

From the on-line ENCYCLOPÆDIA BRITANNICA which falls within the realms of 'general knowledge' in the UK...

https://www.britannica.com/science/DDT

Many species of insects rapidly develop populations resistant to DDT; the high stability of the compound leads to its accumulation in insects that constitute the diet of other animals, with toxic effects on them, especially certain birds and fishes. These two disadvantages had severely decreased the value of DDT as an insecticide by the 1960s, and severe restrictions were imposed on its use in the United States in 1972.
Reply
#4
Syne Offline
Insect species are recently developing resistance to the alternatives, meaning that we should probably cycle through such pesticides, since over enough generations of exposure to one, they likely lose their resistance to another. But bans and the WHO limit that strategy. The toxic effects are largely exaggerated, minimal, or inconclusive.

[Image: resistance.gif]
[Image: resistance.gif]

Reply


Possibly Related Threads…
Thread Author Replies Views Last Post
  Article The lasting impacts of scientific fraud C C 0 61 Feb 14, 2024 08:53 PM
Last Post: C C
  Why research fraud is getting worse + Trust in sci & vaccines still declining. Why? C C 0 47 Nov 28, 2023 06:29 PM
Last Post: C C
  Article There’s far more scientific fraud than anyone wants to admit C C 0 56 Aug 12, 2023 04:05 PM
Last Post: C C
  Article Consequences of New York's pesticide ban + Anatomy of a scientific scandal C C 0 67 Jun 16, 2023 06:33 PM
Last Post: C C
  Article Shaky evidence for medical cannabis + The fraud behind the “discovery” of element 118 C C 0 58 Jun 13, 2023 02:24 PM
Last Post: C C
  Article Is peer review doomed? + AI makes sci fraud easier + Non-humans authoring sci papers C C 0 62 Mar 18, 2023 11:35 PM
Last Post: C C
  Who is responsible for research fraud? + Science of placebos is fueling quackery C C 0 202 Dec 12, 2022 07:38 PM
Last Post: C C
  Canadian activists want to ban flame retardant - bad news for public safety C C 0 51 May 20, 2022 05:29 PM
Last Post: C C
  Cancel culture in science? The "ban" on Russian colleagues. C C 0 69 Mar 12, 2022 08:13 AM
Last Post: C C
  Biomedical (& social) sciences are riddled with fraud: Real scandal behind ivermectin C C 1 74 Oct 26, 2021 05:16 PM
Last Post: Syne



Users browsing this thread: 1 Guest(s)