Reply #20: It is most certainly a valid/answerable scientific question WHY bees are dying NOW...

[Peace Patriot]

...from a fungus & virus and at no time that we know of in the past. This issue of the MYOPIA in scientific studies that affect corporate profit drives me up a wall. I've seen it on sudden large frog die-offs, on the ravaging of forests with clearcutting and pesticide use as entire key species are going extinct, on "sudden oak death" disease and many other events. The paid-for scientists, including government scientists, don't ask the ecosystem questions: What factors in this particular ecosystem's "web of life" are contributing to the CUMULATIVE effects on a particular species? We live in an intricate BIOSPHERE--a "web of life"--that we--and most particularly our profit-driven, profit-is-the-only-value, gigantic, powerful multinational corporations--have been hugely altering for the last century with growing intensity in the last half century. WHY are bees suffering from this fungus/virus disease NOW, and never before?

I find the following paragraph from the above listserv items particularly offensive in this regard:


"3) When everything else fails, there is proximate versus ultimate causes
theory, whereby pesticides do not kill directly but rather weaken the
organism. This theory is almost impossible to prove conclusively in the
case of CCD, and certainly impossible to disprove. Any negative results
can always be dismissed by the "true believers"..."

"Impossible to prove conclusively"? Science is not a matter of proving ANYTHING "conclusively." And this sophist knows that. Science is a matter of the preponderance of the evidence until some more evidence comes along, or some bigger picture is seeable. The preponderance of the evidence that the earth is the center of the Universe and that the "Milky Way" was stardust prevailed at one time. Then somebody--or a number of somebodies--brought more evidence to bear, and invented telescopes.

We are suffering that same kind of enforced myopia about the Earth's biosphere as the people of Middle Ages suffered from the myopia of the Roman Catholic Church about the Earth, the Solar System and the Universe. Only this time it's a different kind of multinational corporate structure that is blinding us. Bees don't suddenly "die off" in huge numbers because of a fungus/virus unless their immune systems have been weakened, making them vulnerable to the fungus/virus. WHAT is causing that weakness? Is it genetic (perhaps why it is affecting only commercial bees)? Or is it environmental? Those are the kinds of questions that should be asked. It's fine to identify the disease. WHAT is causing the disease to SUCCEED--to kill off whole colonies, in many places? What are the CHANGED environmental factors--different from the factors in all previous human/bee history--and how are these NEW factors CUMULATIVELY impacting the bees?

This is difficult science, because it is looking at the bigger, more complicated picture--the "web of life"--but it is not "impossible" science, and "conclusive" proof is NOT needed in order to put up CAUTION SIGNS (and even STOP SIGNS) about pesticides and other relevant environmental factors. You can't ever "prove" that MacDonald's "causes" obesity in children, but you can damn well put two and two together sufficiently to try to ALTER MacDonald's menu and its advertising and to improve childhood nutrition along with other factors including exercise. No exercise COMBINED WITH lots of salt-drenched French fries, and intense advertising to push lots of salt-drenched French fries--and a number of other factors, including poverty--produces this huge health problem. No, it is not all MacDonald's fault. Yes, lots of salt-drenched French fries are a CONTRIBUTING factor.

This obese child gets diabetes, and you've got to treat THAT. Right? Probably with drugs, or the child dies. But have you solved the problem? No, you have not. Why? Because children generally don't get obese and contract diabetes for NO REASON. There are multiple contributing and controllable factors that must be addressed, and if they are NOT addressed, we are looking at medical MALFEASANCE.

Same thing with bee die-off's. Scientists who focus on the disease and not on why bees are suffering the disease, in my opinion, are engaging in scientific malfeasance. Blindness. Myopia. Failure to look at the big picture--at ALL factors contributing to the die-off's. Identification of the disease is not enough. Even treatment of the disease is not enough, given what will likely be a chem/pharma treatment, rather than a more complex "web of life" solution. This is exactly like giving drugs for childhood obsesity/diabetes and NOT trying to change the child's diet and other circumstances.

Sorry to get so angry and shout about this. But it seems so obvious to me that the artificially human-changed "web of life"--in which pesticides play a big part--must be studied, in all its intricacy, and must be addressed, before you say that you "know" what is happening with bee die-off's and propose solutions. And I'm sorry but we know damn well how much corporate propaganda, power and money is influencing scientific problems like this one. Criminy, look at the lack of action of our government on climate change, the biggest industrial impact ever. And look at U.S. forests--or look at the pathetic, post-industrial remnants of them. "Houston, we're got a problem."