HIGHTOWER: Uncle Ugly Goes to Colombia

By Jim Hightower, AlterNet. Posted July 25, 2000.

Have you had your fusarium oxysporum today?

It's a powerful herbicide developed from a fungus, and assorted authorities from on high are proposing that it be sprayed on some of the food and around the habitats of us humans. Has it been tested for its impact on our health and our environment? No. If the idea of spreading this stuff around seems stupid to you, that's because the fusarium oxysporum project comes from America's drug czar, Gen. Barry McCaffrey, who specializes in stupidity.

The New York Times reports that the Little General, backed by the Clinton Whitehouse and Republican congressional leaders, wants to use this fungal pathogen against coca, marijuana, and poppy fields, since it can cause a wilt that kills these drug plants. Problem is, it can also kill tomatoes, potatoes, grains, and other crops, as well as who-knows-what other unlucky plants and animals that get doused by it. Problem number two is that once you turn the fungus loose, it has a life of its own, mutating, moving from plant to plant and living in the soil for years. For most living things, fusarium oxysporum is a disease, and it's rarely considered good policy to spread disease.

Yet no risk is too silly for the general's maniacal crusade to halt the production of all drug crops everywhere. Therein lies problem number three -- there's no evidence that this microbial fungus will even work, since scientists note that the narco traders will simply breed their coca plants to be resistant to the disease.

Nevertheless, the hapless peasants of Colombia are about to become the unwilling guinea pigs of McCaffrey's fusarium experiments. As part of the $1.3 billion Washington recently approved to prop-up the beleaguered Colombian government, officials there had to agree to field tests of what amounts to a biological weapon.

This is Jim Hightower saying ... Imagine how that makes the people there feel about us. Uncle Ugly goes to Colombia.

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