Dr. KRISTI MILLER AND FRANKENFISH

At issue in the Cohen Commission, currently taking place in Vancouver is whether fish farms have diseases that can spread to wild salmon, which in turn may have caused the salmon crash of 2009.  Speculation is swirling around the testimony of Dr. Kristi Miller, a federal fish biologist working out of the Pacific Biological Station on Vancouver Island, and what she knows about fish diseases.

 

But the Harper government has silenced Dr. Miller.  Which is odd, as it was the Harper government who ordered the Cohen Commission in the first place after the crash of the salmon population in 2009.  Surely somebody around Harper must have advised him that fish farms were likely to come under discussion beforehand.  Then there was the enormous run of Sockeye in 2010 (the largest run in one hundred years) that would seem to counterbalance somewhat the claim of real or threatened destruction of the Sockeye by disease. 

I can’t see Harper panicking enough over the discussion of fish farms and fish diseases to risk criticism of being called a dictator (which of course he is) by silencing Dr. Miller.  There has to be other reasons.  But Harper can certainly silence Dr. Miller as the responsibility for fish farms was transferred from provincial jurisdiction to complete federal control by way of a recent law suit pressed by Alexandria Morton.  Dr. Miller, in any event, is a federal employee. This leaves us in a bit of a fishy soup.

For starters Dr. Kristi Miller is not just a fish biologist.  She heads a department at the Biological Station.  Her title: Dr. Kristi Miller, Head, Molecular Genetics.  And the title of her division is: Ecological Genomics.  What is Genomics?  According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary:

“a branch of biotechnology concerned with applying the techniques of genetic and molecular biology to the genetic mapping and DNA sequencing of sets of genes or the complete genomes of selected organism, with organizing the results in databases, and with applications of the data (as in medicine or biology)

A little thick, you say? I agree.  But let’s look at the operable words here.  They are, GENETIC MAPPING, DNA SEQUENCING OF GENES, WITH ORGANIZING DATABASES, and WITH APPLICATIONS OF THE DATA.  From what I know of scientific jargon, I believe this means that Dr. Miller and her staff are looking at fish genes with the object of changing or modifying them in some way. In fact, I think BC is hosting some of the prime architects of genetically modified fish that is causing such great consternation in other parts of the world. Now why would I think such a terrible thing was happening right here in BC?

Because the salmon that are called FrankenFish by the U.S. media have had their genetic structures altered by the DNA Sequencing of Genes, Dr. Kristi Miller’s specialty. These fish are drastically altered by the process of inserting added genes into the salmon eggs.  The fish then grow huge.  And they carry added material in their flesh…hormones and pathogens.  They are being designed for fish farms. I believe these genetically modified fish are already being farmed here in BC on at least two different farms. 

Added to the horror of the creation of these FrankenFish, other fish that have simply been sex changed and sterilized are now populating our BC lakes and coastal waters.  I believe this is really the information causing Harper to panic.   Dr. Miller might accidentally, or under questioning, start talking about how her main work,  I’m beginning to suspect, is that of creating, or helping to create, FrankenFish.  And a rising fear that, (as intimated by Dr. Edward Donaldson) the public might turn ugly upon receipt of this knowledge.

HELP! I'M FALLING...

Help, I’m falling…
Into a slough of despair. The deeper I get into reading the scientific papers on how to create sterilized, sex changed, fish farm fish slurry out of what would have been beautiful, healthy wild salmon is turning my stomach. And I have a cast iron stomach (I’ve raised eight kids.) I’m also relatively shock proof. But, in reading another of Dr. Edward Donaldson’s papers, I find I am not shock proof at all. The salmon Dr. Donaldson (DFO, West Vancouver laboratories) and colleagues are designing to stock fish farms with, are not only also being stocked in BC lakes, but already have been released into BC’s coastal waters.

We are told in a paper entitled The Reproductive Containment of Genetically Altered Salmonids that salmon, triploided and directly treated with estradoil (the most potent of estrogens ) “have been released from both Capilano Salmon Hatchery and Big Qualicum Salmon Hatchery into British Columbia Coastal Waters.” Page 114
And in the same paper we read that these fish were caught and are being caught, by both commercial and recreational fisher people and consumed by humans. However, there are many problems associated with sterilization of salmon, as Dr. Donaldson goes on to inform us, because male hormones are also being used to sterilize fish. Why? Just for fun? To see what will happen? Just to see what will happen to wild fish when some of the treated fish are not completely sterilized as has happened before? There isn’t even a reason to use male androgens as fish farms want all females. Dr. Donaldson tell us on page 118, bottom of the page no.3

No. 3 “Androgens are potent steroids (testosterone, etc.) which are biologically active in humans. Operators must therefore utilize appropriate protective equipment and avoid self exposure.”

No. 5 “Androgen solutions must be disposed of after use in an environmentally sound manner.”

No.6 “While androgen residues are completely eliminated in a matter of two to three weeks after the termination of treatment and the sterilized fish at the time of marketing contain no indictable levels of natural androgen, the potential exists for consumer resistance to fish that have received androgen treatment during early development.”

The potential exists? Just the potential? That the public would be appalled at buying and eating sterilized, sex changed, super fat fish? With no real assurance that hormonal residues are not lurking in the mushy fish flesh? I think perhaps Dr. Edward Donaldson and his colleges have been driven more than a little mad by the secrecy they must labour under; by a grossly magnified sense of their own privilege to destroy and rearrange natural systems almost at whim, and by both provincial and federal governments who recognize only one mantra, that of profit.

This is the same sense of an almost god-like privilege that the logging corporations feel when they freely admit they are after every last old growth tree in this province so that natural forests can be replaced by tree farms. Is it such a stretch for the BC government and the government of Canada to feel that it might also be a profitable thing to change the very fish of the seas into manufactured versions of fish that can be patented? Not likely? Oh, very likely. I’ll tell you about Monsanto’s interest in these fish later. Also about the interest that an extremely prominent businessman in British Columbia has in FrankenFish.

FAT, FALLOW, TRIPLOID FISH!

Bless my bones! The Times Colonist has actually paused for a moment in its never ending praise of the lords of commerce and brought a subject to the attention of the masses that might actually benefit our health to know about (Modified Salmon can breed with fish in the wild TC July 15.) This article is a reprint, more like a filler, not to be confused with an actual TC reporter doing any investigative work for the paper. Which the Times Colonist wouldn't allow anyway.

And the reprint didn’t get it quite right. Modified fish are already being offered for human consumption. They are already in fifty per cent of the fresh water lakes in BC (Fresh Water Society of BC.)These fish are called triploids because by treating the fish eggs shortly after fertilization, instead of developing with two different sets of chromosomes which is normal, the fish develop three. In the wild, a triploid fish is exceedingly rare and is always sterile. However, there is no assurance that these vast numbers of artificially triploided fish recently introduced into our lakes cannot reproduce in the wild.

The government of BC is stocking our lakes with these abnormal triploid fish because it makes a good photo-op for the fIsher people when one of these fish is caught. As triploid fish become adults without going through sexual maturity they get very fat. Would the government bother to tell fishermen that they are catching and eating abnormally fat fish with shriveled testes and ovaries? Good Lord, no. That would upset people. Still, it is the hormonally treated fish that worry me the most.

In his paper “Hormones and Sex Control in Fish with Particular Emphasis on Salmon” Dr. Edward Donaldson from the West Vancouver Laboratory tells us that in order to get all female salmon in farm pens:

“…all female populations can be produced by direct treatment with natural or synthetic estrogens.”

And Dr. Donaldson goes on to cite the experiments he is involved with that use the most potent of the estrogens which is estradiol, and a synthetic estrogen called ethynylestradiol. Remember the research scientists in the book OUR STOLEN FUTURE who told us that estradiol was so potent that it could affect life in the womb even if ingested in parts per trillion? From my own research there isn’t even a measuring device that can register parts per trillion of estradiol. How can Dr. Donaldson assure us with any degree of certainly that there wouldn’t be any residues of artificially imposed estrogen in the flesh of hormonally treated salmon that could have disastrous effects on a human fetus? Or toddlers? Or adults?

The biggest company behind the creation of “Frankenstein Salmon” or “Franken Fish” is an American company called AquaBounty. This company not only uses growth hormones that affect the way estrogens are utilized in the bodies of the fish, they actually slice the fish genes to produce a creature that grows at least twice as fast, sometimes even three or four times as fast, as normal salmon.

Experiments are being done here in Canada for AquaBounty. With Canadian money. And they are not just experiments. AquaBounty has a production facility on Prince Edward Island. And guess what? AquaBounty has also received a $2.9 million dollar grant from the Canadian government to assist in their research and production.

That’s $2. 9 million dollars of our money to help transform our sweet natural salmon that nourishes our bodies, minds, and hearts into…what? Into fish monsters that may cause birth defects, add to the burden of estrogen fed cancers, and may feminize men. This is what the Harper government is promoting and what our BC government has latched onto with gusto. ( The fish shown may or may not be a triploid.)

BRAIN FOOD? or FRAKENSTEIN SALMON?

Brain Food? Or “Frankenstein” Salmon?

es, I’m talking about sex changed fish and fish farms. Again. The Cohen Commission is presently looking at (or will look at) disease and sea lice in fish farms (data complied due to Alexandra Morton’s wonderful work) but I have come to the conclusion that the increasing practice of using sex hormones (both estrogen and testosterone are used) to actually change the sex of fish in the pens is, in my opinion, even more egregious. Why?
I am worried about the sex hormone residue in some fish farm salmon that could very well seriously impact humans. From the book Our Stolen Future by Colborn, Dumanoski, Myers, they write (Chapter Four) that…
”As early as the 1930s, researchers at Northwestern University Medical School showed that tinkering with hormone levels during pregnancy was a dangerous business, particularly for the fetus undergoing rapid development in the womb…Although estrogen at normal levels is essential for development, too much of it can wreak havoc.” But how much artificially given estrogen would a human mother have to consume from fish for it to begin to affect her fetus?
According to Dr. Fred vom Saal, quoted from the same book, Our Stolen Future, it only takes the tiniest particle of estrogen imaginable to cause havoc in the development of a human fetus in the womb:
“When considering hormones such as estradiol, the most potent estrogen, forget parts per million, or parts per billion. The concentrations are generally parts per trillion, one thousand times lower than parts per billion. One can begin to imagine a quantity so infinitesimally small by thinking of a drop of gin in a train of tank cars full of tonic. One drop in 660 tank cars would be one part in a trillion, such a train would be six miles long.”
Let’s consider this. The fish farms want only female fish in their pens because a significant number of male salmon mature early and die. That hurts the bottom line. Better to hurt something else beside the bottom line, they seem to think, like secretly experimenting with, and then producing, farmed fish that very well may still carry enough surplus artificially induced estrogen in their bodies to affect the hormonal development of humans when ingested by pregnant women. Fish farmed salmon can be made all female by direct treatment with estrogen or by treating the mother fish with testosterone to cause her to become male but to develop sperm that will be all xx.
And who would tell pregnant women about farmed fish being hormonally altered? Certainly not our governments. They are providing the funds to get modified salmon “out there. “ At least the US so far has resisted the pressures of the major fish corporation (Agua Bounty) who created “Frankenstein” Salmon as they are beginning to be called, from being FDA approved there. Do we know what’s going on here in Canada and British Columbia?
How would we know? Would our governments tell us? In a pig’s eye. They won’t even tell us what brands of Canadian corn or soy beans are genetically modified. We suspect most Canadian brands are, not because our government told us but because other nations who refuse to accept our modified grains tell us. Then why would we expect our governments to change their secretive ways over modified fish? It’s in their best interests (in their present roles as enemies of the people) to keep hormonally modified salmon a total secret. The public mustn’t know that our elected representatives’ willingness to allow genetically modified basic food stuffs now extends to, oh so recklessly, sex changing our fish with the use of sex hormones. But we, the public, do know some things. Next time.

Christy, Sarah, and the Riot

Christy, Sarah, and the Riot

Ever notice the similarity between these two right wing women? Christy Clark and Sarah Palin? Neither like other women, at least those engaged in actually working to benefit the community, such as nurses and school teachers (yes, I know men also work in these professions.) Both Clark and Palin try to project their love and concern for families in general in their rhetoric, but in practice most of their love goes to rich families. Still, these are two tough sounding ladies. Especially tough on crime. While Christy Clark hasn’t as yet flourished her rifle (if she has one) over her kill as does Palin, Clark can sound just as tough. Consider her “you-can-run-but you can’t hide” threats to the street rioters after the big lose.

Deservedly so? Yes and no. Am I being soft on crime to point out that young people ape the adults in their society? In every society on earth? Game night you had a bunch of young males (yes, a few females were involved ) who have a dearth of alpha male models of honesty and altruism to ape. Young people can be very idealistic; they yearn for good lives. Young men want to identify with something that will contribute to their growing sense of masculinity. They are searching for what it means to be a man. The only place they have to look is to the other men around them. Of course they recognize there are many hardworking honest men everywhere. But in a highly individualist and competitive society young men also recognize that honest, hardworking men are not necessarily rewarded fairly for their efforts. And they look up to men who know how to win. They have been taught by male culture that winning is everything? This makes everybody, especially young men, emotionally skewed. But where did they get this idea only winning counts?

From the adult alpha males (and females) in their world who consider losing anything important a humiliation not to be endured. And we heard this message constantly from the media leading up the game. Just the expectation of winning was front page news for many weeks before the game.

The message that came unremittingly from the media, politicians, and business leaders was that hockey was the thing that held Canada together. All of Canada was involved. This was it. We just had to win. We were bound to. All the important people said so. Obscene amounts of money were poured into this game. The testosterone in the air was palpable. Many young males identification with the hockey players became complete. And then our hockey players lost. Which meant many of the young men felt they had lost, too. This was not only a national disgrace, but a personal one. The high expectation, fueled by alcohol, turned to anger. Against whom? I believe their anger was, at bottom, directed against a society that betrays them at every turn. How so?

By expecting young people to be better than the adults around them. Christy Clark sounded like an avenging angel of the Lord out to skin these young people alive. But my belief is that she projected such outrage because she knows herself to be a plunderer and a coward. If she were not a coward she would order an investigation into the BC Rail fiasco. She would want to explain fully to the public why Basi and Verk were given 6 million dollars in return for their agreement not to name the higher ups in government they claimed had given them the orders to commit criminality. Could that be because Christy Clark was the deputy premier of British Columbia when the deals surrounding the BC Rail sale were made? And that she knows very well who the higher ups were because she was one of them? And is this the real reason she wouldn’t come out and debate David Eby during the bi-election? Because she dreads any pointed questions about the BC Rail sale worse than she would a coiled rattlesnake? I think so.
Well, Christy Clark, carry on. But those words “you can run but you can’t hide” directed toward temporarily out of control young people may come back to haunt you.