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.)