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.