Comments on “Gypsy Moth Management in the United States”

Editor’s Note: the following article was written by Carol Van Strum, an long-time environmental advocate and someone we’re honored to know here at Planet Waves. Below are her reactions to a recently published report on Gypsy Moth management, which can be reviewedВ here. –RA

Comments on “Gypsy Moth Management in the United States: a cooperative approach, Draft Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement USDA NA-MR-01-08 June 2008

John Quincy Adams once famously wondered how two phrenologists could look each other in the eye without laughing.(1) The same could certainly be said about the pseudo-scientist authors of this EIS, who must be hard pressed to keep a straight face perpetrating a 100-year-old con game no more scientific than phrenology.

The tangled web of deceptions, omissions, assumptions and invented math(2) В used to justify this pre-ordained spray program is so devoid of actual data as to preclude meaningful comment. Furthermore, in my very long — three decades -– experience commenting on environmental impact statements, I have yet to see a government program altered or halted by public comments or indeed by anything short of a court order. Cynicism regarding the present program is certainly appropriate, but in the interests of propriety I limit comments to some of the most glaringly fraudulent omissions in this document.

The most blatant omission is the total failure to consider any alternatives other than the “current” spray program and proposed additional spray programs. Considering that more than one hundred years of intensive spray programs have failed utterly to eliminate gypsy moths in the US, the failure even to consider any alternative but spraying would be laughable if it weren’t so costly and so deadly. Indeed, based on the government’s record of failure, a program of prayer and smoke signals would be an equally effective –- and far safer and cheaper — alternative.

The EIS disingenuously –- and with an arrogant aforethought -– notes that “The gypsy moth continues to be a problem as it spreads: over the last 100 years history shows that gypsy moth outbreaks cause widespread defoliation, tree mortality, environmental and public health risks, and public outcry to control the outbreaks.”(3)

What the EIS authors omitted from this amazing revision of history is that for more than 100 years the US government has repeatedly conducted large-scale poison programs in attempts to eliminate gypsy moth populations; as far back as 1906 federal and state officials cooperated to “control and prevent the spread of [gypsy moths] and eradicate outlying infestations,” using a succession of supposedly “safe” chemicals such as arsenate of lead.

Starting in 1946, 62 years ago, these programs used DDT “exclusively against the gypsy moth” in eastern states, spraying a 12 percent solution of DDT over hundreds of thousands of acres by cropduster planes and huge C-47 military tanker aircraft. The long-term objectives of these yearly mass poisoning projects, as stated by USDA in 1952, were to prevent “westward spread” of the gypsy moth and to achieve total “eradication of the gypsy moth from the United States.”(4)   Obviously, neither objective was ever achieved, as amply demonstrated by the current EIS, which repeats the same objectives in virtually the same language.

While the EIS emphasizes “the environmental and public health risks” of gypsy moths,(5) it doesn’t mention anywhere the enormous, well-documented environmental and public health damage –- persisting to this day as carcinogenic DDT metabolites in human and wildlife tissues throughout the nation -– of the government’s repeated and obviously unsuccessful century-long efforts to “eradicate” or even “control” the gypsy moth.

In omitting this crucial information, the EIS also omits any basis for its assumption that the latest effort will be any more successful, or more safe, than previous failures. Conveniently, the EIS further omits consideration of any alternatives whatsoever save its own guaranteed-to-fail options. For example, there is no mention of the cheaper, safer, far healthier and potentially far more effective alternative of providing nontoxic moth traps to every adult and child, and offering a healthy bounty for moths caught. The benefits of such a program, to say nothing of the fun, would be enormous, and it couldn’t be any less effective than a century of failed spray programs; the only risks would be to the pocketbooks of bureaucrats, pseudo-scientists, chemical companies and spray operators.

The definition of insanity, according to Albert Einstein, is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different outcome.(6) В  Nowhere is such insanity more evident than in repeated government attempts to eradicate gypsy moths: again and again trotting out the same old data, the same old fear tactics and horror films [complete with amplified sound effects of larvae chomping leaves], the same old false assurances of safety, the same old phony equations, the same old promises to eradicate these bugs from the continent. Again and again and again EIS authors blithely declare that this time the outcome will be different. Again and again and again they fail to achieve this goal, and seek funds to try again. And again. And yet again. This time the outcome will be different. Sure.

I therefore urge Congress to order a psychological evaluation of the EIS authors and of the EIS itself, in the context of a century’s worth of toxic, unsuccessful gypsy moth eradication projects, to determine the sanity or insanity of continuing this endless, costly, toxic cycle of failure.

Sincerely,
Carol Van Strum

References:

1. Vukin, Matthew C., “Phrenology in America,” 1999: http://clearinghouse.missouriwestern.edu/manuscripts/83.asp

2. e.g., see page 12 for one of the most preposterous scams inflicted on unsuspecting officials and
citizens: with absolutely no references, the human health “Hazard Quotient,” or as one notable mathematician calls it, “the hypothetical fake value,” for the gypsy moth is rated an astounding “1.6 to 625” (that lower number means guaranteed human damage), whereas dichlorvos and Tebufenozide – known acetylcholine inhibitors, methemoglobin increasers and possible carcinogens — are rated only 0.05 to 0.5, and 0.003 to 1.5 respectively. At the very least, the authors have some serious explaining to do about lack of references and a rather blatant attempt to paint the gypsy moth as a far greater hazard than the poisons used to kill it.

3. EIS, Summary page 1.

4. All quotes in this paragraph are from USDA , “Insects: the Yearbook of Agriculture 1952,” pp. 694-698.

5. See note 2, above.

6. Attributed variously to Albert Einstein, to a Chinese proverb, and, most appropriately, to “Sudden Death,” by Rita Mae Brown (1983).