The Phony Fish Discussion

Years ago fish stories were legendarily told by fishermen and women as exaggerations regarding the size of the fish they’d caught.

Must be a wild and natural fish... It's got all its fins

Today, fish stories are mostly told by wide eyed pop environmentalists about how “wild” and natural the salmon are in the rivers and streams those salmon return to when it is time to spawn.

Fish are profitable for pop-environmental groups because raising alarms about fish allows control of the waters the fish live in.  Control of the water allows control of the land surrounding the water meaning a successful campaign to “save the fish” can give even a small group intimate control over much of the population in an entire region.  To an activist group it doesn’t get much better; control and a great money raising opportunity.

Billions of dollars have been spent and untold restrictions have been placed on farmers, cities, residential land owners and others to achieve increases in “wild” salmon runs across North America and in other areas of the world.

The result is a fiction no one seems to want to address – there are no “pure” salmon genetically and, there never have been.

The fact of the matter is not all salmon go back to their river or stream of origin to spawn.  Known as “strays” a certain percentage of the fish enter waters other than their birth waters when they come “home.”  That’s fortunate because absent strays, many of the world’s great salmon rivers would have no fish at all.  It also means the genetics of the stray are introduced into the local population of fish.

An example is the Columbia River.  A few thousand years ago great floods scoured most of the entire Columbia system clean from Montana to the mouth of the river.  Today, fish live in much of the system, a tribute to the ability of a fish population to rebound.

Similarly, in the Skagit River system on Puget Sound volcanic eruptions destroyed some fish populations in the mid-1800s.  Today, fish flourish in the Skagit system.

On top of that, fish hatcheries have been used for a hundred years and more to help fish populations survive.

That brings up another fiction beloved of the pop-environmental movement, especially at fund raising time; “Wild fish,” the movements proclaim, “Are superior to hatchery grown fish which simply dilute the genetics of the population.”

The problem is, after more than a hundred years of hatchery production melding with “natural” populations, there cannot be genetically “pure” fish populations remaining anywhere hatchery fish have been introduced into. 

The lack of logic in the discussion is almost amusing.  When the little hatchery fish are released a fin is clipped to identify them.  Like the mark of Cain the fish instantly becomes an inferior species; but, when two of the inferior fish return to a river and spawn they, by a miracle considered by the pop-environmental movement to be druid’s equivalent to the virgin birth, produce wild and pure fish as offspring  because there is no one around to clip their little fins.

Aside from the fact that the discussion regarding “wild” and tame salmon is mostly fish story and not particularly about science, the whole approach to salmon, and other species, holds the potential to perpetuate a horrible problem that has plagued mankind from the beginning of time; the idea that one species or subspecies is superior to another simply because of genetic origin.

If we perpetuate the myth of the superiority of one species over another when it comes to fish or any other animal, don’t we perpetuate the myth that one species of humans might be superior to another?

Do we really want to do that?

Does Opposition To Genetic Engineering By Groups Like Greenpeace Amount To A Death Sentence For Millions?

The pop-environmental movement has a long history of supporting public policy approaches that, when implemented, end up causing irreparable harm to the environment, and, often, millions of premature deaths, especially deaths among children. 

As just one example, this blog examined, some time ago, the tens of millions of deaths brought about over several decades as the result of Rachael Carson’s misguided attacks on the chemical DDT and the subsequent soaring in the death rates from malaria in much of the tropical world. http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8791618495827652206#editor/target=post;postID=7534575162541163376

In recent years a technology labeled “genetic engineering” has come to the fore as a weapon in the fight against hunger, disease, and other ills suffered by mankind.

Some think this will be the result of genetic engineering

Always a reliable rider on any environmental bandwagon with the capacity to create big dollar donations, the group, Greenpeace, has leaped aboard the anti-genetic engineering wagon with enthusiasm.  In New Zealand, where the discussion regarding genetic engineering has been spirited, in part because of a public relations campaign mounted by a number of organizations allied with Greenpeace, the organization’s website declares, “Greenpeace is opposed to the release of genetically engineered organisms (GE organisms) into the environment and the food chain. Greenpeace is also against the patenting of life.”http://www.greenpeace.org/new-zealand/en/campaigns/genetic-engineering/

Others Think This Is An Appropriate Place For Genetic Engineering

On the other side of the discussion, a November 26, 2012 article published by National Review Online asks the question, “Is Opposition to Genetic Engineering Moral?  http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/333980/opposition-genetic-engineering-moral-henry-i-miller

The subtitle to the piece comments that, “Sentiment and bad science are killing the world’s poor.”

As summarized by the National Center For Policy Analysis, a free market based think tank dealing with many policy issues, including the environment, the National Review Online article addresses a number of new advances demonstrating the potential for saving lives and/or creating significantly enhanced quality of life for the citizens of the world including (bold is mine): http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_ID=22636

“Biopharming.

This is a new way to fight diarrhea, the number two killer of children under the age of five throughout developing countries, accounting for around 2 million deaths per year.

• Since the 1960s the standard care for diarrhea was the World Health Organization's formulation of a rehydration solution. However, this treatment does not lessen the severity.
• Research reflects that reinforcing oral rehydration solution with two proteins, lactoferrin and lysozyme, decreases duration and recurrence of diarrhea.
• Biopharming synthesizes the large quantities of necessary proteins.

Dengue fever.

• A British company, Oxitec, uses genetic engineering techniques to create new varieties of the mosquito species that transmits the disease.
• Oxitec's approach introduces a gene that produces a protein that stops mosquitoes' cells from functioning normally.
• The modified males, once released, survive long enough to mate with wild females, but the offspring die.
• This approach has reduced the infected mosquito population by 80 percent in the Cayman Islands and by 90 percent in Brazil.

The third example is the medical breakthrough called Golden Rice.

• Rice, a staple for billions of people, lacks specific micronutrients needed in a complete diet.
• Vitamin A deficiency is prevalent among poor people whose diet consists largely of rice.
• Every year, about half a million children go blind as a result of the deficiency, and 70 percent of those die within a year of losing their sight.
• The introduction of Golden Rice -- rice groups that are biofortified by the introduction of genes that construct vitamin A -- holds promise for public health.

Other examples exist by the dozens, if not hundreds.  In an article written by myself and soon to be published in an American magazine dedicated to crops a product called Bt is discussed as a natural substance allowing growers to avoid using much harder insecticides.  Bt is a natural bacterium important to the American corn and cotton industries.  Bt can be sprayed onto the surfaces of crops to provide temporary protection against insect pests or, can be genetically engineered into crops to protect plants for the lifespan of the plant. 

Bt has been in used for most of 100 years.

So, what is right, and what is wrong when it comes to genetic engineering? 

If millions of lives can be extended, hunger can be reduced, quality of life can be enhanced, and the environment improved, can it ever be right to withhold the results of genetic engineering from a world in harm’s way?  And, if millions die as the result of withholding the benefits of genetic engineering, who is responsible for those deaths?  Will we ever see Greenpeace stand up and say, in a forthright manner, “We think a world free of genetically engineered foods is worth giving up a few million lives for?” 

I doubt it.

More on this in a future blog.