Hard News: What to make of the spray
72 Responses
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I think sneering at peoples fears when they are keep in the dark is a pretty weak position.
Don, once more, where the hell was I doing that? I thought I was sneering at some pretty shoddy reporting, and flat out dodgy misinformation being put about by pressure groups (and uncritically repeated by lazy hacks) which richly deserves to be sneered at.
And good on you for being able to track down and meaningfully analyse peer-reviewed research. Not everyone can; and folks like me are even more dependent on MSM hacks to do their damn jobs, rather than slap a shock horror headline on a lightly-edited piece of scaremongering. No disrespect to our host, but its pretty embarrasing when one of the pyjamahadeen appears to put more effort - and basic reporting - into a story than the combined forces of the MSM.
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From someone I find credible, with insight but not direct involvement in the spraying:
The plain facts are this:
(1) the people who were relocated were treated with great care and dignity on all occasions, many at great cost over and above the minmum requirements - and indeed, some who played the circumstances to the hilt were indulged with much longer times and distances away from home than required;
(2) those who complain of illnesses had them (some psychosomatic) before the spraying, which is why they were moved - the spraying did not cause the illness;
(3) the reason that a counter to the current furore is not being offered is that the spray content is "commercially sensitive" - I personally think it's time this was dropped in favour of clearing the air, which would stop the neurotic grizzling and uninformed commentary going on;
(4) you won't get any balanced reporting on this issue until MAF and the companies involved open up on this (but isn't it the reporters' job to do exactly that?). Inconvenience, yes; illness - no.
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And, Don, I don't mean to bitch off at you. Bloody good job that you take the health and safety of your kids seriously, and ended up feeling confident enough that you had enough sound information to make a good decision. Can't fault anyone for that.
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Sigh... Preview is my friend.
Should have read (additions bolded):
Sure, you can always do better and pushing back against the huge amount of disinformation and anti-immunisation rhetoric doing the rounds was a massive job in itself. And I still wonder if some of the really in your face 'shock and awe' tactics designed to motivate parents didn't end up have some unintended consequences. Even with the best of intentions, there's part of me that doesn't like public health campaigns designed to scare the shit out of already anxious parents. But I can sure understand any parent or doctor who's seen a child die of meningococcal disease would say the end more than justifies the means.
Hope that's a little less surreal.
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The MoH played down potential side effects of MeNZB too much, even if they were unlikely.
I think even that is a little euphamistic Russell. I think the MoH and the medical profession intentionally hid the potentially side effects of MeNZB (albeit unlikely). We had a right to know.
My 8 month old ended up in Starship for a week and 2 transfusions with this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiopathic_thrombocytopenic_purpura a week after her MeNZB.
Followed by months of blood testing and checkups.
And whilst it is supposedley very rare, according to the local plunket nurse, she's aware of at least 2 cases in Westmere alone.
ACC finally acknowledged and accepted it was caused by the MeNZB but I don't think the MoH is collecting any sort of accurate statistics on adverse reactions to MeNZB so how would they really know ?
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Glenn, your story and the one I discussed with Russell about his boys a while ago are terrifying and every parent's nightmare.
However, there have been a lot of scarey misleading statistics around this, many propagated by folks who should know better. Stand up Tony Ryall.
A lot of the side effects reported are potential side effects from *any* vaccination. I guess it depends on who is advising you on the day but I know when we were getting advice on vaccinations a few years back the potential for fuck up was clearly stated. It was again with MeNZB, in Wellington at least. I also think that maybe the information campaign here was better as a result of lessons learnt in Auckland (that's conjecture based on Glenn and Russell's comments).
The real question should be, is MeNZB *more* likely to cause side effects. Last time I read about the topic it seemed not to be the case.
Craig, apologies for having what must seem like "yet another go". I was actually thinking that it was Russell's column was a little sneering and condescending. I think is unfair on all those people that were sprayed and kept in the dark about what it was that was making them cough and giving them headaches.
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Argh!!
Finally a topic which is on Public Address which I could speak about with some level of actual knowledge and expertise (I'd like to think).
I've been following this for a couple of years now, watching how it's evolved and have talked to quite a few people who were affected by the spraying (even met one or two in person).
Unfortunately because of where I work I'm constrained from really discussing the issues surrounding it or going into any detail - which is very frustrating (to understate it to the extreme).
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I was actually thinking that it was Russell's column was a little sneering and condescending.
Really? That certainly wasn't the intention. I was trying to get across that the hysterical people created so much noise around the issue that it was hard to tell who was seriously affected by the spray and to what degree.
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Russell I am absolutely certain that was not your intention.
I do have a bee in my bonnet about people trying to keep things secret in NZ. Would it be a stretch to compare Andertons arrogance with that of the EBs?
I guess this will be a rare instance of disagreement. I wonder if that will persuade Tze Ming to come back?
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That is, the people who worried most about environmental toxins were the people most likely to get sick from the spray:
It is worth asking why people get worried about environmental toxins?
Worik ST
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Grant Philpott, in reply to
I came across this old blog a few days ago. I could not believe some of the arrogant and ignorant posts. Here's some facts for future occasions:
Helen Clark ordered the eradication of the Painted Apple Moth because her government was under pressure for it's biosecurity failures.
The government sprayed West Auckland because of corruption and incompetence relating to the control of the Painted Apple moth. I used to work for the organisations involved and I can explain why to those that want to know. There are sanitized documents online relating to this. Serious medical problems from the prior spraying in Auckland were dismissed by corrupt government henchmen.
The government told parliament that Foray 48b contained no genetically modified ingredients. In fact, the active ingredient Btk was genetically modified by adding the genotoxin chloramphenicol to the nutrient broth that formed the basis of the spray. This is confirmed by multiple patents held by Valent Biosciences. These patents also contain full ingredient lists- so much for trade secret! The government and their henchman Ian Gear lied to parliament.
Chloramphenicol is so dangerous to some people (at any level of exposure), that the government has banned it's presence in food down to the limit of detection. It is the most toxic chemical on the governments list and we were made to inhale it.
The government told us to stay inside during the spraying. We found out afterwards that the spray was getting into houses and staying in the air for many hours longer than it was outside.
Chloramphenicol is particularly dangerous to people with blood disorders and sensitivity to preservatives. That's why some people died instantly and some died lingering deaths and some continue to be injured and why babies are being born mutated because of the effects of it on their parents. Some people will have not been affected at all as they are resistant to the effects of chloramphenicol.
Chloramphenicol was once used as an antibiotic but so many many people were killed and injured by it that it has been banned in the USA. There was a book written on chloramphenicol and the corruption around the peddling of it, published in 1994- called Adverse Reactions by Thomas Maeder.
I started having severe reactions to the spray (towards then end of the spraying program) in the form of bleeding blisters in my nose the day after inhaling it. I was seen by AerAqua and they recognized I was being affected, but all they did was pay for me to leave the area for the final sprayings. That is, when they remembered. For the medical conditions I got, they referred me back to my GP. I note that AerAqua was wound up by Inland Revenue. The woman running AerAqua bought herself a farm in Kumeu on the money she stole, that should have gone to helping victims.
I took the ACC to court a couple of years ago for refusing to look at the evidence I found for the presence of chloramphenicol. The judge ordered the ACC toxicology panel look at my evidence relating to chloramphenicol.
The panel then wrote an absolutely false report. for example they said I could not have been poisoned by chloramphenicol as I did not go through an aplastic anemia phase before getting leukemia. ( I developed chronic lymphocytic leukemia during the spraying). It was thought, many years ago, that people poisoned by chloramphenicol would go through an aplastic anemia phase before getting leukemia. In 1990, the World Health Organisation, based on medical records dating back to the 1960's, recognised that people could go directly from being exposed to chloramphenicol to getting leukemia. So why is the ACC expert Toxicology Panel using medical facts that are twenty two years out of date. Is it because they are incompetent or corrupt?
The judge has said that I can't question the new ACC Toxicology Panel report. So where do I get justice now?
During the spraying I helped carry the coffin of my best mates father. I found out after the spraying that he had identical symptoms to me. That man escaped the Nazis during WW2 and the Russians after WW2 only to be struck down down by Helen Clark and her henchmen before he ever saw a grandchild.
I only survived because I found a doctor in the city who checked my endocrine system in 2005 and found I was nearly dead from a failure to produce hormones. Chloramphenicol shuts down the bodies ability to make Vitamin D and pregnenolone. All the sick people could have been simply treated with vitamin D as it detoxifies chloramphenicol.
Perhaps all the loudmouths that contributed to this blog would like to debate the facts with me. -
Ian Dalziel, in reply to
a positive side effect of the spray programme at my place - bug-free peaches off the tree
That would make for a 'Cheery Orchard'...
</check off>
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chloramphenicol
So, basically, it's a vital and effective antibiotic that kills between 1 in 24,000 and 1 in 240,000 depending on application method, with sufficient dosage. Thought to be a rare genetic susceptibility.
It's banned in food because it's an antibiotic, and they're all banned in food. We're trying to preserve the effectiveness of our useful antibiotics.
It does increase childhood leukemia rates, but there's no evidence for it increasing adult leukemia. The rates of childhood leukemia from Auckland's DHB over the relevant periods should probably be available somewhere, as should the rates of all leukemia.
Seems like the expected number of deaths from it should be zero (up to about 3). The government of the day refusing to publish the active ingredients would have worked to prevent to nocebo effect to a large degree, against the crap going out in the media.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nocebo
Writing from his extensive experience of treating cancer (including more than 1,000 melanoma cases) at Sydney Hospital, Milton (1973) warned of the impact of the delivery of a prognosis, and how many of his patients, upon receiving their prognosis, simply turned their face to the wall and died an extremely premature death: "... there is a small group of patients in whom the realisation of impending death is a blow so terrible that they are quite unable to adjust to it, and they die rapidly before the malignancy seems to have developed enough to cause death. This problem of self-willed death is in some ways analogous to the death produced in primitive peoples by witchcraft ("Pointing the bone")."
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mark taslov, in reply to
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If I could perhaps jump in...
how about being exposed to this; https://store.nzfarmsource.co.nz/catalog/bell-booth-x-spore-20l/212445
when the concentration of the active ingredient required to cause these;
is about 1000X less than the reccommended dose.
We didn't find this out until after the leukaemia was diagnosed.
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Chronic lymphocytic leukemia (also called CLL) is a blood and bone marrow disease that usually gets worse slowly. CLL is one of the most common types of leukemia in adults. It often occurs during or after middle age; it rarely occurs in children.
Summary Statistics
Reports of CHLORAMPHENICOL causing CHRONIC LYMPHOCYTIC LEUKAEMIA: 1
Reports of any side effect of CHLORAMPHENICOL : 526
Percentage of CHLORAMPHENICOL patients where CHRONIC LYMPHOCYTIC LEUKAEMIA is a reported side effect: 0.19011406844106%FDA reports of any drug causing CHRONIC LYMPHOCYTIC LEUKAEMIA : 1420
Average percentage for all medicated patients where CHRONIC LYMPHOCYTIC LEUKAEMIA is reported as a complication: 0.0088997217583469%The Silent crisis Blood Cancers in New Zealad(PDF), recognised problems:
Cancer Registry data reporting is delayed, and outdated
in the subclassification of lymphoma and other blood
cancer subtypesClinical databases are practically non-existent to record
treatments, and track outcomesPlus:
When combined, blood
cancers are the fifth most common cancer diagnosed
annually in New Zealand, and the third most common
cause of cancer death at over 900 deaths per yearCompared to WHO stats:
Cancer is a leading cause of death worldwide, accounting for 8.2 million deaths in 2012. The most common causes of cancer death are cancers of:
lung (1.59 million deaths)
liver (745 000 deaths)
stomach (723 000 deaths)
colorectal (694 000 deaths)
breast (521 000 deaths)
oesophageal cancer (400 000 deaths) -
Sacha, in reply to
Jeez given the number of companies that sell Bt based insecticides you'd think they could have found one that made its formulation public
open source, then
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Sacha, in reply to
we only sprayed on Aucklanders, so that's ok
and you wonder what has driven our speculative property investment bonanza?
#sprayforwealth -
Sacha, in reply to
the best they could do for NZ
(businesses)
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Rosemary McDonald, in reply to
and here....http://www.acc.co.nz/PRD_EXT_CSMP/groups/external_providers/documents/guide/dis_ctrb097503.pdf
"Occupational causes of
malignant neoplasms of lymphatic
and haematopoietic tissue"an interesting little missive from ACC.
"Potential occupational causes
should be considered in all presenting
adult cases of these diseases,
and detailed occupational histories"."Unless providers ask questions
about occupational exposure when presented with this group
of malignancies, the number of claims that are submitted
and those that may then warrant entitlements will be small.And yes, agrichemicals/pesticides are listed.
And yes, "occupational exposure" can also mean that you were exposed while someone else was using the chemical in the course of their occupation.
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note that you can show quoted text anywhere here by putting < q > at the beginning and < /q > at the end of the passage - just remove the spaces I added here between the sharp brackets and the letters.
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mark taslov, in reply to
It is shocking Rosemary. Though this is in some ways inconclusive, it is explicitly clear about the chemical’s proclivity to absorption: a detailed summary of Chloramphenicol:
it was determined that acceptable levels in food could not be established.
From John’s link above:
A letter from the then-clinical head of the department of clinical pathology at Auckland City Hospital to the GP said there was no “credible evidence” that exposure to the spray was linked to any kind of leukaemia or to any endocrine disorders.
coupled with:
One occupational case probably involved inhalation and skin contact. It occurred in a shepherd applying a chloramphenicol spray to the feet of sheep for treatment of foot rot. He had treated the animals twice a week with the spray, which contained 10 g of the drug in 100 ml of solution, for two years. Each dose contained 10 mg (Del Giacco et al., 1981).
…in light of the discussion on the election promises thread, and in particular Marc’s link paints a horrendously dark and convoluted picture of our allegedly 100% pure nation.
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Our family used to believe the line "they wouldn't be allowed to use it if it wasn't safe."
Until a diagnosis of a rare chronic leukaemia in a family member who had no real reason to get it.
These leukaemias are almost invariably caused by exposure to something that causes the rapidly dividing cells in the blood/bone marrow to mutate.
Then we learned more about agrichemicals, MSDS, ERMA/EPA, regulations, NZ Standards, the RMA, epidemiological studies (from overseas, NZ data suspiciously scant), etc...then we ever wanted to know.
We should view these blood diseases as the canary in the coalmine, as an indication of just how safe our environment is. Not.
"Horrendously dark and convoluted...". You bet.
The chemical we were exposed to also causes fertility problems in both male and female lab animals.
It is one of those chemicals that is not only used in agriculture and horticulture, but as a timber treatment, in rubber and plastics. It is also used to treat fabrics...to prevent mould whilst in transit. Remember the (literal) stink about shipping containers leaking formaldehyde and making port workers ill? Well, formaldehyde can be detected using a probe...if its there....the workers don't touch the container. What to use instead? Carbendazim. Pretty scary really how widely used the stuff is.
Not surprising that the only NZ occupation/leukaemia study had workers in environments where carbendazim is often found high on the list.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18953052 -
That study is damning Rosemary. In stark conflict with the worldwide trend of men being more likely to develop leukemia and lymphoma than women, elevated odds ratios for vegetable growers and nursery growers/workers appear greater in women.
I had to check that WHO comparison I made above. There’s not too much information available for free, but assuming the wikipedia citations are accurate, in 2012 worldwide lymphoma deaths were 305,000, leukemia killed a further 265,000 and around 80,000 deaths were attributable to myeloma. Combining for a total of 650,000 still only puts this combination at number 5 on that WHO list. A trend backed up elsewhere, e.g. New Zealand coming in at number 9 on a list of countries with the highest death rates for leukemia.
WRT the MAF spraying, reading back over this thread for the first time, I’m struck by the emphasis on psychosomatics alongside the uncontested fact that MAF were actually relocating people.
Fortunately Foray 48B instructions are available online:
Users should:
•Remove clothing/PPE immediately if pesticide gets inside. Then wash thoroughly and put on clean clothing.
• Remove PPE imediately after handling this product. Wash the outside of gloves before removing. As soon as possible, wash thoroughly and change into clean clothing.As are Valent Bioscience’s patents.
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