Robert Mann wrote:

> I have examined the 1996 Extoxnet bulletin on
> toxicology of fluvalinate (the generic name for the active ingredient of
> Apistan®, Mavrik™ Severeal wise beeks have outlined the real world
> of 'active ingredient' bought cheaper and then administered by
> home-made dispensers. Needless to say the old line applies 'OK
> only if used according to label', and I would strongly discourage
> expts with novel routes, except with expert advice.

The practical reality is that some beekeepers have been quietly and
discretely using the cheaper Mavrik formulation of fluvalinate
successfully for more than 10 years here in the USA. If it gave them
serious problems they would not still be using it.

> But my dozen years on the Toxic Substances Board taught me
> to distrust such claims by the chemical industry.  .
> The chemical industry is, as an historical tendency, a refuge for
> crooks. Therefore, I for one disbelieve that fluvalinate has been
> properly tested or that the summarised claims are reliable.

I think we have a double standard here. If private industry -
say a giant like Bayer engages in telling only half truths and
exaggerations in regard to the safety of an insecticide, the company
is freely and publicly labeled dishonest, crooked and corrupt.

Now consider what happens when the academic community
engages in half truths and wild exaggerations. Consider the case
of the best know ecologist in the USA: Dr. Paul R. Ehrlich of
Stanford University in California.  In The Population Bomb
(1968; revised,1971), and in subsequent books Ehrlich
predicted:

 "The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s and
1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite
of any crash programs embarked upon now. . America's vast
agricultural surpluses are gone."

 "a minimum of ten million people, most of them children,
will starve to death during each year of the 1970s. But this is a
mere handful compared to the numbers that will be starving
before the end of the century"

- America in 1984 would havefood shortages so severe that steak
would be $12 a pound, the U.S. unemployment rate would be 27
percent, and India would be an anarchy because of nationwide
food riots.

"Smog disasters" in 1973 might kill 200,000 people in
New York and Los Angeles."

 "I would take even money that England will not exist in the
year 2000."

 "Before 1985, mankind will enter a genuine age of scarcity .
 in which the accessible supplies of 13 key minerals will be
facing depletion."

Have Ehrlich's preposterous predictions hurt his reputation?
Far from it - they've made him both celebrated and rich.

In 1993 Dr. Peter Raven, Director of the Missouri Botanical
Garden presented Ehrlich with the The World Ecology Award

 In  1990 Ehrlich published a sequel to "Bomb" called
"The Population Explosion,"and  received the MacArthur
Foundation's  famous "genius award" with a $345,000 check,
and split a Swedish Royal Academy of Science prize
worth $120,000.

Paul Cherubini