Amazing Beetle to the Rescue

The COLUMBUS DISPATCH,    January 24, 2010

FROM THE STUMP

Lake Erie wetlands clear of invasive plant with beetles’ help

One of the biggest problems for the folks who work to keep our wilds in good health is controlling invasive plants.Invasive plants are nonnative exotics from other parts of the world.    That might sound like an inconsequential problem to some, but those plants can devastate our natural treasures. If not kept under control, they crowd out native plants and, in some cases, can hurt wildlife.

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Among a long list of invasive plants are bush honeysuckle, multiflora rose, garlic mustard and purple loosestrife.  For this column, I want to single out purple loosestrife because attempts to control it have been among the biggest victories naturalist have ever had over an invasive plant.

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I can remember in the 1990s and early 2000s how purple loosestrife, which has an attractive purple flower, dominated the marshes and other wetlands along Lake Erie. The plant was sometimes sold as an ornamental and escaped into the wild. It is native to Europe and Asia.    If you go to the marshes now, they are back to looking the way they did before the invasion.

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Nonnative loosestrife crowds out native plants such as cattails. It also can change the chemical composition of the water, making it harmful to aquatic wildlife, and it can affect the natural food chain.

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What wildlife officials did to control loosestrife is astounding. I found out about it while attending a program the other day by Jennifer Windus, a wildlife program administrator for the Ohio Division of Wildlife.   Windus said Europe has more than 200 insects that feed on loosestrife, so Ohio officials imported a beetle from Europe and raised more than a million of the bugs. Then they released them into the vast stands of purple loosestrife along the lake. The beetles ate the leaves of the loosestrife, destroying it.

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Windus said there are a couple of other good things about the beetles.   First, there is a native loosestrife in Ohio, and the beetle will not eat it. Secondly, when the loosestrife dies back, the beetles greatly decrease in number; but if the loosestrife attempts a comeback, the beetles suddenly multiply and knock it back down.   It’s almost like magic.

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The usual methods used to control invasive plants are digging, mowing, cutting and applying herbicide.   “One of the important messages we want to get out of this success story is that it limits the amount of herbicide we would have to use and the hours of intensive manpower naturalists would have to spend,” Windus said.

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Dave Sherman, a wildlife biologist at the Crane Creek Wildlife Research Station on Lake Erie, heads the purple loosestrife program.   The beetles eat only a little of the loosestrife leaves.   But they lay their eggs on the plant, and after the larvae hatch, they do 75 percent of the damage to the plant, he said.   Sherman said of the use of the beetles: “I didn’t think it would work as well as it did when we first started. But it has definitely added another important tool to fight invasive plants.”
Retired weather columnist John Switzer writes a Sunday Metro column.
jswitzer@dispatch.com (Bravo! John,. . . . and thanks)

JOHN SWITZER

FDA denies our rights

CSPI Asks FDA to Abolish Food and Supplement Health Claims

January 12, 2010

Only a drug company selling an FDA approved drug may make such a claim. Any violation of this rule can result in massive fines and a long jail sentence.

The producer of a Vitamin D supplement cannot legally cite the science showing that Vitamin D prevents and treats the flu. Flu is considered a disease so this is forbidden. The science doesn’t matter to the FDA. Nor does freedom of speech.

The supplement producer can make a Structure/Function Claim. For example, the bottle might say to take Vitamin D for immune system function.

Alternatively, the Vitamin D producer might ask the FDA for permission to make a Qualified Health Claim. For example, it might ask to be able to say that Vitamin D may prevent or treat the flu (note the qualifying term “may”).

But the FDA does not like Qualified Health Claims and will almost always deny them. It will typically say the science is not strong enough. To reach this conclusion, it will throw out most scientific studies because they have not been set up in the form of standard FDA drug trials.

The FDA seems to want, and the Center for Science in the Public Interest says it wants, the abolition of both Structure/Function Claims and Qualified Health Claims. They seem to want food, supplements, and drugs to be treated exactly alike. No health claims of any sort would be allowed unless the product was brought through the full FDA approval process.

At first glance, this might seem both fair and logical. Why not treat everything alike? Why not subject food, supplements, and drugs to the same standard?

But this is not at all fair or logical. It is actually both unfair and completely illogical. It omits an all important fact: the staggering cost of FDA approval: up to $1 billion for a single product.

Drug companies can afford to pay these horrendous sums. For one thing, they can charge as much as $100 a pill. And how can they get away with charging so much? Because drugs are usually patented.

The patent together with FDA approval creates a monopoly. This is a government sanctioned and enforced monopoly, and it makes drug companies the most profitable businesses in America.

Another important fact: natural substances cannot usually be patented (they were after all, designed and created by nature). At least the rules say that they cannot be. Does this mean that drug companies avoid natural substances? Of course not.

When drug companies find a natural substance that promises to prevent or treat disease, they seek to “twist” the molecules enough to claim that the resulting product is “new” and therefore patentable. Then they take the modified and no longer “natural” product to the FDA for approval.

The result? We now pay as much as  for that it as a drug than we would have paid for the natural product. Worse, the “new” drug may be much more dangerous than the natural product from which it was derived. (as it’s DNA has been altered)