dow stands by the safety of insecticide which can harm the brains of fetuses

​IN MY DOTAGE, I find my­self con­stantly (if merely mildly) con­ster­nated by the goings-on of my fellow hu­mans. When con­fronted by their (pos­sibly insecticide-inspired) shenani­gans and the fact that so many ap­pear per­ma­nently stuck in auto-destruct mode, to soothe my trou­bled mind I often reach for the 1979 movie Life Of Brian. If I don’t have time for a full viewing, I skip to the final scene.

It is calling this scene in Life Of Brian to mind that al­lows me to find some­thing pos­i­tive in an ed­i­to­rial like “Trump’s Legacy: Dam­aged Brains” by Nicholas Kristof for The New York Times. In it, Mr Kristoff takes the present ad­min­is­tra­tion to task for em­bracing and en­cour­aging the use of a rather hor­ri­fying chem­ical, chlor­pyrifos.

“The pes­ti­cide, which be­longs to a class of chem­i­cals de­vel­oped as a nerve gas made by Nazi Ger­many, is now found in food, air and drinking water. Human and an­imal studies show that it dam­ages the brain and re­duces I.Q.s while causing tremors among chil­dren. It has also been linked to lung cancer and Parkinson’s dis­ease in adults.” ²

All Nazi con­cen­tra­tion camp staffs were orig­i­nally part of the Allgemeine-SS under the of­fice of the Con­cen­tra­tion Camps In­spec­torate (In­spek­tion der Konzen­tra­tionslager or IKL). 

This is an in­sanity that will­fully em­braces ap­proving the use of a chem­ical which ex­ten­sive re­search has shown can harm the de­vel­oping brains of fe­tuses and chil­dren who eat food from plants treated with the com­pound. ¹

But Mr Kristoff notes that Dow’s spokesperson Rachelle Schikorra claims, “Dow stands by the safety of chlor­pyrifos.”

After reading Mr Kristof’s piece, I im­me­di­ately saw the bright side: Ms Schikorra joins such lu­mi­naries as Ann Coulter, Sarah Palin, Michele Bachman, Kellyanne Conway, and the host­esses on Fox News as ex­am­ples of fe­male “ac­com­plish­ment” in to­day’s po­lit­ical and cor­po­rate world that al­lows us men to ably and man­fully negate any ar­gu­ment that any fem­i­nist can ever make con­cerning how fun­da­men­tally bad/greedy/evil men are and how much better things would be under a ma­tri­archy!

For this we should be thankful.

Finally—and, un­for­tu­nately, without a trace of irony—Mr Kristof notes, “Dow had do­nated $1 mil­lion for Pres­i­dent Trump’s in­au­gu­ra­tion.” ⁴

Rachel Schikorra, Head-Media Re­la­tions & Fi­nan­cial Com­mu­ni­ca­tions at Dow Chem­ical Com­pany. “While acts of evil can mush­room into mon­u­mental tragedies, the in­di­vidual human per­pe­tra­tors of those acts are often marked not with the grandiosity of the de­monic but with ab­solute mun­danity.” ³

Spoiler Alert!

If you haven’t seen Life Of Brian, please not watch this video—get ahold of the movie and watch it all the way through.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WoaktW-Lu38

If you have seen Life Of Brian, go ahead and watch this video—it should prove more than nos­talgic …

FEATURED IMAGE: An air­plane dusts a field of soy­beans with any one of thou­sands of pos­sible chem­i­cals al­lowed on foods that reach our ta­bles in America.

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FOOTNOTES:

¹   See “A con­tro­ver­sial in­sec­ti­cide and its ef­fect on brain de­vel­op­ment: Re­search and re­sources.”

²   See “Dow Chem­ical is pushing Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion to ig­nore studies of toxic pes­ti­cide.”

³   See “The Ba­nality of Evil: Hannah Arendt on the Nor­mal­iza­tion of Human Wicked­ness and Our Only Ef­fec­tive An­ti­dote to It.”

⁴   See “Trump 2017 In­au­gu­ra­tion Donors.”