A FUNGUS AMONG US

Have you had your fusarium oxysporum today?

Its a powerful herbicide developed from a fungus, and assorted
authorities from on high are proposing that it be sprayed on some of
the food and around the habitats of us humans. Has it been tested for
its impact on our health and our environment? No. If the idea of
spreading this stuff around seems stupid to you, that's because the
fusarium oxysporum project comes from America's drug czar, General
Barry McCaffrey, who specializes in stupidity.

The New York Times reports that the Little General, backed by the
Clinton white house and republican congressional leaders, wants to use
this fungal pathogen against coca, marijuana, and poppy fields, since
it can cause a wilt that kills these drug plants. Problem is, it can
also kill tomatoes, potatoes, grains, and other crops, as well as who
knows what other unlucky plans and animals that get doused by it.
Problem number two is that once you turn the fungus loose, it has a
life of its own, mutating, moving from plant to plant and living in the
soil for years. For most living things, fusarium oxysporum is a
disease, and it's rarely good policy to spread disease.

Yet no risk is too silly for the General's maniacal crusade to halt the
production of all drug crops everywhere. Therein lies problem number
three - there's no evidence that this microbial fungus will even work,
since scientists note that the narcotraders will simply breed their
coca plants to be resilient to the disease.

Nevertheless, the hapless peasants of Colombia are about to become the
unwilling guinea pigs of McCaffrey's fusarium experiments. As part of
the $1.3 billion Washington recently approved to prop up the
beleaguered Colombian government, officials there had to agree to field
tests of what amounts to a biological weapon.

Imagine how that makes the people there feel about us. Uncle Ugly goes
to Colombia.