Of Butterflies and storms....

I remember reading a theory years back about how a butterfly fluttering its wings in Siberia can lead to a storm in the Americas. Had something to do with entropy and probabilities and the like .

Even more so it was all about "unintended consequences" and that's what I wanted to write about today. The idea of piecing disparate sets of news together to make a hypothesis interests me.

Last few days the media here is full of news about the big die-out of the honeybee. A collapsed hive syndrome is what it has been described as. Beekeepers are finding their hives empty and that is leading to billions of dollars in losses for the agricultural sector as farmers and horticulturists try to figure out alternate ways for pollinating their valuable crops.

Another seemingly unrelated news was about the success of experiments to introduce the human insulin producing gene in some food crops. In any case, less bizarre GM ("genetically modified") crops are covering increasingly large swathes of the countryside.

Could the death of the bees and the increase in GM crop acreage be related ? Could something in these crops be interfering with the bee's natural life cycle ?

I am no opponent of GM crops. I think like all other technological advancements they have a role to play in modern society. They may play an important role in alleviating hunger across the globe and may provide a new way of improving health & longevity by delivering cures for diseases. Improving crops through selective breeding has been a human endeavor since prehistorical days and genetic modification is a logical extension of the same.

However, the launch of these products into the food chain should be governed by strong science and not by the lobbying clout of the companies promoting them. Not only the health risks to human but the impact on other species (like our friends the honey bees) and long term environmental impact need to be evaluated. The boll weevil resistant cotton which is so irrigation intensive that it depletes water tables in water starved areas is an example of unintended consequences not being thought through.

From bees to weevils to vultures......... the Indian vulture is becoming extinct. The unintended consequence of a drug given to cattle to get rid of some parasitic worms. The drug gets passed on to the vultures when they eat the dead cattle. It weakens the shells of the vulture eggs which then break before hatching killing the hatchling. Without the vultures to act as scavengers in the countryside, putrefying carrion can contaminate water supplies and cause diseases in humans. Wow, that's an unintended consequence .

Let's be more open about evaluating "unintended consequences". Let the science be out there in the open. Let the government/scientific organizations play their desired roles as referees/regulators rather than just being ticket vendors allowing the highest bidders a seat on the table.

Let the Butterflies flutter without creating any storms.