Unfortunately, the same type of microbial evolution occurs with viruses. It happens with viruses that cause the common cold, with flu viruses and even with more deadly viruses, like HIV.

In regard to HIV, drugs have been developed to prevent the virus from replicating and, therefore, the survival rate of AIDS has dramatically increased in recent years. But eventually the AIDS virus, like the bacteria previously discussed, evolves to evade potent medications.

The good news is that research scientists at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Missouri have discovered a new, innovative approach to viral infections, even resistant ones—It’s Bee Venom!

Scientists have found a key ingredient in bee venom that destroys HIV without harming surrounding cells. The bee venom is named mellitin, and researchers have loaded the toxin on nanoparticles structured with bumpers (think of cogs or gears on a wheel).

Normal cells bounce off of these nanoparticles because they’re too large to get caught between the bumpers. The HIV virus, however, is small enough to fit between the bumpers and make contact with the surface of these nanoparticles. And that’s where the bee venom (mellitin) is placed.

The mellitin fuses with the viral shell, called the viral envelope, and causes it to rupture; thus, it renders the virus inactive.

The difference between this technique and existing anti-HIV drugs is that those drugs don’t prevent the initial infection. Their mechanism of action is to inhibit the viruses’ ability to replicate. Eventually that mechanism becomes inactive because viruses are as smart as bacteria and evolve to evade the drug’s lethal action.

Mellitin is a much different approach in that this venom attacks the inherent structure of the virus. In effect, mellitin pokes holes in the protective envelope that surrounds HIV.

The implications for treatments are phenomenal. Treatments could be developed for drug-resistant HIV infections. These remedies could be delivered intravenously to potentially clear HIV from a patient’s blood. And the venom-infused nanoparticles could be added to topical (vaginal, anally, etc) gels to prevent the initial infection.

And the news gets even better! The bee venom potentially could be effective against other viruses since the majority of them are minute particles that fit between the nanoparticle bumpers. Since mellitin attacks double-layered membranes (such as, viral protective envelopes) indiscriminately, other viruses could be killed with this potent bee venom.

That means we may be on the verge of actually killing viruses as never before. Researchers state that the nanoparticles are easy to make and enough bee venom could be extracted to begin clinical trials very soon.

Potentially, the only limiting factor would be obtaining enough bee venom to mass-produce the therapy, and bee populations are declining around the world. One study suggests that the US and UK have lost a third of their honeybee population since 2010 and that the die-off is spreading to other highly populated countries, including China and India, in a phenomenon called colony collapse disorder (CCD).

Barring a shortage of bee venom, however, the implications of this new medical approach are that other viruses, such as Hepatitis B and C, and even the cold and flu viruses, could be treated with venom-loaded nanoparticles and used in the same way we cure bacterial infections with antibiotics.

BUT in this case, the viruses would have no mechanism to evolve and become resistant to therapy. What a refreshing and long-awaited win for mankind that would be!

Thought? Comments? I’d love to hear them!

“Unacceptable.”

That’s what a new European study calls clothianidin, a widespread pesticide that has been contributing to the massive die-off of our honeybees.¹

This new study by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) may be just the thing we need to convince the EPA to finally ban this dangerous pesticide!

Even though honey bee populations have been shrinking at an alarming rate of roughly 30% per year since 2006, the EPA has refused to take immediate action to ban the usage of clothianidin.

But this new study makes it even harder for the EPA to justify its flimsily supported stance.

Ask the EPA to finally call it quits on clothianidin before it’s too late for our bees, our farmers and our food supply.

The EPA says it wants to delay action until it completes its own review of the safety of clothianidin… in 2018. But we can’t wait that long.

Honey bees are vital to our ecosystem and play a crucial role in the cultivation of a third of our food supply here in the U.S.

These new, scientific findings from the EFSA could give us a real chance to convince the EPA to take action before 2018, when it will likely be too late for honey bees.

Urge the EPA to ban the dangerous pesticide clothianidin NOW to prevent further collapse of honey bee colonies across the country.

While there have been numerous independent studies showing that neonicotinoid pesticides like clothianidin are highly toxic to honey bees, the EPA has refused to listen. Instead, they approved the pesticide in 2010 on the basis of a single study conducted by the German corporation Bayer CropScience, the very same corporation that produces clothianidin.

This new EFSA study has also identified Bayer’s study as shoddy and unreliable in proving clothianidin’s safety. This follows on the heels of leaked EPA documents showing that agency scientists who reviewed Bayer’s study have also determined that their evidence was unsound and should not have been the basis of the approval of the pesticide.

Regretfully, clothianidin has been used on corn, our country’s biggest crop source, since 2003. We can’t afford to wait one minute longer while our honey bees continue to die, let alone five more years!

Tell the EPA to follow the scientific findings of the EFSA and ban the use of clothianidin before it’s too late.

Thanks for all your help to protect our honey bees.

Mike Town
Director, SaveOurEnvironment.org
info@saveourenvironment.org

¹http://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/press/news/130116.htm

I described the Caromont kickstarter project in a previous post.  I pointed out that there is much more at stake here than the fortunes of a small farmer & goat cheese maker in rural Virginia.  It’s really about adjusting notions of philanthropy and profit vs. non-profit institutions.  It’s about how we can deploy our consumer dollars to achieve more than just a mouthful of good food.

The problem is that what Caromont needs is a $35,000 vat and they were asking for the whole thing.  I told the the proprietor, Gail Hobbs-Page, that I would make a donation but that she was asking for way too much.  I mean, $35,000 in donations?  (Well, OK, these are not pure donations — you do get something tangible in return.  For my $50 I get a cheese board, and the $1000 donors get a multi-course dinner at her farm.  But for all of us, the main gratification was in supporting the farm and what it’s part of.)

So here it is: as of today, 261 backers have pledged $39,504 — and they still have 46 hours to go! I’m surprised & happy to be wrong on how much support is out there for a goat cheese maker.

Now it’s time to step back and put this into perspective.  Two perspectives actually, one heartening and one troubling.

First the heartening one.  Kickstarter reports that in 2011, when it turned 2 years old, it collected just shy of $100 million in donations.  There were 27,086 projects launched, 46% of which were successfully funded.  Of that, $2.8 million was pledged by 30,682 backers for food projects.  They don’t separate out nonindustrial or “alternative” food/farming projects, but if you peruse the project listings you quickly see that most fall into this category.  Considering how new kickstarter is, and how few people have even heard of it yet, this is really something.

So U.S. consumers are not only spending close to $5 billion a year on local food, for which they often pay a premium and go out of their way more than a trip to the supermarket, they are starting to dish up a surprising amount of philanthropy to support alternative food production.

But the dark cloud behind this silver lining is that we are increasingly buying in to a  system with two separate circuits for reckoning, creating, and paying for value in food. Local/alternative farmers are not subsidized and they don’t make a mess.  Industrial producers claim to be more “efficient,” but what they are actually efficient at is garnering subsidies and evading the consequences of the messes they create in the air, water, soil, and public health.

While consumers were paying full value for unsubsidized local food and even topping off that outlay with several million dollars in food philanthropy, an ocean of pelf was flowing every day from agribusiness into political coffers to maintain government subsidies and protections from responsibility for their messes.

Also see The Bee Keepers by Richard Robinson.

Today’s example: generous donations from German pesticide producer Bayer to both political parties, but mainly the Republicans — $261,000.  Bayer Crop Science produces the most common neonicotinoid insecticide which is increasingly looking like a key culprit in bee colony collapse disorder.  (Make profits selling sprays to farmers but don’t pick up any of the tab when your sprays help kill off the bees.  Now that’s efficient!)

I gave $50 and I get to be part of happy mob of 261 fans of artisinal cheese and small farms.  Plus I get a cheese board.  Let us watch and see what Bayer gets.

by Tom Philpott

I’m doing something very odd this week: speaking at the annual conference of Croplife America, the main trade group for the US agrichemical industry.

Croplife members include Monsanto, Dow, Bayer, and Syngenta, all massive multinational companies I write about regularly and witheringly. I am astonished that Croplife wants to hear what I have to say—what I think of the group’s member companies and their products is a matter of public record—and am curious to hear what they have to say to me.

As I prepared for the conference, a few interesting news items on the industry crossed my desk.

• As I’ve written before, Bayer’s neonicotinoid pesticides, which now coat upwards of 90 percent of US corn seeds and seeds of increasing portions of other major crops like soy, have emerged as a likely trigger for colony collapse disorder. Watch this NBC News report from last week linking bee kills in Minnesota to Bayer’s highly profitable product.

Meanwhile, the Columbus Dispatch reports similar bee die-offs in Ohio farm country, with beekeepers there, too, pointing the finger at Bayer.

• One of my biggest complaints about the agrichemical industry it its market dominance. As I say above, more than 90 percent of corn seeds planted today are treated with Bayer’s pesticide. What if a farmer wants to opt out, to plant seeds free of neonicotinoids? Good luck. According to a Pesticide Action Network press release I received today, farmers in the midwest are complaining that it’s virtually impossible to buy untreated seeds. In other words, farmers there have two choices: either pay up for Bayer’s poison, or exit the corn-growing business.

• Speaking of market dominance, Monsanto essentially owns the market in genetically modified seed traits—a highly lucrative position, given the way GMOs have taken over massive crops like corn, soy, and cotton. And like any well-run company out to maximize earnings for its shareholders, Monsanto invests some of its profit hoard in protecting its market from pesky regulators who might place the public interest over Monsanto’s. From the Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks money in politics:

According to OpenSecrets.org data, in the first three months of this year, Monsanto spent $1.4 million lobbying Washington—and spent about $6.3 million total last year, more than any other agribusiness firm except the tobacco company Altria.

Last year’s investment seemed to pay off for the company. Even as Monsanto’s Roundup Ready technology faltered under a blitz of resistant “superweeds,” the USDA unconditionally approved Roundup Ready alfalfa, after hinting strongly it would place limitations on the crop. The USDA also approved Roundup Ready sugar beets, defying a court order that it delay approval pending an environmental review.

When a company dominates markets and can buy lobbying power in Washington, its products don’t actually have to work, I suppose.

This article was written by Tom Philpott.

Tom Philpott is the food and ag blogger for Mother Jones. For more of his stories, click here. To follow him on Twitter, click here. RSS | Twitte

Source:

http://www.motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2012/05/catching-my-reading-ahead-pesticide-industry-confab

“HFCS is commonly fed to many commercial bees today, which is why more than 75 percent of the so-called “honey” sold on store shelves is nothing more than HFCS.”

Natural News | April 19, 2012

Studies linking neonicotinoid pesticides to Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), a condition in which entire bee colonies suddenly disappear or die, have been gaining national attention in recent months as they continue to flood scientific journals.

But one area that has been largely overlooked is the role high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) plays in killing off bees, as the vast majority of it comes from genetically-modified (GM), pesticide treated corn crops.

Chensheng Lu, Kenneth M. Warchol, and Richard A. Callahan from the Department of Environmental Health at the Harvard School of Public Health examined the effects of imidacloprid, a neonicotinoid pesticide, on bee colonies as part of a recent review. Part of this research involved using HFCS that had been derived from corn crops treated with imidacloprid, for which the pesticide ended up getting into the end product.

For their study, the team created four honey bee sites with five honey bee hives each, for a total of 20 hives, with each site containing four imidacloprid hives and a control hive. Among the 16 hives treated with imidacloprid, varying amounts of the pesticide were used in order to gain a proper assessment of how, and at what levels, it affects bees.

In the end, the team discovered that the vast majority — 94 percent — of hives treated with imidacloprid ended up dying off as a result of what appeared to be CCD, even when very minute levels of the pesticide were added. And a key culprit in this die-off was imidacloprid-tainted HFCS, which served as the delivery system for this toxic chemical.

“Data from this in situ study provide convincing evidence that exposure to sub-lethal levels of imidacloprid in HFCS causes honey bees to exhibit symptoms consistent to CCD 23 weeks post imidacloprid dosing,” wrote the authors. “15 or 16 imidacloprid-treated hives (94%) were dead across four apiaries 23 weeks post imidacloprid dosing.”

You can review the study for yourself at:
http://www.bouldercountybeekeepers.org

Most commercial honey comes from bees fed chemical-laden HFCS

HFCS is commonly fed to many commercial bees today, which is why more than 75 percent of the so-called “honey” sold on store shelves is nothing more than HFCS (http://www.naturalnews.com/034102_honey_consumer_alert.html). And since the GM corn crops from which the vast majority of HFCS is derived have been treated with imidacloprid and other pesticides, it is hardly surprising that these chemicals end up in commercial bee feed.

France actually banned the use of imidacloprid on sunflowers and sweet corn back in 1999 and 2003, respectively, after more than one third of its bees died (http://www.guardian.co.uk). And yet the pesticide continues to be used in the U.S., despite the fact that it was never even lawfully approved for use by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

* * * * *

This article was written by Jonathan Benson, staff writer for Natural News.

Sources for this article include:

http://www.bouldercountybeekeepers.org

http://www.humanespot.org

Source:

http://www.naturalnews.com/035610_honey_bees_pesticides_corn_syrup.html 

This article was also posted by VeggieWitch and Activist Awake.

“HFCS is commonly fed to many commercial bees today, which is why more than 75 percent of the so-called “honey” sold on store shelves is nothing more than HFCS.”

Natural News | April 19, 2012

Studies linking neonicotinoid pesticides to Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), a condition in which entire bee colonies suddenly disappear or die, have been gaining national attention in recent months as they continue to flood scientific journals.

But one area that has been largely overlooked is the role high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) plays in killing off bees, as the vast majority of it comes from genetically-modified (GM), pesticide treated corn crops.

Chensheng Lu, Kenneth M. Warchol, and Richard A. Callahan from the Department of Environmental Health at the Harvard School of Public Health examined the effects of imidacloprid, a neonicotinoid pesticide, on bee colonies as part of a recent review. Part of this research involved using HFCS that had been derived from corn crops treated with imidacloprid, for which the pesticide ended up getting into the end product.

For their study, the team created four honey bee sites with five honey bee hives each, for a total of 20 hives, with each site containing four imidacloprid hives and a control hive. Among the 16 hives treated with imidacloprid, varying amounts of the pesticide were used in order to gain a proper assessment of how, and at what levels, it affects bees.

In the end, the team discovered that the vast majority — 94 percent — of hives treated with imidacloprid ended up dying off as a result of what appeared to be CCD, even when very minute levels of the pesticide were added. And a key culprit in this die-off was imidacloprid-tainted HFCS, which served as the delivery system for this toxic chemical.

“Data from this in situ study provide convincing evidence that exposure to sub-lethal levels of imidacloprid in HFCS causes honey bees to exhibit symptoms consistent to CCD 23 weeks post imidacloprid dosing,” wrote the authors. “15 or 16 imidacloprid-treated hives (94%) were dead across four apiaries 23 weeks post imidacloprid dosing.”

You can review the study for yourself at:
http://www.bouldercountybeekeepers.org

Most commercial honey comes from bees fed chemical-laden HFCS

HFCS is commonly fed to many commercial bees today, which is why more than 75 percent of the so-called “honey” sold on store shelves is nothing more than HFCS (http://www.naturalnews.com/034102_honey_consumer_alert.html). And since the GM corn crops from which the vast majority of HFCS is derived have been treated with imidacloprid and other pesticides, it is hardly surprising that these chemicals end up in commercial bee feed.

France actually banned the use of imidacloprid on sunflowers and sweet corn back in 1999 and 2003, respectively, after more than one third of its bees died (http://www.guardian.co.uk). And yet the pesticide continues to be used in the U.S., despite the fact that it was never even lawfully approved for use by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

* * * * *

This article was written by Jonathan Benson, staff writer for Natural News.

Sources for this article include:

http://www.bouldercountybeekeepers.org

http://www.humanespot.org

Source:

http://www.naturalnews.com/035610_honey_bees_pesticides_corn_syrup.html

And what’s the deal with this Bee Colony Collapse Disorder? The deal, according to some theologians, is an angry God still upset over the ending of the “Seinfeld” series. Friedrich Thompson of the God Institute for Research says, “We’ve found that God was a big fan of the series. How do you go from an episode of ‘existential Jerry’ to ‘Bee Movie’? Apparently God took his crushed expectations out on the bees and the beekeepers of the country. What the ‘Marriage Ref’ will bring from God’s wrath remains to be seen as the anger is not always accurately placed. God wrongly placed the bees in collusion with Seinfeld for his unfunny career moves. And he took vengeance upon them.”

CCD has shaken beekeeping and agriculture with a mysterious ailment that leads to the disappearance of entire hives at alarming rates, leading to bankruptcy for many families. “Why does he have to keep putting out this lame crap?” asks beekeeper Noah Lowell. “It may just take one more season of Seinfeld to quell the Lord’s wrath, but instead he comes up with this stuff that makes me wanna puke!”

BBP 2010©

“In the United States, drastic action is needed,” says Canadian geneticist Joe Cummins, explaining that U.S. farmers and beekeepers shouldn’t have to wait for more evidence or for an air-tight explanation for the complex syndrome, which threatens one in every third bite of food in the United States. Now most apiarists and scientists realize that pesticides are a factor in CCD, he says.

Cummins’ remarks, in an interview with GreenRightNow, come less than a month after Germany’s ban of clothianidin, a pesticide commonly used to keep insects off of corn crops. Germany banned the pesticide after heaps of dead bees were found near fields of corn coated in the pesticide, and in response to scientists who report that the insecticide severely impairs, and often kills, the honeybees that corn and other crops depend on for pollination.

The German government took the extraordinary action to protect bees and other essential pollinators, stating that there is now enough compelling evidence connecting the chemical to Bee Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) in that country.

The ban also will likely fuel the European debate over genetically modified food, which involves treating crop seeds to resist harm from pesticide treatments. Critics of such modified foods say they are harming the environment, and have unknown human consequences, for little or no crop gain. Some scientists in Europe have called for their ban.

Bee Colony Collapse has been threatening bees, and the crops they serve, around the world for the past several years.

Full Story Here

Photo Credit: Petr Kratochvil, (http://www.publicdomainpictures.net) May 5, 2008.

Hans-Hinrich Kaatz,is a professor at the University of Halle in eastern Germany and the director of a study that showed that toxins from a genetically modified maize variant designed to repel insects, when combined with a parasite, resulted in a “significantly stronger decline in the number of bees” than normal. “The bacterial toxin in the genetically modified corn may have “altered the surface of the bee’s intestines, sufficiently weakening the bees to allow the parasites to gain entry — or perhaps it was the other way around. We don’t know,” he said. Kaatz was desperate to continue his studies but funding was cut off.

In the report: The Status of Pollinators in North America the lack of research was highlighted in the following passage:

Transgenic crops were developed in part to reduce the unintended effects of pesticides. However, the use of crop plants genetically engineered to express insecticidal proteins in pollen raised questions about direct effects on non-target species, including some pollinators (Losey et al., 1999). For honey bees, the concerns involved the potential lethality of insecticidal transgenic proteins, the sublethal effects of these proteins on insect behavior, physiology, and reproduction and the economic effects of transgenic pollen as a contaminant of honey. Malone and Pham-Delègue (2001) reviewed the small literature on this topic and concluded that, in some cases, there are negative but sublethal effects attributable to consumption of transgenic pollens.

It seems as if there has been no real effort to follow up the introduction of these technologies with studies to ensure their safety in the field. Questions about the direct effects on non-target species need to be explored. With the unexplained deaths of bee populations in countries around the world more research is needed. We ask, what are governments doing?

In fact, last week, the the USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) which conducts research on pesticide use and risk associated with various crops, such as corn, soybeans, cotton, and wheat, has announced it will stop the program in 2008, due to budget cuts, and won’t be collecting any more data. Annie Bell Muzaurieta of the Daily Green reported that “data is used by chemical groups, trade groups, public interest groups and government agencies to track pesticide use and safety, and several advocates say it is the only reliable, publicly searchable database of its kind”.

One would think that with the rise in importance of food security in the face of growing world demand for commodities, that all risks to agriculture should be open to scrutiny and further research to avoid potential disasters like the devastating of bee ‘colony collapse disorder’.

Of course, without data there is no transparency and the ability of interested individuals and groups to keep chemical companies accountable for the products they produce is greatly reduced. The real irony is that the introduction of GM seeds were promoted using the line that this seed technology would reduce the need for pesticides. In fact over the last few years there has been an increase in pesticide use on GM crops.

Charles Benbrook, a senior scientist with the Organic Center has been quoted as saying:

“The farm media has been full of stories over the past few years of the problems farmers are facing as weeds become resistant to Glyphosate and other herbicides. I find it curious that at the time of peak interest and need for solid information on pesticide use in soybeans that the Department of Agriculture has decided to stop collecting the data.”

The bees are dying. Pesticides are implicated. Data on pesticide use may shed light on what is happening and burying our heads in the sand is no response to the problem. Scientists and farmers alike need both data and research if they are to avoid risks and improve their farming methods as well as protecting biological diversity. After these species have gone it will be too late. Funding for research is sorely needed now and data collection is imperative. It is hoped that the USDA has a change of heart. After all there is funding to explore Mars, but if we are not careful there will be nothing left of our home, the Earth, or is the writing really on the wall!

PHOTO OF THE DAY:

Seastars and a feather star on the bottom of McMurdo Sound.

Photograph by: Henry Kaiser, National Science Foundation. Date Taken: January 11, 2005.

I had not heard about this possibility before, although I was aware that the sudden and unexplained collapse of bee colonies was becoming a serious concern to American farmers who depend on the bees to pollinate their crops.  So I did a search on Google to see what I could learn.  I appreciate that using the internet as a source of reliable information much be approached with great caution and belief should be suspended until one is sure of the reliability of the source. 

Nonetheless, what I read is leading me to follow this question up with some serious concern.  I think it is not hysterical hype to believe that the collapse of bee colonies and other pollinating insects (which are also declining, but not as the same rate as bees) is potentially catastrophic.  Unlike global warming which could gradually squeeze essential water and food supplies over the next half century or so, bee colony collapse could lead to a devastating loss of almost all the world’s entire food supply in less than a decade.

So how bad, really, is the problem, and what is causing it?  I’m fairly certain that it is reliable information that 1/2 of  all American states are affected, most badly on the east and west coasts where 60-70%  of the bee colonies have collapsed without apparent cause, and that the disorder has now begun to spread to Europe.  I don’t know at this point how fast it is spreading, nor how much of our food supply is actually imminently under threat.  I am going to try to find out.

The cause or causes of the disorder are equally problematic.  Some scientists say we simply do not know at this point.  Some think the radiation generated by mobile phones is contributing to the problem, while others are looking for some toxin or chemical fertilizer, as well as at some types of GM crops.  There are reports that when the colonies collapse, other insects do not raid them for their honey, which is usually the case, and that the dead and dying bees show unusually high levels of viral infection.  I have been aware that the US government has put some money into research toward solving this problem, but I haven’t had bee colony collapse disorder high enough on my worry list to keep abreast of current developments.

However, the problem has just made a giant leap up my Priority List of Mega Concerns.