1.    Dr Ian Gibson and the anti-organic lobby
2.    NAMES OF SYNTHETIC PESTICIDES THAT MAY CAUSE PARKINSON'S

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1.     Dr Ian Gibson and the anti-organic lobby

Over the last 18 months or so we have given over part of the ngin list and the website to dealing with organic attacks in the light of the concerted campaign to smear organic agriculture by GM proponents. Here's more evidence of just how extensive and worrying this campaign is.

Dr Ian Gibson MP is on the Commons Science and Technology select committee.  In a recent Commons speech he praised Krebs for - and we quote - his "illuminating" work on organic food!

Amazed by this statement from an MP who had once called for GM foods to be removed from the shelves after the original Pusztai broadcast, and who also called later for GM foods to be excluded from school meals, several of his constituents and others attended a recent meeting Gibson was addressing to ask him some pertinent questions.

What emerged was a very disturbing picture of extensive anti-organic/pro- GM lobbying. According to Dr Gibson, he has been sent "lots of evidence" on problems with organic food. Gibson, of course, is hardly likely to have been alone in relation to such a lobbying effort.

Interestingly, it's reported that Gibson had also been "mesmerised" by a Commons Science and Technology select committee trip to China to look at GM cotton.  The group was accompanied, we believe, by Dr Guy Poppy - the CropGen pro-biotech lobby scientist who is shortly to give a talk on the trip at the Commons.

We also understand that a trip Dr Gibson made to the US was financially assisted by Aventis, though this was apparently linked to cancer treatments in which Gibson has an interest.

It was also reported that Gibson implied that a Member of Parliament who is a well-known GM opponent was in the pay of the anti-GM lobby!!!

There is clearly a big gap between the political elite and the rest of the populace on issues like GM - and with the level of lobbying they seem to be subject to, no wonder!
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2.    SYNTHETIC  PESTICIDES  THAT  MAY  CAUSE  PARKINSON'S

More on Rotenone from Prakash's 'AgBioView' list.  Quite a laugh really.  Dennis Avery had waded in to challenge the Soil Association, following on from Rick Rousch's attack, to say which conventional pesticides might be suspect in relation to Parkinson's.  His mail is followed by this:

Subj:   Re: AGBIOVIEW: Rotenone...
Date:   Mon, 27 Nov 2000 1:35:49 PM Eastern Standard Time
From:   "Robert M. Hollingworth" <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>

Rick et al. -- Probably I missed the first part of this discussion re rotenone-like synthetic pesticides since I've been out of town, but there are several, primarily acaricides, such as pyridaben, fenpyroximate, tebufenpyrad and fenazaquin that act, as far as one can tell, at the rotenone-binding site in complex I of mitochondria e.g. for a review see Hollingworth and Ahammadsahib in Rev. Pestic. Toxicol. 3:277-302 (1995).

This also includes some discussion of these compounds and rotenone in relation to parkinsonism -- which is not a new topic.

Bob Hollingworth