If you don’t hear about “saving the frogs” by the end of this
week, it’s only because you’re living under a rock — like some
amphibian or something. Environmental activists have declared April
29 to be “Save the
Frogs Day,” and they’re going to do everything possible to
enlist you into their crusade.
Their cause has an official website,
announcing international events, seminars, classroom propaganda,
poetry and art contests, and an obligatory demonstration on the
steps of the Environmental Protection Agency — all to alert you,
Joe Citizen, to the looming “amphibian extinction
crisis.”
For several years, researchers have warned about the
threat of extinction among certain frog and amphibian species. And
to the extent that a problem does exist, biologists have managed to
isolate the main culprit: disease.
In 2007, a major scientific
study concluded: “The global emergence and spread of the
pathogenic, virulent, and highly transmissible fungus
Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis, resulting in the disease
chytridiomycosis, has caused the decline or extinction of up to
about 200 species of frogs.” The biologists characterized this
disease’s impact on frogs as “the most spectacular loss of
vertebrate biodiversity due to disease in recorded history,” and
they concluded: “In the absence of supportive evidence for
alternative theories despite decades of research, it is important
for the scientific community and conservation agencies to recognize
and manage the threat of chytridiomycosis to remaining species of
frogs.”
However, blaming the extinction of any species on a
mundane natural explanation only frustrates environmentalist
groups. After all, they survive and thrive by blaming human beings
for every problem on the planet in apocalyptic fundraising letters.
And “Save the Frogs” activists are doing just that.
You would think that if frogs need protection from some
menacing fungus, then those best suited to address the issue would
be research biologists. But no: This grand cause demands
your direct participation. “The frogs are depending on
you,” warns the “Save the Frogs” website. “Your children and their
children are depending on you. The future of the planet lies in
your hands and in your actions. SAVE THE FROGS!”
You might also believe, naively, that promising lines of
research to combat a virulent fungus might lead to developing
appropriate fungicides and breakthroughs in biotechnology. But
again, no: In fact, the amphibian alarmists are actually
blaming
the frog extinctions on pesticides — not on the fungus.
“An abundance of scientific literature,” they insist, “has
demonstrated the negative effects of an array of commonly used
pesticides on amphibians: delayed metamorphosis, immunosuppresion
[sic], hermaphroditism, sex reversal, and outright mortality.” The
worst offender, they declare, is atrazine — an important, widely
used agro-chemical that the campaigners
single out on their website and which is the focus of their
April 29 protest demonstration at the EPA.
I have
written previously about the environmentalist campaign against
atrazine and other agro-chemicals. From a public health
standpoint, thousands
of studies, including lengthy
reviews by EPA scientific advisory panels, the World Health
Organization, and other international bodies, have rejected as
spurious the environmentalists’ charges against atrazine. Recently
the New York Times
reported: “deformities in frogs in the northeastern United
States are far more common in suburban and urban areas, not in and
around farmlands, a Yale ecologist’s research shows. The findings
upend the conventional wisdom that agricultural pesticides are
largely responsible for the abnormalities.”
But such facts mean little to green fundraisers, of
course. Nor do they mean anything to others who profit directly by
spreading such falsehoods.
Consider “Frog
TV,” a YouTube-and-web-based series of videos whose purpose is
to show “how chemical pesticides are threatening our health.” Aimed
in cartoon form at impressionable children, the show features
“Triball,” a three-eyed mutant frog who raises their fears about
“strange things happening in our bodies” due to
pesticides.
After first terrifying mothers and their kids about
pesticides on food, the website tells them to do the following:
“Flex your financial muscle and choose organic for the best
personal and planetary health possible. Why is organic best? No
harmful pesticides.” Then follows a link to a site touting the
benefits of organic food.
What you are not told is that this website is the
creation of the
Organic Valley Cooperative — one of the largest organic farmer
cooperative businesses in the United States, with sales exceeding a
half billion dollars annually. That’s right: Organic Valley is a
profit-making business, trying to frighten consumers about
the safety of their competitors’ farm and dairy products. Like
their website cartoons aimed at children and parents, another of
Organic Valley’s propaganda efforts is a “Farm
Friends Kids Activity Flyer,” which teaches tykes to fear
“Pesticides, hormones, and drugs, oh my!” — and, of course, to buy
Organic Valley’s products instead.
So if you hear a lot of noise this week about “saving the
frogs,” please understand that those yelling into the megaphones
and microphones are not just scientifically deficient. They also
aren’t the selfless, disinterested consumer watchdogs they pretend
to be. When these fear-mongers claim that pesticide makers and
users profit by peddling poison, what they won’t tell you is that
they profit by peddling panic.
