Happy Naw Ruz, 165

Something for Worrying Wanda to Stew Over

By John Taylor; 2008 March 20, 01 Baha, 165 BE

Yesterday, while doing my usual quotidian research, this time about purity, I came across a little discovery that was so distressing and sad and depressing that I simply shunted the more theoretical and less agonizing findings into my daily essay for that day, the last for fast, and attended our Naw Ruz in Simcoe in a cataleptic state. It was as if I had been shot up with ketamine, a drug that induces a dissociative state where you can "still experience pain, but cannot react to it, or really react to much of anything at all; it is as if the mind and body are separate. Ketamine is commonly used ... in veterinary surgery and as a date rape drug," according to the doctor who keeps a blog commenting on every episode of House, M.D., a television show that I watched way too much of this fast. In fact, on those endless fast afternoons I worked through the entire first three seasons, and have only the unfinished season four yet to watch.

Silvie came home from school yesterday and commented that her Grade Eight teacher had told them that this Easter takes place so early that another year like this will not come around for at least another two centuries. So in that sense, this is surely an almost unique Naw Ruz, for, as an Iranian Baha'i told me that evening, the non-Baha'i Persians celebrated their Naw Ruz yesterday, not today, because the actual solstice had taken place the night before. So, enjoy this very unusual Naw Ruz that takes place on the same day as Good Friday, but a different day from the Persian Naw Ruz. We will probably have to wait around for many centuries before there is another.

Actually, do not worry about living centuries, because as I say, we are probably not going to live that long; and not just because normal senescence will kick in first.

Our Simcoe Naw Ruz was a success, there were several kids there of similar age, and Silvie and Thomas amused themselves playing games with them like Truth or Dare and one I had not heard of, Toilet Tag. It was a long, thin room, and two long tables were set up with the many dishes of our pot luck feast lined along the middle -- this arrangement assured that my every thought that evening would be about food, and that I would eat too much and suffer indigestion. My contribution was my bean salad spiced up with a special spice concoction that smells like it has anise in it, supplied by my sister-in-law, who works in a spice factory. It got good reviews, I am pleased to say; certainly I like it, I make up a big batch and eating a bowl of it has become the highlight of my day, especially during the fast. A Persian woman from Brazil sang a duet with Ron Speer, the song of the Master, "Look at Me," which Ron had sung in the home of Abdu'l-Baha on his pilgrimage in January. A grand finale.

I had run out of House episodes for the last day of the fast, and instead read more from Naomi Klein's "Shock Doctrine," which I cannot put down. Really, I would love to put it down, but I cannot. It is gripping non-fiction, and the closer to the present it gets the more suspenseful it is. I keep expecting to read in the next chapter events that I know have not happened yet, like when some crisis like, I don't know, a financial meltdown, happens and the American president decides that maybe they should put off the next election indefinitely, and that maybe he should replace the secret service with his own force of private sector mercenaries clad in characteristic wraparound sunglasses. As the blurb on the cover reads, this is scary stuff.

But not as scary as my little discovery yesterday about purity. Here is how it came about.

In our children's class we are going through the virtue of excellence in the Virtues Project workbook, then we read a story about the early years of Abdu'l-Baha from Hitjo Garst's excellent new biography of the Master designed for kids (I tried some adult material about Baha'u'llah for a while but the difference was so marked that I dropped it as soon as Garst's book arrived), and finally we have been working through the Book of Matthew.

In Matthew, we just read the parable of the soils, you know, the one about the seeds that a farmer throws on rock and various other kinds of soil. This prompted me to do an Ocean search of the Writings using the keywords "pure soil" and "pure earth." Aside from the Master's direct commentary on this parable, Baha'u'llah mentions the metaphor over a dozen times. Clearly, in the eyes of God, the human heart is soil in which the seed of His Word either thrives or dies out, according to how pure we keep it. So the cry goes out and rings from the rafters:

"Keep your soil pure."

Okay, this is the scary part. An article in Discover Magazine called "Superbugged" came to my attention. It is not yet available online, but here is a précis to be found on the net:

"(Jessica) Sachs discusses the science behind recent headlines about DNA pollution and antibiotic resistant genetic material that can transform ordinary bacteria into rogue "superbugs" that are immune to antibodies. Over the last 60 years virtually every known strand of disease-causing bacteria has developed an antibody-resistant strain, largely due to the increased usage of antibiotics in both in humans and (more importantly) in livestock, where unregulated usage of antibiotics is most worrisome. Sachs clearly lays out the real effects of the phenomenon, touring farms and meatpacking plants." <http://www.brijit.com/abstract/14501/Super-Bugged>

The précis hardly does the article justice. Our failure to recycle at source has effectively invented a new and deadly type of pollution, DNA pollution, rogue genetic material that poses a "potentially colossal new health threat."

"In part, modern medicine is paying the price for its own success. `Antibiotics may be the most powerful evolutionary force seen on this planet in billions of years,' ... By their nature, antibiotics support the rise of any bug that can shrug off their effects, by conveniently eliminating the susceptible competition. But the rapid rise of bacterial genes for drug resistance stems from more than lucky mutation... The vast majority of these genes show a complexity that could have been achieved only over millions of years. Rather than rising anew in each species, the genes spread via the microbial equivalent of sexual promiscuity. Bacteria swap genes, not only among their own kind but also between widely divergent species, Levy explains. Bacteria can even scavenge the naked DNA that spills from their dead compatriots out into the environment." ("How DNA pollution may spawn deadly antibiotic resistance: the story behind the headlines." by Jessica Snyder Sachs, Discover Magazine, March 2008, p. 58)

The threat is not way off in the future, either. "The newly resistant strains have been implicated in some 90,000 potentially fatal infections a year in the United States, higher than the number of automobile and homicide deaths combined." Hmm. Strangely, the intrepid, eagle-eyed investigative reporters of our press, ever vigilant for public safety, are not picking up on this story. If only these lives carried the same weight as the three thousand or so who died from terrorist attacks in the past decade, Then you would really see the press stand up and take notice.

 But, oh yes, I forgot, I am getting things out of proportion. The drug industry stands to make a fortune by keeping up with a flood of resistant strains, requiring ever newer and more powerful antibiotics to fight them. Here is what is happening with just one strain of resistant bacteria, known as MRSA.

"...Researchers estimate that invasive MRSA kills more than 18,000 Americans a year, more than AIDS, and the problem is growing rapidly. MRSA caused just 2 percent of staph infections in 1974; in the last few years, that figure has reached nearly 65 percent. Most reported staph infections stem from MRSA born and bred in our antibiotic-drenched hospitals and nursing homes. But about 15 percent now involve strains that arose in the general community."

What is causing DNA pollution? Having just finished my fast marathon of House, M.D., my impression is that the only thing doctors use more than lies is antibiotics. If you took lies and antibiotics out of their quiver, there would remain only one or two arrows for them to fight with. But they are forced by various demands to moderate their applications, whereas factor farmers are under no such restraints.

 So yes, the cause is overuse of antibiotics by factory farms, yes, the three million pounds a year prescribed by doctors to sick humans, and yes, the unnecessary use of antibiotic soaps in most households, but mostly DNA pollution is accelerating because of the ubiquitous custom of spreading of sewage sludge onto crops.

What happens is that sewage collects together with the antibiotics in our soap, and one or two bacteria figure out how to deal with it. Sure, the sewage treatment plant kills the bacteria dead. But, as the investigators featured in this Discover article found out, it does not matter that they are dead, the rogue DNA material survives and when it is dumped onto food crops, the living bacteria in the soil pick up the resistant DNA material. Then resistance propagates on its own. Milton Friedman, the great proponent of free markets would be proud; the bacteria set up a massive free market where resistant DNA is put up on the auction block and sold to the highest bidder. Now thanks to the miracle of the invisible hand and free enterprise on the molecular level, most of the ground we walk on is a witch's brew of superbugs.

Our most fertile and productive soil is rapidly becoming impure, a toxic wasteland, just like in the parable.

I wondered if any of the Worrying Wandas in the environmental movement have picked up on this danger, so I Googled keywords like "sewage," "sludge," and "crops" and it automatically jumped me over to the industry-designed euphemism, "biomass." When I saw that mild, scientific-sounding name, I felt a lot better. I was even more assured when I read that farmers have to have a toxic waste handling license before they are allowed to dump biomass onto their crops -- at least in the EEC they do. What is going on in Canada, much less the Wild West soon to be renamed Uncle Miltyland south of the border where most of our food is coming from, well, that is anybody's guess. Farmers must be licensed because if they spread the sludge in the wrong way or at the wrong time, it can contain some of the heavy metals and other toxic waste that often gets dumped, intentionally or not, into the sewer system.Sure enough, Worrying Wanda is wringing her hands over the toxic waste, which has been proven to transfer toxic materials from the sludge into food crops and small animals, but as far as I could see she has not been alerted to DNA pollution yet. And, thanks to the our privately-owned free market-oriented press, it is unlikely that we will hear about this until inhabitants of gated neighborhoods start dropping from poison and sepsis in very large numbers. More about this tomorrow. Happy Naw Ruz.
Ketamine, anybody?