An article in the New York Times on May 3, 2010, by William Neuman and Andrew Pollack, was the first widely-available report of Roundup resistant weeds: a Roundup-ready soybean crop was being destroyed near Dyersburg, Tennessee. The “super-weed” was pigweed. Originally super-weeds resistant to Roundup were thought likely to come about from ”promiscuous” pollen from nearby Roundup-ready soybeans pollinating weeds closely related to soybeans. Pigweed is a distant relative to soybeans; so the resistance must have come about by an old-fashioned Darwinian mutation with survival value. Compare with insects becoming resistant to DDT. However the consequences to Monsanto, manufacturer of Roundup (generic name: glyphosate) and the farmers are of super-weed proportions.

Also the public is prematurely prevented from getting maximum benefit from Roundup, a uniquely non-toxic and promptly inactivated weed killer if it hadn’t been overused.

In response to the moratorium on genetically modified crops in Europe in 2000, the president of Monsanto stated, "We thought we were doing some great things. A lot of other people thought we were making some mistakes. We were blinded by our own enthusiasm. We missed the fact that this technology raised major issues for people—issues of ethics, of choice, of trust, even of democracy and globalization. As we tried to understand what happened, we realized that we needed to hear directly from people about what they thought, what their concerns were and what they thought we ought to do. If we are to close the gap between those that believe in the benefits and those who have some concerns then something has to change."

So the problem is short-term profits in conflict with legitimate public policy. Another cogent example is E. coli 0157 resistant to many antibiotics and causing fatal diarrheal disease in humans. This occurred because of a long-term use of antibiotics for growth promotion in domestic animals. Growth promotion occurred because of disease prevention, and was cheaper than improving hygienic conditions for the animals. The result was an almost universally antibiotic-resistant intestinal microbial flora that exchanged genes with diarrhea-causing bacteria by a quasi-sexual exchange called bacterial conjugation that occurs only across bacterial species barriers. The most frequent offending product was hamburger because of the grinding equipment distributing occasional contamination widely. Experts were aware of this danger in advance and recommended no non-therapeutic use of antibiotics. Sweden has enforced such a regulation for a decade or so without measurably increasing the cost of meat.

In both the cases of super-weeds and growth-enhancing use of antibiotics, politicians thwarted sensible regulation.

Believe it or not the solution is campaign finance reform, because that would interfere with commercial interests "buying" elections. Confining support of politicians’ campaign expenses to individuals eligible to vote for them is what is needed. The simplest way to do this is public financing of elections. Maine has removed any economic incentive for trying to buy elections by a provision that permits private contributions but rewards the candidate who accepts only the limited public financing by giving support from public funds of 80% of any excess private money spent by his opponent.

Now competent individuals of ordinary means are succeeding in state-wide elections in Maine and private financing of elections there is dying out.     John A. Frantz, MD, NASW, May 9, 2010