Does the end justify the means?

Does the end justify the means and surely a poison is a poison no matter how it is dressed up? No matter how it mixed with something else or renamed or how the ‘spin doctors’ present it to the public – a poison is still toxic.

Here is something I came across that will exercise your mind!

We are ingesting a plethora of pesticides, herbicides and fungicides, (including fluorides in our drinking water), that are applied during all stages of agriculture and forestry. These are highly toxic and quite literally ‘mind bending’ in their effects. The problem is that in isolation each chemical used may well be within official health guidelines and applied correctly, but when they are mixed, in the environment, with other chemicals the combined effects is compounded and can be very distressing. Some of these chemicals have endocrine (hormone) disrupting effects resulting in mutations noticed in fish, reptiles and increased mammary gland cancers in laboratory rats and breast and prostate cancers in humans.

Now I am certainly no chemist but my research shows that, as an example, the fluoride and chlorine in our (Australian) drinking water, even at 1.5 ppm concentrations (which is pretty low), combined with the carbon present in all water (again in very small quantities) and you get chlorfluorocarbon (one of the chemicals used in Agent Orange, the defoliant used in Vietnam which has resulted in all sorts of malformed and mentally retarded Vietnamese children). Add all this to organophosphate (a widely used insecticide) in our water supply (run off from golf courses and general agricultural, horticultural and garden use) and God knows what the physiological and behaviour altering effects will be. You also get organochlorines, which are just as bad. It bothers me that we are ingesting combinations of chemicals without having full knowledge of the cumulative or the long term effects of such chemicals. We have no idea of the long term damage to our, collective and individual, DNA.

Many of these chemicals are known carcinogens and yet because of the vast sums of money that the pharmaceutical and agrichemical companies make they fiercely resist any moves to curtail use and ferociously protect their image in the public’s eye. Take the case of one herbicide, Atrazine – a very widely used herbicide (banned in Europe but allowed in Australia), produced by Syngenta (the company formed from the agribusiness arm of Novartis and the agrichemicals arm of Zeneca, both very large pharmaceutical companies – check this out for yourself at:-
www.syngenta.com/en/about_syngenta/companyhistory.html.

Now, stretching my school acquired knowledge of chemistry to the limits, what research I have done tells me that Atrazine is a endocrine (hormone) disruptor – causing dramatic damage to the reproductive structures of vertebrates because it alters estrogen production (Atrazine is known an aromatase inducer).

This, to me, is where things get dirty. The antidote, as it were, to an aromatase inducer is an aromatase inhibitor. Guess what! At around the same time that Syngenta was hived off to produce Atrazine (the aromatase inducer) the original parent companies Novartis and Zeneca now known as AstraZeneca (in their pharmaceutical guise) produce two aromatase inhibitors used to treat breast cancers. Novartis produces Femara (chemical name: Letrozole) and AstraZeneca produces Arimidex (chemical name: anastrozole). Again this can be checked out at:- www.breastcancerfund.org and at:- www.breastcancer.org . There is also a very good expose at:- www.healthandenvironment.org/?module=uploads&func=download&fileId=592

This is so wrong; wrong ethically; wrong morally and is in fact unconscionable conduct while also being duplicitous. One branch (technically a different company, only because it is registered as such) sells a highly dangerous chemical, a herbicide, an aromatase inducer known to induce breast and prostate cancers. At the same time another branch (technically different as explained above) produces an aromatase inhibitor to treat the cancers caused by the products sold by the other branch!

In effect the companies are saying to the population at large, “pay us to poison you and then if you really want to, you can pay us some more for the antidote.” This is a blatant example of greed; of people – companies - taking advantage of their commercial and industrial might and expertise regardless of the human cost and the emotional and physical misery caused.

All this for money? As I have said before and I will say it again and again, it is totally unethical and immoral to put the acquisition of money before the welfare of human beings. It is our relationships which determines our qualities as human beings. Money is merely a medium of exchange to facilitate trade. The only value that money has is because humans have said that 1 oz of gold is worth US$900, or whatever. Money has no intrinsic value. On the other hand what price a human being?
So to repeat my question – does the end justify the means? How much are you worth?

PS. What with Easter and family visiting from Sydney I have not had a chance, until now, to sit down at my computer and write something.