ග්ලයිෆොසේට් නීතිය හා බටහිර විද්‍යාව

                             ග්ලයිෆොසේට් නීතිය හා බටහිර විද්‍යාව

අද හර්තාල් දවස. හර්තාලයට අදට අවුරුදු හැටපහක් වෙනවා. ඒ ගැන ලියන්න තියෙන්නෙ ඒකෙන් එතරම් මිනිසුන් සංඛ්‍යාවක් මැරුණෙ නැහැ කියන එක විතරයි. සමහරු කියන විධියට පනස්හය ඇති වුණෙ පනස්තුනේ හර්තාල හින්ද! පනස්හයට හර්තාලයෙන් කිසිම බලපෑමක් වුණෙ නැහැ. පනස්හය ජාතිකත්වය ඉදිරියට ඒමක්. හර්තාලයෙ කිසිම ජාතිකත්වයක් තිබුණෙ නැහැ. හර්තාලයෙ බලපෑම කෙසේ වෙතත් පිලිප්ලා ඇන් ඇම්ලා කොල්වින්ලා එස් ඒ වික්‍රමසිංහලා අන්තිමේ දි ශ්‍රී ල නි ප ප්‍රධාන ආණ්ඩුවල කොටස්කරුවන් වුණා. ඒක මහජන පෙරමුණු දේශපාලනය කියල කිව්ව අය තවමත් ලෙනින් කියවනවා. ලෙනින් ලෙනින් කියෙව්ව නැතිව ඇති. නැත්තන් ලෙනින්ටත් ලෙනින් කියව කියව ඉන්න තිබුණා.

ක්රුශිරසයනික වකුගඩු රෝගය

Devivaru Arsenic and Science V

Dr. Upali Samarajeewa in his article on 27th July expresses the view that the Kelaniya group that is on a “great mission to prove” that the Rajarata Kidney Disease is “due to exposure of humans to Arsenic” “start by attacking views of all other scientists examining the possible origins of the disease”. He claims that then we “create fear among the public with a story of high concentrations of arsenic in rice and water”. He admits that we presented our case at a seminar of the Ministry of Irrigation and Water Management in March 2011, which according to him was “later released to a local science tabloid.” Then according to his script “the story expands next to pesticides (conveniently forgetting their (Kelaniya group’s) earlier claims of high concentrations of arsenic in rice and water) and later takes a different turn that arsenic is added to pesticides at various points in the distribution chain, when they find that their arguments do not hold any more in the light of test reports coming out from an internationally accredited laboratory.” He further states that “manipulating their own data to suit the occasions has become a feature of these scientists”.

I must inform Dr. Samarajeewa that we are certainly not on a mission great or otherwise as we are not missionaries of any faith or belief, unlike the great scientists in Sri Lanka who are no more than glorified technicians not having introduced any concept theory or idea, who follow some procedures (some of which are called process by Prof. Carlo Fonseka), and who are on a mission on behalf of the western Christian science. Dr. Samarajeewa like all missionaries wants to attack the others while blaming the others for attacking him and the other missionaries. If he is not attacking our views what is he doing writing all these articles to the newspapers? I have no objections when he attacks us as we not being missionaries who follow Budun Vahanse would tolerate any opposing views.

We have reasons to believe (all the so called theories including Newton’s gravitational theory are nothing but beliefs or stories at best) that Rajarata Kidney Disease is caused by Arsenic through Calcium Arsenate that dissolves in water at certain temperatures at certain acidic levels indicated by the pH values. We have not deviated from this story and we have not dropped our claim that Arsenic is present in rice and water. In fact if Arsenic is not present in water in some form there is no possibility of Arsenic causing the Rajarata Kidney disease according to our script? (Please remember that Newton wrote his script on gravitation in the seventeenth century). In our script Arsenic goes into the system through drinking water that has a content of Calcium Arsenate.

We have not attempted to create fear among the public by claiming a high concentration of Arsenic in rice and water but only attempted to make them aware of the conditions. As I have repeatedly said the presence of Arsenic in rice had been known to great scientists such as Prof. Ranjith Jayasekera the cadre Senior Professor of Botany at the University of Kelaniya since 2004 or so and we were the fourth group to find Arsenic in rice. However, as we have said rice was not our main concern as we were interested in Rajarata Kidney Disease that was not caused by rice. People have been aware of the presence of “vasa visa” (poison) in pesticides and also in what we eat because of the use of pesticides in agriculture for sometime and our disclosure was not a surprise to most of them. In fact some have been engaged in other forms of agriculture such as organic farming in order to avoid poisonous substances for more than at least two decades. Al that we did was to identify Arsenic as one of the poisonous substances in the pesticides.

It was not only Arsenic that we had identified in pesticides but Mercury as well. We have announced this at various seminars and at least one other laboratory has reported on the presence of Mercury in pesticides. In fact the Devivaru had indicated the presence of other toxic matter in the pesticides, which will be disclosed in the near future. Dr. Samarajeewa makes a lame effort to accuse us of changing our claims when according to him our data are shown to be invalid by an internationally accredited laboratory. We have never done so and we must say that internationally accredited laboratories are in now confirming our results though the scientists of the caliber of Dr. Samarajeewa may not be aware of the latest developments.

We have not claimed that Arsenic or any toxic matter is added to pesticides at one or many points in the distribution chain but if the manufacturers of the pesticides claim that what they had exported are free of toxic matter and if we believe them, then Arsenic and other toxic matter have to be added somewhere along the line from the point of export to the point of distribution to the retail traders. It is also possible that the exporters are not telling the truth and that they export pesticides with one or many toxic substances. In this regard I wish to quote the following from the 3rd June 2009 issue of “Daily Nation” published in Kenya.

‘The Kenya Bureau of standards (Kebs) said the entire 20,000 tonnes of DAP fertilizer from the United States contained “very high” levels of poisonous elements – arsenic and cadmium. The agency said these would manifest themselves in crops if the fertilizer was used. On Wednesday, a Kenya Navy ship was said to be patrolling the area, with officers under strict instructions to keep vigilance and ensure the vessel carrying the fertilizer sails back.’

Of course this has happened two years ago in Kenya soon after the LTTE was defeated in Sri Lanka. It may be that we did not have time to look into the problems created by the importers of agrochemicals during the time LTTE was in action with the aid of self same westerners who export these chemicals to the Asian and African countries. Unfortunately the Afro Asian countries are not only in disarray but are dominated by western thinking and knowledge including western science and they can hardly do anything about dumping of toxic matter in the form of agrochemicals by the westerners. We are in a tricky situation as the westerners who export agrochemical with poisonous matter could ban our agricultural exports to them claiming that they contain toxic matter. The only way forward is to develop our own methods without depending on the so called scientific agriculture using agrochemicals produced in the west and the “Arsenic studies” group at Kelaniya is concerned with developing “Sinhala govikama” and of course our own science.

It is in this regard we have deliberately deviated from so called scientific process and obtained help from Devivaru who have instructed on “govikama” as well. It is not organic farming that we practice and the Science Faculty at the University of Kelaniya has already finished with four “kannas” on an experimental level in a paddy field near Kadawatha.

We have already divulged our methods to ITI and we are now testing in collaboration with them for Arsenic in pesticides.

Copyright Prof. Nalin De Silva

Devivaru, Arsenic and Science -IV

The Arsenic issue does not allow me to analyse current politics and give my two cents worth “predictions” in detail. However, before I continue with my reply to Professors Upali Samarajeewa and Oliver Ileperuma let me state that the UPFA with its resounding victory at local government elections has pushed the UNP and the JVP into one corner, and it is inevitable that they will jointly fight against the nationalistic forces with the support of the TULF or ITAK or TNA, whatever the name the latter would use depending on the political situation. All three names refer to the same political force, albeit with negligible differences and the President having consolidated his position outside the Northern Province is now gradually eating into the vote base of the above mentioned parties in the North. Tamil nationalism as we have pointed over and over again is working top down and with the present development programme in the Northern Province, the TULF with its racist policies will have to follow the UNP and the JVP.

Let me come back to Devivaru, Arsenic and Science. Dr. Samarajeewa and many others are concerned about publishing in so called peer review journals, and think that the Kelaniya group sometimes erroneously called the Kelaniya Rajarata group, (it is true that in our group we have a young academic from Rajarata University, but he is there in his capacity as a research student at Kelaniya) should have published in these magic journals without going to press. We did not originally publish our results or methods in so called peer reviewed journals for number of reasons. One of the reasons was that as the leader of the group I believe that the necessity to publish results and methods in some format arises not only as a result of conveying to the others the “new” results but also as a way of giving as many as possible to respond to the article concerned. In our case we are studying a problem that is of concern to the public and the government, and as such opportunities had to be given to as many as possible to take part in the discussion. Besides publishing in a peer reviewed journal does not give anybody a guarantee that the method and the results are correct. As I have already mentioned the contents of some thirty percent of the papers published in Nature and Science, supposed to be the most prestige of the lot, are proved to be wrong by the others within a few years.

We are concerned with the Rajarata Chronic Kidney Disease and we are ninety nine percent sure that it is caused mainly by Arsenic that forms Calcium Arsenate after reacting with Calcium salts found in hard water in Rajarata and other relevant areas. Of course, there is another factor involved, namely the soil in these areas which has the ability to retain Arsenic. The absence of this particular soil is the reason that there is no incidence of the disease in Hambantota and other places though there is Arsenic and hard water in those areas as well. As I have said on many occasions if we had enough bodies of dead Rajarata Kidney patients we probably would have confirmed our results with hundred percent certainty. Then the question was popped up as to how these areas gained Arsenic in the first place. After a number of observations it was not difficult to conclude that Arsenic was absorbed into the soil in Rajarata and other areas from Agro Chemicals including pesticides. It has to be pointed out that Arsenic is not present naturally in Sri Lanka, which could be verified by Geologists and Chemists by going deep and taking samples of earth. The quantities of Arsenic found on the surface and up to about ten feet below the surface are what have been added by humans through various means, such as agriculture based on agrochemicals.

We are interested in finding a cure to the disease and we are happy that a public opinion has been created already as a result of releasing the results of our investigation to the newspapers. If we had submitted our results to so called peer reviewed journals it is very likely that the manuscript would still be on the desk of the reviewer. What we have realized is that Arsenic in agrochemicals, have found its way into the hard water in the affected area after been absorbed by the particular soil found in the area and formed Calcium Arsenate that causes the disease. Though Prof. Samarajeewa tries to make a hue and cry over rice we have never said that eating rice is the cause of the disease. In any event it was not us who said first that Arsenic is found in rice, and in this connection the credit should go to Prof. Ranjith Jayasekera, senior professor of Botany, please note the “of” rather than “in” implying that he is the so called chair professor, who won a Presidential award for this particular paper that disclosed the presence of Arsenic in rice. After that two other groups had found Arsenic in rice and I cannot understand why Prof. Samarajeewa is obsessed with our finding which is inconsequential to us as far as the Chronic Kidney Disease is concerned.

Though we have not published our results so far, we have divulged our results and methods at five seminars/presentations to the so called scientists in Sri Lanka who are concerned with the problem. They were at seminars/presentations organized by the WHO, the Ministry of Research and Technology, Ministry of Agriculture, Medical Faculty of the University of Rajarata and the secretariat of the Prime Minister. It is because of our revelations that the Registrar of Pesticides (RoP) had to test for Arsenic in 28 brands of pesticides at the ITI, which has so far tested positively in 9 of the brands. We note that the RoP has taken steps to ban the 9 brands in Sri Lanka and also that the Sri Lanka Customs have retained more than a dozen of containers with pesticides based on our findings as well as of others. If we went through the peer reviewed journals these 9 brands of pesticides would have been available in the market and the containers would have been released.

I must reiterate that I am not inclined to publish in so called peer reviewed research journals except under very special circumstances, and I believe in communicating my ideas to the others for discussion, criticism, testing etc., through newspapers, websites blogs and other such media. Also I believe in the Buddhist method of “Ehi Passiko” or see for yourself, rather than in the Biblical tradition of quoting chapter and verse. Prof. Samarajeewa may be unfamiliar with our methods as he and all of us have been trained and forced at schools and universities to follow the western Christian tradition. Ehi Passiko was only for the period where we “studied” Buddhism while practicing Christianity in culture that includes traditions. I know that Prof. Samarajeewa and most of the other so called scientists do not know that there are methods of communication other than those demanded by the western Christian colonialist culture that he has imbibed at the fountains at Peradeniya through western science as an undergraduate, and I would like to find out whether it is the western scientific tradition that demands us to follow their methods of communication to the exclusion of others.

I must inform Prof. Samarajeewa that we are not quick publicity seekers nor people waiting to jump a bandwagon in his words. I have been criticizing western science for more than twenty five years losing my job at the University of Colombo as a consequence, and we have now come to a point where the technicians who masquerade as western scientists in Sri Lanka cannot ignore that there are other sciences based on different cultures and different chinthanayas. Our “finding” that Rajarata Chronic Kidney Disease is caused by Arsenic, first revealed by Natha Deviyo and Vipasaka Deviyo, though has been verified to a certainty of ninety nine percent using western scientific techniques (in fact what is meant by scientific method by most of the masqueraders is techniques and nothing else), confirms that there are ways of acquiring knowledge other than those prescribed in the western Christian science. Our western medical doctors would tell anybody who is interested how the study was guided by the Devivaru and I only hope that the Sri Lanka Medical Council would not decide to cancel their registration as western medical practitioners for divulging those facts. In any event we are of the opinion that the Rajarata Chronic Kidney Disease is a form of cancer, though it may not be of the same type as any other Kidney disease known hitherto.

Finally a comment on the last paragraph of Prof. Samarjeewa’s article. He asks the following questions attributing them to ordinary people. “Leaving science out for a minute, the questions raised by the ordinary public are: "We all eat rice in Sri Lanka, which is supposed to be contaminated with arsenic and how come only the people in the North Central Province have been affected by arsenic? What will be the fate of our cattle eating the paddy straw?" Should we stop drinking local milk too?” The answers are as follows. Rice has never been stated as the cause of the Rajarata Chronic Kidney Disease by our group. Thus those who eat rice anywhere in Sri Lanka would not be affected by Arsenic as far as the Kidney Disease is concerned. At present we do not have any evidence to show that milk is affected by Arsenic, and our investigation is not geared towards any organ of cattle eating straw. However the cattle who live on straw should take extra precautions if they decide to ask silly questions and to write articles to the press.(11/07/27)

Copyright Prof. Nalin De Silva

Channel Four and Killing Fields in Rajarata

Channel Four has done it again. Two years after the Nandikadal defeat of the LTTE, the infamous channel has come out with another footage on the so called killing fields in Sri Lanka. It is said that the Sri Lankan Army had been involved in war crimes during the last stages of the humanitarian operations and so many innocent Tamils had been killed while Tamil women had been raped. Channel Four has taken two years to produce this footage and may be few more videos are being prepared to release in the near future.

It is well known that the LTTE made use of three hundred thousand innocent people as a human shield during the last stages of the operations and the Sri Lankan government took a long time to defeat the LTTE as it did not want to cause any harm to the innocent Tamils. Unlike the Americans and the other westerners (especially NATO) who bomb innocent civilians in Libya, Afghanistan and other countries Sri Lankan armed forces did not resort to any such actions against humanity.

The question naturally arises as to why the Sri Lankan armed forces waited till the last stage of the humanitarian operations to engage in these so called mass killings. An army that had behaved as an exemplary military had apparently decided to turn into vultures all of a sudden towards the end. How did it happen? Why did the armed forces behave so only during the last stages? Do the western pundits have answers to these questions? Almost all the people who were held as a human shield by the LTTE have been resettled now and I am sure that these people would give the correct picture of what had happened during the last stages of the operations.

Killing Fields is a hackneyed expression of the western scriptwriters and other such pundits and they very often use it in reference to so called war crimes committed by non westerners. The Killing Fields due to the westerners are easily forgotten as they are the people who dominate the news media in the world, and also since the west has established its hegemony in creation and distribution of knowledge in general.

The Killing Fields of the west are not confined to battle fields. The multinationals control everything, and in Sri Lanka and in the rest of the so called third world, a term used by the westerners, there are so many other killing fields. The killing fields in the Rajarata area where more than twenty thousand people have died due to what is known as Rajarata Chronic Kidney Disease Unidentified Etiology (RCKD Un et) is only one example. There are some pundits in Sri Lanka who object to the terminology RCKD claiming that such patients are found in other places such as Girandurukotte and Dehiaththakandiya outside the Rajarata area. The disease is called RCKD simply because the vast majority of the patients due to it are from Rajarata area.

Rajarata and other affected areas are also killing fields although Channel Four is not interested in making a movie on RCKD. For almost twenty years the cause of the disease was not known and that was the reason why Un Et had to be tagged on to the name of the disease. As I have explained in recent articles the group at Kelaniya University that study various aspects of the disease is ninety nine percent confident that the disease is due to Arsenic found in agrochemicals and mainly in pesticides. It has to be mentioned contrary to the view expressed by some scientists Arsenic is not found naturally in Sri Lankan soil and our studies with soil from Rajarata areas have confirmed this. Arsenic is found only up to a depth of about six to eight feet and the patterns are clearly indicative of introduction of Arsenic from the top of the soil.

We tested for Arsenic not only in the soil of Rajarata but in flora as well. Arsenic was found in rice as well and naturally we divulged these facts at a number of seminars and workshops held with learned scientists from universities. No objections were raised at these learned gatherings, and it cannot be said that our findings are not in the public domain as such. I of course have a different attitude to publishing in so called peer reviewed prestigious journals, though most of the members of our group do not endorse my views. Though I have a few papers published in international journals, including two papers in Nature in my younger days, for the last twenty five years after I broke away (my abhinishkramanya or renunciation) from western science in particular and western knowledge in general, I publish all my original ideas in The Island, Divaina and Vidusara all of which happen to be Upali Publications. I value these articles more than my papers in the so called prestigious journals, as they contain better original ideas, though the Sri Lankan Universities and the pundits therein do not recognize them as research papers and no points are given for them. However, our group did not publish their methods in so called refereed journals, not because they are not interested in having a paper or two in their names, but for the reason that they got the ideas through “unconventional methods” including Bhavana, and they were not sure as to whether the ideas belonged only to them. Anyhow now they have resolved the problem, and they would submit their papers to the standard journals.

There were lot of obstacles to our research even from the University itself and the opposition was led by a lady who has vested interests and who still goes around agitating against our research. We overcame these in the University but now all these elements including various government officials have got together to engage in a vicious campaign against us. It appears that they have gone to the highest levels but we will carry on with our work in the interests of the general public. We were mainly interested in the RCKD and did tests for Arsenic only in the relevant material. Rice was also tested and we found Arsenic in that substance but did not want to make a big fuss over it. Of course, we did not test bread or wheat flour or apples or imported butter as we were concerned with how Rajarata has been affected by pesticides. The fact that we did not test for Arsenic in imported food items does not mean that we are promoting them as against local products including rice. Only a crooked mind of an official who wants to survive at any cost can accuse us of a conspiracy against the country and our economy. These officials were not anywhere near during the last twenty five years or so when we fought against the most deadliest terrorists on a theoretical plane. We are happy to inform all of them that we would be testing for bread as well as ponac very soon as some of them may be interested in the Arsenic content of the latter.

The Registrar of Pesticides in a recent article to “The Island” on the “Arsenic Upheaval” claims that we did not submit our results to him even after repeated requests. It is true that we did not submit our results as it is not our policy to do so. We presented our results at a meeting held with the Minster of Agriculture where the RoP was also present and he cannot say that he is totally unfamiliar with our conclusions. The RoP has the luxury to hind behind the relevant acts and regulations and, it appears that until we raised the issue he (or his predecessors) has either issued licenses or recommended issuing them simply by going through the application to import pesticides and accepting the declarations of the importers. Apparently he has not taken steps to test for various chemicals including Arsenic and only after the Arsenic Upheaval according to the PoR, he has sent some samples to the ITI which has submitted a report to him. It has to be mentioned that when the University of Kelaniya sent some samples to the ITI to test for Arsenic it declined to do so claiming that one of their employees fainted as a result of testing. We hope that nobody fainted this time but we are not in agreement with their recent findings. It has to be brought to the notice of the public that it is not only the group at Kelaniya that has got positive results and the Sri Lanka customs when they decided to retain some of the containers they had other evidence as well regarding presence of Arsenic and also Mercury in pesticides.

The RoP depends only on the readings of the ITI and I do not know how much it agrees with the so called scientific method to come to conclusions only on the results of one institute how much it is “internationally recognized”. In any event one cannot say that Arsenic is not present in pesticides that one has not tested and all that one can say is that according to the method one has adopted Arsenic is present in certain quantities in the samples that have been tested. At Kelaniya we did not stick to the instructions given in the text books and the journals on testing for Arsenic as we modified the methods. If somebody requests we are prepared to give them the methods and alternatively we are prepared to allow them to come to our laboratories and test for Arsenic with us using our methods.

The killing fields in Rajarata, we claim are due to the Agrochemicals imported from the west, and the channel four could shoot a film on this tragedy if they are so humanitarian. More than twenty thousand innocent people have already died and the government should consider the feasibility of asking the relevant companies to pay compensation to the affected families as well as to the country, and introducing alternative methods of farming to the farmers without sticking to western farming with its nasty consequences.(2011/06/22)

Copyright Prof. Nalin De Silva