The Poison Planters

Preface

This novel is based on scientific and political facts. All discussions of science, biology, agronomy, and agriculture are factual. All references to Monsanto, Bayer, Union Carbide, Dupont, and the various other real corporations whose names are specifically mentioned are factual, including their political connections. All universities, government agencies, government committees, and research institutions are real. All references to real persons, whether politicians, government officials, corporate executives, international figures, scientists, or academicians, are factual, including the academicians and others whose reputations or careers were damaged or destroyed. All references to specific countries, and the disasters which their farmers or populations encounter, are factual.

These disturbing facts have been put into the context of a novel in order to make them more easily readable and understood by a wider audience. The existence of this information is easy to verify. All references and citations from books, articles, studies, and lectures are real. It’s hoped that the reader will review some of this literature.

Summary

Former CIA Director Mike Reilly with former Secretary of State Elizabeth Bauer, having barely averted a nuclear holocaust during the administration of U.S. President Jim Caufield, are now on the faculty of the University of Virginia, where two personal tragedies combine to draw them into the on-going battle over how to feed the world’s exploding population.

Powerful coalition forces led by the Rockefeller Foundation and Monsanto Company have been aggressively advancing biotechnology research and the global sale of genetically modified food seeds. This strategy has permitted Monsanto Company to dominate and partially control world agriculture through patented Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO seeds). This strategy, as brilliant as it is diabolical, if successful, will enable Monsanto to continue selling even more of its poisonous herbicide Roundup during and after the decline of the chemically-based so-called ‘Green Revolution.’ Yet, there is scientific evidence that these chemically-created GMO seeds may be harmful to anyone who eats them, and toxic to the unborn.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the U.S. Agency for International Development (AID) exert their enormous bureaucratic and economic power to assist in developing world markets for products from these U.S. and foreign chemical and biotechnology companies, led by Monsanto, Dow Chemical, Bayer, and others. These multi-billion dollar corporations generate hundreds of millions of dollars of tax revenue. AND, they are huge contributors to political campaigns. They also influence and control appointments to key government positions whose decisions directly affect their profits. To help achieve those profits, companies often sue or ruin local farmers in the U.S. and around the world, and, to conceal negative or controversial independent research results, they often bribe, silence, or destroy government leaders and scientists who oppose genetically engineered crops or various pesticides.

Set in contemporary times, The Poison Planters is a novel of domestic and international intrigue, corporate greed, human tragedy, individual heroism, and hope for a sustainable future against immense odds. The story follows upon the adventures of Reilly and Bauer in Clash of the Gods (Abington House November 2008), the first of the Phoenix Trilogy novels.

The Poison Planters is a ‘reality novel.’ With the intent to entertain, it also seeks to inform – about the imminent global threat to our food supply and to our health.

The Poison Planters provides a propitious warning concerning the global genetic genocide that is actively underway with the help of the U.S. government and the United Nations. This is the authors' reason for writing The Poison Planters. The novel conveys a wealth of documented factual information.

All references in The Poison Planters to Monsanto, Bayer, Dow, Syngenta, BASF, and other existing companies, as well as references to the FDA and AID, are accurate descriptions of what these organizations have done and are doing, including punitive actions they have taken against specific academicians and research scientists – honorable and courageous people who dared to challenge the deceitful efforts of these companies and their allies in government to mislead the public into believing that genetically engineered crops are nutritious and safe.

List of Fictitious Characters, Companies and Organizations

The names listed below are either major or minor fictional characters appearing in the novel. ALL OTHER PEOPLE AND ORGANIZATIONS MENTIONED IN THE NOVEL, OF WHATEVER PROFESSION OR GROUP, ARE REAL.

Fictitious Characters

Robert Agroli, CEO of Agroli Pharmaceuticals, Inc.

Ryan Asquith, former FDA official

Elizabeth Bauer, professor at University of Virginia, former U.S. Secretary of State

Laura Brett, CIA analyst, Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University in Biochemistry

Gordon Brett, Laura Brett’s brother and father of Joey

Carmella Brett, Laura Brett’s sister-in-law and mother of Joey

Joey Brett, Laura Brett’s nephew, an eight-year-old diagnosed with cancer, eventually traced to GMO foods and pesticides

Boko Buhari, the Nigerian Interior Minister

Patrice Colon, Deputy Minister of Agriculture of Nigeria

Matthew Conling, U.S. Trade Representative to China

Sharon Croklin, Director, Food and Drug Administration

Hana Dalton, nurse at the Mayo Clinic

Jack Davis, lawyer/lobbyist for GMO Corporation

Ken Dick, Ph.D., administrator at the Agriculture Research Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture

Naomi Feldberg, graduate student at UVA

Michele Foucoure, Assistant to Doctor Jain of the US Dept of Agriculture

Rob Gifford, Chief-of-Staff of the US President

Ron Gunville, CIA Officer in Nigeria

Greg Halston, graduate student at UVA

Bill Hardy, GMO Corporation crop inspector

Hunter, CIA operative in China

Craig Jackson, Indiana lawyer

Dr. Patrick Jamison, Professor of Agriculture at Aberdeen University, Scotland

Robert Jamison, GMO Corporation crop inspector

Doctor Joseph Jain, Director, Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, U.S. Food and Drug Administration

Adrianna Labumba, Nigerian citizen with the Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome

Michael Lampston, the US Economic Attaché at the American Embassy in Lagos, Nigeria.

Anat Lakim, Israeli citizen working for Greenpeace

Moshe Lakim, Israeli citizen working for Greenpeace

Jennifer Larson, graduate student at UVA

Doctor Tokay Lazar, physician at the MAYO Clinic in Minneapolis, Minnesota

Won Chin Lee, a Chinese national working for the CIA.

John Leeger, official in the Nigerian government

Marty Matson, graduate student at UVA

Doctor Igor Michaels, professor of biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Manual Ortega, a member of National Association of Rural Producers in Mexico

Nicolo Papendrolos, Captain of the Hellenic Police Department of Athens, Greece

Michael Reilly, Professor at University of Virginia, former CIA Director

Bill Russell, Indiana farmer

Nathaniel Scherr, Congressman from Iowa

Doctor Gene Stevenson, physician at George Washington University Hospital

Daniel Sullivan, Congressman from Nebraska

Bruce Thompson, Indiana farmer

William Wainwright, International Vice President of GMO Corporation.

John Wellworth, Congressman from California

Fictitious Companies and Organizations

Agroli Pharmaceuticals, Inc.

Genetically Modified Seed and Crop Organization

GMO Corporation

Iraklion Agricultural Products

Sabra Chemical Group

Prologue

The poison came swiftly, and it killed, without warning. The immediate dead surpassed the number of people buried in the rubble of the collapsed World Trade Center towers attacked by Al Qaeda on September 11, 2001. But in Bhopal, India, in 1984, the network news was not there to capture the drama. These dead and injured ‘working class’ Hindis mattered to their families and loved ones. But this wasn’t New York City, and they weren’t Americans. They had no clout.

Coordinated terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India in 2006 and November 2008 were horrifying, and killed over 300 people. The attention of the world was drawn to Mumbai. Was it Al Qaeda? Were they Muslims trained in Pakistan? Will this set Mumbai’s industrial growth and tourist trade back five years? Five Americans were killed. News stories and headlines blared around the world.

Yet in Bhopal in 1984, the dead numbered not in the hundreds but in the thousands. Those poisoned were in the hundreds of thousands. The Indian Armed Forces, the third largest in the world with nearly one and a half million troops under arms, even had they been dispatched, had no weapons with which to repel this invisible gas.

Aziza Sultan never had a worse day in her life than on December 3, 1984. A community health worker at the Sambhavna Clinic in Bhopal, Aziza and her husband, along with their 3-year-old daughter, Ruby, and eight-month-old son, Mohsin, were living with her husband’s family. The house had four rooms – two pucca rooms made of brick and mortar or cement, and two side rooms made of wooden slats with a large opening below the roof. Aziza and her husband and children occupied one of the side rooms.

On a peaceful Sunday evening, the family was watching the Hindi movie 'Damaad' on their new television set, since the marvel of TV had just come to Bhopal. Aziza’s husband was away that night. Present in the house were Aziza’s father-in-law and mother-in-law, two sisters-in-law, their husbands and their four children. The children fell asleep during the movie, while the rest of the family had a late dinner and went to bed around 10 o’clock.

Aziza awoke at 12:30 a.m. to the sound of three-year-old Ruby coughing badly. In the dim light from a street lamp, Aziza could see that a white cloud had filled the room. She heard people outside running, and shouting 'bhago, bhago' (run, run). Eight-month-old Mohsin began coughing, and then Aziza also started coughing, and suddenly each breath seemed as if she were sucking in fire. Her eyes started burning, and she could barely see.

Aziza’s mother-in-law came into the room coughing uncontrollably. She was in a panic and motioned for everyone to come out. Aziza came first, with her children, carrying Mohsin in her arms and holding Ruby's hand as she stumbled into the kitchen. The other members of the family were coughing and groaning as they tried to close all the doors and windows to prevent more gas from coming in, as if the invisible killer had a physical body that could be barred by the porous and leaky door. The invading white clouds had already claimed the room for their own designs.

The family matriarch was known in the community as a person always ready to help others. So a Hindu family in the neighborhood, the parents and their three children, knocked loudly on the front door, and then rushed inside and collapsed on the sofa – which broke under their collective weight. "The 'sardars' are trying to kill us," they shouted excitedly, referring to the Sikhs who a month earlier had assassinated Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. A cycle of violence had followed.

More people began pouring into her house for help. They were all becoming sicker by the moment, and her nephew fell unconscious onto the floor. Aziza’s son, Mohsin, was next. He looked up at his mother, his brown eyes searching hers for a mother’s help, then he collapsed like a rag doll onto the floor, unconscious.

Aziza’s mother-in-law urged everyone, "Go to the Hamidia hospital! Now! Quickly!" They all hurriedly left the house, with Aziza carrying the infant Mohsin and little Ruby tightly squeezing her hand. Aziza’s sister-in-law was also carrying two children, and her father-in-law was carrying his favorite five-year-old grandson. Although it was very cold outside in the dark night, everyone fled the house wearing only their pajamas, not even taking the few seconds to get their dupattas or burquas.

It was 1:30 a.m. The desolate scene gave the surrealistic appearance of a lunarscape that had been crossed by a crowd of people who had left their shoes, shawls and other clothing strewn about on the ground, as white clouds enveloped everything. The light from street lamps diffused through the milky white fog. There were only a few vehicles on the streets. Throngs of people were running, screaming crying out desperately for help, vomiting, and falling down unconscious. Aziza’s family was swept up in a mad rush in the darkness.

After they had gone only about 500 meters they came to Bhopal Talkies Crossing. More people kept dropping to the ground. The infant Mohsin started to vomit all over Aziza. Then Ruby also began to vomit. Suddenly Aziza could not control her bowels, and feces began to run down her legs. Two months pregnant, and worn out, Aziza fell to the ground and had a miscarriage in the middle of the street, her body now covered with blood and feces, placenta, and the vomit of her children.

Although she had just lost the life of the child she was carrying within, and her body faced the threat of death, this was no time for caution or modesty. She was also in the midst of some inexplicable mortal threat to herself, her children and her family. Her only thought coincided with her human instincts for survival – and the survival of her children. Aziza picked herself up off the ground, gathered up the children again, and plunged forward. They had to reach Hamidia hospital, for safe haven and medical treatment.

After nearly an hour of painful struggling, her pathetic group reached the hospital. With little strength left, Aziza exhorted her family members to get inside. Now, right away! she shouted, and advanced them forward much like a sergeant in front of his troops taking a hill in battle. But as she reached the entrance doors her heart sank. She peered inside. All was dark. The hospital was abandoned.

Looking desperately around, Aziza’s mother-in-law saw some people running toward Kamla Park. Go! This way! she yelled, and they began to chase after them, as best they could. When Aziza, her children, and family finally made it to the park between the upper and lower lakes, they saw people were everywhere. Some were trying to help one another by spreading their quilts and blankets over each other to protect against the poisonous clouds of gas; others had already died or passed out. Exhausted, the family dropped down onto a pile of dried leaves near a garbage dump and collectively fell unconscious.

Toward dawn they were aroused by a faint announcement on a public address system mounted to a jeep saying, We are in control of the gas leak from Union Carbide. Go back to your houses. Their eyes still closed and now very swollen, and their lungs gasping for air, they struggled to their feet for the long walk home.

They reached their house to leafless trees that just hours earlier were full, yet had now turned from life-giving green to a desolate burnt black. They looked aghast at their milk, no longer white but instead a grotesque shade of green. The food had turned into garbage. Their home was now a toxic dump. The chemical people are killing us all, Aziza thought, in a silent rage.

When Aziza and her family learned around 8 a.m. that people were running away from Bhopal, they joined these thousands of others and fled for their lives. Sometimes those running stumbled over each other from the blindness in their inflamed eyes and at times trampled each other in their haste to flee. Some people were crushed to death by the cows which were also running to save themselves.

Hundreds of people began to die in the most hideous ways: some vomited uncontrollably until they collapsed or had convulsions and fell over dead. Others had spasmodic constriction of their bronchial tubes which led to suffocation. Some could not breathe because internal secretions of liquids filled their lungs and caused them to drown in their own bodily fluids. Thousands of people choked to death, gasping for oxygen, when they inhaled too much poisonous gas as they dashed through the narrow streets or gullies in their attempts to escape.

Thousands who survived the initial nightmare died a painful death in later weeks, months and even years. Vast numbers of people who survived were now condemned to a life afflicted by any number of painful medical problems. Many others were destined to become too mentally or physically disabled for any employment, and suffered a life of poverty.

A pesticide manufacturing plant caused these deaths and crippling illnesses. On the night of December 2, 1984, a Union Carbide plant began leaking 27 tons of the deadly gas methyl isocyanate, MIC, used in the manufacture of pesticides. None of the six safety systems designed to contain such a leak were operational, so a plume of the toxic gas spread throughout the city of Bhopal.

In the first few days up to 4,000 people died painful, harrowing deaths. From information provided by the authorities and from the sale of shrouds sold in the city at the time, it is estimated that over 10,000 people died during the first month. Of the 500,000 people who were exposed to the gas, another 20,000 died in the aftermath, and various estimates are that anywhere from 100,000 to 500,000 suffer from a host of ailments resulting from the gas, or the consequent contamination of the well water, groundwater, flora, and soil.

Twenty years later, on November 14, 2004, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) reported that drinking water from a well near the accident still contained contamination 500 times greater than limits set by the World Health Organization, and some 25,000 tons of toxic waste remained in and around the site.

By contrast, the worst nuclear plant accident in history, at Chernobyl in the Ukraine in 1986, killed 2 workers immediately and 56 subsequent deaths directly from the accident, according to a 2005 World Health Organization report, which estimated 4,000 additional cancer deaths among the approximately 600,000 most highly exposed people. An estimated 336,000 people from the contaminated areas were resettled.

Environmental and health effect tests after the Bhopal catastrophe showed mercury at levels in the water between 20,000 to 6 million times higher than normal. A variety of other cancer, brain-damage, and birth-defect causing chemicals were found in the water; the chemical trichloroethene which has been shown to impair fetal development was found at levels 50 times higher than U.S. EPA safety limits. A report in 2002 also revealed that a multitude of poisons such as 1, 3, 5 trichlorobenzene, dichloromethane, chloroform, lead, and mercury were found in the breast milk of nursing women.

The sudden and deadly release of methyl isocyanate upon the people of Bhopal was not without other consequences. Union Carbide, a thriving American multinational chemical company with a proud and profitable history was now a sullied brand and had to be dumped. In 1998 Union Carbide turned over the Bhopal plant site to the government of India’s Madhya Pradesh state. Then in 2001, Dow Chemical acquired Union Carbide with the stipulation that Dow was not responsible for any outstanding liabilities in Bhopal, based upon a 1997 finding of no remaining water supply contamination on the site – a finding that was later contradicted by other studies.

Employee lives were disrupted. Those well-educated and trained Union Carbide executives, managers, and scientists who were not absorbed in the acquisition by Dow faced the insecurity of a job search. Money was shoveled out to lawyers, public relations people, and investigators – millions of dollars for legal strategies and crisis management. And after years of legal wrangling and court battles, Union Carbide’s insurers were forced to pay out $470 million to the Government of India; though it was not until 20 years after the massive poisoning, in 2004, that India’s Supreme Court finally approved a plan to disburse $360 million to the families of the dead and their poisoned survivors.

After purchasing Union Carbide and acquiring its assets and liabilities, Dow refused to clean up the site. Dow also refused to disclose the complete chemical composition of the gas leak or the toxic effects of MIC so doctors could have all the information necessary to help treat the victims. Dow claimed that this vital information was a business trade secret. Thus maintaining confidentiality was more important than providing information needed by future generations still being poisoned by the chemicals left behind, even though more birth defects and reproductive disorders had become a constant fact of life among many survivors who were poisoned in 1984.

Who could be blamed for this catastrophe? There was no visible mastermind. No shadowy group to claim credit for mass murder in the name of their god or their cause. There was no Adolph Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Milosevic or Osama Bin Laden to serve as the personification of evil. Behind the disaster was merely a pioneering and storied American chemical and polymers company located in Danbury, Connecticut, whose researchers in 1920 developed an economical way to make ethylene from natural gas, which give birth to the modern petrochemicals industry.

Union Carbide was a good company with civilized people, with good research scientists, managers, and line workers making profits for the company and a living for their families. They were one among many dynamic U.S. chemical companies contributing to the so-called global ‘Green Revolution’ in agriculture, which converted an abundant supply of natural gas and petroleum into pesticides, fertilizers and herbicides through the wonders of modern chemistry, thereby enabling farmers to grow more food more efficiently.

On one level, the impersonal progress of science could be blamed for the largest chemical accident in history. On another level, at the center of the carnage of Bhopal was the pursuit of profits and corporate negligence, in a global industrial strategy for farming – which curiously produced poisonous chemicals to help increase the world’s food supply.

Yet, this disaster was only a prologue to what was about to occur in the up-coming 21st century, when toxic chemicals would actually be inserted into the seeds themselves, and the poisonous effects could be concealed from the public. Today it is not just one city or one country. Human greed is creating genetic genocide on a global scale.

* * * * *

At the time of the Bhopal catastrophe, Laura Brett was a second year undergraduate student at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, majoring in biology with a minor in the history of science and technology.

Laura was also tracking the trail of chemical industry tragedies. She learned that closer in time and nearer to home than Bhopal, were Anniston, Alabama, East St. Louis, Illinois, and Times Beach, Missouri, among others. These were U.S. towns and cities so contaminated by chemical companies that governmental action was needed to close down the entire communities and evacuate the residents.

Laura had cried when she read about Anniston, Alabama, where children played in Snow Creek without knowing that the reason it flowed red or purple was because it was one of the Monsanto Company’s chemical dumping grounds for thousands of pounds a year of cancer-causing polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs.

She became even more incensed to learn that Monsanto had been manufacturing the herbicide 2, 4, 5 –T since the 1940s and had been disposing dioxin, a by-product of PCBs and a known carcinogen, in another part of the United States, the East St. Louis area. There was so much contamination in East St. Louis that the chemical discharges in the water which became known as Death Creek caused it to smoke by day and glow on moonless nights. Intrigued children would ride their bicycles across the creek bed to create friction which would cause a spontaneous combustion in the chemicals – not knowing that they were poisoning themselves and their future offspring.

She also came across information that Monsanto was not alone in seeking the dubious distinction of being in the number one spot for pollution. Northeastern Pharmaceutical and Chemical Company, NEPACCO, in Verona, Missouri, contaminated the town of Times Beach and the rivers running through the entire state of Missouri so badly that in 1982 the federal government literally bought the entire town of Times Beach and 50 other sites in Missouri and evacuated the citizens.

By the time she finished her college degree, Laura had learned that Monsanto had developed other chemicals which were far more deadly, and were toxic on a much wider scale, than those that poisoned people in Alabama and Missouri. She could see that there was an even more devastating environmental disaster looming on the horizon, one that threatened to poison the entire population of the planet. To understand it, she would need additional education.

Chapter 1 The Green Revolution

When she finished her undergraduate studies, Laura Brett chose to enter graduate school at the Johns Hopkins University School of Biology. Hopkins had the proud heritage of being the first university biology department in the United States, founded in 1876, but Laura chose it because of its modern approach to understand biological phenomena in molecular terms. Because of the chemical composition of what she wanted to explore, this was just what she wanted.

At Hopkins, Laura was able to find professors familiar with the issues of global food production and the pesticide industry. One of them had a colleague at the nearby Agricultural Research Service (ARS) headquarters in Beltsville, Maryland, the scientific research arm of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Here entomologists, nematologists, weed scientists, soil scientists, plant pathologists and others conducted taxpayer-supported research, published papers and made presentations to professional associations under the watchful eyes of administrators.

Despite being government employees, however, the eyes of the administrators had an additional focus. They and their research scientists sought breakthroughs which they could personally patent and help to commercialize. This would gain them recognition from their peers, and lift them out of the obscurity and fixed salaries of their government sinecures. It would also aid them in achieving the dual prize of fame and fortune.

Still a naïve idealist, with an introduction in hand, Laura hopped into her 1980 faded grey Toyota Camry. In what was to be the first of a number of trips, she made the 40-minute journey to the ARS research trial fields, greenhouses, and offices in Beltsville to educate herself.

In her studies Laura had become disturbingly aware that the business of agriculture had somehow become dominated by the pesticide industry. I have a basic question, she asked a career plant pathologist at ARS. How are we going to feed the world without using even more pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers made from petroleum and natural gas? What happens when we’ve poisoned everything we need for life? Laura wanted to know.

Food production is gradually shifting from chemical agriculture to biotech, the plant pathologist explained. But it’s a constant struggle to get funding and sustain our research at the highest level.

Where does the funding come from? she wanted to know.

Part of it comes from Congress, he answered instinctively. Then, trying to suppress a guilty look, he added, But, in the final analysis we depend upon our agri-business partners.

During subsequent visits to the ARS facilities in Beltsville, researchers responded to Laura’s probing questions by explaining that many agricultural researchers at universities have their work funded by major chemical companies – such as Dow Agro Sciences, Dupont, Syngenta, BASF, and I.G. Farben, the parent company of Bayer. Although Laura also appreciated the constructive synergy between science and business, she could just as easily see the dramatic opposite: this set of incestuous relationships made a variety of ethical compromises inevitable. She observed that the scientists whose research was funded by these corporations were in effect on the payroll of these companies. Therefore, the scientists’ loyalty would be to their benefactors. Inevitably the interests of the public would be subordinated to the pursuit of profits.

This isn’t only about what already happened in Bhopal, Laura told her parents in explaining her serious concerns. These pesticides are harming all of us. Agricultural pesticides and fertilizers from fossil fuels are also systematically destroying the biological makeup of the natural topsoil that is essential to human survival.

Do you have a solution? her father asked.

Not yet, she replied. But I want to be part of a solution, whatever it is.

When Laura returned to school she asked her graduate faculty advisor, Why not, at least in an ideal sense, go back to farming the way it used to be before all these chemicals?

Too many people to feed, he answered. Seven billion today and 50 billion by 2050. You’re really talking about what’s now called ‘organic farming.’ Great idea, in theory, but you can’t grow enough food.

When you consider the entire lifecycle of a person, and the world, I’m not convinced that that organic farming is not actually less expensive, she rejoined, as well as morally correct for all of us as custodians of our planet.

You’re completely unrealistic, he replied bluntly. The farming requirements are too demanding for most farmers. No one thinks organic farming can produce the amount of food required, because organic farming is inefficient compared to our system of large farms. The marketplace has already determined that there’s just not enough profit to support it.

Have you read the work of Dr. Tim LaSalle on regenerative organic farming? she asked. He co-authored a paper in 2008 when he was CEO of the Rodale Institute. He explains how successful agricultural output in this country must provide human and ecological health as the population grows. Or else, the soil will continue to degrade as water becomes increasingly scarce. He claims that research demonstrates that organic farming can feed the world.

With all due respect, there are a lot of idealists out there, her father suppressed his impatience. Notice I didn’t say ‘kooks.’ A word of caution: you will do your career no good to throw yourself in with that lot.

Yet at some point the constant contamination of our country by pesticides will become intolerable to the public, Laura rejoined. However, she also could not ignore her father’s words, The agricultural expansion is not simply to satisfy the needs of the people in the US. It’s for the people in other parts of the world – and… for the profits of the chemical companies. There must be some other way to do this, she insisted.

Back at Johns Hopkins Laura’s faculty advisor told her about an approach that was being explored. There is another way, he said. The idea is to engineer DNA into plants in order to change the genetic structure of plant seeds to make them resistant to damaging insects, herbicides and insecticides. Some major money is pouring into universities for biotechnology programs that will help us improve agricultural production through what we now call ‘genetic engineering.’ It’s a new development in science.

He ended with a bit of advice. You might want to look into this emerging field of biotechnology as it is being applied to agriculture, he said. The potential benefits to food production worldwide are thought to be profound. And, it could be one helluva lucrative career.

Laura had done some reading about genetic engineering as an undergraduate. So she decided to focus on biotechnology and agriculture. At some point this led her to participate in a seminar with a senior microbiologist from Fort Detrick, home of the military’s biological defense program in nearby Frederick, Maryland. The bacteria research facility of the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases specializes in preparedness against bubonic plague and other diseases, and often works in coordination with the National Institutes of Health. Fort Detrick also hosts the National Cancer Institute. On one occasion shortly after the World Trade Center attack on September 11, 2001, these groups had all been involved in investigating the death of five people from anthrax poisoning.

Laura learned that the roots of this bio-tech work were from the German biologist Robert Koch and his ground-breaking work on anthrax as an infectious disease, and the Swiss bacteriologist Alexander Yersin who discovered the pathogen causing the bubonic plague.

Interested in food security and genetics, Laura now saw firsthand the importance of biology for overall national and global security. In the process it was disturbing when she realized that there was a long-standing relationship between the Defense Department and the entire U.S. chemical industry, including chemicals for agriculture. Her faculty advisor was right. Government funding of biotech was increasing. In fact, two new buildings had been constructed at Fort Detrick.

‘This could be my passion,’ she thought, ‘an outlet for my obsessive-compulsive approach. But not to establish a lucrative career, like my father hopes.’ She knew her mother’s idealism was once again overcoming her father’s realism.

Laura determined she would gain enough knowledge and experience of biotechnology for a career that would enable her to save lives and avert tragedies. It was less important to her whether the tragedies were the result of chemical explosions or environmental destruction caused by industrial age chemicals contaminating the soil, air, food and water. The fact that 920 million people around the world go to bed hungry every night is an existential tragedy all by itself, she thought. There is no need for corporations to add man-made chemical catastrophes!

*****

In graduate school Laura wrote a paper on new scientific developments in agronomy. She learned through her research that the Rockefeller Foundation had taken a leading role in introducing and advancing chemical agriculture by funding an agricultural project in Mexico in 1943, and expanded the model to other Latin American countries and then to India in 1956. They did this through strategically targeted investments from the vast profits generated through the Rockefeller family’s controlling interest in the Standard Oil group of companies. The Rockefeller Foundation brought together the Ford Foundation, USAID, and the World Bank to sign on to a major philanthropic project that came to be known worldwide as the ‘Green Revolution.’

In her