REMARKS for an Introduction to FUTURE ECOLOGY

‘The time will therefore come when the sun will shine only on free men who know no other master but their reason;..’[Condorcet, 1795, ‘Esquisse d’un Tableau Historique des progres de l’esprit humaine’]

Hippocrates [c.460 - c.377 BC], the most celebrated Physician of antiquity, known as the 'Father of Medicine', made the following biting statement: 'There are in fact TWO things, SCIENCE and Opinion. The former begets KNOWLEDGE, the latter Ignorance.' It’s a good basis to start a quick look at a field usually covered by misconceptions.

The exercise of Science is possible because '..The universe is governed by a set of rational laws, that we can discover and understand.' [Stephen Hawking [1942 -], Mathematics, Theoretical Physicist and Cosmologist at the University of Cambridge, UK, in 'A Brief History of Time', 1996, Bantam Books, NY]. Further, Arthur Kornberg [NY, 1918 -] who discovered DNA polymerase - for which he shared the 1959 Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine - and who was the first to synthesize a viral DNA [Stanford Univ. Med. Center, Dept. of Biochemistry, wrote [Science (1992), 257, 859]: '..Science is unique among all human activities - unlike law, business, art, or religion - in its identification with progress'.

Nature = the universe with all its phenomena. [Webster]

AGAINST NATURE

Charles DARWIN [1809-1882] obtained wide recognition after publication of his great work 'On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection' [1859], founding the theory of Evolution. He was perhaps the greatest expert in living organisms. Darwin published: 'The Fertilization of Orchids' [1862]; 'The Variation of Plants and Animals under Domestication' [1867]; 'The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex' [1871]; 'The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals' [1872]; 'Insectivorous Plants' [1875]; 'The effect of Cross and Self Fertilization in the Vegetable Kingdom' [1876]; 'Different Forms of Flowers in Plants of the Same Species' [1877]; 'The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the Action of Worms' [1881].

Discussing on general aspects of Nature with Joseph D. Hooker, Charles Darwin wrote [July 13, 1856]: '..What a book a devil's chaplain might write on the clumsy, wasteful, blundering, low, and horribly cruel works of nature!' [Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol.6; 1990].

As a matter of facts, one may take a walk in the highway of the Gigantic Disasters of Nature [GDN].

1^st GDN: INBORN DISEASES [ID]. More than 3,300 genetic diseases caused by ‘inborn errors’ are actually known [McKusic, V.A., 1983, ‘Mendelian Inheritance in Man’, 6^th ed., John Hopkins Univ. Press, Baltimore]. Among the most relevant consequences of ID one may find: autistic behavior, blindness, cretinism, deafness, dwarfism, IQ below 50, mental deficiency, paranoid ideation, skeletal deformity, cardiopathy, cerebral degeneration, cirrhosis, cranio-facial dismorfism, chronic polyneuropathy, growth retardation, impaired intelligence, multiple malformation, neurological disorders, neurosis, psychosis, premature aging, recurrent infections, etc.

Each year come into the world about 120,000 US babies with birth defects; birth defects contribute substantially to childhood morbidity [in the US 5,000 to 6,000 infant deaths are attributed each year to the Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, SIDS, attributed recently to the inborn error in the metabolism of the short-chain L-3-hydroxylacyl CoA dehydrogenase] and long-term disabilities.

About 1/3^rd of inborn diseases are accompanied by Mental Retardation, from mild to severe. An estimated 12 every 1,000 US school children have Mental Retardation

2^nd GDN: A LIFE THREATENED by DISEASES, SENESCENCE and DEATH. – Human life is threatened by a collection of about 11,000 classified diseases [Intnl Classification of Diseases, 9^th Revision, Clinical Modifications, 4^th ed., 1993, Washington, Public Health Service], caused by thousands of pathogenic viruses, bacteria, parasites, and physiological malfunctions. Furthermore, the benefices of a life threatened by diseases are accompanied by senescence, characterized by impairment of mind, sight, hearing, all the body, caused by the simultaneous and progressive piling up of cells damages [the wear-and-tear] produced by a collection of ‘natural agents’ like ‘natural peroxide radicals’ formed by the ‘natural metabolism’ of the cells; ‘natural background radiation’ from the rocks and incoming from the outer space, causing multiple damages to the DNA [‘The Biology of Aging’, J.A. Behnke, C.E. Finch & G.B. Moment Ed., Plenum Press, NY & London, 1978]; ‘natural toxic chemicals’ present in nearly all vegetable and fruits eaten daily [R. F. Keeler, 'Toxins in Plants', in The Safety of Foods, H.D.Graham Ed., AVI Publ. Co. Inc.,Westport, CO, 1982].

Further, one can add to the above grants, a natural collection of mental affliction – from mild to severe - coming from sadness to despair, to depression, to the Alzheimer’s disease, to the borders of madness. All the above is mixed with the famous ‘struggle for life’, in a world chracterized by violence [men against men, men/animals against animals, men/animals against plants], down to the widespread idiocy. [In connection with the human ‘natural idiocy’ it can be remembered that during less than 3,700 years [historic age] a total of 3,050 [± 100] wars were fought in the world , for a total of 19,162 years-in-war].

To complete the feast, the phycho-physical degradations are crowned by the very final ‘error catastrophe’, the ‘natural death’.

The Nobel Prize for Peace [1952] Albert Schweitzer [1875-1965], Medicin, Philosopher and Humanitarian, wrote: ‘..Nature does not have any respect for life. Beings live at each other expenses. The nature compels them to commit the worst cruelties. Nature is beautiful and wonderful if seen from the outside, but reading in his book it fill us of disgust..’.

Examples of disgusting cruelty in the animal world are innumerable. Only few paradigmatic situations follow.

3.1 - PARASITISM. Two examples would be enough to describe both the cruelty and the disgust. [A]. The ichneumonoidea are wasps living freely, as adults, but passing their larval life as parasites feeding on the bodies of other animals. The most common victims are caterpillars [bytterfly and moth larvae]. The free-living females locate an appropriate host and convert it to a food factory for their own young: many females lay their eggs directly upon the host's body. Since an active host would easily dislodge the egg, the ichneumon mother often simultaneously injects a toxin that paralyzes the victim. The caterpillar lies, alive but immobile, with the agent of its future destruction secure on its belly. Most often, adult females of ichneumons pierce the host with their ovipositor and deposit eggs within it; the host is not otherwise inconvenienced, at least until the eggs hatch and the ichneumon larvae begin their grim work of interior escavation, by gnawing the inside of the caterpillar, devouring almost every part of it except the skin and intestines, carefully avoiding injuring the vital organs. Finally, the larva completes its work by devouring the remaining internal organs, the heart and central nervous system, killing its victim, and leaving behind the caterpillar's empty shell. [S.J. Gould, ‘Non-moral Nature’ in Great Essays in Science, quoted; http://www.entomology.wisc.edu/mbcn/kyf102.htm]

[B] - The Fieraster, is a small fish living most of the time inside the aquiferous lungs of the holothuria, gnawing little by little some lung of his host. At night, the Fieraster leave some time his host to search for some fruit, and then recovering to his warm lung at daybreak.

3.2 – FLESH-HEATING MAN AND ANIMALS. Men share with many animals [wolves, coyotes, jackals, foxes, bears, raccoons, cacomistles, coatis, kinkajous, olingos, weasels, linsangs, genets, civets, mongooses, hyenas, lions, tigers, leopards, jaguars, pumas, lines, cheetahs and more than 150 different species], collectively termed carnivores, the habit of being flesh-heaters. Wild animals usually – but not exclusively – catch animals of different species, smaller, weaker, defenceless, inexperienced young, whether or not herbivores. I doubt it exist some ethic guide - other than ‘natural idiocy’ - not regarding as the worst crime the killing of living beings for eating them; the killing of weaker subjects is regarded by common laws as an aggravant. The man exerts the same killing activity as wild animals; even worse, the man breeds cattle, horses, sheep, poultry, fishes, etc., in billion of heads, with the exclusive purpose of slaughtering and heating them. Such massive breeding for killing overcome any conceivable justification. It’s an unacceptable cruelty. In the same contest, also the herbivore animals eat living beings, because plant material is made of living cells. Thus even the eating habit of herbivores can be envisioned as an unacceptable cruelty against life. Life is a collection of chemical mechanisms not essentially different in animals and men, with the seldom-revealed exception of the human understanding capacity. Nor the plants are fundamentally different from animals, except for the unique capability of plants to synthesize organic matter from the simplest matters as water, light, carbon dioxide and inorganic salts, what grants to plants the complete nutritional autonomy. The Plant kingdom is the best – although imperfect too - result of Nature.

4^rd – CANCEROGENIC NATURAL CHEMICALS. A great threat to human life comes from cancerogenic substances present in common ‘natural foods’. 'ABOUT 50% OF CHEMICALS - WHETHER NATURAL OR SYNTHETIC - THAT HAVE BEEN TESTED IN STANDARD, HIGH-DOSE, ANIMAL CANCER TESTS ARE RODENT CARCINOGENS.' [Ames, B.N. & Gold, L.S., 2000, Mutation Research 447, 3-13] The two Authors are the major world experts on the matter.

'Dietary Pesticides are 99.99% ALL NATURAL. ..Plants produce toxins to protect themselves against fungi, insects, and animal predators. Tens of thousands of these natural Pesticides have been discovered, and every species of plant analyzed contains its own set of perhaps a few dozens toxins. When plant are stressed or damaged, such as during a pest attack, they may greatly increase their natural pesticide levels, occasionally to levels that can be acutely toxic to humans. The human intake of these toxins varies markedly with diet and would be higher in vegetarians. ..We estimate that Americans eat about 1.5g of natural pesticides per person per day, which is 10,000 times more than they eat of manmade pesticide residues. ...in chronic cancer tests carried out for the purpose, about HALF of naturally occurring pesticides resulted to be CARCINOGENIC...the natural pesticides that are rodent CARCINOGENS are present in the following foods: anise, apple, apricot, banana, basil, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, cantaloupe, caraway, carrot, cauliflower, celery, cherries, cinnamon, cloves, cocoa, coffee, collard greens, comfy herb tea, currants, dill, eggplant, endive, fennel, grapefruit juice, grapes, guava, honey, honeydew melon, horseradish, kale, lentils, lettuce, mango, mushrooms, mustard, nutmeg, orange juice, parsley, parsnip, peach, pear, peas, black pepper, pineapple, plum, potato, radish, raspberries, rosemary, sesame seeds, tarragon, tea, tomato, turnip. ' [B. N. Ames, M. Profet and L.S. Gold, 1990, 'II. Dietary Pesticides (99.99% All Natural)' in Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences USA 87, 7777-7781].

That’s enough to claim ‘ why [the Delaney Clause] isn’t it applied to natural carcinogens?’ [P.H. Abelson, 1993, SCIENCE 259, 1235].

5^th – PLANETARY GDN: EARTHQUAKES, TORNADOES, STORMS, FLOODS; CROP DESTRUCTION by PEST; ETC. The Big Nature does not disregard to ADD some gift of planetary relevance.

EARTHQUAKES: during only the 20^th century about 110 major earthquakes occurred, each causing 1,000 or more deaths, for a TOTAL of about 2,216,528 victims.

TORNADOES, STORMS, FLOODS, ETC.: Number of DEATHS Caused from 1888 to 1994: 624,365, equivalent to about 5,890 Deaths / year.

PEST: '..the tsetse fly puts about 100 million people and 60 million heads of cattle at risk in sub-Saharian Africa due to the transmission of tripanosomiasis .' [ICIPE, 1997, ‘Vision and Strategic framework towards 2020’, ICIPE Science Press, Nairobi, Kenia ]

PEST accounted for pre-harvest losses of 42% of the potential value of crop [eight crops that together occupy half the world's cropland, with harvest wrote $300 billion over 1988-1990], with 15% attributable to insects and about 13% each to weeds and to pathogens. An additional 10% of the potential value was lost post-harvest [Oerke, E.-C. et al., 1994, ‘Crop Production and Crop Protection’, Elsevier, Amsterdam]. [American Phytopathological Society; http://www.scisoc.org/feature/FoodSecurity/Top.html]

Maize is the main staple food in sub-Saharian Africa. In the Kenyan highlands, total losses of maize due to pests were estimated at 57 percentage [Grisley, 1997, http://www.fao.org/inpho/compend/text/ch03.htm]

In Zimbabwe, grain damage of 92 % stored maize was reported due to insect pests [Mutiro, C.F. et al., 1992, Zimbabwe J. Of Agric. Res., 30(1), 49-58 ]. In sub-Saharian Africa insect pests, in addition to fungal diseases, are responsible for 50 percentage damage in cassava [Yaninek, J.,1994, Proc. 5^th Symp. Internat. Soc. for Tropical Root Crops-Kampala, Uganda, pp.24-26].

In Kenya, the National Food Policy Document reported up to 30 percentage destruction of harvested maize due to pests during storage and handling [Wongo, L., 1996, Post Harvest Technology, vol. 11, p. 30]. In West Africa, up to 100 % damage to cowpeas may happen in a few months after storage due to infestation of Callosobruchus maculatus [Lienard, V. & Seck, D., 1994, Insect Science and its Applicat., 15(3), 301-311]. Post-Harvest losses of grains due to rodents is estimated to range between 2 and 12% on the average, rising up to 20-100% in some countries as Egypt, Belize, Sierra Leone, Korea, Ethiopia [Hopf et al., 1976 >> http://www.fao.org/inpho/compend/text/ch03.htm].

LOCUST. Locusts can damage a wide variety of crops. Damage resulting from adult locusts flying into an area can be sudden, unpredictable and devastating. Migrations of 500-600 km overnight are not uncommon. In 1984, during a major outbreak of the Australian plague locust, estimated crop loss was $5 million. Without control, losses would have been $103 million. The damage caused by an uncontrolled outbreak may reach up to $200 million; in 1990, locust damage in Australia totaled more than $20 million, after widespread spraying cropping areas to control about 70% of locust population.[ http://www.agric.wa.gov.au:7000/locust/locust.html]

6^th – ARCHAIC GDN: NATURAL MASS EXTINCTION OF ANIMALS AND PLANTS. On the basis of fossil records, there is a general agreement among geologist/paleontologist over the existence of 5-6 major destructive events during earth's history, called Mass-Extinction [ME]. Some scientist suggests that ME were a cyclic phenomenon, occurring every 25-30 million years; accordingly, the number of ME during Earth history would be about 19 - 23 from the Cambrian period.

The cyclic ME theories seem to suggest that such destructive events would be caused by collision events with comets or asteroids having orbits passing through solar system with regular frequency, and colliding regularly with earth. Several evidences suggest that the crater near Yucatan peninsula was caused by an extraterrestrial impact which took place just about 65 millions years ago [the cretaceous period], and disrupting the earth's echosystem to such an extent as to cause ME.

The number of living species, which have ever existed, can be estimated to be about 5 billion. Today the biodiversity is greater than has ever before: the number of living species ranges - according to most scientists - between 12 and 100 million species. That is to say that more than 99.8 % of all species were destroyed by ME. 'Life on earth has suffered its share of catastrophes. In the last 600 million years there have been five massive holocausts of biodiversity, and eleven other mass extinctions of major extent. The great

Permian extinction, some 250 million years ago wiped out 90 per cent of all-preexisting species. At the end of the Cretaceous period, 65 million years ago, 60 to 75 % of species were killed off, including most of the dinosaurs, large marine reptiles, ammonites and flying pterosaurs.' [Scientific American, July 1996].

The above destructive capacities are well over any destructive capacity of communism [more than 100 million victims – S. Courtois, N. Werth, J-L Panne, A. Paczkowski, K Bartosek & J-L. Margolin, 1997, ‘Le Livre Noir du Communisme. Crimes, Terreur, Repression.’, Robert Laffont editeur, Paris] and nazism [ 25 million victims; Courtois et al., quoted above], though joined together.

7^th – COSMIC GDN. Universe is violence. It’s the greatest conceivable violence, by the so enormous, huge, dimensions and by the essence itself of the cosmic objects. Mind:

A - The birth of the Universe with the greatest conceivable explosion: the big bang. ‘…The beginning of time would have been a point of infinite density and infinite curvature of space-time….At the big bang, the universe is thought..to have been infinitely hot. ..As the universe expanded the temperature of the radiation decreased…One second after the big bang it would have fallen to about ten thousand million degrees..’ [S. Hawking, quoted].

B - What makes the stars shine is a continuous hydrogen bomb explosion. Just our Sun shines, forwarding heat and radiation into the space, through a continuous and infernal tripudium of hydrogen bomb explosions: [four] hydrogen nuclei fuse together to form [one] helium nucleus; the mass irradiated into the space amounts to about 4,000 million kg each second.

C - The number of Galaxies amounts to about 1,000 billions, each made of some ten billions of stars and of an unknown number of orbiting planets. The stars spinning round the center of galaxies, the galaxies spinning round local groups, local groups going away each other in the expanding universe. Large galaxies gently gulp smaller ones or smash into each other (the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies are ‘.. closing the 2.5-million light-years gap between them at nearly 500,000 kilometers per hour.’ [R. Irion, 2000, SCIENCE 287, 62-64], in cataclysms explosion of hellish potency [R. Irion, quoted], (hellish light, hellish roar) forwarding the shine just to the ultimate limit of universe; where only echoes live of such remote explosions, together with only a memory [2.7°K] of the billions degree reached by the cosmic explosion of 12 billion light years ago.

D – At the center of the Galaxy, the presence of a supermassive black hole of 2.6±0.2 x10⁶solar masses [M⊙] [F. Yusef-Zadeh et al., 2000, SCIENCE 287, 85-91], in an area spanning 30 light-years, was proposed ‘..to explain the tremendous energy –equal to 100 million Suns – pouring from the center ..’ [E. Stokstad, 2000, SCIENCE 287, 65-67].

What’s a vision completely different from the quiet image of the starry night.

‘The practice of that which is ethically best – what we call goodness or virtue – involves a course of conduct which, in all respects, is opposed to that which leads to success in the cosmic struggle for existence. … The cosmic process has no sort of relation to moral ends. The ethical progress of society depends not on imitating the cosmic process, but in combating it.’ [Thomas Henry Huxley, in ‘Evolution and Ethics’, 1893]

Humankind must endeavor to subtract the entire environment to the violent power of Nature. All aspects of life on the Planet must be taken under control, to temperate, modulate the idiotic, criminal, random, senseless violence of nature.

The achievements of Science and Technology in the last century were some thousands. The life span effectively doubled in the last century. Some hundreds millions people survived [were subtracted to the destructive power of nature] to diseases as a result of huge progress in biology, medicine, therapy; hygiene, welfare.

The most insane policy is unable to turn the planetary situation to a level worst of the actual one inherited by the insanity of nature. Anyhow, I trust the time of criminal policies [like communism and nazifascism] ended forever last century.

We, the people, we have freedom and internet. We are achieving such high levels of Scientific knowledge, that in the nearest future human intelligence will be widely expanded up to leave very few chances to uncontrolled natural events, few chances to violence.

‘…the perfectibility of man is truly infinite;..the progress of this perfectibility from now onwards must be independent of any power that might wish to halt it.’ [CONDORCET, 1795, ‘Esquisse d’un Tableau historique des progres de l’esprit humain’.]

THE FIRST GREAT HOPE OF A NEW WORLD

‘It is simply a design fault that we age and die? If cells were not programmed to age; if the telomeres, which govern the number of times a cell divides, did not shorten with each division; if our bodies could repair damage due to disease and aging, we would live much longer and healthier lives. New research now allows a glimpse into a world in which aging – and even death – may no longer be inevitable.’ [J. Harris, 2000, SCIENCE 288, 59].

CONDORCET, 1795, ‘Esquisse d’un Tableau historique des progres de l’esprit humain’. [Outline of a Historic Table of Human Mind Progess]