1950s gene transfer technology?? (NYTimes, Borlang)
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Mort Zuckerman
Sep 13, 2009, 5:10:43 AM9/13/09
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Subject: 1950s gene transfer technology?? (NYTimes, Borlang)
Date: Sep 13, 2009 5:08 AM
ARTICLE BELOW re 1950s Gene Transfer Technology
--------------------------------
Oh. Ya mean like Brucella's lameness gene into
stealth Relapsing Fever spirochetes and then into
the tiniest of ticks, ticks that live in moderate
climates. And then lie about, and slander against
and in all possible ways, defame all the accidental
victims - and especially the mothers - for 30+ years.
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?tool=pubmed&pubmedid=17984211
To ascertain whether the effects elicited by L-Omp19 could be extended
to all B. abortus lipoproteins, THP-1 cells were incubated with
various concentrations of a synthetic lipohexapeptide (Pam3Cys) that
mimics the structure of the lipoprotein lipid moiety, and the
expression of MHC-II was evaluated by flow cytometry after 48 h of
stimulation. The range of Pam3Cys concentrations used encompassed the
molar concentration of Omp19 used (1,000 ng/ml). Pam3Cys inhibited MHC-
II expression to a degree that was commensurate with the degree of
inhibition induced by L-Omp19 (Fig. (Fig.3C).3CFIG. 3.). These
results indicate that the Pam3-modified cysteine is the molecular
structure that down-modulates the IFN-γ-induced expression of MHC-II;
thus, this down-modulation could be brought about by any B. abortus
lipoprotein.
OspA:
http://www.actionlyme.org/Pam3Cys_Version15.htm
http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dbmd/diseaseinfo/Brucellosis_g.htm
"What is brucellosis?
"Brucellosis is an infectious disease caused by the bacteria of the
genus Brucella. These bacteria are primarily passed among animals, and
they cause disease in many different vertebrates. Various Brucella
species affect sheep, goats, cattle, deer, elk, pigs, dogs, and
several other animals. Humans become infected by coming in contact
with animals or animal products that are contaminated with these
bacteria. In humans brucellosis can cause a range of symptoms that are
similar to the flu and may include fever, sweats, headaches, back
pains, and physical weakness. Severe infections of the central nervous
systems or lining of the heart may occur. Brucellosis can also cause
long-lasting or chronic symptoms that include recurrent fevers, joint
pain, and fatigue."
^^^^
Identical to Lyme, same antigens (OspA),
chronic disease outcome.
AALLLL*RIGHT*ythennn.
The reason the CDC refuses to admit the truth about
"Lyme Disease" is because if they did, their statements
would sound identical to mine.
Think:
Then what?
People would say, "Then is CDC responsible for the lies
about Lyme from the beginning or is this international
crime solely the responsibility of the scientist-wannabee
morons Edward McSweegan and Durland Fish?"
http://www.actionlyme.org/GOLDWATER_LETTER.htm
^^^Cuz it sure looks like, from the Barry Goldwater Letter, that
Sweeg was talking about deliberately taking over the Navy's
vector-borne disease bioweapons endeavors.
Making it a commercial enterprise, and therefore a
scientific fraud and racketeering crime:
http://www.actionlyme.org/ALDF_BOARD.htm
The CDC could cut themselves loose, as we have seen
them begin to attempt to do, in their correspondence with
David Volkman:
http://www.lymedisease.org/news/files.php?file=Volkman_address_removed_Text_3_09_115176301.pdf
"CDC Surveillance Definition
"In the 1980s as the Ixodes ricinus tick vector spread beyond its
usual habitat, human
borreliosis followed. In order to reliably track the geographically
expanding incidence of
LD, the CDC tried to derive a case definition that would include only
definitive cases and
exclude possible ambiguous ones that might or might not be true LD.
Dr. Steere and I
were members of the “Committee to Develop a Surveillance Case
Definition for Lyme disease” and
traveled to Atlanta to write the surveillance definition. We
identified a number of
Western Blot bands most highly associated with definitive cases of LD
and established a
minimal number of these that would pick up true cases of Lyme disease
but, more
importantly, exclude conditions whose etiology was uncertain. The CDC
explicitly
cautioned against using this restrictive case definition for clinical
diagnosis and reiterated
this proscription with every re-issuing of its “Surveillance
Definition.” It has been a
7
source of frustration and confusion that some in the medical community
wrongly insist
that a Lyme patient must satisfy CDC criteria (see memo below).
"Yes, CDC has always warned against using the surveillance case
definition for clinical diagnosis. However,
*** we can not obviously regulate inclusion criteria for Lyme disease
studies conducted by other investigators.***
http://www.actionlyme.org/MKLEMPNER.htm
You will also find that the new 2008 Lyme disease case definition has
expanded ability to detect other clinical
presentations of Lyme disease, and thus the use of "CDC criteria" may
not be as frequent in the future.
Sincerely,
Kiersten Kugeler
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Division of Vector-Borne Infectious Diseases
Bacterial Diseases Branch
Fort Collins, Colorado"
Kathleen M. Dickson
http://www.actionlyme.org
=================================
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/14/business/energy-environment/14borlaug.html?ref=global-home&pagewanted=print
"In 1953, Dr. Borlaug began working with a wheat strain containing an
unusual gene. It had the effect of shrinking the wheat plant, creating
a stubby, compact variety. Yet crucially, the seed heads did not
shrink, meaning a small plant could still produce a large amount of
wheat.
"Dr. Borlaug and his team transferred the gene into tropical wheats.
When high fertilizer levels were applied to these new “semidwarf”
plants, the results were nothing short of astonishing."
------
September 14, 2009
Norman Borlaug, 95, Dies; Led Green Revolution
By JUSTIN GILLIS
Norman E. Borlaug, the plant scientist who did more than anyone else
in the 20th century to teach the world to feed itself and whose work
was credited with saving hundreds of millions of lives, died Saturday
night. He was 95 and lived in Dallas.
The cause was complications from cancer, said Kathleen Phillips, a
spokeswoman for Texas A&M University, where Dr. Borlaug had served on
the faculty since 1984.
Dr. Borlaug’s advances in plant breeding led to spectacular success in
increasing food production in Latin America and Asia and brought him
international acclaim. In 1970, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
He was widely described as the father of the broad agricultural
movement called the Green Revolution, though decidedly reluctant to
accept the title. “A miserable term,” he said, characteristically
shrugging off any air of self-importance.
Yet his work had a far-reaching impact on the lives of millions of
people in developing countries. His breeding of high-yielding crop
varieties helped to avert mass famines that were widely predicted in
the 1960s, altering the course of history. Largely because of his
work, countries that had been food deficient, like Mexico and India,
became self-sufficient in producing cereal grains.
“More than any other single person of this age, he has helped provide
bread for a hungry world,” the Nobel committee said in presenting him
with the Peace Prize. “We have made this choice in the hope that
providing bread will also give the world peace.”
The day the award was announced, Dr. Borlaug, vigorous and slender at
56, was working in a wheat field outside Mexico City when his wife,
Margaret, drove up to tell him the news. “Someone’s pulling your leg,”
he replied, according to one of his biographers, Leon Hesser. Assured
that it was true, he kept on working, saying he would celebrate later.
The Green Revolution eventually came under attack from environmental
and social critics who said it had created more difficulties than it
had solved. Dr. Borlaug responded that the real problem was not his
agricultural techniques, but the runaway population growth that had
made them necessary.
“If the world population continues to increase at the same rate, we
will destroy the species,” he declared.
Traveling to Norway, the land of his ancestors, to receive the award,
he warned the Nobel audience that the struggle against hunger had not
been won. “We may be at high tide now, but ebb tide could soon set in
if we become complacent and relax our efforts,” he said. Twice more in
his lifetime, in the 1970s and again in 2008, those words would prove
prescient as food shortages and high prices caused global unrest.
His Nobel Prize was the culmination of a storied life in agriculture
that began when he was a boy growing up on a farm in Iowa, wondering
why plants grew better in some places than others. His was also an
unlikely career path, one that began in earnest near the end of World
War II, when Dr. Borlaug walked away from a promising job at DuPont,
the chemical company, to take a position in Mexico trying to help
farmers improve their crops.
The job was part of an assault on hunger in Mexico that was devised in
Manhattan, at the offices of the Rockefeller Foundation, with
political support in Washington. But it was not a career choice
calculated to lead to fame or honor.
Indeed, on first seeing the situation in Mexico for himself, Dr.
Borlaug reacted with near despair. Mexican soils were depleted, the
crops were ravaged by disease, yields were low and the farmers could
not feed themselves, much less improve their lot by selling surplus.
“These places I’ve seen have clubbed my mind — they are so poor and
depressing,” he wrote to his wife after his first extended sojourn in
the country. “I don’t know what we can do to help these people, but
we’ve got to do something.”
The next few years were ones of toil and privation as Dr. Borlaug and
his colleagues, with scant funds or equipment, set to work improving
yields in tropical crop varieties.
He spent countless hours hunched over in the blazing Mexican sun as he
manipulated tiny wheat blossoms to cross different strains. To speed
the work, he set up winter and summer operations in far-flung parts of
Mexico, logging thousands of miles over poor roads. He battled
illness, forded rivers in flood, dodged mudslides and sometimes slept
in tents.
He was by then a trained scientist holding a doctoral degree in plant
diseases. But as he sought to coax better performance from the wheats
of Mexico, he relied on a farm boy’s instinctive feel for the plants
and the soil in which they grew.
“When wheat is ripening properly, when the wind is blowing across the
field, you can hear the beards of the wheat rubbing together,” he told
another biographer, Lennard Bickel. “They sound like the pine needles
in a forest. It is a sweet, whispering music that once you hear, you
never forget.”
Norman Ernest Borlaug was born on March 25, 1914, in his grandfather’s
farmhouse near the tiny settlement of Saude, in northeastern Iowa.
Growing up in a stalwart community of Norwegian immigrants, he trudged
across snow-covered fields to a one-room country school, coming home
almost every day to the aroma of bread baking in his mother’s oven.
He was a high-spirited boy of boundless curiosity. His sister,
Charlotte Culbert, recounted in an interview in 2008 in Cresco, Iowa,
that he would whistle aloud as he milked the cows, and pester his
parents and grandparents with questions. “He’d wonder why in some
areas the grass would be so green, and then over here it wouldn’t be,”
Mrs. Culbert recalled.
At the time, most farm boys dropped out of school. But Norman’s
grandfather Nels Borlaug, regretting his own scant education, urged
his grandson to keep going. Norman worked his way through the
University of Minnesota during the Great Depression. More than once in
those desperate years he encountered townspeople in Minneapolis on the
verge of starvation, which sharpened his interest in the problems of
food production.
He first studied forestry, but fell under the influence of a legendary
expert in plant diseases, Elvin C. Stakman, who encouraged him to
switch to the broader field of plant pathology. After earning a
doctorate in the field, he took a job with DuPont in 1942 and worked
on chemical compounds useful in the war. But Professor Stakman helped
persuade him to join the Rockefeller Foundation’s Mexican hunger
project in 1944.
Dr. Borlaug’s initial goal was to create varieties of wheat adapted to
Mexico’s climate that could resist the greatest disease of wheat, a
fungus called rust. He accomplished that within a few years by
crossing Mexican wheats with rust-resistant varieties from elsewhere.
His insistence on breeding in two places, the Sonoran desert in winter
and the central highlands in summer, imposed heavy burdens on him and
his team, but it cut the time to accomplish his work in half. By luck,
the strategy also produced wheat varieties that were insensitive to
day length and thus capable of growing in many locales, a trait that
would later prove of vital significance.
The Rockefeller team gradually won the agreement of Mexican farmers to
adopt the new varieties, and wheat output in that country began a
remarkable climb. But these developments turned out to be a mere
prelude to Dr. Borlaug’s main achievements.
By the late 1940s, researchers knew they could induce huge yield gains
in wheat by feeding the plants chemical fertilizer that supplied them
with extra nitrogen, a shortage of which was the biggest constraint on
plant growth. But the strategy had a severe limitation: beyond a
certain level of fertilizer, the seed heads containing wheat grains
would grow so large and heavy, the plant would fall over, ruining the
crop.
In 1953, Dr. Borlaug began working with a wheat strain containing an
unusual gene. It had the effect of shrinking the wheat plant, creating
a stubby, compact variety. Yet crucially, the seed heads did not
shrink, meaning a small plant could still produce a large amount of
wheat.
Dr. Borlaug and his team transferred the gene into tropical wheats.
When high fertilizer levels were applied to these new “semidwarf”
plants, the results were nothing short of astonishing.
The plants would produce enormous heads of grain, yet their stiff,
short bodies could support the weight without falling over. On the
same amount of land, wheat output could be tripled or quadrupled.
Later, the idea was applied to rice, the staple crop for nearly half
the world’s population, with yields jumping several-fold compared with
some traditional varieties.
This strange principle of increasing yields by shrinking plants was
the central insight of the Green Revolution, and its impact was
enormous.
By the early 1960s, many farmers in Mexico had embraced the full
package of innovations from Dr. Borlaug’s breeding program, and wheat
output in the country had soared sixfold from the levels of the early
1940s.
Urgent queries began to pour in from other poor countries, for they
were caught in a bind. After World War II, the introduction of basic
sanitation in many developing countries caused death rates to plunge,
but birth rates were slow to follow. As a result, the global
population had exploded, putting immense strain on food supplies.
On the Indian subcontinent in particular, a crisis developed. The
population was growing so much faster than farm output that it was not
clear how the masses could be fed. In the mid-1960s, huge grain
imports were required to avert starvation.
At the invitation of the Indian and Pakistani governments, Dr. Borlaug
offered his advice. He met resistance at first from senior
agricultural experts steeped in tradition, but as the food situation
worsened, the objections faded. Soon, India and Pakistan were ordering
shiploads of Dr. Borlaug’s wheat seeds from Mexico.
One vital shipment through the Port of Los Angeles was delayed by the
Watts riots of 1965 in that city, and Dr. Borlaug spent hours yelling
on the phone to get it through.
Indian and Pakistani farmers took up the new varieties, receiving
fertilizer and other aid from their governments. Just as in Mexico,
harvests soared: the Indian wheat crop of 1968 was so bountiful that
the government had to turn schools into temporary granaries.
As with the Mexican effort, the Rockefeller Foundation and other
donors set up a project in the Philippines to work on rice. It led to
the creation of semidwarf varieties that also caused rice yields to
soar. Chinese scientists ultimately followed in the footsteps of
Western researchers, using semidwarf varieties to establish food
security in China and setting the stage for its rise as an industrial
power. And Dr. Borlaug and his colleagues helped spread the new crop
varieties to additional countries of Latin America, notably Colombia,
Ecuador, Chile and Brazil.
Dr. Borlaug’s later years were partly occupied by arguments over the
social and environmental consequences of the Green Revolution. Many
critics on the left attacked it, saying it displaced smaller farmers,
encouraged overreliance on chemicals and paved the way for greater
corporate control of agriculture.
In a characteristic complaint, Vandana Shiva, an Indian critic, wrote
in 1991 that “in perceiving nature’s limits as constraints on
productivity that had to be removed, American experts spread
ecologically destructive and unsustainable practices worldwide.”
Dr. Borlaug declared that such arguments often came from “elitists”
who were rich enough not to worry about where their next meal was
coming from. But over time, he acknowledged the validity of some
environmental concerns, and embraced more judicious use of fertilizers
and pesticides. He was frustrated throughout his life that governments
did not do more to tackle what he called “the population monster” by
lowering birth rates.
He remained a vigorous man into his 90s, serving for many years on the
faculty of Texas A&M and continuing to do vital agricultural work. In
recent years, he marshaled efforts to tackle a new variety of rust
that is threatening the world’s wheat crop.
Dr. Borlaug’s wife of 69 years, the former Margaret Gibson, died in
2007. He is survived by a sister, Charlotte Borlaug Culbert; a
daughter, Jeanie Borlaug Laube; a son, William Borlaug; five
grandchildren; and six great-grandchildren.
Gary H. Toenniessen, director of agricultural programs for the
Rockefeller Foundation, said in an interview that Dr. Borlaug’s great
achievement was to prove that intensive, modern agriculture could be
made to work in the fast-growing developing countries where it was
needed most, even on the small farms predominating there.
By Mr. Toenniessen’s calculation, about half the world’s population
goes to bed every night after consuming grain descended from one of
the high-yield varieties developed by Dr. Borlaug and his colleagues
of the Green Revolution.
“He knew what it was they needed to do, and he didn’t give up,” Mr.
Toenniessen said. “He could just see that this was the answer.”
Gerald Jonas and Sarah Wheaton contributed reporting.
"[Real] scientists are *fiercely* independent. That's the good
news."-- NIH's Top Fool, Anthony Fauci
Aa...@columbia.edu, gary_w...@nymc.edu,
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patrick.f...@usdoj.gov, model...@sbcglobal.net,
jdr...@nejm.org, let...@courant.com, Jgerb...@cdc.gov,
michae...@po.state.ct.us, con...@po.state.ct.us, executive-
edi...@nytimes.com, managin...@nytimes.com, news-
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ly...@idsociety.org, meganm...@theatlantic.com,
bob.d...@latimes.com
Subject: 1950s gene transfer technology?? (NYTimes, Borlang)
Date: Sep 13, 2009 5:08 AM
ARTICLE BELOW re 1950s Gene Transfer Technology
--------------------------------
Oh. Ya mean like Brucella's lameness gene into
stealth Relapsing Fever spirochetes and then into
the tiniest of ticks, ticks that live in moderate
climates. And then lie about, and slander against
and in all possible ways, defame all the accidental
victims - and especially the mothers - for 30+ years.
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?tool=pubmed&pubmedid=17984211
To ascertain whether the effects elicited by L-Omp19 could be extended
to all B. abortus lipoproteins, THP-1 cells were incubated with
various concentrations of a synthetic lipohexapeptide (Pam3Cys) that
mimics the structure of the lipoprotein lipid moiety, and the
expression of MHC-II was evaluated by flow cytometry after 48 h of
stimulation. The range of Pam3Cys concentrations used encompassed the
molar concentration of Omp19 used (1,000 ng/ml). Pam3Cys inhibited MHC-
II expression to a degree that was commensurate with the degree of
inhibition induced by L-Omp19 (Fig. (Fig.3C).3CFIG. 3.). These
results indicate that the Pam3-modified cysteine is the molecular
structure that down-modulates the IFN-γ-induced expression of MHC-II;
thus, this down-modulation could be brought about by any B. abortus
lipoprotein.
OspA:
http://www.actionlyme.org/Pam3Cys_Version15.htm
http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dbmd/diseaseinfo/Brucellosis_g.htm
"What is brucellosis?
"Brucellosis is an infectious disease caused by the bacteria of the
genus Brucella. These bacteria are primarily passed among animals, and
they cause disease in many different vertebrates. Various Brucella
species affect sheep, goats, cattle, deer, elk, pigs, dogs, and
several other animals. Humans become infected by coming in contact
with animals or animal products that are contaminated with these
bacteria. In humans brucellosis can cause a range of symptoms that are
similar to the flu and may include fever, sweats, headaches, back
pains, and physical weakness. Severe infections of the central nervous
systems or lining of the heart may occur. Brucellosis can also cause
long-lasting or chronic symptoms that include recurrent fevers, joint
pain, and fatigue."
^^^^
Identical to Lyme, same antigens (OspA),
chronic disease outcome.
AALLLL*RIGHT*ythennn.
The reason the CDC refuses to admit the truth about
"Lyme Disease" is because if they did, their statements
would sound identical to mine.
Think:
Then what?
People would say, "Then is CDC responsible for the lies
about Lyme from the beginning or is this international
crime solely the responsibility of the scientist-wannabee
morons Edward McSweegan and Durland Fish?"
http://www.actionlyme.org/GOLDWATER_LETTER.htm
^^^Cuz it sure looks like, from the Barry Goldwater Letter, that
Sweeg was talking about deliberately taking over the Navy's
vector-borne disease bioweapons endeavors.
Making it a commercial enterprise, and therefore a
scientific fraud and racketeering crime:
http://www.actionlyme.org/ALDF_BOARD.htm
The CDC could cut themselves loose, as we have seen
them begin to attempt to do, in their correspondence with
David Volkman:
http://www.lymedisease.org/news/files.php?file=Volkman_address_removed_Text_3_09_115176301.pdf
"CDC Surveillance Definition
"In the 1980s as the Ixodes ricinus tick vector spread beyond its
usual habitat, human
borreliosis followed. In order to reliably track the geographically
expanding incidence of
LD, the CDC tried to derive a case definition that would include only
definitive cases and
exclude possible ambiguous ones that might or might not be true LD.
Dr. Steere and I
were members of the “Committee to Develop a Surveillance Case
Definition for Lyme disease” and
traveled to Atlanta to write the surveillance definition. We
identified a number of
Western Blot bands most highly associated with definitive cases of LD
and established a
minimal number of these that would pick up true cases of Lyme disease
but, more
importantly, exclude conditions whose etiology was uncertain. The CDC
explicitly
cautioned against using this restrictive case definition for clinical
diagnosis and reiterated
this proscription with every re-issuing of its “Surveillance
Definition.” It has been a
7
source of frustration and confusion that some in the medical community
wrongly insist
that a Lyme patient must satisfy CDC criteria (see memo below).
"Yes, CDC has always warned against using the surveillance case
definition for clinical diagnosis. However,
*** we can not obviously regulate inclusion criteria for Lyme disease
studies conducted by other investigators.***
http://www.actionlyme.org/MKLEMPNER.htm
You will also find that the new 2008 Lyme disease case definition has
expanded ability to detect other clinical
presentations of Lyme disease, and thus the use of "CDC criteria" may
not be as frequent in the future.
Sincerely,
Kiersten Kugeler
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Division of Vector-Borne Infectious Diseases
Bacterial Diseases Branch
Fort Collins, Colorado"
Kathleen M. Dickson
http://www.actionlyme.org
=================================
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/14/business/energy-environment/14borlaug.html?ref=global-home&pagewanted=print
"In 1953, Dr. Borlaug began working with a wheat strain containing an
unusual gene. It had the effect of shrinking the wheat plant, creating
a stubby, compact variety. Yet crucially, the seed heads did not
shrink, meaning a small plant could still produce a large amount of
wheat.
"Dr. Borlaug and his team transferred the gene into tropical wheats.
When high fertilizer levels were applied to these new “semidwarf”
plants, the results were nothing short of astonishing."
------
September 14, 2009
Norman Borlaug, 95, Dies; Led Green Revolution
By JUSTIN GILLIS
Norman E. Borlaug, the plant scientist who did more than anyone else
in the 20th century to teach the world to feed itself and whose work
was credited with saving hundreds of millions of lives, died Saturday
night. He was 95 and lived in Dallas.
The cause was complications from cancer, said Kathleen Phillips, a
spokeswoman for Texas A&M University, where Dr. Borlaug had served on
the faculty since 1984.
Dr. Borlaug’s advances in plant breeding led to spectacular success in
increasing food production in Latin America and Asia and brought him
international acclaim. In 1970, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
He was widely described as the father of the broad agricultural
movement called the Green Revolution, though decidedly reluctant to
accept the title. “A miserable term,” he said, characteristically
shrugging off any air of self-importance.
Yet his work had a far-reaching impact on the lives of millions of
people in developing countries. His breeding of high-yielding crop
varieties helped to avert mass famines that were widely predicted in
the 1960s, altering the course of history. Largely because of his
work, countries that had been food deficient, like Mexico and India,
became self-sufficient in producing cereal grains.
“More than any other single person of this age, he has helped provide
bread for a hungry world,” the Nobel committee said in presenting him
with the Peace Prize. “We have made this choice in the hope that
providing bread will also give the world peace.”
The day the award was announced, Dr. Borlaug, vigorous and slender at
56, was working in a wheat field outside Mexico City when his wife,
Margaret, drove up to tell him the news. “Someone’s pulling your leg,”
he replied, according to one of his biographers, Leon Hesser. Assured
that it was true, he kept on working, saying he would celebrate later.
The Green Revolution eventually came under attack from environmental
and social critics who said it had created more difficulties than it
had solved. Dr. Borlaug responded that the real problem was not his
agricultural techniques, but the runaway population growth that had
made them necessary.
“If the world population continues to increase at the same rate, we
will destroy the species,” he declared.
Traveling to Norway, the land of his ancestors, to receive the award,
he warned the Nobel audience that the struggle against hunger had not
been won. “We may be at high tide now, but ebb tide could soon set in
if we become complacent and relax our efforts,” he said. Twice more in
his lifetime, in the 1970s and again in 2008, those words would prove
prescient as food shortages and high prices caused global unrest.
His Nobel Prize was the culmination of a storied life in agriculture
that began when he was a boy growing up on a farm in Iowa, wondering
why plants grew better in some places than others. His was also an
unlikely career path, one that began in earnest near the end of World
War II, when Dr. Borlaug walked away from a promising job at DuPont,
the chemical company, to take a position in Mexico trying to help
farmers improve their crops.
The job was part of an assault on hunger in Mexico that was devised in
Manhattan, at the offices of the Rockefeller Foundation, with
political support in Washington. But it was not a career choice
calculated to lead to fame or honor.
Indeed, on first seeing the situation in Mexico for himself, Dr.
Borlaug reacted with near despair. Mexican soils were depleted, the
crops were ravaged by disease, yields were low and the farmers could
not feed themselves, much less improve their lot by selling surplus.
“These places I’ve seen have clubbed my mind — they are so poor and
depressing,” he wrote to his wife after his first extended sojourn in
the country. “I don’t know what we can do to help these people, but
we’ve got to do something.”
The next few years were ones of toil and privation as Dr. Borlaug and
his colleagues, with scant funds or equipment, set to work improving
yields in tropical crop varieties.
He spent countless hours hunched over in the blazing Mexican sun as he
manipulated tiny wheat blossoms to cross different strains. To speed
the work, he set up winter and summer operations in far-flung parts of
Mexico, logging thousands of miles over poor roads. He battled
illness, forded rivers in flood, dodged mudslides and sometimes slept
in tents.
He was by then a trained scientist holding a doctoral degree in plant
diseases. But as he sought to coax better performance from the wheats
of Mexico, he relied on a farm boy’s instinctive feel for the plants
and the soil in which they grew.
“When wheat is ripening properly, when the wind is blowing across the
field, you can hear the beards of the wheat rubbing together,” he told
another biographer, Lennard Bickel. “They sound like the pine needles
in a forest. It is a sweet, whispering music that once you hear, you
never forget.”
Norman Ernest Borlaug was born on March 25, 1914, in his grandfather’s
farmhouse near the tiny settlement of Saude, in northeastern Iowa.
Growing up in a stalwart community of Norwegian immigrants, he trudged
across snow-covered fields to a one-room country school, coming home
almost every day to the aroma of bread baking in his mother’s oven.
He was a high-spirited boy of boundless curiosity. His sister,
Charlotte Culbert, recounted in an interview in 2008 in Cresco, Iowa,
that he would whistle aloud as he milked the cows, and pester his
parents and grandparents with questions. “He’d wonder why in some
areas the grass would be so green, and then over here it wouldn’t be,”
Mrs. Culbert recalled.
At the time, most farm boys dropped out of school. But Norman’s
grandfather Nels Borlaug, regretting his own scant education, urged
his grandson to keep going. Norman worked his way through the
University of Minnesota during the Great Depression. More than once in
those desperate years he encountered townspeople in Minneapolis on the
verge of starvation, which sharpened his interest in the problems of
food production.
He first studied forestry, but fell under the influence of a legendary
expert in plant diseases, Elvin C. Stakman, who encouraged him to
switch to the broader field of plant pathology. After earning a
doctorate in the field, he took a job with DuPont in 1942 and worked
on chemical compounds useful in the war. But Professor Stakman helped
persuade him to join the Rockefeller Foundation’s Mexican hunger
project in 1944.
Dr. Borlaug’s initial goal was to create varieties of wheat adapted to
Mexico’s climate that could resist the greatest disease of wheat, a
fungus called rust. He accomplished that within a few years by
crossing Mexican wheats with rust-resistant varieties from elsewhere.
His insistence on breeding in two places, the Sonoran desert in winter
and the central highlands in summer, imposed heavy burdens on him and
his team, but it cut the time to accomplish his work in half. By luck,
the strategy also produced wheat varieties that were insensitive to
day length and thus capable of growing in many locales, a trait that
would later prove of vital significance.
The Rockefeller team gradually won the agreement of Mexican farmers to
adopt the new varieties, and wheat output in that country began a
remarkable climb. But these developments turned out to be a mere
prelude to Dr. Borlaug’s main achievements.
By the late 1940s, researchers knew they could induce huge yield gains
in wheat by feeding the plants chemical fertilizer that supplied them
with extra nitrogen, a shortage of which was the biggest constraint on
plant growth. But the strategy had a severe limitation: beyond a
certain level of fertilizer, the seed heads containing wheat grains
would grow so large and heavy, the plant would fall over, ruining the
crop.
In 1953, Dr. Borlaug began working with a wheat strain containing an
unusual gene. It had the effect of shrinking the wheat plant, creating
a stubby, compact variety. Yet crucially, the seed heads did not
shrink, meaning a small plant could still produce a large amount of
wheat.
Dr. Borlaug and his team transferred the gene into tropical wheats.
When high fertilizer levels were applied to these new “semidwarf”
plants, the results were nothing short of astonishing.
The plants would produce enormous heads of grain, yet their stiff,
short bodies could support the weight without falling over. On the
same amount of land, wheat output could be tripled or quadrupled.
Later, the idea was applied to rice, the staple crop for nearly half
the world’s population, with yields jumping several-fold compared with
some traditional varieties.
This strange principle of increasing yields by shrinking plants was
the central insight of the Green Revolution, and its impact was
enormous.
By the early 1960s, many farmers in Mexico had embraced the full
package of innovations from Dr. Borlaug’s breeding program, and wheat
output in the country had soared sixfold from the levels of the early
1940s.
Urgent queries began to pour in from other poor countries, for they
were caught in a bind. After World War II, the introduction of basic
sanitation in many developing countries caused death rates to plunge,
but birth rates were slow to follow. As a result, the global
population had exploded, putting immense strain on food supplies.
On the Indian subcontinent in particular, a crisis developed. The
population was growing so much faster than farm output that it was not
clear how the masses could be fed. In the mid-1960s, huge grain
imports were required to avert starvation.
At the invitation of the Indian and Pakistani governments, Dr. Borlaug
offered his advice. He met resistance at first from senior
agricultural experts steeped in tradition, but as the food situation
worsened, the objections faded. Soon, India and Pakistan were ordering
shiploads of Dr. Borlaug’s wheat seeds from Mexico.
One vital shipment through the Port of Los Angeles was delayed by the
Watts riots of 1965 in that city, and Dr. Borlaug spent hours yelling
on the phone to get it through.
Indian and Pakistani farmers took up the new varieties, receiving
fertilizer and other aid from their governments. Just as in Mexico,
harvests soared: the Indian wheat crop of 1968 was so bountiful that
the government had to turn schools into temporary granaries.
As with the Mexican effort, the Rockefeller Foundation and other
donors set up a project in the Philippines to work on rice. It led to
the creation of semidwarf varieties that also caused rice yields to
soar. Chinese scientists ultimately followed in the footsteps of
Western researchers, using semidwarf varieties to establish food
security in China and setting the stage for its rise as an industrial
power. And Dr. Borlaug and his colleagues helped spread the new crop
varieties to additional countries of Latin America, notably Colombia,
Ecuador, Chile and Brazil.
Dr. Borlaug’s later years were partly occupied by arguments over the
social and environmental consequences of the Green Revolution. Many
critics on the left attacked it, saying it displaced smaller farmers,
encouraged overreliance on chemicals and paved the way for greater
corporate control of agriculture.
In a characteristic complaint, Vandana Shiva, an Indian critic, wrote
in 1991 that “in perceiving nature’s limits as constraints on
productivity that had to be removed, American experts spread
ecologically destructive and unsustainable practices worldwide.”
Dr. Borlaug declared that such arguments often came from “elitists”
who were rich enough not to worry about where their next meal was
coming from. But over time, he acknowledged the validity of some
environmental concerns, and embraced more judicious use of fertilizers
and pesticides. He was frustrated throughout his life that governments
did not do more to tackle what he called “the population monster” by
lowering birth rates.
He remained a vigorous man into his 90s, serving for many years on the
faculty of Texas A&M and continuing to do vital agricultural work. In
recent years, he marshaled efforts to tackle a new variety of rust
that is threatening the world’s wheat crop.
Dr. Borlaug’s wife of 69 years, the former Margaret Gibson, died in
2007. He is survived by a sister, Charlotte Borlaug Culbert; a
daughter, Jeanie Borlaug Laube; a son, William Borlaug; five
grandchildren; and six great-grandchildren.
Gary H. Toenniessen, director of agricultural programs for the
Rockefeller Foundation, said in an interview that Dr. Borlaug’s great
achievement was to prove that intensive, modern agriculture could be
made to work in the fast-growing developing countries where it was
needed most, even on the small farms predominating there.
By Mr. Toenniessen’s calculation, about half the world’s population
goes to bed every night after consuming grain descended from one of
the high-yield varieties developed by Dr. Borlaug and his colleagues
of the Green Revolution.
“He knew what it was they needed to do, and he didn’t give up,” Mr.
Toenniessen said. “He could just see that this was the answer.”
Gerald Jonas and Sarah Wheaton contributed reporting.
"[Real] scientists are *fiercely* independent. That's the good
news."-- NIH's Top Fool, Anthony Fauci
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