Human Experimentation.

There's an unusual parasite called a brainworm that has an extraordinary life cycle.

Its prey is the humble ant

Here's its story.

It lives in the guts of sheep, cows and rabbits and lays eggs there which are then passed out with the faeces of the animal.

The faeces are eaten by snails where the eggs undergo asexual reproduction and these are eventually excreted as tiny capsules within the snails mucus.

These capsules are then eaten by the ant.

Once the brainworm is inside the ant it forms a thin-walled cyst and burrows into the brain of the ant becoming a 'brainworm'

Then the brainworm emits chemicals that alter the behavior of the ant causing the ant to climb to the top of a blade of grass, waiting patiently until the grass is cropped by a grazing animal and the process begins to renew.

This is called parasitic persuasion.

What has this got to do with Human Experimentation?

In the Soviet Union in the late 1930s, Beria, one of Stalin's henchmen, set up a special gulag, he wanted to see if he could use such a technique to control human beings.

The gulag was rumoured to look just like a tidy village and the prisoners sent there were at first relieved that they were being given a chance to redeem themselves. They were unaware that their food was being sprayed with certain chemicals.

After a while a significant number of them began behaving strangely, fornicating in the streets at whim and becoming generally docile.

Even though they hated Beria, he could give them a gun and they would not be able to shoot him after being ordered not to.

They had become completely suggestible.

Once, for the hell of it he ordered some people to go around whistling and ordered others to go around shooting those that were whistling.

Eventually everyone died and the gulag closed, the experiment deemed a success.

In the 1960s in Britain patients with syphilis were deliberately denied treatment so that doctors could study the effects of the disease as it ravaged its host.

Political agitators in asylums were given LSD without their knowing so that the effect on the subjects mental state could be obvserved.

In Sweden, the physically and mentally handicapped were focrcibly sterilised.

In Australia, Aboriginal children were  forcibly removed from their parents and put to work as virtual slaves in white institutions.

All these horror stories took place in to one degree or another and there are many other stories not told here.

Again, what does this have to do with Human Experimentation?

The revelation of these atrocious social experiments in recent history by both the Soviets and the West demonstrate a breathtaking lack of the respect for the dignity of the human individual.

Following these revalations, years after their incidence, we have learned to respect the human individual, or have we?

In New Zealand, an artist was forced to remove a poster of her naked niece, squatting on all fours with six milking cups attached to each of her six breasts.

She was protesting against the plan to insert human genes into a cow so that it produce human 'friendly' milk.

Why should this be a problem, after all we'd have the choice whether to use the product or not because our freedom of decision.

Or do we?

A few years ago, the medical journal the Lancet published a study on the harmful effects on rats fed with genetically modified potatoes.

It was ridiculed by industry lobbyists, despite being peer reviewed and accepted as sound science.

There has been a huge amount of fighting in recent years between Europe and its trading partners, the US and Canada with regard to genetically modified food.

Europe has adopted the Precautionary Principle, this demands that there must be convincing evidence, other than profit, for introducing a new technology with no demonstrable benefits to the consumer, especially when it comes to their health.

The Europeans are watching the US and Canada with a simple motivation.

To see what happens.

People in the US and Canada have been consuming genetically modified food for several years, mostly without their knowledge or consent.

Human experimentation continues unabated, despite the histories of the last century and their horrific consequences.

In place of the state institutions, we now have corporate entities that could be poisoning our people.

I say could be, because I do not believe the corporations to be evil, they are simply abstract entities blind to anything except profit, for that is their function, theie raison d'etre, toreturn maximum profit to their shareholders.

But there's a simple problem here.

Human error.

I know of no commercial institution that has not, does not and will not continue to make mistakes.

Because of their understandable commercial vested interest, the biotechnology being introduced into the animal and food chain is not open to peer review, public scrutiny and the grandest test of all, that of time.

In the West, with our colossal food mountains and agricultural gluts, we have no need for genetically modified foods.

Why take the risk?