WE LIVE in a remarkable and frightening time; mankind has mastered leaps and bounds in machine development, medicine and industry. Dazzling declarations confuse populations as to the reality between the tested, with us in a commercial laboratory and the proven workable. The method of using botanicals (herbs) and metals for healing is thousands of years old. Though much of the early remedies were entangled in what we call superstitions, this did not prevent them from being effective enough to be adopted in our modern world of mega pharmaceutical industries. The use of the coconut is one such case study.

I find it amusing to buy a book in 2018 that instructs me of the uses of the coconut to be applied as an integral part of my menu. The dark side of biological experimentation emerged in the 19th Century, predominantly in the European theatre of events, with specific relevance to the concentration camps of both colonial South West Africa (Shark Island) then with the usage of cyclone B in the battlefields of WWI and some 21 years later, most notably in Nazi Germany.
Where specific variations of humanity were regulated to less than human and subject to experimentation through the premeditative contamination of concentration camp inmates by Nazi doctors using every infectious disease, to test the human reaction to their onslaught, also experimentations on food like a special nutritional sausage that was first tested on inmates; with fatal effects, this macabre descent led to much of the medical data that the west and Russia secured, even sparing from prosecution many of the active SS Doctors involved, the information was indeed presumed too valuable to commerce. That assessment and its collaborations were tested in the early 1950s with the release of the drug Thalidomide by a company with roots to the Nazi past. That drug was proposed to aid pregnant women; instead, it produced a generation of physically deformed children from among its users.

The next star or herald of advertised misery came luring the world was the cigarette, every Hollywood star in the noir era shouted that it was wise, cool and tough to smoke. Romantic wisps filled cinema screens in too many satisfying movies and the list of lung cancer stars rose. Growing up we were told that cancer “was a white people sickness” and when our own people died without a precise diagnosis, it was “somebody wuk pon he.” Nowhere was nicotine mentioned on either side of the Atlantic.

Last week, I came home with some cucumbers. My wife informed me that it tasted bitter. I bought it at Bourda market. It really doesn’t matter where it was bought. I told her to throw it away. I had memories of this kind of treatment of vegetables and fruit in the past that had lethal effects on persons. Years ago I managed a farm in Kamuni Creek off the Demerara River. There were other holdings, one well cultivated with avocado. The boatman who managed it assured me that there was a way to produce pear out of season with a certain chemical sprayed. I asked to see the magic chemical, but we never got around to that. So far there are no laws known to me to address this type of practice. In India, a high court judge in 2015 referred to fruit traders who ripened fruit with the carcinogen calcium carbide as “worse than terrorists”.

Over the past few years, vendors have been offering the Guyanese public ‘seedless limes’. This is a highly suspicious product that refers to why there have been protests worldwide especially in Europe against Genetically Modified Crops (GMO). How do you replant a fruit without its seed? I asked a vendor-farmer. “Yuh got fuh buy the packet at…” he informed me. How’s this happening? It seems that the authority at the Ministry of Health has gazed into Medusa’s face.
I can remember in the early 90s during the past administration one of their parliamentarians, a doctor/businessman had imported artificial ‘milk’ for the local market. He was exposed by an independent source. Another area of dangerous goods are toys banished by first world markets because of lead content. It’s very possible that some quick raise importer could land that stuff here. Are there guidelines among our customs officials to intercept such? I would hope so.

A serviceman just finished some repairs on a crucial piece of kitchen equipment. In conversation, he informed me that ‘asbestos’, a confirmed cancer giving material, is still used by some servicemen at Linden. I wrote a letter to the media concerning the strange outcome of local repellents. The Stabroek News editorial attachment indicated that they had forwarded the letter to the relevant authorities, but I have received no reply after months. I was told by a pharmacy staff that the products contain DDT or DEET, same thing. This cannot be safe to spray on one’s body. All the references point to an effective external agent for insect control, but not without environmental consequences. Dr. Giglioli used it to fight malaria in the 1940s. This chemical was banned in most countries; it is a ‘cancer’ producing agent.

Why is it casually used in this country? Are we ready for worlds that seek out lapse regulated countries like ours as a platform for experimental drugs and organ harvesting? These pharmaceutical creatures test the mettle of countries with watchdog institutions. Are we using the very information technology that will be used against us via social media rather than allowing ourselves to be caught in the hype and our evil twin, procrastination?