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The Tale of J.R. Simplot's Two-Headed Trout
The corporate propensity for rationalizing the irrational in the pursuit of profit appears to be boundless.
Simplot Images from the appendix of a report by the J. R. Simplot Company show the mutated offspring of trout from Idaho creeks. The report concluded that selenium should be allowed in higher levels in creeks than is now permitted under regulations. (New York Times)
Consider J.R. Simplot, a giant conglomerate whose mining operations in Idaho have grossly polluted creeks with selenium, a highly toxic metal. But Simplot's scientists rationalized the corporation's dirty deed with a 1,000-page study asserting that even though the selenium contamination of creeks was well above levels allowed by environmental law, the water remained "safe" for fish.
Tucked back in the appendix of Simplot's "study," however, were a few photographs that vividly depicted the screaming irrationality of the corporation's safety claims. The most stunning photo was of a two-headed baby trout produced by Simplot's pollution of area creeks. It was not the only sickening deformity caused by the selenium – other trout had facial, fin, and egg disfigurements.
These grotesque mutations led to calls for an independent agency to conduct a full scientific review of Simplot's 1,000-page study. At Sen. Barbara Boxer's request, this was done by the Fish and Wildlife Service, which issued a scathing report in January that bluntly branded the corporate study "biased." For example, Simplot systemically understated the deformity rate of baby fish in the creeks – it's not 20 percent that are deformed, but 70 percent.
Asked about this rather broad discrepancy, a Simplot vice-president could only grump that the Fish and Wildlife review was "totally outside the regulatory process." Well thank goodness for that! As another independent toxicology expert says, "I have seen lots of malformed baby fish, but never one with two heads. We need to be careful here."
Yes, let's. In fact, let's stop swallowing any irrational rationalizations by corporations that pollute for profit.
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37 Comments so far
Show All"Totally outside the regulatory process." Orwell would be impressed by this example of newspeak. I wonder if the fellow who said it would have said the same thing if a two-headed baby had been born in the area polluted by his company.
I am thinking he would. In the corporate world there's not much difference between a trout and an average citizen.
Yes, neither the trout nor the citizen have the power to stop corporations from doing their dirty work these days.
I guess we could just wait until we have two-headed corporate CEOs.
They're already two-faced...can the rest of the heads be far behind?
Idaho gone! The whole Pacific Northwest could be next. We're in deep do do.
Probably following the attention deficit disorder generation is my guess.
As long as the baby wasn't produced by his children, I don't see why he would not say the same thing. Actually, even then the man might be stupid enough to hail the creation of a new and better human being... Two heads are better than one, donchaknow.
if jim knew what he was talking about he would be dangerous
fact is that this two headed fish is part of a homeland security/nsa/cia/ngo secret program to make the fish twice a s smart as they already are
that's liberals for ya - even when you try to do something good they see conspiracies everywhere
next thing you know they'll be saying 9/11 was an "inside job"
jim better watch out or he is gonna get slapped with a defamation lawsuit by one of the damn smart two headed trouts
then he'll be sorry
apparently they are working on a three headed trout - that one will be able to play three games of chess simultaneously
Also, selenium is a micro-nutrient* so people in ID should be thankful for this bit of corporate bounty. /snark
* It really is a trace element necessary to human health: NIH Factsheet
http://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/selenium/
(One time links actually worked on here!)
Speaking of "grotesque mutations", what is wrong with J.R. Simplot?
all the congress should drink out of this creek and then we could cut down on the size of congress by 1/2 and save all that money with the bonus of smarter reps. cause they will all have two heads
Then they would be talking out of both sides of TWO mouths...the mind boggles! Or are you REALLY saying this would be a good way to shrink government, we'd only need half the poiticos if they each had two mouths?
With two heads they'll finally be able to obstruct themselves, thereby eliminating the need for the pesky "opposition" party. Yeah, that's it. One head could be a "D" and one could be an "R," and they could disagree on everything, except the things that consistently favor corporations and the wealthy over the rest of us.
Are there no fishermen in Idaho who have noticed these aberrations? Is everyone falling prey to the corporate propaganda that these things must be done for our own good? That these things will produce jobs for Americans? Is everybody eating stupid pie?
I would imagine that mutations like this don't make it to adulthood. So it would be extremely rare for a fisherman to come acrossed one. Hatchlings like the ones pictured would not rise on regular bait.
It's the Sgt Schulz Academy for Vice Presidential Thought: "I know nothing. I see nothing. I did not get up this morning!!" (and exit ....)
If we can buy this happy horseshit, just wait till they get their world-wide, Smartmeter, grid up- without resistance from the sheeple.
Then controlling us through their microwave program will keep us all in quiet servitude.
I think you are mistaking CD for the John Birch Society's web site.
The purpose of smart meters and smart grids is to reduce electricity consumption and improve generation efficiency. In particular, smart grids are required to accommodate the highly variable and geographically scattered output from renewable sources. If renewables are ever going to be a practical source for most electric power, we will need a smart grid.
There is no nefarious UN "one world government" plot here, it is just one measure to save us for climate disaster.
Surely everyone has learned by now that correlation does not imply causation?
If the creeks were filled with incompletely-divided trout, that'd be one thing. But isolated examples? They can be expected as part of the randomness associated with speciation. That selenium is known for causing such conditions is not evidence that they caused any of the examples.
Has no one heard of the Hensel twins?
According to the article, the deformity rate of baby fish in the creeks is 70 percent.
Correlation does not prove causation, but it can certainly suggest or imply possible causation. There could be no science if the implications of high rates of correlation were not pursued and investigated for possible causality.
Accepting the article's contentions and yours - selenium is known for causing deformities; there is an extraordinarily high level of deformities in the creeks; a lot of selenium was introduced to those creeks. If that does not imply possible causation, nothing ever could.
I live in Sun Valley, Id.
One of the tributaries of a world famous fly fishing stream runs 30 ft off my back porch.
This 70% is complete and utter bullshit.
Ground Truth.
Please post a map of the streams involved in the Simplot report and the Fish and Wildlife follow-up, pointing out the stream you study fish in that was polluted by selenium and studied in the report.
Actually forget it, you are full of complete and utter bullshit.
I don't think I have ever characterized a comment here at CD as "stupid." I will now.
This reminds me of Palin's notorious "I can see Russia from my back porch" comment.
Deformity rates in hatchlings and embryos would not be observable in adult fish, and in fact could not be casually observed at all. Do you even understand what it is that you are calling "complete and utter bullshit?"
Second, at issue here is the rate of deformities associated with various levels of selenium in the water - the water where the hatching occurs, not the water near your back porch.
According to a Fish and Wildlife Service selenium expert, the level of selenium that Simplot says causes a 20% deformity rate in fish actually causes a deformity rate of 70%. Simplot lied in their report.
There is a substantial body of work on this subject. You might want to become familiar with it before you shoot your mouth off again.
Selenium Accumulation and Toxicity in Freshwater Fishes
David K . DeForest and William J . Adams
Citation Information
Environmental Contaminants in Biota
Interpreting Tissue Concentrations, Second Edition
Edited by James P . Meador
http://www.crcnetbase.com/doi/abs/10.1201/b10598-7
Selenium Toxicity to Aquatic Organisms
David M . Janz , David K . DeForest , Marjorie L . Brooks , Peter M . Chapman , Guy Gilron , Dale Hoff , William A . Hopkins , Dennis O . McIntyre , Christopher A . Mebane , Vincent P . Palace , Joseph P . Skorupa , and Mark Wayland
Ecological Assessment of Selenium in the Aquatic Environment
Edited by Peter M. Chapman , William J. Adams , Marjorie L. Brooks , Charles G. Delos , Samuel N. Luoma , William A. Maher , Harry M. Ohlendorf , Theresa S. Presser and D. Patrick Shaw
http://www.crcnetbase.com/doi/abs/10.1201/EBK1439826775-c6
Symptoms and implications of selenium toxicity in fish: the Belews Lake case example
Symptoms of chronic selcnitun poisoning in Belews Lake fish included, (1) telangiectasia (swelling) of gill lamellae; (2) elevated lymphocytes; (3) reduced hematocrit and hemoglobin (anemia); (4) cornea1 cataracts; (5) exopthalmus (popeye); (6) pathological alterations in liver, kidney, heart, and ovary (e.g. vacuolization of parenchymal hepatocytes, intracapillary proliferative glomerulonephritis, severe pericarditis and myocarditis, necrotic and ruptured mature egg follicles); (7) reproductive failure (reduced production of viable eggs due to ovarian pathology, and post-hatch mortality due to bioaccumulation of selenium in eggs): and (8) teratogenic deformities of the spine, head, mouth, and fins. Important principles of selenium cycling and toxicity were documented in the Belews Lake studies. Selenium poisoning in fish can be `invisible', because, the primary point of impact is the egg, which receives selenium from the female's diet (whether consumed in organic or inorganic forms), and stores it until hatching, whereupon it is metabolized by the developing fish. If concentrations in eggs are great enough (about 10 µg/g or greater) biochemical functions may be disrupted and teratogenic deformity and death may occur. Adult fish can survive and appear healthy despite the fact that extensive reproductive failure is occurring -- 19 of the 20 species in Belews Lake were eliminated as a result of this insidious mode of toxicity. Bioaccumulation in aquatic food chains causes otherwise harmless concentrations of selenium to reach toxic levels, and the selenium in contaminated sediments can be cycled into food chains for decades. The lessons learned from Belews Lake provide information useful for protecting aquatic ecosystems as new selenium issues emerge.
http://www.srs.fs.usda.gov/pubs/3213
Are you kidding me with the Smartmeter stuff? That is the least of our worries. We are allowing companies to produce over 67,000 different chemicals and dump them into our environment. The government has only tested about 300 of them for potential impacts and that testing is done on individual chemicals. There is little to no testing done on potential impacts from chemical combinations. The trout are letting us know that we are permitting insane practices from corporations. We shouldn't be arguing about the which report is correct or more accurate. We should be shutting down these freaks until the contamination is dealt with.
Exactly. If a real human being dumped even a small amount of toxins, the cops would arrest him, a jury would convict him, and the judge would throw him in prison.
Every state has criminal statutes that would cover this activity. They don't have to sit back and wait for the EPA. The local DA should just go in and arrest the operators and put out arrest warrants for the far away owners. Under the full faith and credit clause of the US constitution, every other state has to honor those warrants.
I would suspect the local DA worries more about jobs than fish.
Yeah, I think that was covered in this statement:
"Asked about this rather broad discrepancy, a Simplot vice-president could only grump that the Fish and Wildlife review was "totally outside the regulatory process." "
Corporations truly operate under different laws and regulations than the rest of us.
"Are there no fishermen in Idaho who have noticed these aberrations?" In response to Ironblood's comment, I actually can't recall the last time I heard a fisherman from Idaho say anything in the MSM, so how would we ever know if they were seeing them hourly by day and watching them glow by night?
Maybe having two heads makes these fish harder to catch. But on a serious note, hatchlings like that would not make it to adulthood. What fishermen will experience is a declining population.
The more people, the more pollution, the more we learn, the less people, the less pollution.
The statement that the Fish and Wildlife Service review was "totally outside of the regulatory process" is easily understandable when you compare it to how Washington regulates anything corporate nowadays. They don't.
This statement also reminds me of the most revealing statement ever made by one of the most devious corporate criminals in this nation,
"That depends on what your definition of 'IS' is."
I wonder if Hightower will be attending the democrat's corporate love-fest in Charlotte, North Carolina this year to celebrate their re-annointed criminal-in chief and if he will be chummy with Mr. "Is-Is" Clinton.
The reason Simplot Corporation behaves the way it does is because the price for its criminal acts are not brought home on the heads of the Corporate Directors (and Officers). That can be tracked down; these bums cannot hide. Then you make them pay the price. And there are plenty of ways to do that. When they hurt, then they stop. Not until.
Good article!
J.R.Simplot owns Idaho. This corporation can and will do anything they want in Idaho. From potatoes to treasure north to south east to west this corporation controls all of it. Saying that they pollute is like saying air may be needed for breathing. The prosecution of this company by any local office or agency will never happen. What I didnt see in this article was that people use these rivers and streams. They use them for boating, swimming, rafting. In a word recreating. Will the contamination affect those people. Their children? Their future?
Having lived in the treasure valley of Idaho for a few short years I have seen some of the vast wonders nature has provided Idaho. I have also seen the endless march of civilization encroaching on its soil. It saddens me to know that what I have seen will never be the same. Some change is for the better. I fear this is not.
Thank you kokobell616!
Your statement "I have seen some of the vast wonders nature has provided Idaho.. I have also seen the endless march of civilization encroaching on its soil. It saddens me to know that what I have seen will never be the same." This expresses exactly how I feel about all the beautiful places in which I was lucky enough to be a guest. They are continually under seige by people. Finally someone uses the emotion "saddened". We should all be saddened by what's happening to Earth.
One acre at a time we plunder the Earth. The two headed trout is a portent of what's to come. Though I would argue that that "portent" is already here; I never remember the rate of autism and childood disabilites that are present today. The party is just getting started. You couldn't pay me to have a child in today's world with the impoverishment that lies ahead. And even more disheartening is what our hubris is doing to the innocent flora and fauna who just happen to get in our way.
I used to plan two trips a year (before I had one of those gerryrigged mortgages); one in the fall and one in spring. I'd pick a mountain range and plan out my driving routes. Idaho was one of the places I remember vividly. It was unbelievable traveling out of Boise up into the Sawtooth Mountains, climbing toward the Galena Summit then winding back down into Sun Valley proper. Ketchum, a short distance out of Sun Valley, was a cool little town, reminding me of the old artist's community and simpler times. I returned to Boise by way of the Camas Valley making the journey circular. It was one of the most physically breathtaking regions I've ever visited.
I'll never go back to any of the places whose beauty remains etched in my soul. All of them have been ravaged and continue to be by humans and development. I end up crying the entire vacation and swearing I'll never go anywhere again. (a little dramatic but pretty damn close to the truth).
We deserve everything coming down the pike. For such a supposedly bright and superior species we sure are dumb. Who in their right mind would kill off the very system that supports its life? Only a completely stupid and ignorant H. sapiens.
Can the two-headed fish swim against the current and go with the flow simultaniously?
Sorry for the frivolity, but sometimes things are so troubling that it is hard keep fighting the good fight without a litlle humor.
High selenium is also a big problem in West Virginia and Eastern Kentucky streams that drain the MTR sites. The high selenium levels are caused by leaching from the 1000 foot thick shot-rock hollow-fills and will probably persist forever for all practical purposes. There are also studies showing serous health impacts, from a variety of causes, including birth defects. A 2011 study found "the odds for reporting cancer were twice as high in the mountaintop mining environment compared to the non mining environment in ways not explained by age, sex, smoking, occupational exposure, or family cancer history."