DID other Tasmanian Times readers get a chance to read Matthew Denholm’s article on Tasmanian devils in The Weekend Australian Magazine last weekend 1?
Buried deep within the article were statements by cytogeneticist, Anne Maree Pearse and wildlife biologist, Nick Mooney that should have been the highlight of this article.
According to these two scientists working on the Devil Facial Tumour Disease, the cause could be pesticides or herbicides used by Tasmanian farmers or foresters.
Maybe their quoted comments weren’t cleared with the political stage managers of the DFTD program or just maybe it’s the beginning of the letting the cat out of the bag … slowly.
For those who missed the feature, here are a few quotes:
After mapping the devils chromosomes for the first time, cytogeneticist Anne Maree Pearse began comparing them with the chromosomes found in the cancer cell. She was unprepared for what she saw. All the diseased devils had exactly the same complex chromosomal rearrangements in their cancer cells, with no variation even between male and female.
“That’s pretty much unheard of,” Pearse says. In human and other known cancers, chromosome arrangements in tumour cells are different in every individual, never exactly the same in every victim, as observed in the devils.
Key scientists now believe that chemicals used by farmers or foresters triggered the disease. “That’s very likely: that in the first instance, the devil was for some reason or other exposed to a carcinogenic chemical,” Pearse says. There is no shortage of potential chemical culprits. “Take your pick,” says Pearse. “Organophosphates [chemicals widely used in farming pesticides] can cause genetic damage.”
Wow! … remember the response, Sydney Water scientist Dr Marcus Scammell received from the State Government to his report entitled Environmental Problems Georges Bay, Tasmania (February -June 2004). Marcus highlighted the likelihood that a chemical carcinogen could be responsible for the emergence of this infectious cancer in devils in NE Tasmania.
Back to the Weekend Australian Magazine,
Nick Mooney, a respected government wildlife biologist instrumental in getting DFTD taken seriously, agrees with Pearse. Like Pearse, he is a key DFTD team member, and says the exposure of a lone devil, or a small group of devils, to chemicals was most likely the trigger. “That is the likely scenario — that there isn’t ‘a’ chemical to blame, it’s more likely a group of chemicals, such as the organophosphates,” Mooney says. ‘And if that’s the case it will produce a very interesting public debate with some serious repercussions.”
I hope not for you personally, Nick!
The State Government, TFGA and the Forestry Industry might not like this kind of free talk, even if it is scientifically proven. But maybe DPIWE knows more than they’ve let on to date. Could this approach is right out of the ‘Bad News Public Relation Manual’? If you have serious news to reveal to the plebs, let the front line troops let it out and then we can all ‘move on’.
Watch for more slow developments.
Dr David Obendorf is a veterinarian
1 – Sympathy for the Devil – The Weekend Australian Magazine 22-23 October, 2005, pp 46-49
The Obendorf analyses:
