Manila bishops go where WHO won’t

The respected and world-renowned scientific agency has spoken on a controversy regarding research data, methodology and analysis. Quick, bring in some Catholic bishops to refute it on “moral” grounds.

A news report says the Philippine representative of the World Health Organization has determined that a controversial study that is being used as the basis to ban aerial spraying in banana plantations in Mindanao was inconclusive. Dr. Soe Nyunt-U, the WHO representative, relayed this unequivocal conclusion to local health authorities based on a peer review of the so-called Dionisio study conducted by two WHO experts, Dr. David Coggon of England and Dr. Brian Priestly of Australia.

That ought to be a clear statement for public health officials led by Health Secretary Francisco Duque and their foreign-funded NGO partners who want aerial spraying banned for allegedly poisoning the residents of places close to the banana plantations. But it doesn’t surprise anyone familiar with the issue that, failing to rally the WHO to their side, the ban’s proponents are now using a bunch of Catholic bishops based in Metro Manila (yes, Metro Manila) to condemn what the respected international health organization will not in Mindanao.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. First, let’s discuss Dr. Soe’s recent teleconference with the members of the Inter-Agency Committee on Environmental Health, the government agency deliberating on the ban originally proposed by some Davao-based NGOs that want to bring down the banana-growing industry using a discredited four-year-old study conducted in Davao del Sur by a certain Dr. Alan Dionisio.

Now, “discredited” may sound like it’s too strong a term to use here. But when two peer reviews (including an earlier, still-undisclosed one conducted by Dionisio’s own colleagues at the University of the Philippines-Manila) both find a scientific study seriously flawed and inconclusive, with no other reviews confirming its findings, then there is no other way to describe Dionisio’s admittedly sensational report.

This late, the Health Department has still refused to make the UP-Manila peer review public. That’s perfectly understandable, since that report was the first to debunk Dionisio’s findings for being based on insufficient and possibly polluted data and unscientific and flawed methodology and analysis—and the UP-Manila reviewers are too much in awe and in fear of the department to force the issue of disclosure.

Indeed, Duque is still attempting to convince the representatives of the government agencies that make up the inter-agency committee to sign a resolution banning aerial spraying, even if he’s been rebuffed before by these officials, who are aware, at the very least, of the existence of the UP-Manila peer review. Unfortunately for Duque and the environmental entrepreneurs in the Davao NGOs, they cannot suppress the WHO’s verdict on Dionisio’s study.

During the teleconference, Dr. Soe said Dionisio’s “Health and Environmental Assessment of Sitio Camocaan in Hagonoy, Davao del Sur,” the only scientific study on which the proposed ban is based, is “inadequate, based on insufficient data and inconclusive.” If the ban on aerial spraying is to be based on this study alone, Dr. Soe said in so many words, the WHO will not support it.

Because of the WHO’s findings, the committee has decided to consider a plan to conduct a new, more comprehensive study with the participation of officials of the health, agriculture and natural resources departments, representatives of the banana-growing industry and other stakeholder groups. The recommendation is supposed to be taken up in the next meeting of the inter-agency committee.

Now that’s a study that should have been condcuted a long time ago, before the government even started entertaining the hysterical denunciations against the practice in the media, complete with rallies featuring supposed poisoning “victims” who have since been proven to have either faked their ailments or who have been mistakenly reported to have died. And why this issue could not have been resolved earlier through thorough and conclusive scientific research—instead of by the guerrilla lobbying and media scare tactics of the NGOs—is something the government officials involved should be called to account for later on.

Make no mistake: No one is saying, at this point, that aerial spraying of fungicides has been conclusively proven to be safe, despite decades of use without reported deaths or other public-health concerns involving the people who live near banana plantations. But imposing a ban on the basis of one study that has been repeatedly debunked is simply unacceptable and unfair—and an acknowledgment that often in this country he who shouts loudest, wins.

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After the WHO debacle, the ban’s proponents have literally found religion, in the form of four supposedly “highest-ranking” (according to one clueless report) Catholic bishops, who have written the banana-growing industry association to ask it to stop aerial spraying for being an immoral practice, of all things. To quote Manila Archbishop Gaudencio Cardinal Rosales and three ecclesiastical dwarfs who signed the letter—the Caloocan City bishop and Rosales’ two auxiliaries hardly qualify as highest-ranking—“we are one with all affected people in Mindanao in working for their deliverance from this immoral practice [i.e., aerial spraying]. We cannot allow their suffering to go [on] any longer.”

How a bunch of bishops in Manila (regardless of their rank) can be “one” with people supposedly suffering a thousand kilometers away is something even the Jesuits of Ateneo will find hard to justify. But it is revealing that the people who convinced Rosales and his equally misguided subordinates to sign and send this letter weren’t able to convince bishops from Mindanao to do it—these latter clerics on the ground, as it were, would definitely be more at “one” with the people supposedly being poisoned by aerial spraying.

Indeed, any number of Mindanao bishops will probably be able to refute Rosales and his aides’ protestations that aerial spraying should be halted “for public health and social peace.” And it’s reasonable to assume that the bishops of Mindanao do not agree with the cardinal and his sidekicks, otherwise the NGOs who set the Manila bishops up for this act wouldn’t have gone all the way to Manila to round up some sympathetic clerics.

It’s easy to dismiss the bishops’ letter to the Pilipino Banana Growers and Exporters Association as just another case of ecclesiastical interference in a matter that churchmen are ignorant or incapable of forming an unbiased opinion. But the Manila bishops’ letter also came with an unseemly (and definitely un-Christian) threat against the banana-growing industry.

According to the report, if the industry heeds the bishops’ advice and stops spraying on its own accord, Church leaders will no longer “bring to the attention of your international market the concerns of poor farmers who have been victimized by your aerial spraying activities.” After acting like the inquisitors of Galileo, without a clue about the science that should inform the controversy, the bishops suddenly start to sound like Mafia gang bosses with an offer the industry can’t possibly refuse?

The not-so-subtle threat in the bishops’ letter clearly indicates its real authorship by the Davao anti-spraying NGOs. Indeed, the job of demonizing the Philippine banana industry abroad has already long been performed by these groups, who rake in a lot of money from the foreign donors that they horrify with unconfirmed (and even out-and-out nonexistent) reports of people poised by chemicals coming from the sky.

In fact, the prime mover of the bishops’ strange letter is declared in the very same news report—probably so the foreign donors will know who put the clerics up to it. In the very next paragraph, the report says the bishops wrote the letter to help the Davao-based Mamamayan Ayaw sa Aerial Spraying, which recently went to Manila’s churches and schools for its “poisoned villages” roadshow that is the staple of its overseas fund-raising campaigns.

Again, the only scientific basis for this whole propaganda offensive by MAAS and other such enterprising NGOs is the aforementioned Dionisio report—the same report that the WHO itself has called inconclusive. Of course, as the wag said, why let facts get in the way of a good (and lucrative, for the NGOs) story?

As for the Manila bishops supporting this truly immoral campaign that intends to destroy the livelihood of hundreds of thousands and Mindanao folk and the social peace that gainful employment brings, they can’t even be excused like the well-intentioned but totally erroneous clerics who told Galileo that the sun revolves around the earth. Rosales and his confederates are, after all, just tools of the NGOs that are using public health issues to make some money for themselves. –Jojo Robles, Manila Standard Today