My mind is off on a different tangent today. I'll just float this one quickly and be off and if anybody wants to expand on it feel free- the notion came into my mind as I read the article.
Carrier pigeons are extinct I believe, but are there other birds that are pretty much guaranteed to migrate to a narrowly specific geographic area? What I'm getting at is- would it be in any way possible to develop some dangerous bio agent or virus- Ebola for example- and then purposefully infect a bird (or several), tag that bird with some sort of tracking device and then have an "agent" pick it up when it reached Europe from Africa or N America from S America? What about attaching a small phial of the virus to the bird's leg and tagging it the same way? Is there any species of bird or animal such kooky idea would work with?
If it did work, it would be a brilliant way to bypass security at airports, ports and national borders. What you would need is a Muslim ornithologist in the receiving country and a biotech guy to forward it to once it was secured from the avian transporter.
Hey, I'll put it in a story if nothing else...
copyright Prodigal Son 2002 --- just kidding??? Maybe/Maybe not.
Excerpt:
Environmentalists charge that DDT is dangerous to humans and animals, but the first study to find an elevated risk of breast cancer from exposure to DDT "has now failed to be replicated at least eight times," with some studies even finding "significantly" reduced risk Ð and there were similar findings for "multiple myeloma, hepatic cancer, and non-Hodgkin lymphoma" (Attaran et al. 2000, 731, 730). Amir Attaran, who was one of the leaders in the successful effort to prevent the total banning of DDT for disease (malaria) vector control, added that although "hundreds of millions (and perhaps billions) of people have been exposed to elevated concentrations of DDT...the literature does not contain even one peer-reviewed, independently replicated study linking DDT exposure to any adverse health outcome" (Attaran and Maharaj 2000).
< snip >
It was in the early days of the modern anti-chemical hysteria that DDT became a target for activists, leading to the ban. In their zeal for what they imagined to be chemical-free purity, they ignored the real costs and benefits of the ban. It is interesting to note that the December 31, 1972 EPA press release titled "DDT Ban Takes Effect," which decreed that the "general use of the pesticide DDT will no longer be legal in the United States after today," also conceded the enormous benefit to human health from the use of DDT. DDT was developed as the first of the modern insecticides early in World War II. It was initially used with great effect to combat malaria, typhus, and the other insect-borne human diseases among both military and civilian populations.