AR-News: Eastern States 17-Year Cicada Warning

[ipan]

ipan wrote:

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> CICADA WARNING.
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> Healthy cicadas are not harmful to other animals, including humans, 
> who eat them. But I have heard of several dogs who have had diarrhea 
> after eating them . Hundreds of cicadas that I have examined have 
> developmental defects, many being so deformed that they cannot fly, 
> while others who look normal are ether already dead shortly after 
> emerging from their chrysalises or are too weak to fly, and some so 
> neurologically impaired that they cannot.
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> Combine these two facts, and pending analysis of these cicadas for the 
> many toxins from our air and rain and from domestic and municipal 
> applications of pesticides and herbicides that contaminate the soil 
> where they have lived for 17 years, and by the process of 
> "bioaccumulation" have concentrated many of these poisons into their 
> tissues (especially in the lipid or fat components of their nervous 
> and reproductive systems, and the associated damage to their DNA), and 
> I would advise that companion animals not be allowed to eat these 
> potentially toxic creatures. I hope that birds and other wildlife 
> eating these cicadas will not have their immune systems impaired, 
> which could increase their susceptibility to the West Nile virus that 
> devastated populations in many states last year, and is linked by some 
> scientists with global warming/climate and associated population changes.
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> A prohibition on companion animals eating cicadas should not go in 
> tandem with a negative attitude toward these remarkable creatures. 
> They are one of Nature's miracles who can speak to us in a language 
> more ancient and universal than ours, from which we may gain a new 
> lexicon of understanding and reverence for life .Like canaries taken 
> down into the coal mines, their evident sickness and deformities is a 
> warning to us all to be more proactive with respect to air quality, 
> rain water and soil contamination, for which we are as much 
> responsible as for their fate, and ours.
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> ---Michael W. Fox D.Sc., Ph.D., B.Vet.Med., M.R.C.V.S.
> Author and syndicated columnist.
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> See also www.doctormwfox.org
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