Keeping Our Eyes on the Eradication Goal : Medfly: Reasonable people can question spraying. But rather than give in to the bug, we must persuade these objectors that the risk is very low.

At the height of the Santa Clara County Medfly War in the early 1980s, an entomologist stirred up a storm by questioning whether the pest could be eradicated. Now another entomologist has expressed those same doubts about the current effort in Southern California.

Make no doubt about it, a UC Berkeley entomologist knows a thousand times more about the science of entomology than most of us. So did the entomologist who questioned the Santa Clara eradication effort. But history shows that the Santa Clara infestation was eradicated and the entomologist was wrong.

There are many differences and similarities between the current Medfly battle and the one in Northern California nearly a decade ago. Scientists can be found on both sides of the issue. Some contend that you can win; others aren’t so sure. This is the nature of science, and it has become one of the most frustrating parts of the ongoing food safety debate. Science is inexact and ever changing.

But there is a consensus on one thing--that rhetoric and fear have no place in determining public policy regarding pesticides. The Natural Resources Defense Council was irresponsible in scaring and confusing the public about the pesticide Alar and apples. A person would have to eat more than 28,000 pounds of Alar-treated apples every day for 70 years to approach the exposure levels that produce ill effects in the laboratory. We need to be aware that our interpretation of facts, based on our own experience and biases, will be different from the interpretation of someone who has decided to make a living exploiting the public’s concern for the environment. Somewhere in the middle is the public, not sure which scientist or which special-interest group to believe.

Critics are correct when they note that what is regarded as safe now may turn out to be dangerous later. What they don’t say is that some risk is necessary, or more correctly, inevitable and we should try our hardest to deal with it.

Many people don’t agree with the UC Berkeley entomologist and others whose “doubts are growing” over the potential success of the current eradication efforts. These same people might listen to Roy Cunningham, who chairs the state’s Medfly scientific advisory panel and is a veteran of infestation battles in California and elsewhere. He is “confident” the Medfly can be eradicated. Cunningham is not alone in his optimism. A UC Davis entomologist agrees with him.

Aerial application of the malathion syrup over populated areas has been accepted as as a necessary means of eradication since the Santa Clara situation. The big loser there was not the public but former Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr., who originally opposed the spraying.

Still, one cannot blame some residents for expressing concern when the helicopter flies over, not once, but several times. They are confused and rightly concerned. Then you have the opportunists and others who move in to grab headlines and notoriety by feeding on those fears. They choose not to accept the latest studies, also from the Santa Clara experience, which disclosed no increase in health problems or birth defects after the Medfly battle there.

Learning to live with the Medfly is not an acceptable alternative to agriculture or the rest of California. Those who believe such cohabitation is possible miss the real environmental concern--the increase in pesticide use that would have to be made in the back yards of Southern Californians to allow them to grow their avocados and tomatoes and all the other myriad fruits and vegetables that are favored by home gardeners. Add to that the increased application that would be required in commercial agriculture, and you have a good reason to resolve to fight the Medfly, not learn to live with it.

Certainly there are people in Southern California vehemently opposed to the current Medfly eradication effort. Many of them are reasonable people. We must persuade them that the risks, real or imagined, are so low, so remote that eradication is the only logical course.