The Health bulletin [serial] - University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

The
Insecticide
That Turns
The Bug
Against
itself
by Isaac Asimoy
Reprinted by permission from
THINK Magazine, published by IBM,
Copyright 1967 by International Busi-
ness Machines Corporation.
In his campaign against the unde-
sirables of the insect world, man has
produced an impressive array of chem-
icals and pesticides. Yet our tactics fal!
far short of total victory; insects have
a way of building up resistance to
chemical warfare, and what worked last
year may be useless today. But ultimate
victory may be af hand in the
special strategy developed by a Har-
vard biologist.
June, 1967 THE HEALTH BULLETIN
The search for new insecticides seems
virtually endless; man and bug appear
to be on a nonstop merry-go-round of
chemical attack and genetic defense.
The reason is clear. There are always
some insects with natural resistance to
a particular insecticide. These flourish
and produce young by the millions,
while their weaker kinfolk die. In a
few years, the hardy breeds are almost
unaffected by a spray that had earlier
seemed an angel of death.
Man's attack moreover, is a doubleedged
sword. What kills undesirable in-
sects may also kill desirable ones—or
may be poisonous to birds, livestock,
even man himself. What we really need
is an ideal bug-stopper, one that kills
insects without affecting other forms
of life. Better yet, we need one that
kills particular, undesirable insects
without affecting others. To top that,
we need one to which the undesira-
bles cannot become resistant.
This is asking a good deal. But actu-
ally, something of the sort has already
been found. It has been developed by
Dr. Carroll Williams, a professor of bi-
ology at Harvard who has been studying
insects for almost thirty years. And
while Dr. Williams' material is not yet
available commercially, the necessary
negotiations are under way between
the chemical industry, the Federal Government
and the scientists in question.
Although Dr. Williams' object is to
kill insects, he is clearly fond of those
he works with. When he shows a visi-
tor a jar of crawling bugs, his craggy,
high-cheekboned face lights up and his
deepset eyes sparkle. "Look at them,"
he says, "They're cute rascals." But he
knows which side he's on. Cute those
rascals may be, but they are his ene-
mies. To cope with them, he has adopted
the judo approach: don't whack
away by main force; use the enemy's
own strength against him. Since the
insect uses certain chemicals within