“The full scope of the blunder was not immediately apparent to Kerr. Kerr who introduced Africanized honey bees (Apis mellifera scutellata) to the Americas. Brazilian geneticist Warwick Estevam Kerr would have made a fine nominee. This international award could be presented annually in Stockholm by a sad clown wearing a lab coat and goggles, giving scientists that much more of an incentive to get things right for once. “It is strange and unfortunate that there is not a Nobel Prize for Really Bad Mistakes In Science. For example, this is from a blog promoting a book called The Animal Review: A Report Card. Most of the western press didn’t bother to investigate the reasons behind the Brazilian government’s dismissal of Kerr’s work and his qualifications.Īll of this is lost on most people who write about this subject. Sister Maurina Borges, who ran the Ribeirão Preto Orphanage, was an activist the soldiers were part of Brazil’s military dictatorship, committing crimes encouraged by the government. In 1969 he was re-arrested, this time for protesting that Brazilian soldiers who had raped and tortured a nun went unpunished. He was imprisoned in 1964 when he publicly fought government corruption. Although he was a geneticist and was at first entrusted with developing a better bee for Brazil’s farmers, the Brazilian military dictatorship attacked Kerr’s stand on civil rights. Warwick Kerr’s sour reputation came directly from the Brazilian government. He rightly assumed that tropical genetic stock would be more successful in his tropical country. Kerr’s goal was to improve the non-tropical honey bees which farmers were using in Brazil. Kerr’s importation of 26 queen bees from Tanzania is in league with importing Clydesdales long after Arabians and Morgans were already established. The African bee ( Apis mellifera scutellata) is a cousin of a common European honey bee, Apis mellifera iberiensis, which was in Brazil when the African queen bees arrived. Second, Kerr was not introducing a new species. Honey bees are not native to the western hemisphere. First, recall that all honey bees in the Americas are imported from somewhere else. In Dr Kerr’s day, the importation of bees from Africa was hardly daring. In today’s context, importing an alien creature from another continent seems horribly reckless. First, some background.ĭr Warwick Kerr brought Africanized genetic stock to South America in 1956. The man who brought African honey bees to South America was turned into a mysterious fiend who had “disappeared from sight” after “he turned killer bees loose”. When the Africanized hybrid honey bee entered our awareness in the 1970s, the bee was described as a killer bee (in Brazil, they called it the assassin). But Kerr did more to help his country’s agriculture than perhaps any other individual. And just like his bees, Dr Kerr has been much maligned and misunderstood in the popular press. Just like his bees, Kerr comes from hot, tropical Brazil. Today (September 9) is the 94th birthday of Warwick Estevam Kerr, the man who made the Killer Bees.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |