Roads Paved with Good Intentions

Just a few days ago the EPA approved the release of male mosquitoes to eliminate or slow down the spread of mosquito-borne diseases. Here is a Nature Magazine clip of that news:

“Instead of relying on genetic engineering, MosquitoMate infects lab-grown mosquitoes with the common bacterium Wolbachia pipientis, which affects mosquitoes but not animals or humans.

The Wolbachia-infected male mosquitoes (which don't bite) mate with the wild populations of female Asian tiger mosquitoes (which do bite). The eggs fertilized by MosquitoMate's male mosquitoes won't hatch because the paternal chromosomes don't form properly due to the effects of the bacterium.”

This is supposed to be good news, right? Let’s hope it is, however, we should not forget that there were many instances in the past when the “cure” was worse than the “disease”.

In late 1900s mongooses were brought into Puerto Rico and other Caribbean islands to eradicate rats that were infesting the sugar cane fields. Mongoose, a native of India, is a voracious predator and it would certainly have found rats to be quite delectable; however, so were birds, reptiles and amphibians and chicken, naturally.  The mongoose, thriving even today, caused the decline of and sometimes the extinction of local species. The “hired” predator is now a bigger pest in habitats where it is at the top of the food chain. Meanwhile, rats are still a problem.

At one time, China declared war on sparrows because they fed on grain before harvest. Sparrows also fed on insects. Well, yield in rice production actually went down when the sparrow population declined from the massive eradication campaign but over population by insects did a number on the rice field.

The Story of the Snail Darter Fish

Depending on which side one stands on this story, it was either a case of extreme environmentalism or whether progress was almost halted by a small fish about twice the length of a paper clip. In the 70’s the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) was constructing a dam on the Tellico River for a major hydroelectric project. It had been approved by Congress and Federal money was allocated and was near completion when opponents to the dam took up the case of the snail darter fish. The dam, safer than a nuclear reactor and cleaner than fossil-fuel-fired electric plants, will cause the extinction of the small fish. It was protected under The Endangered Species Act. A court injunction temporarily stopped the construction. After much delay a higher court allowed the project to be completed citing that so much money was already spent. Likely not cited in the decision was the fact that electric energy production for a large population area outweighed the fate of the fish.

But there was a twist. After the dam was completed, it was discovered that the darter fish existed in several other tributary bodies of water along the same river system and thriving well. It was subsequently taken off the endangered species list.  This darter fish story was cited in a California case where another fish, the delta smelt, is in the middle of another cause celeb involving water supply distribution.

There are a number of stories enough to fill a whole book where good intentions by well-meaning folks, and even by government bureaucrats, backfired or resulted in ill effects worse than the original malady. Consider the case of the rat tails in French colonial era Vietnam.

The Rat Tail Story

In 1897, the French introduced the sewer system in Hanoi to modernize the city and promote wide spread use of indoor plumbing. Nine miles of underground sewer system was completed when the rat population exploded almost overnight – the cool dark sewers were ideal breeding ground for the rodents. Fearing bubonic plague and other diseases, the French colonial government decided a rat eradication campaign. Rat killers were dispatched to hunt the rodents down in the sewers. Although so many rats were killed, the program was far from a total success. The well-to-do folks whose homes were naturally served by the sewer system, thus the first the rats would go to when they emerged from underground, complained loudly.  The rat hunting was opened to all citizens who were enticed with a one cent incentive for every rat tail brought in. The tail idea was conceived so government officials and facilities did not have to deal with rat corpses. Rat tails started pouring in by the thousands. It was fine until it was later discovered that rats with no tails were seen running around. It turned out that a good number of “rat catchers” were capturing rodents, cut off their tails and released them so they can continue to breed, thus ensuring a healthy source of rat tails to sell to the government. In extreme cases some folks resorted to actually breeding rats in cages, poultry like, which were more efficient and less labor intensive than going out each night to hunt for the hapless rodents. If you’re interested, check out my musing, “When Rattle Snakes Don’t Rattle Anymore”.

The Barbra Streisand Effect

“In 2003, Streisand sued photographer Kenneth Adelman for distributing aerial pictures of her mansion in Malibu. But Adelman was no paparazzo—he operated the California Coastal Records Project, a resource providing more than 12,000 pictures of the California coast for scientists and researchers to use to study coastal erosion. At the time Streisand sued Adelman for $50 million, the picture in question had been accessed a whopping total of six times—twice by Streisand’s lawyers. Nonetheless, her lawsuit stated that the photos explicitly showed people how to gain access to her private residence”.

The lawsuit, before which only a handful of people knew of Ms. Streisand’s expensive mansion, resulted in over a  million views by people who otherwise would have been oblivious to Ms. Streisand’s residential location.

The Economist described the Streisand Effect as, when “efforts to suppress a juicy piece of online information can backfire and end up making things worse for the would-be censor.”

Not only did Ms. Streisand lose the $50 million lawsuit, she had to pay over $150,000 in court fees incurred by Mr. Adelman.

There are two main themes from these stories. First, we have classic examples that best exemplify the old proverb, “The roads to hell are paved with good intentions”. Second, it is not a wise idea to make such a big deal of something when your intention is to make sure it does not become one in the first place.  These proverbial statements are also called aphorisms – concise statements of facts or generally considered truths expressed in as few words as possible. For example, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”.

There are a few more examples worth noting that did not seem obvious immediately: eradication of wolves from some U.S. National Parks; widespread use of DDT to eradicate harmful insects that almost wiped out the entire population of bald eagles; environmental disaster not initially seen when beavers were hunted down to near extinction for their pelts. On the other hand, the prohibition managed to kill off legitimate businesses immediately but did not eradicate alcohol consumption; instead, it ushered the birth of organized crime from liquor smuggling, which became the “business model” for other crime organizations that today are more sophisticated than ever.

Let’s do a speculative one.

There were some analyses made by a handful of folks on the ascendancy of the “Trump Phenomenon”. Early during the Republican primary, the mainstream media (MSM) were seen to give Trump premier coverage over his opponents. The MSM reason was that he was a news maker and so he got a good share of media attention. One line of analysis was that the media was so much into making sure that there was another breakthrough political event (i.e. Pres. Obama was elected the first black president) when for the first time the country will have had its first woman president. The idea, according to the speculation, was that Trump will be so much easier to beat in a general election. Collectively, the media, so the claim goes, wanted Trump to be the Republican candidate. Trump was prone to self-inflicted political wounds and his bombastic, flamboyant personality did not conform to generally accepted norms of political conduct and would easily have been a weaker candidate. MSM, it was concluded, promoted Trump’s ascendancy and once he was the candidate, then the same MSM can easily bring him down. What they did not count on was how poorly Mrs. Clinton ran her campaign. She also committed her fair share of self-inflicted rhetorical wounds, i.e. “deplorables” comments, and not campaigning in states she assumed she was going to win handily. If true, MSM also underestimated Trump’s indefatigable energy and determination to work hard on his own campaign.

Can we classify this as an example of good intentions that did not result in what it was intended for? Is today’s predominantly negative coverage by the media of Pres. Trump’s administration a reflexive effort by MSM to rectify their miscalculation? Are they trying to bring down, someone in their mind, the “monster” they created? I leave that to the political pundits. And there is almost an unlimited arena for punditry to last at least through the next three years. I think the jury is still out as to whether the last election was a case of a road paved with “good” intentions that is now full of potholes. Note “good” is in quotation marks.

Next time you hear politicians promise another good thing for the people, first ask yourself if it is just another road paved with good intentions.