Subject: To Kill or Not To Kill

From: [email-masked] (AROUTIOUN AGADJANIAN)
Date: Thu, 10 Nov 1994 21:15:30 +0000

Dear Beekeepers,

I would like to invite your attention to posting 'To Kill or Not to
Kill'. Originally it was prepared for sci.bio.ecology newsgroup. But I
thought the theme discussed in it might be of equal interest to you.

I think that results of our investigations could prompt unusual ways of
increasing the efficiency of honey production.

We are ready to any form of collaboration in investigating this
phenomenon on different species of bee.

TO KILL OR NOT TO KILL

Human mostly treats the nature as an unwise consumer. He kills in huge
proportions the animals that he needs as food as well as the animals
that from his point of view are harmful. But often the results of such
mass destruction of animals are completely different. In some cases
nature figuratively speaking manages to protect itself: the
reproduction rate of killed animals increases in such extent that
humans have to spend more and more resources to keep the situation
under control. In most other cases nature for some reason turns to be
completely defenceless and because of human activities many biological
species are under threat  of extinction or already don't exist. Why?
Let's examine two typical cases. Human kills in equally huge numbers
fish (for food purposes by taking it out from water) and rats
(poisoning them by pesticides). Then how it happens that in the first
case the respond is a lot of fish species under the threat of
disappearing while in the second case we could only speak about some
limitation of numbers? Maybe we don't know something very important
about killing? Maybe we don't know something substantial about "how to
kill", something that could allow us eventually to get rid of rats in
our cities and to restore the numbers of fish populations?

Our team has developed a theory allowing new view at this problem. In
the course of  long term investigations we have come to a conclusion:
violent death of living creatures leads to increase in birth-rate in
survivors within population. This phenomenon is an integral part of
intrinsic mechanism providing natural regulation  of population
numbers.

To prove the link between reproduction rate of living creatures and
violent death rate within a population we have conducted a series of
experiments on laboratory animals (mice, rats, some species of insects,
aquarium fish). The experiment pattern was extremely simple similar to
that of well-known experiments aimed to study population self
regulation at the level of numbers in which populations of laboratory
animals are exploited as they might be by predators. In these
experiments we observed the reproduction rate in several identical
groups of animals from which the equal numbers of animals were removed.
The difference in our experiments was that the animals from the test
group were killed and then removed while the animals from the control
were just removed (An attempt was done to model what occurs
in nature). Results proved the theoretically predicted increase in
reproduction rate in the test groups.

Whether it is ethical to conduct such experiments for example on rats
in order to prove that all methods of control of rats (as well as any
other kind of pests) population based on killing not only  is unethical
but biologically and economically not justified and they principally
cannot bring the desirable results - decrease of economical loss due to
rat populations? The results of such investigations (which
unfortunately otherwise than through experiments on laboratory animals
is not possible to conduct) could give us so important knowledge to
solve our problems in dealing with reproduction in nature and save a
lot of animals on Earth from being killed as well as could help us to
save environment and our food from increasing pollution by chemicals.
Would it be ethical to conduct similar experiments on fish in order to
find the right methods of fishing giving the nature possibility for
restoring the numbers of fish populations? (We think that the possible
solution of overfishing problem might be the killing of small numbers
of fish in water instead of  taking them all out alive while fishing.
That probably would be unethical from human morality point of view but
very useful to re-establish the ecological balance in the oceans.)
I attach the copy of certificate on  one the of series of experiments
that were conducted by independent researchers. (These experiments have
not been published. )

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copy translated from Russian

CERTIFICATE

This is to certify that based on the pattern suggested by Ignat
A.Agadjanian experiments were carried out from April to June 1989 by
the Department of Epidemiology, Yerevan State Medical Institute to test
the conception proposed by him claiming that dying creatures radiate
signals which increase the reproduction rate in survivors within a species.

Experiments were carried out on 835 identical (weight, age, etc.) non-
linear white rats (600 females and 235 males) equally divided into
experimental and control groups. Within 7 days one individual was
killed daily by 3% phosphide of zinc (dosage equals to that used by
sanitary epidemiological services for pest control) in experimental 
group and one was removed from control alive.

Investigations results with statistical accuracy equal to probability
of casual results below 0.001 showed that although other conditions
were maintained equal, compared with the control the number of pregnant
females in experimental group was 2.9 time more, the number of
offsprings - 3.45 time and the number of offsprings against one killed
individual - 10 time.

Conclusion: Investigated phenomenon can be successfully applied in the
economy, in pest control and in husbandry in particular.

K.M.Dechtsunian, DMs, Professor,
Supervisor of Investigations,
Head of Department of Epidemiology,
Yerevan State Medical Institute
signature

A.Dz.Ambartsumian, CMs,
Senior Experimenter,
Senior Research Worker
signature

Stamp of department of Epidemiology,
Yerevan State Medical Institute

Date: 29 June 1989

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AROUTIOUN AGADJANIAN

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From: [email-masked] (Adam Finkelstein)
Date: 11 Nov 1994 13:26:16 GMT

Interesting. Should be brought up in local bee meetings for intense,
thoughtful discussion.
Adam
-- 
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  Adam Finkelstein    [email-masked] | (awaiting my muse...)
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