Scorched earth disease control

Way back in 1858 Nongqause, a prophetess of the Xosa Tribe in South Africa, had a vision telling her that all cattle of the tribe would have to be slaughtered, having been reared by contaminated hands. She said that she had met the spirits of three of her ancestors who had told her that the Xhosa people should destroy their crops and kill their cattle. In return, the spirits would sweep the British settlers into the sea. Then their granaries would fill again and their kraals would have more and better cattle.

In the cattle-killing frenzy that followed they killed between 300,000 and 400,000 head of cattle. In the resulting famine, the population of the province dropped from 105,000 to fewer than 27,000. This is a photo of Nongqause's gravestone:

Neither the cattle nor the Xosa tribe recovered from this deadly cure.

Every species has its lurking danger waiting to pounce – Hendra virus for horses, Johne's disease in sheep, veroa mites attacking bees, bird flu, swine fever, mad cow disease, monkey pox, wooden tongue, myxomatosis – even the plant kingdom has its rusts and blights.

The spirit of Nongquase lives on in today's bureaucracy – the bureaucratic instinct is to kill every member in any threatened herd to ensure all sick ones die.

There is one fatal flaw in the scorched earth disease control so loved by the bureaucracy – it fails to encourage the survival and multiplication of resistant individuals. Those individuals who survive, showing that they are resistant to the disease, are also slaughtered – there is no survival of the fittest, no evolution of a resistant strain under the Nongquase remedy.

For example, a disease was detected in Australian beehives – it is being managed by a scorched earth policy of isolating and exterminating all nearby bees. Naturally honey supplies are dwindling and there are fears for the pollination of fruit trees and crops.

In our local Woolworths, the long shelves usually devoted to eggs were empty last week. Why? Followers of Nongquase found some sick hens on some farms and then murdered every hen in every flock where "bird flu" was detected. Entire flocks are culled when even one bird tests positive.

They are forever seeking more efficient ways to select the flocks to slaughter.

In the sad but moving Australian film "Rams", modern flock exterminators go after sheep, killing every sheep in the district to eliminate a few with Ovine Johne's disease. But one cunning old sheepman, distraught that they planned to destroy his life's work in breeding better sheep, refused to accept their Nongquase solution. He hid a few ewes and his top class ram in his cellar, sprouting grass for them in his bathroom. He let them out onto the grass at night. But a diligent visiting inspector noticed fresh sheep poo on his lawn. When discovery threatened, he fled to the hills with his remnant sheep. They all survived (in real life the bureaucrats would probably have pursued the refugees with drones and marksmen in helicopters).

"Foot and Mouth" is used by politicians everywhere with hidden agendas to crush live exports or local meat consumption.

And in America now, an outbreak of measles is being used to bludgeon Amish people into vaccinations they normally refuse. One recalcitrant Amish parent was fined US$118,000.