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Did you know that Yale Professor Arthur Galston was horrified that his research as a graduate student in 1943, on the use of 2,3,5-triiodobenzoic acid (TIBA) to encourage the flowering of soybeans, in which he noted that high levels had a defoliant effec  was being used by The British and U.S. military as Agent Orange and used extensively in Malaya and Vietnam in the 1950’s.

Galston became a bioethicist, and spoke out against such uses of science.

As director of the Division or Biological Sciences at Yale, in Feb 1970, he made the suggestion at a conference in Washington on War and National Responsibility that  a new international agreement to ban “Ecocide”—the willful destruction of the environment.

In doing so, he pointed with alarm to United States defoliation and crop‐destroying practices in South Vietnam, where he said there is evidence of “irreversible damage” to plant life.

Because of the interrelationship of all life in an eco logical system, such damage could also have long range effects on animals and humans as well. For example, Professor Gaiston noted that the destruction by defoliants of mangroves lining the estuaries of South Vietnam eliminates “one of the most important ecological niches for the completion of the life cycle of certain shellfish and migratory fish.” This development could affect the health and welfare of South Vietnamese who depend heavily on such marine life for protein.

A world that is increasingly mindful of the threat to all life inherent in heedless tampering with the environment cannot be indifferent to the consequences of deliberate interference with the ecological balance.

 Galston's ethical objections led President Nixon to end the use of Agent Orange in 1971.

This law on Ecocide as a Crime is NOT a NEW idea! 

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