Fungus suspected in Cowichan Bay death

Fungus suspected in Cowichan Bay death

Times Colonist

Thursday, April 17, 2008

The B.C. Coroners Service is investigating the death of a Cowichan Bay woman at Victoria General Hospital Tuesday morning who is suspected to have died from a yeast-like fungus found on trees on Vancouver Island.

Regional coroner Rose Stanton said the 45-year-old woman’s death is under investigation but she is suspected to have died from Cryptococcus gattii. Results won’t be available until the end of the week. About one person dies from the disease in B.C. each year.

Cryptococcus is a microscopic yeast-like fungus.

A variety of this fungus is called Cryptococcus gattii, according to the B.C. Centre for Disease Control.

The fungus has been living on trees on the east coast of Vancouver Island, first identified in Parksville’s Rathtrevor Park in 1999. About eight people have died from the disease since that time.

People and animals exposed to this fungus can become sick with cryptococcal disease — a rare fungal disease that can affect the lungs, resulting in pneumonia, and nervous system, manifesting as meningitis in humans.

© Times Colonist (Victoria) 2008

Fungus-decomposing what the world proses…

From:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fungus

Occurring worldwide, most fungi are largely invisible to the naked eye, living for the most part in soil, dead matter, and as symbionts of plants, animals, or other fungi. They perform an essential role in all ecosystems in decomposing organic matter and are indispensable in nutrient cycling and exchange. Some fungi become noticeable when fruiting, either as mushrooms or molds. Many fungal species have long been used as a direct source of food, such as mushrooms and truffles and in fermentation of various food products, such as wine, beer, and soy sauce. More recently, fungi are being used as sources for antibiotics used in medicine and various enzymes, such as cellulases, pectinases, and proteases, important for industrial use or as active ingredients of detergents. Many fungi produce bioactive compounds called mycotoxins, such as alkaloids and polyketides that are toxic to animals including humans. Some fungi are used recreationally or in traditional ceremonies as a source of psychotropic compounds. Several species of the fungi are significant pathogens of humans and other animals, and losses due to diseases of crops (e.g., rice blast disease) or food spoilage caused by fungi can have a large impact on human food supply and local economies.

Etymology and definition

The English word fungus is directly adopted from the Latin fungus, meaning “mushroom”, used in Horace and Pliny.^[3] This in turn is derived from the Greek word sphongos/σφογγος (“sponge”), referring to the macroscopic structures and morphology of some mushrooms and molds and also used in other languages (e.g., the German Schwamm (“sponge”) or Schwammerl for some types of mushroom).

Ecology

Polypores growing on a tree in Borneo

Although often inconspicuous, fungi occur in every environment on Earth and play very important roles in most ecosystems. Along with bacteria, fungi are the major decomposers in most terrestrial (and some aquatic) ecosystems, and therefore play a critical role in biogeochemical cycles and in many food webs. As decomposers, they play an indispensable role in nutrient cycling, especially as saprotrophs and symbionts, degrading organic matter to inorganic molecules, which can then re-enter anabolic metabolic pathways in plants or other organisms.^[32][33]

Symbiosis

Many fungi have important symbiotic relationships with organisms from most if not all Kingdoms.^[34][35][36] These interactions can be mutualistic or antagonistic in nature, or in case of commensal fungi are of no apparent benefit or detriment to the host. ^[37][38][39]

Morning Dew–from my Prison Notebooks

I’ll try and kick it off…(Just woke up 5 mins ago, giving some stream of consciousness a shot here…)

Listening to some Ben Harper from Lifeline–Younger than Today & Fight outta you

“I would rather take a punch, then not give you a shot…I’d rather find out who you are, then who you’re not…Don’t let it take the fight outta you” BH

Last meeting, we talked about Leo Panitch and Sam Gindin’s introductory essay from the Socialist Register, can’t remember the exact title right now, but it is from the 2004 edition on the Imperialism of Our Time.

http://socialistregister.com/recent/2004

The whole book is basically about reintroducing the word Imperialism into discourses, conversations, thoughts about Amercian power, American Hegemony, American Exceptionalism–whatever you might’ve (or are) calling it according to Panitch and Gindin actually refers to the Imperialism nexus of the present, that grows out from the past era of inter-imperial rivalry upto WWI.

Summaries aside, the importance of this article is that it helps the FUNGUS name the powers it wishes to speak truth to, or even more correct–it helps having a historical, conceptual, theoretical analysis of what we like to call the MACHINE.

Aside–the Machine, or evil?, just think Morpheus in the Matrix giving you the choice–blue pill or red pill–depending on what you choose, you’ll know what we’re talking about when we speak of the machine–a system, a structure, ways of organizing life that put the living species and ecosystems of earth in the slavery of the interests of a very small few elites, maybe their fucked up aliens? I don’t know, but it damn near time for our generations to really start fucking them up…sand in the wheels of the machine–to put those damn grinding gears to halt!

Ok, back to the Socialist Register–we read little more than half the article, and will finish today. After which I’ll put up a better analysis, with some questions for online folks to answer…

BUY NOTHING DAY

2nd outing of action in the name of the Fungus, and well, we had a great day of action. Spreading the good word, if sometimes problematic, of the busters, downtown.

I consider it like giving people a little shock, nothing taser deadly, but maybe like putting a fork in socket or something. And you could see it, sometimes, jolting people out of there zombie shopping states–double takes, stares, looking(but not looking), scowls, some smiles too!

We’re (I’m) not saying that buying nothing for a day will solve everything, we’re just trying to show folks (including ourselves) it doesn’t have to be like this, it shouldn’t–consuming more than you need, trying to fill some void (that emptiness inside you that most aren’t sure what to call) at the expense of others, on the backs of others. Maybe that’s one of the problems, that we see them as others…those whose slave-like service for the production of goods for our gross overconsumption.

Forget about what Jesus would do…think about What your gonna do differently from this day forward about your consumption and act on it muthafucka!

Myself included…I speak to myself on this as much as I do the readers of this thing.

Other:

• Meet again today
• finish Imperialism article
• discuss Mission Statement(s)
• think about future actions, I’ve got one in mind:
  • http://www.forumsocialmundial.org.br/noticias_01.php?cd_news=2402&cd_language=2
  • Instead of the centralized events of past editions, WSF 2008 will have thousands of activities organized by social movements, unions, groups, networks and other organisations in their own regions. This will cover a one-week period, culminating in a Global Day of Action on January 26th. The global mobilization will be directly linked to the local agendas of social actors, making the week full of debates, cultural and artistic activities, demonstrations, protests, direct actions, meetings and many other ways of showing that another world is possible.
• Fungus.co.uk? Starting up a UK fungal node–care package to get them started?
• Podcast–musical score

To Do’s:

• start working on podcast
• fix up website/blog
• format for the next few meetings–articles, projects, art, thoughts anyone?
• insert more here if I missed any…

Quote of the Day:“African-Amercian orator, Frederick Douglass, a militant abolitionist and himself an escaped slave, who wrote”:

Those who profess freedom, yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without ploughing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful wrath of its many waters. Power concedes nothing without demands–it never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to, and you have the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them. And these will continue until they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.

-from Taiaiake Alfred’s Wasase: Indigenous pathways of action and freedom

peace.

Mushroom Documentary

Hidden in the shadows, intertwined with virtually everything on the planet, mushrooms and fungus are an incredible dynamic force – they stink, ooze, metabolize, synthesize and decompose their way down a path of inebriation, murder and mayhem.

http://www.deepbluefunkfilms.com/mushroomtreat.html

This film will be the first full-length documentary about the role and scope of fungus in our lives and environment; exploring a vast, untapped, and forgotten kingdom. Fungi are a branch of life as diverse and important as either the plant or animal kingdom, and yet people know very little about them. Hundreds of millions of years older than plant life and sharing a closer genetic make-up with animals, the fungi remain a mystery. Underworld: The Fun, Violent, Sexy Mushroom Movie will challenge its viewers to accept some radical ideas about communication, individuality, sexuality and the nature of death. In the fungal world sexual pairings are enormously intricate, allowing as many as 21000 pairings – a concept that humans have a hard time grasping. The largest organism on the planet is a single fungus in Oregon that stretches over 2200 acres.