A DANGEROUS 'SILVER BULLET'

Fungus As Anti-Drug Weapon Holds Too Many Risks

Colombia's minister of the environment is right to question a
controversial United Nations project to test the fungus fusarium
oxysporum on a few acres of coca plants there. Backed by the United
States, which has been looking for a silver bullet in its war on
drugs, the project aims to kill at the roots much of the cocaine grown
in Colombia.

That goal is laudable, but the risks may prove so grave that the
utmost caution is warranted, and the United States must not pressure
Colombia into hasty use of this biological weapon. A pathogen, the
fungus infects unwanted plants, turning their dying leaves pale green
or yellow.

And the fungus seems ideally suited for an anti-narcotics use: It can
survive in the soil for up to 40 years, can be attached to seeds and
dropped from high altitude. The fungus proved to be effective in Peru,
where an outbreak in the early 1990s hit the Upper Huallaga Valley,
wilting thousands of acres of coca. Since then, the idea of creating
intentional epidemics is considered the potential ''silver bullet'' in
the war on drugs. The UN plan aims to have the coca-killing
mycoherbicide sufficiently tested, developed and ready for large-scale
aerial application by 2002.

Yet this is the same fungus Florida was going to test against
marijuana crops last year until environmentalists and ranchers raised
a stink and got the state to shelve the plan. President Andres
Pastrana should listen to his environment minister, Mr. Juan Mayr, and
others who raise serious reservations about the fungus. They say it
presents a huge risk, not only to humans whose defense levels are low,
causing a variety of diseases, but also to Colombia's
biodiversity.

Bad enough that it might deprive many small coca farmers of their
livelihood, they say fusarium oxysporum might ruin the land because it
secretes toxins into the soil and into the plants that it attacks.
Worse, they fear, is that the fungus could convert into a pathogen
hostile to plants beyond the species related to coca. The social
consequences of war-driven refugees could be enormous, critics warn.

The tests carry diplomatic risks as well. It is baffling why
Washington, using the cloak of a UN agency, chose to carry out the
test in the midst of peace negotiations between the Pastrana
government and the guerrilla groups that have support in rural,
coca-growing areas.

Now critics of the plan fear that Washington will use as leverage the
$1.3 billion in aid Congress approved for Colombia to fight the drug
trade. Mr. Pastrana might feel compelled to short-circuit the tests
and put the fungus into widespread use.

Were that to happen, it could undermine his larger plan for ending the
civil war, the $3.5 billion Plan Colombia, that features training and
weapons for the military and crop substitution help for peasants who
lose coca plantations.

Fusarium oxysporum holds promise; additional research will help guide
scientists as to its effectiveness and safety. But until much more is
known, Mr. Pastrana and Mr. Mayr made the right decision to agree only
to tests. In the meantime, the United States should invest in other
crop substitution programs diverting Colombia's farmers away from coca.