Thursday, February 09, 2006

Children of the corn

Neil Shakespeare posted a bit of art starring a kitten atop some ears of corn (and scroll down the page, Blogger has rearranged the post), and I was thinking about how benign, tame and harmless corn is. Oh… the cobs make rough T.P. but good pipes, and even inedible corn is pretty and decorative.

Well, corn actually is benign, but a toxin in corn mold (and in the corn tortillas) is thought to be responsible for a large number of babies being born between 1990 and 1992 without brains. This happened down near the Texas/Mexico border. Even horses died from brain disease after eating the corn.

It’s pretty scary because they are not yet sure what caused this problem to develop, and may not ever find out.

2 comments:

Neil Shakespeare said...

Geez, is that TRUE? Holy cow, that IS scary. That's Stephen Kingish alright...

Blueberry said...

Unfortunately, it is true, and may never be solved. Some polluters have already settled out of court for whatever part they may have played in it, which may have been none at all. And my guess is that the well-being of some border town women who eat 110 tortillas a month is not the highest concern on the government radar, plus most of it happened 10 or more years ago.