On Thu, 07 Aug 2003 16:01:53 GMT, (Shiva) wrote:

Correction-- should read "Yet you are claiming that a second-hand
tale told by Ann Mansker about a SINGLE study [...] is EVIDENCE that
Rose Mosaic Virus can spread in our gardens?"

Oh please, Henry! You are a scientist, no? Retired, maybe, but once a
scientist always a scientist. Yet you are claiming that a second-hand
tale told by Ann Mansker about a SINGLE study--in other words a study
that has not been replicated anywhere, ever--in which some rows of
multiflora, some virused, some not, were planted close to one another
and trimmed with hedgetrimmers, and in a couple of years showed a ONE
to TWO percent incidence of the virus in plants ALLEGEDLY virus free
at the beginning of the study

is proof that Rose Mosaic Virus can spread in our gardens?

Is this what you are saying?

In addition to all the tacit problems with this statement, how do we
know--how did THEY know the original plants that were allegedly virus
free really were?

Thanks for the information, and please take this in the spirit in
which it is offered--that of a good lively debate.

I have noticed in Gardenweb and other fora that there are people who
get very, shall we say, emotional about RMV, and they tend to be
alarmists who love to exaggerate its ill effects.

It is going to take more than the above to convince me that it is
going to spread in my garden.



Henry Kuska, retired

http://home.neo.rr.com/kuska/