GRANT REQUEST FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF UNICORN-DERIVED INSECTICIDES TO REPLACE DDT



PROBLEM



Last year, the United States banned the use of dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT), one of the most effective commercial insecticides in common use. This ban comes amid a wave of international restrictions on DDT, which are expected to continue to grow over the next decade. As a result, there is now a niche available for new potent industrial pesticides, equivalent in strength and efficacy to DDT, but without its many ecological and environmental hazards. We believe that such an insecticide could be produced from the processed horn of unicorns.



SOLUTION



The horn of the unicorn (Equus castus), when powdered and ingested, acts as a unique retrocausal contraceptive, eliminating all physical side-effects and results of sexual reproduction. When consumed by an organism with extant offspring, that organism's contributions to the genomes of its offspring are removed, which in most species results in the immediate death of those offspring. This effect has been most studied in mammals, particularly humans, but initial experimental trials suggest that it is just as effective in other species, including insects with external fertilization.



As a pesticide, unicorn horn has the potential to be one of the most effective insecticides in history, due to the eusocial nature of many insect species. Ingestion by a colony queen would result in the extermination of most or all of the colony. The destructive potential among non-eusocial insects is lower, but still greater than in mammals, due to the extremely high reproductive rates of most insect species.



BUSINESS CASE



This product would be marketed as an industrial pesticide, for use in rapidly exterminating large infestations of insects. Individual consumer use would likely be limited, due to the low demand for such potent insecticides among individuals, although termite infestations present a possible residential use case. Agricultural use would likely also be limited, as the indiscriminate nature of the pesticide would pose a significant threat to pollinators and other beneficial insects.



USE OF FUNDING



Most of the funding for this project would be directed towards researching neutralizing additives (see KNOWN ISSUES for details). However, once a suitable additive is discovered, it should be relatively cheap to design a manufacturing process that converts raw unicorn horn into a usable insecticide. As such, the overall R&D budget for this project is estimated to be no more than 250,000 USD.



KNOWN ISSUES



The largest obstacle to using unicorn horns as an insecticide is the non-discriminating nature of the contraceptive effect. If deployed unaltered, there is a significant risk of wide-spread ecological collapse caused by powdered horn accumulating in runoff. Some kind of additive would need to be developed that neutralizes the effects of the powder in non-pest species, which will require a greater understanding of the mechanism of action behind the contraceptive effect.