Re: [pf] Biotech Panderers

At 14:50 7/8/2001 -0500, vicki wrote to the PF list:
>... like others on the list, i have concerns about genetically engineered
food, and am surprised to see it proposed here {at:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A30279-2001Aug3.html ,Fw. in
http://csf.colorado.edu/mail/pfvs/2001III/msg00852.html }; as part of a
"positive future."
> it's the  "risks" referred to in the article ... that worry me. 
>scientists don't seem to be able to categorize these risks—at least as far
as i can understand—which to me seems like playing with fire.
>

· The article was posted to contribute to the discussion about whether
those risks _are_ "manageable", whether "irrational consumer fears" should
be ignored. A better view of what consumers want - and that's what it
should be about, not what biotech corporations want - is: 
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010807/sc/food_australia_genetics_dc_1.htm
l , posted to PF at:
http://csf.colorado.edu/mail/pfvs/2001III/msg00865.html

· I agree: "scientists don't seem to be able to categorize these risks" and
I am a retired scientist. I am actually quite doubtful that most scientists
have the knowledge and experience that might equip them to evaluate the
full range of risks of releasing never-before-existing living organisms
into the environment. That involves ecology - only known-about in a
rudimentary way by almost all scientists - and the Precautionary Principle,
which hasn't a chance when there are huge fortunes apparently to be made.
  There are also ethical issues hardly ever mentioned. The NZ Royal
Commission on Genetic Modification's report at least spends a whole chapter
on this (see my recent posts):
http://csf.colorado.edu/mail/pfvs/2001III/msg00849.html (& probably: )
http://csf.colorado.edu/mail/pfvs/2001III/msg00868.html

· I have to say that a great deal of what has been posted to the Positive
Futures list, this year particularly, has been about fears about the
future, and little about envisioning (and taking steps toward) a positive
future.
  In the last week and a half there's been a marked slow-down in number of
posts per day, I think because those who were sending large numbers of
forwards have been using more restraint.

· To get a better flavour of the PF list, use the list of posts
http://csf.colorado.edu/mail/pfvs/2001III/ since July 1. {Earlier:
http://csf.colorado.edu/mail/pfvs/ }


> but i'm not sure i understand all the issues—everything is so complicated
anymore! i dont' mean to oppose progress. i'm just not sure what progress is.
>     vicki  colorado springs, co
>
· I am one of the diminishing number of people who began their adult life
truly believing in Progress - we could see it happening all around us most
months of the year, in the late 1950s.

· My science experience and the knowledge gained by living in many parts of
the world, watching a huge flood of new products brought to the market as
soon as possible (starting with DDT, plastics and Thalidomide), has
convinced me that it's a lottery, whether a new development contributes to
Progress or to Regress. And I truly doubt that there is much to the idea of
progress; certainly it's half accident, not something to count on. Like the
end of the Cold War: leaders acceded to it, they didn't lead (except maybe
Gorbachev).

· You say: "i dont' mean to oppose progress".  There is a place for small-c
conservatives, who are extremely doubtful about proposed change - the "Show
Me" attitude; so questioning new things, particularly as major as
genetically engineered living organisms, _is_a_good_thing_.

· There used to be some kind of balance. In science, there was (I can't say
there still is) a checking-out process involving peer-review and repeat
experiments by truly skeptical opponents; after _years_, sometimes decades,
the "new" development became refined and the improved version became
accepted as "this _is_ how the world works". New facts, in other words. The
innovators had to go through a "trial by fire" under the scrutiny of those
conservative scoffers who initially said: "no way!"

· That's mostly gone, now the technological innovators have become far too
powerful. The government is no longer willing to act as more than a token
gatekeeper. At least that's my impression of the US government, which sees
fostering economic growth as its main job; IMO they don't care whether
their citizens are treated as the guinea-pigs in the hugest experiment the
world has ever known.

· Sorry; not much Positive Future there, is there?

David.
David MacClement [davd @ ihug.co.nz] (remove spaces)
http://davd.tripod.com/GrRR-010727_titles.html#top
http://www.geocities.com/davd.geo/index.html#top
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