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Just writing to add my voice to any consensus on the undesirability
of manipulating our food in this way.
Those who advocate GM crops etc as faultless need a lesson
in sod's law perhaps?
Scientists, as a rule, build their knowledge using a broad
range of belief systems (including conservation-of-energy
style ideas, the importance of increasing our knowledge etc).
The wider community also hold some comparable beliefs, they
just come to different conclusions - I imagine a lot of us
are applying this very simple bit of layman's logic: things
have good sides and bad sides. The problem is - the more complex
the thing we're meddling with - the more intangible the process
of any emergent problems. Dogmatic supporters of the all-things-new-are-good
philosophy are acting in a dangerously arrogant way in my
opinion (Robin McKie's piece was an unfortunate example of
this I thought: "Improving the environment"?? Yeah,
I dare say we can cover all the bases when "improving"
what "nature" has arrived at through the tortuous
but more stable tried-and-tested evolutionary process. Of
course! We are masters of the universe! I may not agree with
fundamentalist interpretations of religion - but I also disagree
with absurdly fundamentalist instigations of pseudo-Popper-istic
science. And I fear intense and immediate "side-effects"
resulting from intensely and hurriedly applied changes.
Case in point: We cannot trust these new sciences if they
are not tested and conducted rigorously. How is it scientifically
acceptable to ignore, refuse to publish or "gag"
failures? In what way is "substantial equivalence"
a valid measurement criteria - do we even have to technology
to measure the results and repercussions of changes we enact?
The Institute of Science in Society are a marvellous example
of "good" scientists trying to establish some independent
risk assessments and to rescue scientific endeavour from the
clutches of amoral businesses.
My personal belief is that science as a whole, due to its
requirement on rational and conscious understanding of an
issue, inevitably ignores the "unknown" and the
"unknowable". These are actually untenable positions
in some respects. Just because you don't, or even can't, know
something, doesn't mean it isn't there unfortunately. Although
there is no rational or coherent course to take moving in
the "opposite" direction to these ideals, it would
be very nice indeed to see some greater acceptance of human
and scientific failure in scientific application before we
paint in the blue sky.
Tom Fox
English Teacher and all-round amateur enthusiast
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