ExSqueeze Me?

[elfs]

I've never heard of the magazine Resurgence, "the leading international magazine for ecological and spiritual thinking," but their ridiculous broadside against chemistry, of all things, makes me wonder if they're maybe a little too egotistical. Or simply absurd.

The article is entitled Heart of Darkness, and it's about nanotechnology. Calling nanotechnology (which is really just a sub-discipline of chemistry) "grim and frightening," the authors portray those in the discipline as intoxicated pollyanas following their muses to the destruction of us all.

Some tidbits include: "the prevailing western scientific model assumes scientific inquiry to be both a neutral and (paradoxically enough) a positive activity." I was under the assumption that most forms of inquiry, whether scientific or artistic or religious or historical, were primarily positive activities; that adding to human knowledge was better than enjoying ignorance.

But the most precious quote is this one: "one sometimes wonders which century the world just, barely, lived through - surely not the century of chemical, biological and nuclear warfare, global warming, acid rain and Frankenfoods?"

Can anyone name a single person who was harmed by "Frankenfood?" I can point to the billions in India and surrounding countries today who are not starving thanks to the first generation of Frankenfoods. I suppose if they were starving, Resurgence would be livid about "The West" not doing enough, but because they're not starving, that is because the problem doesn't exist, it's not worth commenting on.

Vicious, small-minded, and yes, Luddite. They should embrace the term.

Comments

[trickofthedark.livejournal.com]

Hi! You don't know me, but I'm a fan of your blog and the newsy things you post. I should have posted long ago to say 'Hi, I think you're fab," but I never did until now when I had a different opinion. So, I thought I better make it clear first that I'm a big fan and I love reading your writing. Hi, I think you're fab. =)

I can point to the billions in India and surrounding countries today who are not starving thanks to the first generation of Frankenfoods.

I'm all for science and new tech (I think the medical potentials of cloning are fabulous: new organs!) but over here in other countries we hear very different talk about GM foods.

We hear that they cause superweeds, and that the bugkillers that one is required to use with them kill large local systems of good bugs that other farmers want for pollination. We hear about small farmers who get sued because they save seeds (and then get in debt and committ suicide). And we hear that it's the WTO and global food distribution that is the cause of poverty and that allowing in the GM food companies will be very bad for local agribusiness.

I'm sure you are right that the magazine you were reading was entirely ridiculous. But many living out of America (and I'm talking farming conservatives and such in New Zealand and elsewhere in Europe) really think there IS something to the idea that GM foods may not be a good thing and are keeping a close eye on what happens with them.
~D

Re: June 2002 BBC report

[elfs.livejournal.com]

Okay, does any of this constitute evidence that people have been harmed or people will be harmed by the deployment of GM crops? The bit about crop risk is most telling-- the US corn crop has been a monoculture for 50 years and so far there hasn't been a problem. The US corn crop is the result of uncontrolled mutation, by the way-- why do we feel safer eating something we don't understand, than something we do?