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Planting a GM future

As a geneticist-bioethicist with no links to the GM food industry, I am heartened that the commercial planting of GM maize is to be permitted (Letters, February 20). The alteration of genetic sequences has been carried out for millennia by agriculturalists using selective breeding. GM technology simply offers a more efficient means to alter genetic sequences, thus providing an enhanced means for improving food.

Moreover, neither evidence nor logic supports the supposed health risks of GM food disingenuously alleged by opponents of the technology. Indeed, millions of consumers in the US and elsewhere have been eating GM food on a large scale for several years, with no negative health effects. Of course, some individuals are allergic to particular GM foods ? but food allergies are not restricted to GM foods, nor do allergies occur at a higher level with GM foods than with "natural" foods. Indeed, it is ironic that GM technology offers the means to remove known natural allergens from crop plants.

Biotechnology is one of the few growth sectors within our beleaguered industrial economy. Had the government listened to the anti-GM propaganda and prohibited the commercial planting of GM crops, the country would not only have taken a step backwards in terms of scientific progress, but such prohibition it would also have jeopardised the UK's future as a hi-tech industrial economy. We ought to ignore the shrill voices of the anti- science Luddites and embrace GM technology.

Kevin Smith

Dundee

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Thats from The Guardian's "Letters" section.

Hmmmm. Where to start. How about at the beginning?

As a geneticist-bioethicist with no links to the GM food industry

It is irrelevant that you have no connections with the GM food industry. Your vested interest lies in your scandalous and poison releasing chosen career. If these plants are legalized, you might get the chance to practice your evil...and get PAID. That is the REAL reason you are "heartened" by this bad news.

The alteration of genetic sequences has been carried out for millennia by agriculturalists using selective breeding.

Selective breeding is a slow and NATURAL process; in other words, the genes combine through the force of nature, and not via manmade cutting and slicing at the molecular level.

more efficient means to alter genetic sequences, thus providing an enhanced means for improving food.

That is utter and complete bollocks. Do you know how a "more efficient means to alter genetic sequence" is done? They take genetic material, put it in a Petri dish, and then expose the contents to ionizing radiation, which damages the exposed material at the molecular level. The kook^H^H^H^H scientists then try and grow something from the results of this scattergun technique. When something grows, they try and find out what its characteristics are and what it?s good for, if anything. This is as far from genetic alteration through selective breeding as you can get. Selective breeding produces strains that are natural and that exhibit traits that are desirable (if that?s what you are breeding for; some selective breeding produces this kind of thing) and more or less predictable. It is not dangerous. There are no ill effects to the environment from cross pollination...its slow, and that?s what the companies cannot bear; to have to do the hard work of breeding many generations of plants to get a desired strain. They want profits NOW, and nature doesn?t work on a NOW basis.

neither evidence nor logic supports the supposed health risks of GM food disingenuously alleged
Of course, some individuals are allergic to particular GM foods

You contradict yourself in the same paragraph. There is nothing wrong with being self contradictory, but there is everything wrong with it when your work is going to be released into the environment. The UK has the highest levels of Allergies in Europe. This has only been the case recently. Obviously something is terribly wrong with the modern environment (taking as given that the human population has not changed into ...something else in the intervening years. But I have already spoken about THAT have I not? :] )

To deliberately add these new, known allergens into the food chain is totally INSANE.

offers the means to remove known natural allergens from crop plants.

You can?t do that. You dont know how to do that. And more to the point, we have to find out WHY people are more allergic today than they were in the 1950's before we start releasing GM plants into the environment to solve a problem that is being caused by who knows what.

industrial economy
scientific progress
hi-tech industrial economy

Bullshit bullshit bullshit. Money is your God. Go back to university and re-train as a space engineer - that?s what the UK needs more of. Scientific Progress, and any kind of progress is not measured by a blinkered elite of salary addicts, and a "high-tech industrial economy" does not mean one that HAS to include the work of your particular specialty.

This all boils down one thing; to whom does the environment belong? If I own a farm, should my neighbor be allowed to plant something that will poison and destroy the value of my crops? If this was in any way a fair country, anyone?s plants that were shown to be contaminated by cross pollination would be able to sue the manufacturers of GM plants, and their neighbors for the losses. If the Biotech garbage makers knew that they could be put out of business by a torrent of lawsuits resulting from proven contamination claims, they would never have released even the test plants into the environment, never mind full scale production. And of course, no farmer would take the risk of being sued if he knew that cross pollination was bound to happen. GM would be a non starter, at least in a country with a fair legal system.

The Environment must belong to everyone collectively, otherwise, Mosanto and the other companies staffed with insane, 100% ego personality scientists would be able to alter all life forever, and we the chattel, will have no choice but to literally eat it. People like this ?Kevin Smith? if that is his real name, are, literally, the problem. Their blind belief in the God of money and science puts them on a pedestal above all other people and above all morality and responsibility. Only they are right, only their view of nature and the world is correct, and you will EAT what they give you to eat or you are a an anti science screeching Luddite.

I am more than happy to break the following news to these people; the environment belongs to everyone equally, an no company, no single person has the right to permanently alter the environment for the sake of an experiment or the almighty dollar. If it is found later that you and your colleagues are in error, and that your work has damaged the environment, I guarantee you that you will, along with your corporate masters, be hauled into court in the Hague, where you will all face charges of crimes against humanity. You will not be able to claim that you were just following orders, or that you were doing what you thought was the right thing. You will be found guilty, and you will deserve your sentence, because you were warned not to release these organisms into the environment, but decided to do so anyway, to keep up with the joneses and to retain your salaries.

Die you pigs DIE!

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