Letters to the Editor
Well, that's all for now.
Published Letters: 84 Editor's Choice: 10
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Hypocrisy Isn't Pretty
[Read the article: To Damascus with Nancy Pelosi]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]If the right-wing noise machine is apoplectic about Nancy Pelosi's trip to Syria and her wearing of a head scarf, I can only imagine how many drugs Rush Limbaugh would have to take to calm himself down at the sight of George W. Bush kissing and holding hands with the Saudi king ... in Texas no less.
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Came across a quote attributed to Abraham Lincoln today which seems relevant to current U.S. policy abroad:
"No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's consent. "
Sounds about right.
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Extremely important topic
[Read the article: Who is guarding the pharma-crop henhouse?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Personally, I've got very little faith left in our regulatory bodies, especially those responsible for industry oversight of cutting-edge (read $$$) technologies. I just tried, to no avail, to find an article I once read on the birth of our regulatory agencies around the turn of the last century, which detailed how industry basically created such agencies as a means to disinvite closer scrutiny. [Maybe at poclad.org?] It was not the genesis of public oversight that I had somehow imagined, and as jaded as I'm becoming it was nonetheless kind of shocking and disheartening.
What frightens me most about the biopharm topic at hand, is that unlike, say, oversight for mine safety, the dangers being overlooked are biological in nature. More specifically, as concerned as I am about toxic wastes which affect biological systems, I am far more concerned with GMOs which don't just affect biological systems, but are part of them. I know this is stating the obvious, but the point that these are living entities interacting within their environments and not just ingredients on a shelf, cannot be stressed enough I feel.
Extrapolating experiences from GMO food crops isn't reassuring in the least. On the one hand, organic farmers are unable to protect their crops from GMO windborne contamination and the government views it as, essentially, their problem. On the other hand, GMO producers have been successful in seeking damage awards for the results of their own gene pollution. Clearly, the regulatory and legal decks are stacked.
Hoping to seal ourselves off from unwanted side-effects which GMOs may or may not someday cause by trying to limit modification to certain inedible species ignores the ecological interconnectivity of species which science does not yet fully understand. It's nice to imagine no ill side-effects forthcoming from the grand experiment that's been foisted upon us, but that's not a responsible position to take given our limited knowledge and the high stakes involved.
[Lastly, as a related aside ... what in the world are people, no matter how well-intentioned, thinking when they posit the delivery of vaccines to the Third World through, e.g. GMO bananas, etc.? Even if I thought GMOs were totally safe, such a scenario seems dubious at best just on the basis of logistics ... segregating such items from the food supply (if any), getting them delivered only to the target population, and dosing them properly.]