From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@aeiveos.com)
Date: Tue Dec 10 2002 - 16:33:00 MST
On Tue, 10 Dec 2002, Mike Lorrey wrote:
> On this score, I think my previously scorned proposal to launch a
> product labeling campaign should take advantage of this. Labeling
> 'organic' food products which are the result of cloning as 'cloned
> organisms' would bring the truth in advertising as well as the cloning
> debate further along.
Mike, I believe in the U.S. the FDA has recently issued regulations
with respect to what can be called "organic". Fortunately or
unfortunately, I think they have lumped a bunch of things together
to have this "label".
The points that Barbara, Lee and you make have caused me to reverse
somewhat my opposition to labeling (based on the fact that the
average consumer is pre-programmed to make snap judgements
with a poor information base).
I don't believe the FDA regulations even consider the question of
whether "organic" = "non-cloned" so you may be opening Pandora's Box.
If one could cite a long list of examples of "cloned" organisms
that we grow or consume on a daily basis then it might reduce
the anti-cloning perspective. The only exception to this would
appear to be "cloning" via nuclear transfer but this may be a
technical detail that most people would not want to quibble over.
More importantly perhaps, from a transhumanist perspective is
whether we could advance this research agenda? Many of the
people on the list are in educational environments. How difficult
would it be to print up flyers and post them on local bulletin
boards?
Question: "What is the success rate cloning via nuclear transfer in plants?"
(Or to a lesser extent "what is the success rate of cloning via single
cells in plants?")
Its a fundamental scientific question. One that to my knowledge
hasn't been addressed. It has significant implications with
respect to the cloning question and aging in general (through
the study of what fraction of "adult" genomes are "perfect").
It costs very little to post these questions in an academic
setting -- a young student might just become interested
in the question and seek to answer them.
Robert
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