>From: Damien Broderick <d.broderick@english.unimelb.edu.au>
>Reply-To: extropians@extropy.org
>To: extropians@extropy.org
>Subject: Re: GM angst
>Date: Thu, 20 Jul 2000 13:25:53 +1000
>
>At 04:09 PM 19/07/00 EDT, Greg Burch, conservationist, wrote:
>
> >> concern
> >> that remixing genes in ways not pre-tested by millennia of natural
>(or
> >> indeed human) selection and broadcasting them everywhere in industrial
> >> quantities might have horrible consequences?
>
> >How do we get institutions and
> >interest groups to "calm down" and allow the science to be done in a
>fashion
> >that will produce acceptable answers without prejudging the many
> >techno-soccial questions we face?
>
>It's all a matter of degree, no doubt. I certainly don't advocate
>hysterical acting-out tantrums. But there seems a willing and willful
>blindness on lists such as this one to the way corporations and militaries
>actually *do* routinely, and with malice aforethought, poison and kill and
>degrade us.
>
I am very much pro-Genetic Engineering, and think we ought to proceed full
speed ahead. And I actually agree with the anti-genetic engineering forces
in their claims that GE could lead to some disaster.
But everyone seems to be overlooking the main point: We are all dying.
And GE is our best hope. Therefore IMO we have no choice. Let commerce do as
it may because that will bring the greatest and quickest advances. THere
will likely be a price to pay, but the potential benefits are immeasurable.
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