[p2p-research] controversy: GM foods and organic agriculture

[Hervé Le Crosnier]

	Hello,

	Quick answers in the text :


Michel Bauwens a écrit :
> Hi Herve,
> 
> Thanks for that, but don't forget that what is obvious for you, may not
> be for Ryan, so these things still need to be argued.


	Sorry if my tune is too sharp. As I told you, my english is
	really not diplomatic.

	But I also fear the way doubt are set up where no-doubt is
	to be the only attitude, because of so many evidences.
	We have to take care not becoming "opinion people". As
	scientists, we have to look for arguments, reasoning,
	examples, generalisation, all those patterns of academics.

	If we don't, who will built a counter power for media. Never
	forget that media earn their money from advertisement : the
	influence industry is working everyday, not for the sake of
	the world, but for the own beneficial of the trust that
	pay them...

> 
> However, I just realized that neither you nor Roberto really answered my
> argument, which is different from Ryan's.
> 
> My point is: would it be different, if GMO where part of an open
> commons, not part of corporate profitmaking. So if we assume open and
> participative science, not under the control of privatizing companies,
> would that make GMO different?
> 

	Well, this question is two folded.

	- not granting patents on living organism is a crucial test for
	  this. I suppose, but that's only an appreciation concerning
	  the actual type of buggy GMO (pest plants, and other non
	  innovative plant, but suport for the chemical industry), that
	  we will then stop GMO in the field.

	- if people try to use trangenese and mutagenese in laboratory
	  (and really in confine environment) they will surely get new
	  information about life, genetic and so... May be this can
	  develop new products in a long to mid-long term... and without
	  pressure of patents, we can think it's possible to make all
	  toxicologic and environmental studies to acertain those new
	  agricultural products.

	But :

	- the biothec is not an industry who is here to fullfill public
	  needs (look around near 1 billion people starving !). So the
	  hypothesis of "no-patent on living organism" will only be
	  there if a real world social movement hurry up.

	- there's a really good biotech from milleniums : farming. This
	  where the communities that select plants who can get together
	  best yielding and best human nutrition.

	And :

	- When physics scientists want to understand better the atom,
	  they build new laboratories... and beyond protons and
	  electrons, they find a realy huge complexity, and every
	  naming of a new corpuscule tend to call for new studies.

	- Why wasn't this the same for biology and living organism.
	  The reductionnism of genetic is only one slant of the
	  understanding of life. Let science go on, considering nature
	  as a partner, not as an industrial thing we can engineer.

Hervé Le Crosnier