From: Lee Daniel Crocker (lcrocker@piclab.com)
Date: Sun Feb 20 2000 - 14:19:49 MST
>
> I'm as forward thinking as the next guy (well maybe not on this list), but
> personally I'll stick to the old-fashioned food for as long as possible. I
> know the general consensus is that GM food is OK. But the same thing was
> thought about such things as cigarette smoking, silicone breasts and
> thalydomide (sp?) once upon a time. Sure maybe GM stuff is harmless, but my
> goal is long life. I ain't taking any chances ;)
Odd that you chose that set of comparisons: (1) No one with 2 brain cells
to rub together ever thought smoking was safe, even in 19th century,
until tobacco company advertising in the 50s. (2) Silicone breast implants
_are_ completely safe, and all the propoganda and court cases you've heard
about are piffle. (3) Thalidomide was a big goof--no argument there.
Fortunately, our FDA had enough delay-causing bureaucrats to keep it off
the market long enough for us to discover its dangers (of course someone
else discovered that, and the FDA would have approved it without the test
that discovered it, so they don't really deserve any of the credit they
claim for keeping us safe from Thalidomide, but that's a different story).
In short, I think the question is not how well-tested or how new a
technology is, but how truly _different_ is it from well-known stuff,
how confident can we be in our assessments given the facts, and how
honest and reliable are the people giving us those facts? If one is
reasonably well-educated and understands whats going on with GM foods,
if one ignores anything said by the government, industry advertising,
and political scare groups, and looks at just the facts, they are
pretty clear to me: moving proteins around shouldn't hurt anyone.
Sure, if I had some severe allergy to peanuts or something I'd want
to know if any peanut proteins were used in this tomato I'm buying,
but besides that, GM foods just aren't different enough to make me
worry despite their being new and untested.
-- Lee Daniel Crocker <lee@piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lcrocker.html> "All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past, are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC
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