I'll have to give this a listen later but I have a quibble with dismissing fears of "frankenfood" out of hand. I'm not inherently against genetically modified foods. In some cases I think we'll see a wonderful set of opportunities. However, it is an area in which a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing indeed and at this point that's all we have...a little knowledge. There needs to be years and years more research done before we can really declare some of these experiments as safe. There is a big difference between aggressive interbreeding to produce desireable characteristics and wholesale replacement of a section from one species genome into another. The later, we think, is something that doesn't normally happen in nature, though there are suspicions that viruses may be responsible for some relatively large genetic changes.
Right now we don't have a massive food crisis on our planet. We do have a distribution problem, but these genetically modified plants won't address that. And since we don't have a production crisis at this point I think it behooves us to take a very cautious approach and learn a lot more about a brand new area of research before we go into production. A number of the companies behind this push, I'm looking at you Monsanto, are not good stewards of the earth and have a history of bogus science and criminal recklessness. There are some great possibilities out there. But if we rush forward too quickly we run a major risk of having things go horribly wrong due to unforeseen consequences and that will both hurt us in the short term and in the long term as the real possibilities will ignored due to fear. Don't fuck this up like with did with nuclear power. Cheers, Judah On Mon, Apr 12, 2010 at 11:09 AM, Jerry Johnson <jmi...@gmail.com> wrote: > > I thought this talk from TED was worth the time to watch > > http://www.ted.com/talks/michael_specter_the_danger_of_science_denial.html > > About this talk > > Vaccine-autism claims, "Frankenfood" bans, the herbal cure craze: All point > to the public's growing fear (and, often, outright denial) of science and > reason, says Michael Specter. He warns the trend spells disaster for human > progress. > > > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Want to reach the ColdFusion community with something they want? Let them know on the House of Fusion mailing lists Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/message.cfm/messageid:315631 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/unsubscribe.cfm
