Biotechnology

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San Diego is having a Biotech. conference with 15,000 participates and 3,000-5,000 protestors. Presently unknown to the protestors, there a another huge international conference on cancer that I'll be attending starting today. Greenpeace was in a store yesterday labelling produce as hazardous.

It is true that those of us doing genetic research and engineering need to be more actively open about biotech. benefits and more aware of the pulse of the general public. I'm not doing agricultural research, mine is soley human disease based, so I'm a little more out of the fray than someone who works in Monsanto's agri. business.

How do you feel about biotechnology? How and where do you get your info. that you base your opinions on?

-- Anonymous, June 22, 2001

Answers

All I'll say is that I'm extremely thankful that I don't work next door to a big-ass Monsanto office building anymore. The building I worked in for about the last four years of my last job looked very much like the Monsanto building and neither building had it's street address clearly marked. I was always afraid that activists were going to bomb the place. Not that I believe that all activists are violent bombers, or anything. I just think that activists who choose to protest using violent means are stupid enough to hit the wrong building.

-- Anonymous, June 22, 2001

Good question Vicki!

I like biotech. In the long run, it adds to lifespan and assures a greater food supply for the 6 billion people on planet earth. I think most biotech research and development is based on sound science and profit motive. I don't have a problem with this.

Many protesters base their protest on "values" and not on hard empirical data. This is wrong, and it probably explains why Greenpeace membership is in decline.

Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring" is a classic read (circa 1962). We have learned a lot since then. Pesticides and herbicides are carefully monitored and controlled these days. Even the Amish use pesticides and antibiotics. Nobody uses DDT. Because of the ban on DDT, many bird and mammal species have revived. Good science.

The dark side of the environmental movement is discussed in Alston Chase's "In A Dark Wood" 1995 ISBN-0-395-60837-6. There are many well meaning people in this world who confuse "personal values" with "hard science".

We will probably see this issue heat up when oil drilling starts in The National Parks.

-- Anonymous, June 22, 2001


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