On Sun, 14 Feb 1999, Nathan Newman wrote:
> [This is the new draft of the Black Radical Congress Freedom Agenda. Damn
> impressive. - NN]
Yes it is. But I was a little taken aback by their opposition to the Human Genome Project.
Michael --------------
The opposition stems from the fact that the HGP has gone to third world countries to search out a variety of DNA samples from native peoples who have probably not been part of the first world gene pool. Theoretically the idea is to catalog human genetic variation. On the other hand, the field work has evidently been undertaken without the formalities of first world informed conscent protocols. The entire project reeks of exploitation by the bio-science industrial complex of corporate and government interests. In the context of the BRC, any prospectus for HGP is no doubt reminiscent of Dr. Mengle.
Chuck Grimes
ps. if this message looks screwed up, it is because it was composed on an old 486 system running FreeBSD and X-windows--this is my experimental free system--as in zero cost hardware, zero cost software. It is quite something to run an X-window server on an old VGA, 256k display card. The trick seems to be to run X in monochrome and load the minimum X frontends to standard unix applications like vi and mh and the older less fancy versions of X-windows and GNU applications.