As though it's "scaremongering" to be extremely wary about the unexpected and unpredicatable effects of modifying the genes of food plants. Half the world's in a mad panic over the Y2K bug in computer software. For crying out loud, there are people who worry seriously about things like eMail spam. But when a company comes along and starts diddling with the genes of food plants, well, la di da, what me worry, who the Hell needs to eat, anyhow?
So one particular journalist is full of shit about one particular issue. My God, what a shock - a case of a journalist who writes about stuff where he doesn't know what he's talking about. My faith in journalists, hitherto complete, has been shattered.
So how do you feel about Monsanto's "Terminator" technology? There's no controversy and no question about the effect of "Terminator." There's an example of "Frankenfood" with clear, openly avowed terrible effects. (At least I think it's pretty terrible when you can't plant next year's crops because the seeds are all sterile.) How would you like to see the "Terminator" gene spread out in the wild by cross-pollination, as the patented genes for Monsanto's "Roundup" breed of soybeans were?
Another curious Monsanto practice is the notion of them patenting the entire genotype of a food plant. Take that soybean - the genotype of soybeans, a vastly complicated structure, evolved naturally over umpteen million years, then was further refined through painstaking, deliberate breeding by countless generations of farmers. Along come the greed maniacs at Monsanto, who modify a handful of genes and slap on a trade name - now they claim to own the entire thing. It's like I take a hex editor and change three bytes of IO.SYS - presto, the entirety of Windows 95 is now mine, all mine!
Yours WDK - WKiernan at concentric.net