Dim? Reactionary? I'd say he's the Prince Albert of the age. If you're going to have royalty, I'll take a Charles over a Diana any day.
>Barry Commoner, who made his scientific name by dethroning
> the fundamental dogma of molecular biology (that, following a model
> of the cell based on the capitalist factory, influence only went from
> gene to protein synthesis; Commoner argued instead that the process
> was very complex, with the cellular environment influencing gene
> expression - or so it was explained to me once by a Marxist
> biologist), is now turning his attention, at age 81, to genetic
> engineering. He's convinced that while you can't trust Monsanto, a
> lot of its critics don't know what they're talking about either.
Funny, I heard Commoner speak at Brown University on the first Earth Day -- when was that, 1972? -- when he ridiculed the very idea of reengineering nature. I remember his vivid turn of phrase: "If I open the back of my watch and stick in a pencil point, there is a chance I will improve its operation -- but I assure you it is a very remote chance." That seems to me a more useful bit of cautionary wisdom than his truistic comment about "a lot of" Monsanto critics .
Carl Remick