Genetic modification could be a good or a bad thing, depending on the use to which it was put. Doubtless if it was done recklessly, with real risk then that would be a bad thing, but what risks there are seem so wildly overstated that it is hard to find a convincing example of that.
The left's accommodation to its own lowered horizons has led us to substitute the socialist critique of capitalism with the romantic critique of industrialisation. Where people once aspired to change the way society was, they find that programme less inspiring. By contrast the petit bourgeois reaction against industrial society is stronger than ever. Genetic modification is the acme of industrialisation, and provokes a middle class response from uncompetitive small-producers and consumers' lobbies.
The left, despairing of ever mobilising a working class reaction against capital has decided to make do with a middle class reaction against industry.
In message <Pine.BSF.4.21.0010171034360.17567-100000 at industrial.egenetic
s.com>, Peter van Heusden <pvh at egenetics.com> writes
>On Mon, 16 Oct 2000, Carl Remick wrote:
>
>> >i'm trying to understand why the Left is so against GM food.
>>
>> As I've said here in the past, the reason I oppose GM food is the risk it
>> presents in terms of adverse heritable traits escaping into the wild and
>> creating ecological threats similar to those caused by non-native invasive
>> species. I do not think that risk can be adequately managed so long as
>> GM-food research is conducted under the auspices of profit-seeking
>> organizations.
>
>That's one reason, but personally I find the fact the GM strategies are
>(quite clearly, if you look into the evidence) strategies for increasing
>the power of the agribusiness giants (Monsanto, Novartis, etc.) a much
>more compelling argument. Immediate threats to food security, through the
>mechanism of further re-organisation of the world food supply, along with
>concentration of the proportion of the world's foods into less and less
>diverse species, are my major concerns.
>
>I've got tons of info on this, but its all in hardcopy.
>
>Peter
>--
>Peter van Heusden <pvh at egenetics.com>
>NOTE: I do not speak for my employer, Electric Genetics
>"Criticism has torn up the imaginary flowers from the chain not so that man
>shall wear the unadorned, bleak chain but so that he will shake off the chain
>and pluck the living flower." - Karl Marx, 1844
>
-- James Heartfield