"...Opposition to genetic modification is almost universal among greens everywhere...."
I'm not at all sure that this is the case (even if we restrict it to "Greens"--militants in parties with "Green" in their name--as distinguished from "greens"--people with a very high degree of environmental awareness and concern). What is, and should be, "almost universal" is opposition to genetic modification under the auspices of the Monsantos of the world and their affiliated governments, because the short-term social benefits of the derived technology are trivial at the very best while the negative environmental effects could be enormous and irreversible. For Marxists and people in the Marxian tradition, able (like Trotsky) to envision the ultimate destiny opened to mankind by the liberation of its material and intellectual productive forces under the "higher stage" of communist society, genetic modification represents nothing less than the evolutionary future of the human race. Genetic modification is like a tree whose fruits ripen on a time scale of centuries but are acutely poisonous if eaten unripe. I therefore favor research, if truly open (that is, with no potential for generating "intellectual property" and with prompt publication of all results) and confined to strictly controlled laboratory environments, but strongly oppose any form of commercialization or commercialization-oriented research at least until the capitalist order has been replaced worldwide by the initial stages of planetary communism.
Shane Mage
"When we read on a printed page the doctrine of Pythagoras that all things are made of numbers, it seems mystical, mystifying, even downright silly.
When we read on a computer screen the doctrine of Pythagoras that all things are made of numbers, it seems self-evidently true." (N. Weiner)