CDC preliminary findings on GE corn - Apr. 30

[Neil Jones]

In article <001301c0da9d$7edb5d40$9b0f1218 at gscrk1.sc.home.com>
           gatrelle at tils-ttr.org "Ron Gatrelle" writes:

> 
> The issue is not: Is Bt engineered corn safe as mother's milk to humans,
> nor poisonous to humans as arsenic. The issue is - is it harmful to
> Monarchs? That's it. Milkweed is harmful to humans - so are we to conclude
> Monarchs shouldn't eat it either? I don't intend to eat milkweed or Bt
> corn. I don't even know that I want the Bt  corn fed to cows and pigs I
> might later ingest. But that is not relevant either. The issue is - is Bt
> corn harmful to Monarchs. That's it.

This is an oversimplistic analysis which ignores the bigger issue.
The real point is that releasing this Bt corn for human consumption
 is not legal
Yet its still got into the food chain. If you were to research this a bit
more you would find that farmers are complaining that they were not told to 
segregate the stuff because it was only fit for animals.
There is a possibility that this stuff might kill people yet it still
got loose. What chance is there that proper notice will be taken 
of something that kills mere bugs.

> I have never said, nor am I saying, I like the idea of Bt corn. I am
> saying, just stick with what it does or does not do to Monarchs - not
> Mickey Mouse. that's it. Bt corn could be found to kill everything on
> earth, except Monarch's. And for this topic that is all that would be
> relevent. That's it. What bothers me is that certain people seem to WANT to
> find it is harmful to Monarch's - Just like the Tobacco scientists didn't
> WANT to find tabacco was harmful to humans. There is no place in science
> for predisposed WANT.

Again I think you are not looking deeply enough at the issue. "Want" as you 
describe it is an inevitable result of commercial pressures. If GM
technology is not ineherently dangerous to an ecosystem then ALL
of our understanding of ecology is undermined. Now, unless the GM proponents
can produce proper logical and scientific arguments that do overturn our
understanding of ecology then I will continue to believe that it is inherently
dangerous. The sort of proof I am talking about is a simple one.
They would simply have to state that ecological interactions are very simple
and easily predicted in all cases. That isn't very likely is it?

-- 
Neil Jones- Neil at nwjones.demon.co.uk http://www.nwjones.demon.co.uk/
"At some point I had to stand up and be counted. Who speaks for the
butterflies?" Andrew Lees - The quotation on his memorial at Crymlyn Bog
National Nature Reserve


 
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