Bissell:
> My point is, and remains, that concern over GM seems to be largely an
issue
> of potential dangers. Like predictions of disaster in the past, the
> environmental community has often cried wolf when there was no wolf.

I see your point. But what interests me is what criteria would you use to
certify when a risk is actual for the future and no longer simply a
potential. What examples of 'crying wolf' do you know that would support
your contention? Often it is the scientific community that raises the alarm
first and then it is the larger community. I don't think it is possible to
'overgeneralize' about the environmental community. What criterion do you
use which would enable the average person who is simply interested in an
environmental issue to seperate the environmental wheat grain from the
chaff?

>The
> moral of that story, if you recall, was that there really was a wolf, but
by
> the time it showed up, no-one would listen. Thus far the dangers of GM
have
> been mainly issues of "what if. . ." and not based on anything real. I
think
> that there is an element of fear here, perhaps founded but as yet
unproven.

Many GMO's have already been pulled from the laboratory and from the
environment. One example involves a genetically altered spring salmon
species that was being developed in New Zealand. The company one day
reported in a news release that it had destroyed it's entire population of
giant Salmonids because it was deeply concerned about this species ability
to displace less 'competitive' or less 'competent' native species of
salmon....These salmon grow at a rate three times that of native species. So
this subspecies if introduced in the wild would cause extinction of some
local populations of endangered species. The problem with your ethical
hypothesis as I see it is that (a) we should not be concerned about the
foreseeable risks until we experience them. This if a faulty form of logic.
Using inferenctial wisdom based on a sound understanding of ecosystem
dynamics that is being paraded lately on this list should instill a deep
sense of caution in those who are proponents of GMO's. There is this whole
issue of adaptive and differential selection based on relative competencies
at the organism level that have not been adressed by the Franken-crowd belly
aching about there putative wonders....

and (b) even though some people believe that some in the environmental
community are 'crying wolf' indeed, the sense being engendered is that once
wrong, twice wrong, and because there are so many 'crying wolf' why bother
adapting to the potential risk, may as well way until the wolf shows up. The
problem with that is that some 'wolves' have irreversible effects for which
there is no adequate response that humans can apply....

the moral of the story is that one should not really on second person
testimony if it is derived from a single source. No if the rule is made that
first person testimony is required, then you need a bevy of qualified, and
not self-serving, individuals to conference and report on the facts, which
are fully verifiable. The metaphor of the lad crying wolf is apt only in
certain cases, but not in the case of GMO's.....do a bit of research...and
you will see that it is not simply a potential risk, but it is now an actual
risk to environmental quality...hence the very high increase in the use of
Roundup since the introduction of GMO seed crops...if that does not qualify
as an impact, then nothing will. There is a parable too about the monkeys
who 'see no evil, hear no evil'....why is that? There there is the ostrich.
Why is the ostrich burying his head in the sand? Well he does not, he puts
his head down near the ground to avoid being detected from a distance. All
these folk pyschological parables and such are forms of critical thinking
masked in the solitude of symbolic reference, and by overgeneralization.
Applicable to many situations, there are essentially useless if the task is
to resolve conflict at the scientific, policy and values level. At least
they orient the listener to that attitude of the speaker. Attitudes always
take the form of a propositional thought...at least they do for me...

> And, I think from my point of view there is more than a little
anti-science
> going on here. The moral in Mary Shelly's "Frankenstein" (That's
> Frankensteen!) was that science does not take responsibility for its
> creations, not that science was god-like as is often thought. I might
agree
> with that, except from everything I've seen so far and everyone I've
talked
> to, people working on GM are aware of the potential dangers and are at
least
> trying to avoid them.
>
> I remain still skeptical.
>
> Steven
>
> Even errors must be respected
> when they are more than
> two thousand years old.
>                  Sangharakshita