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[mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of [log in to unmask]
Sent: Tuesday, October 05, 1999 3:03 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: GE and politics
In a message dated 99-10-05 11:40:34 EDT, Steve Bissell writes:
<< I think that this is the problem with environmental politics and one for
which environmental ethics should be able to supply an answer. Is there a
moral issue here? I've been asking this for the past couple of weeks and so
far all I'm getting is that there is a potential for some sort of undefined
harm from GE or GM crops. All right, if that is the case, so what? Have we
decided that all potential harm is the issue? That poses a whole set of
problems. Life is impossible without changing the environment and all
change
has the potential of harm. Is some sort of biological stasis the goal of
environmental ethics? >>
LM Dangutis replies :)
Perhaps its not the GM or GE crops, we all have problems with. But the
fact
we are playing with evolution itself. In the 1990's research has come to a
sort of new for front. I think my problem with all this from a moral point
of view
is that I don't think we have enough understanding of genetic procceses to
fully
carry out these procceses. If there is a moral question, it may lay in the
pace of which we design and use technology. A new wonder drug a week, or a
plant
to make wire. The problem is the designs and use of technology in my
opionion.
Bissell here; I'm not sure what you mean by "playing with evolution."
Evolution is not directed at some metaphysical goal of perfection. There are
probably as many examples of disaster in evolution as success, at least in
geologic time. Dinosaurs come to mind. Also I think that statement implies
that there is some "outside" force working through evolution and thus the
moral dilemma. If I believed in directed evolution I'd agree, but I don't.
Evolution is undirected and blind as to consequences. If, for example, the
GM scientists find a way of making plants resistant to insects, that's
exactly what evolutionary process has done in a large number of plants. So,
why is it a moral issue for scientists to rationally produce insect
resistant plants and "natural" for it to occur through evolution? The
consequence is the same in any case.
The issue, then, is technology and a basic discomfort with science. That may
be rational or not, but it is not a moral issue. I'm very uncomfortable with
some aspects of technology, but that does not allow me to condemn all
technology as morally suspicious. I think that the idea that because
technology is advancing at a certain pace is the issue is a bit problematic
as well. At any point in history, change was probably occurring at a pace
too fast for many segments of society. That is hardly a new thing. My
grandfather, who died in the 1950s, never rode in a car in his life. He used
a horse drawn wagon. I never had a "store bought" shirt until I was 14 years
old, my mother made all my clothes. Now I'm sitting here writing this on a
computer, which if the Nazis had possessed in the 1930s we'd all be speaking
German.
I'm *not* an advocate of GE or GM or "messing with mother nature," but I
still don't see it as a moral issue rising to the level which justifies all
the attention it is getting.
sb
http://www.du.edu/~sbissell
What we lost with that wild, primal existence
was a way of being for which the era of
agriculture and civilization lacks counterpoise.
Human life is the poorer for it.
Paul Shepard
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