--- Deborah Harrell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Stopping yellow rice > > - that's not a few loonies, that's a mass > movement. > > If it field-tests not to be more susceptible to the > various rice-rots/smuts/other diseases than the > unaltered variety, it is worth pursuing. But > playing > devil's advocate: how is govt-supplied yellow rice > seed different from 'state nannyism' which you > implied > that I support? (and indeed I confirmed that in frex > the case of folate enrichment of various > cereal/grain > products; but my stance on illicit drugs is much > more > hands-off - with an admittedly harsh twist WRT > contraception) Since 'saving lives' didn't seem to > be > an acceptable reason for such regulation, as I > understood your position, what is the difference?
There's a huge difference between legislating against McDonald's hamburgers and keeping kids from going blind, Debbi. Eating at McDonald's is a choice that you make as a free citizen, and having the government interfere in it is absurd and offensive. Golden rice stops kids from going blind. It's not a small thing, it's a huge thing. And thousands of kids are going blind every year because the environmental movement thinks that's okay. > > > Banning DDT in Third World countries - that's not > the > > fringe, that's _everyone_. <snip> > > If the GM of malarial parasites/symbiotes tests out > to > be feasible and safe, the 'footprint' of its use > ought > to be far less than DDT, which is indiscriminent > (sp?)in its toxic effects (although there will be > some > unintended consequences anyway). Well, first, who do you think are the most prominent opponents of that sort of GM, the ones doing the most to stop it? Even more than that, though, the footprint of DDT, used properly, is effectively zero - it has no measurable environmental effects unless you pretty much coat a country with it. What it _should_ be used for is simple - you paint it on the walls of homes, where it serves to both repel and kill the insects who spread malaria. It does this with no perceptible environmental downside. So if your hypothetical GM technologies overcome the opposition of the environmental movement they may, at some point in the future, be as effective as DDT itself in preventing deaths from malaria, hopefully with no more environmental impact than, well, DDT has. How many million people will have died of malaria unnecessarily in the meantime? So now we're back where we started. You tell me that it's only the extremists who support things like blocking golden rice or banning DDT use in the Third World. But how do you feel about it? Because the cost of the first is thousand of blind children, and the cost of the second is millions of deaths from malaria. Every one of those blind kids didn't have to go blind, and almost every one of those deaths from malaria didn't have to happen (when was the last time you heard of a malaria death in the US, where it used to be endemic - before DDT?). But they did, and they will continue to happen, and they will continue to do so because people choose to allow them to continue happening. That _choice_ is outrageous. ===== Gautam Mukunda [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Freedom is not free" http://www.mukunda.blogspot.com __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Win a $20,000 Career Makeover at Yahoo! HotJobs http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/careermakeover
_______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
