Sanet Post, Patricia Dines
Re: Ag, politics, biotech, and SANet
December 30, 1996

I've been watching this conversation with interest.

On the one hand, Dan, while I appreciate your passion, I feel much more progress would occur if you could state your differing view without putting others down with such vehemence. Discussing content without invalidation and personal attacks makes conversations so much more enjoyable and fruitful! If we can't influence those who see differently than us, no change can occur in the world. And to influence others, we must be open to what the world looks like from their point of view - i.e., we must be willing to be influenced. To attack is to have others fight or shut up, but to stop true conversation that can move things forward. That is why I'm committed to conversations that allow diverse viewpoints - *if* they are communicated based on facts and ideas, not attacks. That to me is consistent with being sustainable, connected to Spirit and heart, and other values I've heard you discuss, and I feel is just as vital to creating a happy world as not using pesticides is.

On the other hand, I do feel that the original question was weird and obviously biased (even in it's rewritten form) - basically in the "if pigs had wings" category and seeming to want to prove some assumption about our predisposition to be against genetic engineering (GE), rather than move forward a real conversation that might do good in the world.

Sure, if all those conditions could be met we'd be having a different conversation. But those conditions are *not* being met and that is vital to those of us with concerns about GE. The corporations/U.S. government are not waiting til we have perfect knowledge before tinkering with the basis of life! Like so many other corporate ag experiments, it's being thrown out into the world after brief analysis and then the (easily predictable) problems are being found - "oh sorry, oops!" Well, some people feel that this experimentation on human populations needs to stop. Haven't we learned anything from history???

Every person in this country has DDT in their bodies, it's in the north pole, its links to breast cancer (for instance) are strong - and the corporations made money from it without compensating those who harmed - while we argue among ourselves about who should pay for and who should get the expensive medical resources for the diseases caused (that then give profits to often the same corporations). What population would continue to play that game, where they keep being the losers without compensation....?

There are real existing tangible reasons to be concerned about/against genetic engineering just by looking at today's GE "products" such already-proven problems like:

• - allergic reactions (to the inserted gene, ex. nuts),
• - supporting increased use of pesticides (Roundup on soybeans),
• - increased pest resistance to pesticides (by their foolish prophylactic use in corn and cotton, e.g. Bt, that literally trains the pest to adapt) and thus it's failure as a tool (more money for the pesticide company, not necessarily good for the farmer, consumer, or anyone else),
• - increased illness in livestock (rGBH; meeting an individual farmer's goals of more output by causing unncessary suffering in the animals in their care - in a market that already has too much milk), and
• - risking transferring antibiotic-resistant bacteria to human populations (thus rapidly increasing the trend toward antibiotic failures and people dying of previously curable diseases).
• - And now the news that these tinkered toys might not even work (e.g. GE Bollgard failures on cotton)!! (Of course, Monstanto had another pesticide they could buy to solve that problem - rather than taking responsibility for the failure of their promises and "making good" by providing the new remedy free.)

How much more horrifying does this have to get to be taken as a real problem that requires real thinking rather than some theoretical exercise? To turn the question around, "If it were shown that genetic engineering puts our population and DNA at risk, would this be good or bad news?" This shows the bias of the question. It's happening, and it's not good news! How bad does it have to get to be taken seriously? And will it be reversible at that point, once the new DNA is integrated into our ecosystem and food supply?

And even without this overwhelming evidence there are two more reasons many intelligent people are deeply concerned about/against GE products:

1. We are tinkering with DNA, the source of life, the source of the food we need to survive. We are crossing species that would otherwise have no way of being combined! But there is still much we don't know about nature and DNA and the inter-relationships of ecosystems. We are taking this huge risk with our very survival armed with a huge lack of knowledge. Before doing such a thing with the fate of the entire global ecosystem, there should be a darned good reason, and there should be free discussion and choice about whether we really want to take that risk.
2. The history of corporations hiding the truth about the harm of their products, suppressing those who would say it, suppressing democracy to be able to continue their actions, putting products out that are harmful and doing all they can to avoid responsibility (liability), refusing to let customers have the info they need to "vote" at the grocery store, etc. does not lead me to blindly accept their assertion that they are doing this from some Mother Theresa desire to save the world, or that they are adequately weighing costs and benefits to anyone but the corporation. Just as if they were a 13year old teenager on hormones, I wouldn't give them the keys to the family car on Saturday night without some serious consideration!

Rather than true conversation about our goals, the best way to reach them, and what risks we want to take, we get government officials acting as cheerleaders for the chemical companies biased justification for taking huge risks to the entire global ecosystem ("Um, we're going to feed the world, yeah, that's it..."). Instead of conversation and choice, we're told "this is the future" and we should accept it. Instead of real analysis, policy is driven by unproven assertions that can easily be seriously challenged (How exactly does being allowed to use more toxins feed the hungry....? Even if a tenuous link can be shown, is that really the best path to that goal?) Corporate visions dominate and are supported by our government - for such corporate welfare is said to be in the interest of this nation (while the corporations respond with no such loyalty to this country, abandoning their workers for countries led by dictators and few worker and environmental protections) - but, on the other hand, people welfare and food stamps that actually *do* feed the hungry are "too expensive" for us to afford.

I could give many more examples of reasons that I just don't see the evidence that corporations are our benevolent benefactors that should be given control over (and ability to then patent) the very source of life.

So, though I support people like William in asking the questions they feel are appropriate, I too am more interested in conversation that doesn't completely ignore the evidence about the true threats to sustainable ag/ecosystems and has some intention to constructively discuss how we might shift this world's path away from the harmful hugely-risky corporate path to one where the wisdom of natural systems is treated with respect and something to learn from, not tinker with foolishly.

Hope these thoughts are useful -

P. Dines

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