Sanet Post, Steve Bonney
Re: Question Rephrased
December 30, 1996

Willie,

Your rephrased question is still scary to contemplate. The limits of human knowledge about indicators of impacts on human health, the uncertainties of measurements and their intrepretations in complex systems, and the long term implications of genetic alterations prevent findings and conclusions that, without question, genetic alterations of crops do not effect human health adversely.

Furthermore, the arrogance implied in the assumption that such a conclusion is definitive is no different than the level of arrogance required to generate ecological risk from recombinant DNA technology.

I couldn't disagree with Benbrook more about the value of GE. The great surge of technological fixes that began after WWII has generated the muriad of ecological crises that exist today. Good management and stewardship do not require magic bullets to develop an agricylture that is sustainable. Releasing a plethora of transgenetic products to build a biological based agriculture is akin to building countless nuclear weapons to produce a lasting peace on earth.

The fact is that very few charastics of living matter are produced by the expression of a single gene. Likewise, few, if any, genetic manipulations result in the translocation of a single gene. There are no free lunches.

This technology will be so abused by the multinational corporations for monetary gain that any benefits will be negligable. The Plant Variety Protection Act that allows the patenting of GE material should be overturned. In agriculture, the end result of this technology will be that the major agribusiness players will produce entire systems that farmers must purchase in order to farm "conventionally."

Regards,