SDV,
I do take your point about probably.  However, in the case of GM crops, the
companies have gone some way to testing their safety for consumers.  It is a
question of where in the probability scale one judges it to be and I find
the assertion of their safety for consumers reasonable when set against
standards adopted elsewhere in the food industry and routinely applied to
non-GM crops.  I do not think those claims of safety amount to lying.

Of course, safe for a consumer does not mean safe for the ecosystem. Some of
the agriculural strategies being proposed, and for which some GM crops are
designed, seem ecologically very questionable indeed.

Sincerely

John Hewitt



----- Original Message -----
From: sdv <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, November 01, 2000 9:28 PM
Subject: Re: Science and guilt -


> John
>
> In the midst of a major system rollout - fated by a major systems bug -
the
> trouble with the type of applications/systems that I deal with is that
they
> never fulfil the users requirements - I feel like Norman Foster must have
felt
> when he discovered his bridge was unable to deal with people walking
across it
> without undulating like a snake...
>
> However - The lie exists in the continuing statements that a) GM foods are
safe
> - rather than the true statement that 'we do not know if they are safe but
they
> probably are' - b) That as as a result of the genetic changes being made
less
> pesticides will be required - whereas the truth is that nature evolves and
the
> evolutionary cycle for bacteria, virus and insect is rather short.
>
> The greatest shame lies with the third world scientists who mistakenly
imagine
> that GM crops will in some way or other free them from the economic
tyranny of
> the western transnationals and the equivalent tyranny of nature.
>
> Except in the social and political realms science does not and cannot deal
with
> truth only with various states of the probable...
>
> regards
>
> sdv
>