Comments on: SuperCarrot - addendum http://seedstory.wordpress.com/2008/01/28/supercarrot-addendum/ INFORMATION ENCAPSULATED Sat, 17 May 2008 23:09:36 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=MU By: Frank Morton http://seedstory.wordpress.com/2008/01/28/supercarrot-addendum/#comment-72 Frank Morton Sun, 30 Mar 2008 20:59:51 +0000 http://seedstory.wordpress.com/2008/01/28/supercarrot-addendum/#comment-72 I'm all for science, and I enjoy and understand the language of many sciences. But I am also for pointing out where impressive language is a smokescreen for ignorance, or for misleading people down narrow corridors of understanding where they must be impressed by dead ends all dressed up as solutions to real-world problems. Biotech carrots are simply not a reasonable solution to osteoporosis across the globe. Access to land or to a diverse locally available diet is a way-better solution to problems of malnutrition than pills, gene-splicing, or high input agriculture. It doesn't take much land to create a healthy diet, nor many inputs...but this is the solution that biotech would deny the world's poor, given any credence. I’m all for science, and I enjoy and understand the language of many sciences. But I am also for pointing out where impressive language is a smokescreen for ignorance, or for misleading people down narrow corridors of understanding where they must be impressed by dead ends all dressed up as solutions to real-world problems. Biotech carrots are simply not a reasonable solution to osteoporosis across the globe. Access to land or to a diverse locally available diet is a way-better solution to problems of malnutrition than pills, gene-splicing, or high input agriculture. It doesn’t take much land to create a healthy diet, nor many inputs…but this is the solution that biotech would deny the world’s poor, given any credence.

]]> By: Nick Routledge http://seedstory.wordpress.com/2008/01/28/supercarrot-addendum/#comment-63 Nick Routledge Thu, 14 Feb 2008 02:39:18 +0000 http://seedstory.wordpress.com/2008/01/28/supercarrot-addendum/#comment-63 Yes, Bob, I'm reminded of physicist Freeman Dyson's claim that science has always been an alliance of free spirits in all cultures rebelling against the tyranny of their local cultures. Interesting, though, that the root paradigmatic pathology of GMOs, indeed of modern science and the entire modern experiment, is that in attempting to transcend tyranny, we have become so estranged from authentic relationship with local culture, local soils, local water, local life - and with it a sense of proportion which includes a genuine concern for the neighborly - that we have simply become unhinged. We don't even need to go as far as GMOs to see this trend reflected in seed technology of course. Hybrids are a classic example of science 'triumphing' over a sense of place. http://www.seedambassadors.org/Mainpages/reclaimingtheharvest.htm Time for science to return to its roots, I sense. What is it Rumi says? "Seek the tyranny of your friends." n Yes, Bob, I’m reminded of physicist Freeman Dyson’s claim that science has always been an alliance of free spirits in all cultures rebelling against the tyranny of their local cultures. Interesting, though, that the root paradigmatic pathology of GMOs, indeed of modern science and the entire modern experiment, is that in attempting to transcend tyranny, we have become so estranged from authentic relationship with local culture, local soils, local water, local life - and with it a sense of proportion which includes a genuine concern for the neighborly - that we have simply become unhinged. We don’t even need to go as far as GMOs to see this trend reflected in seed technology of course. Hybrids are a classic example of science ‘triumphing’ over a sense of place.

http://www.seedambassadors.org/Mainpages/reclaimingtheharvest.htm

Time for science to return to its roots, I sense. What is it Rumi says? “Seek the tyranny of your friends.”

n

]]> By: Bob Jones http://seedstory.wordpress.com/2008/01/28/supercarrot-addendum/#comment-59 Bob Jones Sat, 09 Feb 2008 21:33:31 +0000 http://seedstory.wordpress.com/2008/01/28/supercarrot-addendum/#comment-59 Frank Morton's comments are spot on, but I cannot allow his remark about "all the science jabber" go unchallenged. Science is not the enemy (it is science, after all, that demonstrates the dangerous nature of GMOs and their derivatives). The fraudulent reporting (or non-reporting) of genuine science is an appropriate target, as is the mis-use of science or, more accurately, of technology. Science is a beautiful and valuable discipline, and real scientists (as opposed to the biotechnology industry's hired guns who avoid confronting real science) ought to be our heroes. Frank Morton’s comments are spot on, but I cannot allow his remark about “all the science jabber” go unchallenged. Science is not the enemy (it is science, after all, that demonstrates the dangerous nature of GMOs and their derivatives). The fraudulent reporting (or non-reporting) of genuine science is an appropriate target, as is the mis-use of science or, more accurately, of technology. Science is a beautiful and valuable discipline, and real scientists (as opposed to the biotechnology industry’s hired guns who avoid confronting real science) ought to be our heroes.

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