05.22.10
Response to the angry engineers
I’d like to share my response to this article in the NY times that takes it, as unassailable fact, that genetic engineering is no different from natural sexual propogation practiced by generations of plant and animal breeders:
Inherent in your blog is the assumption, shared by most researchers, that genetic engineering and synthetic biology are no different, essentially, than the natural plant breeding processes man has engaged in for generations.
This assumption allows you to not only research these engineered, self-replicating products, but to also have no qualms about visiting these products and their offspring on the public at large. Research all you want, I say, in your controlled laboratories. But what the researchers seem to lack is an understanding of the vast, limitless and amoral laboratory at Mother Nature’s command.
It is, overall, the most offensive of actions to force your products on me and my family, through gene spread which is inevitable, no matter my reason for not wanting your products. Keep them to yourselves. Is that a difficult concept to understand? Is that not ‘reasonable’ ‘rational’ enough for you?
And, on that subject, please know that every war, genocide, military coup and Final Solution has been started in the name of ‘reason’ ‘rationality’ and ‘efficiency’ for the ‘betterment of humanity’; Started by people who were absolutely certain about their logic, their goodness; their greater, more rational approach to the human condition.
I’m saddened that pure rationality at all expense of beauty, or the ephemeral, unknowable ‘meaning’ of life, has overcome your view of the world. And I wish you could keep your products to yourselves, but you don’t seem to even know why I don’t want them or give me some basic credit, beyond some provincial troglodyte fear, for not wanting your products in my foods and mountains and waters.
