WEEKLY WATCH number 187 (10/8/2006) | |
from Claire Robinson, WEEKLY WATCH editor Dear all: Yet another study, this time from the US, shows that GM cotton neither improves biodiversity or yield. And a GM grass has escaped into the wild in Oregon (RESEARCH). Worth reading in full is Nathaniel C. Comfort's incisive review of GM fundamentalist Lee Silver's new book (for excerpt, see SCIENCE & RELIGION). Claire ------------------------------------------------------------ RESEARCH ------------------------------------------------------------ + GM COTTON FAILS TO IMPROVE BIODIVERSITY OR YIELD + GOLF COURSE GM GRASS ESCAPES IN OREGON Jay Reichman and colleagues at the US Environmental Protection Agency's labs in Corvallis, Oregon, identified nine escapees among grass varieties sampled within a 4.8-kilometre radius of the site where the bentgrass is being cultivated, the most distant 3.8 kilometres away. The team showed that the GM grass has spread both by pollinating non-GM plants to form hybrids, and by seed movement. The escape is worrying the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) enough that it is running its first full environmental impact assessment of a GM plant. Lawn and grass seed is exported from Oregon all over the world, including to the UK. http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6872 ------------------------------------------------------------ Lee M. Silver is currently flavour of the month among biotech promoters with the publication of his new book attacking biotech critics as irrationalists driven by "subliminal" embedded religious beliefs. But 'Challenging Nature: The Clash of Science and Spirituality at the New Frontiers of Life' is actually a testament to the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of most biotech promoters. + LEE M. SILVER - CHALLENGING NATURE Silver is a Princeton professor with a background in mouse genetics who caused a stir with his 1997 book, 'Remaking Eden', which asserted the inevitability of using human genetic engineering to manipulate future generations. Its terms "GenRich" and "Naturals" neatly encapsulated the possibility of an entrenched genetic aristocracy. In 'Challenging Nature' Silver moves on to analyzing the supposed belief systems of biotechnology critics. But virtually the whole book is an assault upon a straw target of Silver's own creation, spiced with irrelevant criticisms of outdated examples of unscientific thinking. He is notably unfair, disingenuous and sloppy. He misrepresents several scandals in the field of agricultural biotech. Some of his quotes are mangled; some of his citations are wrong. http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6873 + SILVER-TONGUED NONSENSE - GM WATCH REVIEW This is nonsense. Asia has seen some of the most vociferous and effective opposition to GM crops anywhere in the world. In Thailand not only commercial GM crops but even GM trials are banned. India has also been a hotbed of opposition, and the global prospects for GM wheat commercialisation hit the buffers because of the strength of opposition in Japan, a country where millions of concerned citizens have signed petitions opposing GMOs. http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6873 + REVIEW OF SILVER'S BOOK FOR 'AMERICAN SCIENTIST' EXCERPTS: Strange to say, but Challenging Nature ... shows a Victorian perspective on science versus religion to be ideally suited to cheerleading for modern biotechnology and genomics. Silver uses the unreconstructed science-religion conflict as a foil for that old-time scientism: the belief that true knowledge can come only from natural science and that technology can therefore solve all social problems. So convinced is he that technology - especially biotechnology - is good for what ails us that he can see only one r |