Damned, Evil Mutant Corn

The Rocky Mountain News is running an op-ed piece that basically slaps their own editorial staff around for supporting biopharming. His article is a whiny slice of fear-mongering.

Over the past several years, drug companies have been quietly fooling with our food. They've spliced drug-producing genes into food plants and animals in order to grow pharmaceuticals by the bushel. Their aims are selfish: to cut the cost of producing drugs. My aims are selfish, too. While I seldom fill a prescription, I eat every day. I also grow food, and I'd hate to see fields of mutant crops across the fence. If you eat, you should be concerned, too.

Oh, no! Scary mutant crops! Fact is, whether using gene-splicing or good old fashioned selective breeding, all contemporary crops have been genetically husbanded to their current forms. The idea in farming (for pharmaceuticals or food) is to grow a bountiful, hardy crop that fulfills needs. The more crops that can be grown, the more stable those crops are, and the more bountiful their production per acre, the more mouths are fed in an economical fashion.

I call this a good thing.

If pharmaceutical companies can also bring about the creation of drugs through these farming techniques, then the world becomes a better place and drugs become cheaper.

A few years back, I witnessed the beginning of this fairy tale at an agricultural forum in Denver. Drug industry hucksters transfixed farmers with PowerPoint presentations that projected the marvels of biopharming across the screen. Showing us a slide of a hog barn, the spokesperson crowed, "You could grow pigs filled with human blood!" That's when my hair stood on end. If this happens, it will end pig farming as we know it.

I admit, the idea of pigs growing human blood (an over-simplification) does make me a bit squeamish. Put me on an operating table while I'm losing tremendous amounts of blood and ask me if I care, though. Just pump me full of O-pos, doc, and make sure I'm around to bitch about the sudden swinish habits I'm sure to adopt.

Fear-mongers are keeping valuable American food aid from being distributed in Africa--because the Africans don't want to take the risk that their own crops might be tainted and Europeans won't buy what crops they actually do have to sell. The Europeans are hysterical about genetically modified food, though, and won't be mollified by the simple fact that these foods are safe. So, again, people who are in need lose out to the people that have the luxury of saying "no."

Worse, the writer never really explains how any of the modified crops might truly be hazardous, just that they're scary, Europeans don't like them, and, darnit, it's a bad idea.

Bah. Just another Luddite terrified of the dangers of those Damned, Evil Mutant Corn Crops.

Read the story.

Posted by zombyboy at May 30, 2003 12:00 AM | TrackBack