[TheForge] OT: GM foods OT:

[Andrew Vida]

CGRAF wrote:
> On 5/26/2011 7:39 PM, peter fels wrote:
>> On May 26, 2011, at 5:18 PM, CGRAF wrote:
> 
>>> I am also aware of things like R22 that passed muster originally on
>>> safety specs, it was not poisonous like the ammonia  it replaced nor
>>> explosive like the propane it replaced. It only took 50 or so YEARS for
>>> us to figure out that just maybe it was screwing with the ozone.
>> It's a game of learn as you go and hope the unscreened mistakes aren't catastrophic.
>> Will ozone depletion cause more deaths than propane and ammonia in that time span?
> 
> Assuming that the man made halogens are the cause of the ozone 
> depletion, which ain't necessarily so, what make the newer replacements 
> which are or will be used on a far larger scale safer? Perhaps they are 
> differently dangerous, but we were in such a gosh awful hurry.

	My point exactly.  Life systems are so complex, in so many ways so 
subtle, and our knowledge of them so incomplete that there is, at the 
very least, the strongest justification for exercising the utmost 
caution.  None of this technology is proven for safety.  Proving them 
would rightly require generations of careful testing, not mere years or 
even decades.  These technologies may prove safe, but what if they do 
not?  What if it is not?  The combinatorial complexity of genetics is 
such that no human on the planet can wrap his head around it, that much 
I am confident of.  We had no clue as to what all that "junk" DNA was 
doing there.  We are just beginning to discover that it is not junk at 
all, but appears to serve an unimaginably broad array of evolutionary 
purposes.  Yet companies like Monsanto screw around with it with such 
blind and utter hubris, as if they had a damned clue as to what they are 
doing in this broader context.