Disappointing. In a world where hunger remains an issue, it's sad to see fear-mongering preventing us from using the best technology available to produce the most food with the least negative externalities.<p>Oh well, I guess if we just dump a lot more pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers, along with using more fresh water for irrigation, we can almost replicate the results of GMO seeds.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb :
<i>"Genetically Modified Organisms, GMOs. Top-down modifications to the system (through GMOs) are categorically and statistically different from bottom up ones (regular farming, progressive tinkering with crops, etc.) To borrow from Rupert Read, there is no comparison between the tinkering of selective breeding and the top-down engineering of taking a gene from a fish and putting it into a tomato. Saying that such a product is natural misses the statistical process by which things become “natural”.<p>What people miss is that the modification of crops impacts everyone and exports the error from the local to the global. I do not wish to pay —or have my descendants pay — for errors by executives of Monsanto. We should exert the precautionary principle there —our non-naive version — simply because we would discover errors after considerable damage."</i><p>Mathematical Definition & more -> <a href="http://blog.longnow.org/02013/07/08/the-artangel-longplayer-letters-nassim-taleb-writes-to-stewart-brand/" rel="nofollow">http://blog.longnow.org/02013/07/08/the-artangel-longplayer-...</a>