Monday, April 25, 2005
Science and Myth
One of the reasons I have worked so hard on this blog help people understand that science is a morally neutral undertaking is stories like this.
It's not the science. It's the scientists. This sounds like useful science to me.
Scientists have begun putting genes from human beings into food crops in a dramatic extension of genetic modification.Moral dilemma? Not necessarily. Of course there are many that find it repugnant.
Even before this development, many people, including Prince Charles, have opposed the technology on the grounds that it is playing God by creating unnatural combinations of living things.So why would we want to do something like this? Consider:
Environmentalists say that no one will want to eat the partially human-derived food because it will smack of cannibalism.
In the first modification of its kind, Japanese researchers have inserted a gene from the human liver into rice to enable it to digest pesticides and industrial chemicals....Professor Richard Meilan of Purdue University in Indiana, who has worked with a similar gene from rabbits, says that plants modified with it could "clean up toxins" from contaminated land.As someone who spends quite a bit of time trying to clean up contaminated land, something like this would be an absolute godsend. Instead of tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in digging, treating, transporting, testing and replacing - instead of hugely disrupted business and lives, we could just plant a crop.
It's not the science. It's the scientists. This sounds like useful science to me.
