Tuesday, October 02, 2012

"Are You Just Running on the Issues?"

From the NYT obituary of Barry Commoner, of his 1980 run for President in :
His own favorite moment of the campaign, he recalled many years later, was when a reporter in Albuquerque asked, “Dr. Commoner, are you a serious candidate, or are you just running on the issues?”
Commoner certainly did a lot to elevate environmental concerns, but he went too far at times -- his 2002 article in Harper's, "Unraveling the DNA myth," was not very scientific (naturally, though, Harper's ate it up because of his point of view), which seems to be the case with much of the left's opposition to genetic modification.

A life well lived, though.

1 comment:

tonylearns said...

can't read the article because I don't subscribe, so I don't know what you are objecting to in the DNA unraveled piece. I however is strognly opposed to GMO's NOt because of any specific dmage they have already done ( and I have seen some evidence that suggests there already is at least some) but becuase it has become ubiquitous in this country, and I am completely confident that the element of profit easily trumps adequate regulations. there is no way to know what future problems may occur and if ALL of our food is GMed it will be very difficult to control or even determine what is causing th problem. I do not understand how anyone can be against labeling GMO's and allowing people to pay more money for those willing to produce it. It seems literally insane to me for us NOT to have a control group and maintain food stocks that are not artificially modified. natural selection is no magic guaranteur of healhty food, but it does operate under structural limits that are almost completely removed with current and future technology. I have no doubt that there will be tremendous advances made in all sorts of ways that will benefit us greatly, but I think it foolish to pretend that we really understand what we are doing in this area.