Saturday, November 03, 2007

Ban Genetically Modified Organisms by Louis Evan Palmer

The horrible truth about GMOs beyond anything that anyone does or claims is that creating a GMO is always a roll of the dice and we cannot survive a single loss. The reason it's a roll of the dice is we understand very little of the intensely complex and long-reaching relationships between the various organisms and environments and their associated chemistries and physics. Once we make a mistake in this sphere, it's in play, it starts replicating and interacting and altering its environment, our shared environment. We don't know enough to play this game. We may never know enough. We only have this one Earth and if we lose it then we're doomed.

There are already stories of how close we have come to obliterating ourselves. It's a certainty that for every story that makes it into the public domain, however briefly or tangentially, there are ten others that don't, that happened but knowledge of which is blocked by non-disclosure agreements, by the inability of people to lose their income, by threats or actual violence.

One such roll of the dice goes by the non-descript acronym of SDF-20. It is different from SDF-15 which is a normal regular baterium called Klebsiella planticola. We are told that SDF-20 is "genetically engineered" which implies that we know what we're doing. It's a lie. We know how to modify certain bacterium but we have only the sketchiest of ideas on how it fits into everything else which is where it's being placed.

It almost doesn't matter why SDF-20 was created, the basic reason is always the same, to make money. In this particular case, the object was to create more ethanol out of farm waste. It would also use the fermentation residues on the farm soil as a fertilizer. The testing used sterile soil as all testing does. Here was a huge error. This was caught in time by a Phd candidate at Oregon University who decided that testing should also use normal soil. All the plants in the test in normal soil died. SDF-20 had coated the plants' roots with deadly concentrations of ethanol.

There were various presentantions before government agencies such a one in New Zealand. The New Zeland scientists argued like their next paycheck depended on Monsanto. But none of the INs and OUTs of their nuances and point counterpoint matter. This could have slipped through and killed all living plants because we don't completely and profoundly know what we're doing and that is what is required. We can't outsource this or 80/20 it or anything else.

The GMO danger is immense. They must be banned immediately!

Genetically Modified Organisms, The Way It Can Be, Louis Evan Palmer, http://twicb.blogspot.com
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Copyright 2007 Louis Evan Palmer lives in Ontario Canada. His short stories have appeared in numerous publications.


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