August 1, 2014

The issue with GMO seeds is political, not just scientific

NOTE ON EDIT of August 10, 2014: I'm changing the title of this thread (formerly, "Vandana Shiva on the problem with GMO seeds&quot to make clear it's about the issues generally, and to make it harder for certain parties to degenerate it into the sneering distraction tactics of the fake "skeptics" and the irrelevant ad-hominem attacks now fashionable among many self-designated embodiments of "science". Let's focus on the issues of GMOs and their actual utilization within the present-day system of political economy.

First, a Vandana Shiva interview with Bill Moyers - please watch it.

http://vimeo.com/45691238

http://billmoyers.com/segment/vandana-shiva-on-the-problem-with-genetically-modified-seeds/



Here are questions the GMO issue raises that are generally avoided by framing the discussion merely as one of science determining the supposed effects on health:

How is this technology applied? What kinds of GMOs have been developed? By whom and to what purpose? With what effect, not just on the biology of the organism or of the eater, but also on the environment and in the political economy, the lives of humans generally? What are the totality of the consequences, insofar as we might know them, as well as the potential unintended consequences? Who decides?

My argument:

This is at least as much an issue of politics and power as of science. GMO functionally is used as a means for business entities to claim intellectual property rights to seeds whether or not these are in their possession, or to set up other systems of guaranteed rent-seeking, as when they sell both the seed and the persticides/herbicides to which it is resistant. (A place gets flooded with that particular herbicide and then everyone's forced to buy the more expensive, herbicide-resistant seeds and prohibited from using seeds gained in the harvest.) As a matter of system GMO tech is applied with corporate pecuniary interests as the motivating force. In practice reinforces the present systems of energy-intensive industrial monoculture, food processing and delivery-marketing in the hands of cartels, and problematic diet.

Analogy:

Applying new techniques in metal sciences, I invent a new gun and sell it to a corporation that puts it into immediate mass production. Some people don't like this, many of them for visceral reasons. Others rationalize my invention, like Neil de Grasse Tyson has just done with GMOs, with the general argument that people have been making things out of metal for millennia. This is obtuse. He's a smart guy, but he's missing the point. What's the gun for? Who's using it, to what end?

August 1, 2014

Missing the matter of who and why. Politically naive.

Re: Tyson's defense of GMOs.

Here is what he's not asking:

How is this technology applied? What kinds of GMOs have been developed? By whom? To what purpose? With what effect, not just on the biology of the organism or of the eater, but also on the environment and in the political economy, the lives of humans generally? What are the totality of the consequences, insofar as we might know them, as well as the potential unintended consequences? Who decides?

Analogy:

Applying new techniques in metal sciences, I invent a new gun and sell it to a corporation that puts it into immediate mass production. Some people don't like this, many of them for visceral reasons. Others rationalize my invention, like Tyson in this case, with the general argument that people have been making things out of metal for millennia. This is obtuse. He's a smart guy, but he's missing the point. What's the gun for? Who's using it, to what end?