New at Reason

David Weigel | July 7, 2006

Ronald Bailey gets back into the ring with Jeremy Rifkin, who's now waxing (fact-free, of course) about the evils of biotechnology.

Comments

|7.7.06 @ 2:23AM|#

May Ron Bailey one day sit on all of our faces!

|7.7.06 @ 2:33AM|#

Back in 1998 when he was flogging his book, The Biotech Century: Harnessing the Gene and Remaking the World, Rifkin warned that because of biotech, "All living beings are drained of their substance and life becomes a code to be deciphered. There is no longer any question of sacredness or specialness."

They've been drained of their precious bodily fluids! :) Bailey, you missed a perfectly good oppurtunity to quote Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.

|7.7.06 @ 8:36AM|#

In light of yesterday's thread, it's only fair to say that I have found nothing objectionable in this article.

|7.7.06 @ 9:03AM|#

I wouldn't mess with Jeremy "Joel" Rifkin.

|7.7.06 @ 10:52AM|#

Jeremy Rifkin is a shmuck. Nothing more needs to be said.

|7.7.06 @ 10:57AM|#

Nice job Ron. I'm disappointed at the lack of a snarky disclosure.

|7.7.06 @ 1:07PM|#

"All living beings are drained of their substance and life becomes a code to be deciphered. There is no longer any question of sacredness or specialness."

I remember being forced to read Time Wars, one of Rifkin's anti-technology screeds, back in College. If memory serves, his point in this one was that "artificial" measurements of time (hours, minutes, seconds, years) were bad because they took humans out of the "natural rhythms" of the Earth. Also, computers were evil because it operated in terms of miliseconds and nanosecods, periods of time that humans could not perceive.

Rifkin doesn't facts, figures, or peered reviewed research to make his points. He prefers the Hallmark Greeting Card approach to scientific debate where he mistakes pathos and New Age pantheist drivel as evidence. Rifkin and neo-luddites like are to the applied sciences what "Doctor" Ken Hovind and Michael Behe are to Evolution: Cranks who shouldn't get a nanosecond of our attention, but get scores of drooling followers who have political or cultural axes to grind.

|7.7.06 @ 1:27PM|#

If memory serves me right, Rifkin is a world-class Luddite famous for his New Age cuisine. . . .

|7.7.06 @ 2:11PM|#

"Fuki san?"

"Yeeees?"

"I'm being told that Birchwood Chef Rifkin is using tofu in his salad?"

|7.7.06 @ 2:45PM|#

Ota-san, Challenger Rifkin says that it isn't tofu--he's using squid brains! He really understands Japanese cuisine.

|7.8.06 @ 2:16AM|#

"Speaking of health risks, toxic varieties
of crops have been produced by means of
conventional breeding, as happened in the
case of an insect resistant variety of
celery (produced too much psoralen) and
a potato (too much solanine)."

Thanks for the celery link. I remember
reading about that rash-inducing celery
years ago (before getting on the internet).
As I vaguely remember it, this celery was
bred for organic farmers and was very
insect resistant without the use of
insecticides. The celery was commercially
grown, picked presumably by glove-wearing
pickers, and then delivered to grocery
stores. Luckily it was quickly taken off
the shelves, once grocery store workers
developed rashes on their hands.

For the me, the moral of the story is
that if more than incidental changes are
made to a food crop (whether by breeding
or GE) then there has to be some kind of
testing to make sure it's safe to eat
before it's grown in an open field.
Especially so when changes are made to
to make the crop more pest resistant.
After all, mother nature is quite capable
of creating plants very resistant to
insects, but they tend also to be
poisonous to people.

As for MAS versus GE, one big advantage
of MAS over GE is that a MAS plant would
breed true (unless it was a hybrid),
while generally the GE plants do not.
This would be especially important
for third world farmers who could then
reuse seeds year after year.