Travels In The Genetically Modified Zone

With Genetically modified crops we entered uncharted territory

Amazon Book Description

With genetically modified crops we have entered uncharted territory--where visions of the triumph of biotechnology in agriculture vie with dire views of medical and environmental disaster. For two years Mark L. Winston traveled this fraught territory at home and abroad, listening to farmers, industry spokespeople, regulators, and researchers, canvassing high-security laboratories, environmentalist enclaves, and cyberspace, making a thorough survey of the facts, opinions, and practices deployed by opponents and proponents of transgenic crops.

Through his sympathetic portrayal of the passions on all sides, Winston brings a clear, unbiased perspective to this bewildering landscape. Traveling with Winston, we see the excitement and curiosity that pervade laboratories developing genetically modified crops, as well as the panic and outrage among dedicated opponents of agricultural biotechnology; the desperation of conventional farmers as they look to science for solutions to the problems driving them from their farms, as well as the deeply held values of organic farmers who dread the incursion of genetically modified crops into their expanding enterprise. And, Winston shows us, these contrasting attitudes transcend national borders, with troubling counterparts and consequences in the developing world.

As he seeks a middle ground where concerns about genetic engineering can be rationally discussed and resolved, Winston gives us, at long last, a full and balanced view of the forces at play in the chaotic debate over agricultural biotechnology.

Amazon Book Info

Winston gives us, at long last, a full and balanced view of the forces at play in the chaotic debate over agricultural biotechnology.

About the Author

Mark L. Winston is a Fellow in the Morris J. Wosk Centre for Dialogue at Simon Fraser University.

Prologue

We hear concerns about bioengineered genes moving from crops into the wild, borne by wind-blown or bee-carried pollen that fertilizes feral plants. We know that plants promiscuously exchange genetic material, and genes from the current generaton of genetically odified crops already have been found in adjoining weeds. We're told that the proteins expressed in GM crops might harm us, inducing silent cell mutations that could erupt in cancer epidemics in twenty years or immedit and fatal allergic reactions in unsuspecting consumers. We read the GM crops might induce reesistance in pest insects, forcing us back into heavy overuse of synthetic chemical pesticides.

All of ths practical risks have some basis in reality, but underlying both beenfit and risk is the unknown.

Quotes

Seeds
The skills of farmers are centered not on their relationship to the world but on their ability to change it.

Hugh Brody, The Other Side of Eden, 2000

In farming, then, now, and always, it begins with the seed.
A seed is a marvelous entity, expressing a tiny moment of evolutionary history.

In The Heat of the Day

The use of recominant DNA methodology promises to revolutionize the practice of molecular biology. Although there has as yet been no practical application of the new techniques, there is every reason to belive that they will have significant practical utility in the future.