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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Grainne who wrote (100159)	4/2/2005 3:06:41 AM
From: cosmicforce	Respond to of 108807

That was my whole point about entering this fray in the first place. Just like the use of mercury in gold extraction isn't JUST the business of the miners, it is simply wrong to dismiss the opinions of non-farmers on the issue of GMO. One can be very skilled at extracting gold using amalgam because of daily experience doing it. In the practical matter of getting the most gold per ounce of mercury, this empirical knowledge would no doubt be more meaningful than that of someone with university chemistry and geology training (if gold extraction efficiency was the only metric that mattered). We didn't leave the decision of asbestos in brake pads to mechanics or DDT in the hands pest management experts. There are good reasons to use asbestos in brakes or DDT to control mosquitos but the public health and environmental aspects are simply more important. Despite the social and environmental impact, industry experts at the time these materials were first criticized seemed either willfully ignorant of the larger picture or they simply didn't care. It is probably impossible to determine which. People seldom think they are doing the wrong thing and it could be a form of groupthink where like-minded people start filtering the information to avoid cognitive dissonance. A similar argument can be made for GMO advocacy. The most balanced perspective on GMO may not be in the hands of farmers whose knowledge base is concerned with maximized field production.