> Those guys don't do statistics because ... they can count ? You are
> looking at about 600 wheat plants per m^2, multiplied by the area of
> cultivation, multiplied by the number of harvests per year, 
> multiplied
> by the number of years that plant species will be used. In 1935 it 
> was
> already about 155 million ha and two harvests. That's about 10^11 
> plants
> per harvest. How many nines in their safety factor again ?

Alas, that's just the sort of stats that they do do.

The argument goes something like.

"What's the worst case risk?
    "Kills everyone on earth"
"How many people on earth?"
    "About 6 billion give or take"
What's the risk of the worst case happening?"
    "To be honest, as long as nobody's taking notes, we have 
absolutely no idea, but it may be as good as only 1 in 100 million per 
year"
"Hmm. 1/100000000 x 6 billion per year. That's only 60 people a year 
on average. That's about 0.1% of the US road toll. (Just ask James). 
Utterly trivial. Lets do it."
    "Or it could be 1 in 10 million per year. We really have no way of 
telling."
"Still only 1% of ther annual US road toll".
    "Or perhaps one in 1 million."
"What's that make. OK - 6,000 people a year. Look, every DAY over 
200,000 people die on earth. Every HOUR more people than that die. 
Look at the benefits. And the profits. and the fame. Lets do it."
 "Yes Sir!"

___

GM could destroy all human life. But probably won't. But may.

Numbers of nines in a safety factor is not always the most appropriate 
way to express a risk. Even if you can in fact calculate how many 9's 
there really are. And with GM, in any given case, you absolutely 
cannot. With GM we are playing with arcane and wonderful machinery not 
of our making and, still, far far far beyond our comprehension. We can 
pull the levers and push the buttons and make the machine run, but 
when it does something unexpected, about the best we can do is say 
"Well! Fancy that! Who would have thought?, ...". How many 9's were 
there in the Interleukin mouse virus experiment. What if it had been 
rabidly infectious - as it just as easily could have been. What if it 
had then escaped - as such things have been known to do. (Google 
smallpox janet parker).

Interestingly, Smallpox vaccine is based on Vaccinia. *Nobody* knows 
where Vaccinia came from. What started out as another virus was 
replaced by Vaccinia unnoticed and it took years before the new 
organism that was being used worldwide was "discovered". It turns out 
to be  a superior innoculation source. It could have also been doing 
other far nastier things. The highly controlled smallpox vaccine 
industry "converted" to a new totally unknown organism quite unbeknown 
to anyone and it went unnoticed for years. How many 9's did that 
bypass?

In case you think Smallpox is gone, In March 2003 smallpox scabs were 
found tucked inside an envelope in a book on Civil War medicine in 
Santa Fe, New Mexico. The envelope was labeled as containing the scabs 
and listed the names of the patients that were vaccinated with them. 
Alive? I don't know. Theoreticaly could have been. Someone does know 
but I'm sure they're not telling. How many 9's?






        Russell McMahon







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