D. Jay Newman wrote:

>>> Yes, there is a chance that GM could cause some major problems.
>>> However, nature has been doing GM for, well, ever since there was
>>> nature.

Well, maybe. (I won't say "no" like Russell and for the sake of the
argument say "maybe" -- but it doesn't really matter.)

But it has been doing it /much/ slower, with /much/ more time to let die
the ones that are not mutually beneficial. And it didn't multiply untested
crops by the billions and distribute them worldwide before they didn't
succeed in a local test. And that local test lasted for millennia. 

The thing is that we don't necessarily want to have Darwin's rules applied
to us as a species. All along we have been working to invalidate natural
selection. We are now, on average, with almost certainty weaker genetically
than we were thousand years ago. People with severe chronic problems are
able to have children and lead almost normal lives. A good thing, from an
individual point of view, but not something that is likely to make us more
resistant as species. 

Who is to tell whether that GM stuff is not an aberration with the effect
to eradicate a species that shows to have been straying from the path of
coexistence?

/Something/ will always continue. But the comfortable ranges of environment
indicators for human survival are pretty small. That's the problem with
saying "nature has been doing it all along": it may have, and it may just
continue to do that. But we don't want it to do that without humans, I
suppose...

Gerhard

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