Re: [A-List] Errors sow new doubts for biotech

[Waistline2@xxxxxxx]

In a message dated 12/25/02 10:49:53 PM Pacific Standard Time, michele@xxxxxxxx writes:

>Well, before the recent troubles, environmental groups wondered what would
>happen if, say, animals were exposed to human drugs by eating field crops.
>These groups often favor health-related uses of the technology but want
>these plants locked up in greenhouses or laboratories - a restriction the
>biotech companies say is impractical.



Comment


"Pharming" instead of farming is the growing - planting and harvesting, of genetically engineered food stuff for its newly created biochemical ingredient. As stated in the above article, the planting and harvesting of a genetically altered stain of corn was for purposes of manufacturing a drug - chemical agent, alleged to be useful in the treatment of cystic fibrosis.

What is cystic fibrosis? Actually, it makes no difference to my bottom line response because other matters need to be clarified in the future, that would roughly be called a Marxist standpoint approach to human biology and ecology. 

Ecology in this specific instance refers agriculture and then goes forward. Agriculture on a capitalist basis has never reckoned well with ecology - the maintenance of the self-reproducing character of the unity of the biosphere, or preservation of the land. Bringing land itself into the sphere of commodity production and exchange; and the consequent mobilization of the land for agriculture production on the basis of exchange and profit maximization is radically different from humanities historic mobilization of the produce of the land. 

Preservation of the land need to be qualified and in America we are in a somewhat unique position to undertake this task given our past history of capitalist slavery. I refer to the cotton crop and the destruction of the farming capacity of the land. Here historic records can be reviewed anew, using a different theoretical approach and different doctrine of life. It is not enough to say, "We have been bad and need to change." What is needed is science - the examination of the law system of consumption and self-reproduction of species as the unity of self-reproducing biosphere. 

A larger issue that Marxist or rather materialist, might address is the matter of farming for the production of exchange-value as opposed to local markets riveted on immediate consumption - use-values. 

On a very basic level most peoples from my generation notice but lack the science to understand the impact of the difference in all produce from the same produce when we were children. This is what is being stated: a lemon or tomato currently has been genetically altered and given stronger skins to preserve it life cycle during transportation and sale. The lemons today hardly have any lemon juice in them. The tomatoes are horrible and lack a certain meatiness and juiciness I remember from my youth. 

Then there is this matter of "seedless" fruits. As a hard-core materialist I do not believe that a seedless grape can spring from nature because it violates the law system of self-reproduction. An interesting reference is the Bible and Genesis, with its reference to what man should eat and "seed bearing fruits." 

In other words, I am trying to raise in a different form the entire question of "sustainability," which is still articulated within the ideology and doctrine of the epoch of the bourgeoisie. Sustainability is actually a theoretical concept of industrial society and an ideological framework - doctrine, of the bourgeoisie. 

There is a need for a materialist approach - based on radically different concepts, of eating or biological consumption, and what is necessary for the maintenance of human life. 

In other words, the Pandora box Mark Jones opened up concerning thermodynamic principles of energy consumption and conversion can be applied to man as environment and this stage in the evolution of commodity production. 

Now, the Pharmaceutical corporations - the dope man, are in the main evil and destructive and based on chemical alchemy. This is a big subject that will be discussed in more detain in the New Year. 

I have no love for the chemical scientist in the main, although there are exceptions to the rule. 


Melvin P.