On manipulating genes

As a research discipline, modern-day genetics addresses the consequences of that small percentage of disease-producing genes that we acquire along the way. It operates from the assumption that one day we will be able to locate and identify damaged genes and use that information to more easily diagnose and treat disease. However, it largely fails to consider how to prevent genes from becoming damaged in the first place. And the field’s presumption that genetic engineering will be able to prevent disease from occurring by repairing or replacing specific genes that cause disease, is the height of hubris, given the unimaginable complexity of DNA.— Whole: Rethinking the Science of Nutrition, page 127

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Come, let us play God! So far, every time we've tried, it hasn't worked so well. But, hey, maybe this time, right? : (
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This is just plain evil

Got this today from "Catch the Buzz" a beekeeper e-mail. It originally appeared in Food Manufacturing News.

Inspired by the popular "USDA organic" label, House Republicans are proposing a new government certification for foods free of genetically modified ingredients.

The idea is part of an attempt to block mandatory labeling of foods that include genetically modified organisms, or GMOs. The certification would be voluntary, says Rep. Mike Pompeo, R-Kan., who is including the idea in legislation he is introducing Wednesday.

But here's the part that stinks

The bill would also override any state laws that require the labeling.

Under the legislation, the Agriculture Department would oversee the certification, as it does with organics. But while organic foods must be USDA-certified to carry any organic label on a package, the department's non-GMO certification would not be required for every food that bills itself as free of genetically modified ingredients. The idea is that foods the department certifies as free of GMOs would have a special government label that companies could use to market their foods. User fees would pay for the program.

Two things there: (1) It would override more stringent state laws.
And (2) certification would not be required for every food that bills itself as free of genetically modified ingredients. What!? You don't need to certify you are GMO-free to advertise it? But, you would need to be certified to have the label. Right! What happened to truth in advertising?

And what does the public think about GMO-free labeling?

According to a December Associated Press-GfK poll, two-thirds of Americans favor mandatory labeling of genetically modified foods.

So for whom do these representatives really work? Obviously not for the 2/3 of Americans!

Write you congressperson and tell them to stop working for the big ag companies and start working for you.

Whom do you trust?

Buying seeds for your garden? There's a list of trustworthy companies at Council for Responsible Genetics

Personally, I buy primarily from Fedco Seeds (which is a cooperative, but you don't need to belong to buy) and Johnny's. But I also buy from Seed Savers Exchange, Seeds of Change, and Peaceful Valley. I love looking at Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds (their magazine is sold at the Coop here in town and it is wonderful!) but so far haven't ordered anything from them...now to go get those onions and leeks started. And see if I can get some broccoli to grow in the basement under lights in those self-watering containers...

I should have expected this

This showed up in my inbox this morning:

Last month, “Big Food,” in the form of the Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA), a trade organization that represents more than 300 businesses, sent a letter to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) advising that it intends to petition the agency to allow foods containing GMOs to be labeled as “natural.”

Right! But if GMOs are natural, then why this a bit further in the article:

General Mills, Inc., has started producing GMO-free Cheerios. The company expects this new product, which will bear the label, “Not Made With Genetically Modified Ingredients,” to be available to consumers “shortly.” However, this change does not affect other General Mills brands such as Honey Nut Cheerios.

Anything for a quick buck...Lord, deliver us from ourselves!

Reductionism

I just finished reading a book entitled Whole which examines, among other things, the atomization of our thinking. He calls it reductionism and is mainly concerned with how it affects scientific research. Personally, I see it as being larger than that; it affects the way we look at life in general.

For an example let's take theology. We like to break things down into manageable chunks, so we study "the doctrine of God," or the ordo salutis (order of salvation), or justification, or sanctification, or...well, you get the idea.

The same thing happens in exegesis; we examine a verse, then break it down into phrases, then do word studies. Now, each of those is fine in and of itself, but we need to synthesize these back into a coherent whole. But we don't usually do that. We leave them as independent snippets; soundbites, if you will. And we expect to live by those.

That, my friends is a problem. We need to recover a holistic (I hate that word!) view of life. We need to our life as in interrelation of spirit, soul, mind, and body (I'm not even sure those are legitimate parts, but that's another issue...). We can't live life as a secular/sacred divide, we need to see all of life as sacred and full of God's goodness. In short, we need to live "in Christ."

When I was in operations/warehouse management, we looked at things from a systemic view. That is, we didn't look at the operation as a set of discrete operations, we looked at it as a system. You could tweak individual parts of the system and still end up with a mess. What we were interested in was throughput to the customer. It didn't matter if the pickers (the people filling orders) were operating at an unbelievable rate. If the order didn't get out the door, we didn't make any money.

Further, it didn't matter if the pickers were super fast if they were pulling the wrong items for the order! It had to be the correct product. It gets complicated real fast...and that's just a simple thing like order fulfillment.

Once we saw the system as a whole, we could then zero in on a specific part of the system and tweak it. But, we always had to keep our eyes on the results those tweaks had on the whole.

That's one (of many) reason I'm against GMO foods and seeds. And why I am against using pesticides and herbicides. And the liberal use of antibiotics. We just don't know what the systemic results are. And we don't even bother (usually) to study those results. Funding is nonexistent—it might damage profits.

As much as it grates on us, we need to acknowledge that we are finite beings with finite understanding of a huge world. Sure, we know more than we did 50-100 years ago. But the old saw "Give a man a book and he is an expert. Give a man a library and he becomes a student" is true here. We have a book (scientific discoveries); we've read about 1/4 (at most!) of it and we think we're experts. I'm reminded of a Charles Schultz cartoon in Young Pillars. A teenaged Charlie Brown says to his neighbor, "I used to consider myself an expert on the book of Revelation. Then I met someone who had actually read it."

That's us. We think we understand how things work, so we play God. But we are like nursery school kids playing with an Erector Set and thinking we're rebuilding the World Trade Center. Nursery school kids can't even build something simple with an Erector set, let alone something as complicated as a high-rise...

Just an
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