David Cooper, a professor of philosophy at Durham University, has co-edited three books on environmental issues, including Spirit of the Environment (1998).
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Vol. 22 No. 10 · 18 May 2000
pages 28-29 | 2786 words
Homeric Cheese v. Technophiliac Relish
David Cooper writes about GM food
‘Wonder bacteria will manufacture drugs and food supplements, while contributing to the production of cheese and other foods. They will be used to prevent frost damage to strawberries. Crops will be created to resist pests and diseases ... Food products from wonder fish, cattle and poultry will also find their way onto the grocer’s shelves.’ These might have been predictions from a utopian tract by some 1930s technophile – H.G. Wells, perhaps, or J.B.S. Haldane. However, change the tense and replace ‘wonder’ by ‘genetically engineered’ and ‘grocer’ by ‘supermarket’, and you have an actual passage from a recent book, Eat Your Genes.
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Letters
Vol. 22 No. 14 · 20 July 2000
From A. Duane
Where David Cooper gets it wrong on GM foods (LRB, 18 May) is in his optimistic assumption that 'sound science … can provide a pretty accurate audit of risks and benefits.' Scientists look too eagerly at the benefits and too reluctantly at the costs of their work. Take the example of ionising radiation: what is considered to be the safe dose has been decreasing since the time of Mme Curie.
As long as scientists are rewarded for finding interesting and useful things and are not rewarded for finding the bad side-effects, the benefits will emerge first and the risks later. Science works quite well within its limits; mainly because there are strong internal checks to keep scientists honest. If the sanctions against failing to find the bad side-effects associated with one's discovery were as strong as those against failing to realise that one's sample is contaminated or that one has neglected a background effect, science might be taken more seriously.
A. Duane
Grand Saconnex<br />Switzerland
