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After reading the Lovins' editorial, I saw an op-ed by Gregg Easterbrook inThe
New York Times (November 19, 1999) about genetically engineered crops, under
the headline: "Food for the Future: Someday, rice will have built-in vitamin A.
Unless the Luddites win."
Are Amory and Hunter Lovins Luddites? Certainly not. I believe we all would agree
that golden rice, with its built-in vitamin A, is probably a good thing, if developed
with proper care and respect for the likely dangers in moving genes across species
boundaries.
Awareness of the dangers inherent in genetic engineering is beginning to grow, as
reflected in the Lovins' editorial. The general public is aware of, and uneasy
about, genetically modified foods, and seems to be rejecting the notion that such
foods should be permitted to be unlabeled.
But genetic engineering technology is already very far along. As the Lovins note,
the USDA has already approved about 50 genetically engineered crops for
unlimited release; more than half of the world's soybeans and a third of its corn
now contain genes spliced in from other forms of life.
While there are many important issues here, my own major concern with genetic
engineering is narrower: that it gives the power - whether militarily, accidentally,
or in a deliberate terrorist act - to create a White Plague.
The many wonders of nanotechnology were first imagined by the Nobel-laureate
physicist Richard Feynman in a speech he gave in 1959, subsequently published
under the title "There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom
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