GM food

I have never been much of a fan of the Royal Family, and cannot really appreciate the arguments that people put forward for maintaining them. I am sure that Oliver Cromwell hoped to have got rid of the institution and probably turns in whatever grave he is in, at the current state of affairs. We have a priveleged and wealthy bunch of "Aristocrats", powerless to do very much other than make public appearances for the sake of the readers of the sun and the daily mail, who seem to think that millions of pounds of tax payers money is well spent on their upkeep and maintenance, and all they seem to do is produce more mouths for the public purse to feed.

The reason for my outburst, is the recent attacks made by "wingnut" Charlie on the whole of GM technology. According to him, and this guy has no qualifications in Science that I am aware of, the whole GM experiment has been a catastrophe. The evidence that he has, seems to be in his own imagination.

Man has been genetically modifying foods since farmers first bred livestock and cereal crops. Each time a breeder selects a characteristic that he deems apt, and carries out a program leading to that character's development is guilty of genetic manipulation. Without that having taken place, we would have little in the way of food and would of course probably be still living in tribes and painting our faces blue.

It is all part of evolution, which of course is based upon natural selection or the survival of the fittest. The difference is that instead of allowing natural processes to make the selection, man is giving the process a hand. Should he produce something that is unfit to survive in the wild then it will simply die out, which is of course the fate of inbred lines!

GM technology is simply extending our abilities to produce food that will be required to feed the ever growing population. Agreed it needs to be regulated and secure safeguards built in, but surely this is a technology that can produce miraculous results, given time and sufficient research.

Wingnut's problem is that he comes from a long line of inbreds, whose own gene pool has become dangerously limited. His own understanding of the technology is very limited, but in order to justify his own existence, he feels that he must pontificate on all issues that have any degree of controversy. I am sure that he means well, but the problem is that too many people actually listen to him and believe that he knows what he is talking about.