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Whatever Became of Selective Breeding?When we selectively bred animals and plants for generations to get an improved species, ‘fingers in the food’ never seemed to bother anyone. Now that we can achieve the same results more quickly, what we used to call selective breeding; we call genetic engineering. If you think words aren’t important, don’t say that to Jeremy Rifkin. People like Rifkin make a life’s work of using words of mistrust and suspicion, spreading the fear that someone mustn’t be telling the truth, that frost-free strawberries will do us in, or that somehow the next killer virus will be a result of biotech gone berserk. While few would suggest that ethical and safety concerns be ignored or relegated to the trash heap, even fewer would suggest that the promise of biotechnology be trashed either. It seems that caution must be balanced with reason, distrust with goodwill, so that goals that are truly beneficial may receive fair consideration. It is certain that no person, anti-biotech activist or biotech booster, favors the almost certain chance of one day being a victim or crime, feels good about the fact that four million of their fellow citizens are drug-related offenders and are in jail, on parole or on probation. Neither do they disagree over the need for a better justice system, drug-free schools and neighborhoods, children with live-in parents, parents with mates, streets without gangs. Every person of every persuasion can come up with their own reasons why a world without narcotic drugs would be a better one. Each one of those reasons is a vote for giving biotechnology a chance to cure a curse centuries have not yet touched. There is a an honest time for fear, but also a time for honest courage. There are solutions science has to offer that can win the applause of all of us.
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