The Tomato That Ate Chicago: Part Two?
October 5, 2001
Anti-Tech Gadfly’s Attempt To Tab Bio-Foods As Next Terror Weapon Smacks of Desperation
WASHINGTON, D.C .- The second most awful thing about the terrorist hijackings is watching activists attach their agendas to the horror of the World Trade Center.
Anti-tech gadfly Jeremy Rifkin, for example, has been campaigning against biotechnology for years and suddenly takes to the pages of The Los Angeles Times to proclaim that “Genetics May Be the Terrorists’ Next Tool.”
Rifkin cheerfully speculates on terrorist-created plagues of genetically enhanced anthrax and smallpox. He claims Moslem high school kids could set up a state-of-the-art biotech laboratory with $10,000 worth of off-the-shelf equipment to “create a wide variety of pathogens that can attack plant, animal and human populations.”
Rifkin doesn’t know any of this, of course. He was a philosophy major in college and now makes his living being against things. He’s opposed digital watches and hamburgers. He’s warned us that computers will put everybody but rich people out of work. (Can you imagine sitting by your pool, with computerized robots tending to your every need, and complaining that the rich guys are all at their offices?)
Never mind that the latest real-world news from biotechnology is a cure for cancer, according to a recent Associated Press report. Two Yale researchers recently created a synthetic molecule that destroys the blood vessels feeding cancer tumors and then makes copies of itself to find and attack any other tumors in the body. It works heroically in mice, and human trials will start next spring.
Genetic engineers at the University of California at Davis just produced tomato plants that actually remove the salts that are gradually building up in the world’s irrigated soils and threaten one-third of the world’s food supply, according to a recent edition of Science News.
Nothing in the last 100 years has so radically increased the sustainability of human society. The biggest beneficiaries will be the poor Moslem subsistence farmers feeding their Middle Eastern families from traditional camel-powered farms.
“Golden rice” has been bio-engineered to contain Vitamin A, and thus prevent millions of Third World kids from going blind or even dying each year due to severe Vitamin A deficiency.
As a side benefit, it will also cure the chronic iron deficiency afflicting billions of rice-culture women, giving them more energy and radically reducing the number of birth complications in the world. Rifkin thinks we should turn our backs on these fabulous, massive advances in
human well being, and ban biotechnology because it could be misused by bad guys.
Tough luck, Mr. Rifkin, the entire world already knows about DNA and transplanted molecules.
Saddam Hussein spent billions of dollars over the past 20 years trying to build nuclear bombs and turn anthrax into a usable weapon. I doubt that he’s ignored biotechnology. If Saddam hasn’t yet attacked us with genetically engineered microbes (or elephants crossed with skunks for that matter) it’s because he can’t.
The Soviet Union also spent billions trying to turn microbes into weapons. Anthrax germs actually escaped from one of their biological warfare labs into a city with a million people. The death toll was 66. That’s horrifying, but still a pretty small scale.
Terrorists can create small-scale horror no matter what we do: A hijacker attacked a Greyhound bus driver with a box-cutter. He wrecked the bus, severely wounded the driver and killed six people, including himself.
The answer to terrorism is to help fanatics understand that 1) the modern world will not crumble back into the 15th century; 2) the modern world will defend itself in a variety of ways that include new strategies for air crews and airplanes, and effective strikes at terrorist bases and networks; and 3) not even the people of the Arab countries want to spend the future living like today’s Afghan peasants.
In the meantime, we should rejoice in the promise that even the poor of today’s Middle East can look forward to better health, better nutrition, and longer lives in a 21st century that includes genetic engineering.
This article was published by Knight Ridder Tribune
Dennis T. Avery is based in Churchville, Va., and is director of global food issues for the Hudson Institute of Indianapolis.
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