I wrote

>> The suggestion of scientist speakers for the Jan mtg is very good.
>> An obvious choice would be Margaret Mellon PhD JD, chief of the Union of
>> Concerned Scientists work on GM.  Also you might invite Dr John Losey,
>> asst. prof. at Cornell, the leader of the team that published the monarch
>> results in _Nature_.  And then of course there's Prof. Patrick Brown of UC
>> Davis, whose general criticisms of current GM crops I've previously
>> recommended. You could also consider a global star, Prof D T Suzuki of
>>UBC  -
>> one of the most prominent of GM critics.

to which Paul Cherubini commented:
>For the sake of balance, someone to represent the pro-GM point of
>view would be good too.


        The GE industry has no hesitation in mounting entirely proGE
propaganda (by Val Giddings, C S Prakash, etc) with no attempt at balance,
and has thoroughly subverted the FDA etc.  They don't care about balance.
The scientists I mentioned are not antiGE, they're genuinely balanced.  The
fact that their balanced analysis points to severe reservations about GE
does not create an opening for proGE advocates.
        I hesitate to quarrel with Ames (who taught me and for whom I have
much respect; I was present when he announced the Ames test).  But in some
parts of the world such as mine, life expectancy has scarcely increased in
the past century for those who got thru infancy.  The claim that cancer is
just because people are living longer has serious defects, including the
sheer fact that people are, in that sense, not living longer.
        My idea of a real authority would be S S Epstein 'The Politics of
Cancer'.  He does not quote numbers which are bound to be meaningless to
the reader.

R

-
Robt Mann
consultant ecologist
P O Box 28878   Remuera, Auckland 1005, New Zealand
                (9) 524 2949