Peter Borst wrote or quoted- in part:

"they argued, the basic control over scientific work in the United States
was in the hands of a small minority of industrialists and bureaucrats who
have always exploited science for harmful purposes so as to increase their
own power. They believed that scientists, and everyone else for that
matter, should actively work for radical political changes and that if this
means that the progress of science itself may be interrupted that is
something we will have to accept."


I am concerned about statements such as "in the hands of a small minority
of industrialists and bureaucrats" and to politicize science and
"interrupt" it. This smacks more of hysteria and witch hunting than a
rational approach to an important problem. I am in favor of controls, but
the approach noted worries me a great deal and is as harmful or more so
than the problem it addresses.

The opposition to GM was sufficient to cause a major recall of GM corn in
consumer food. It was not hushed up. So that "small minority" is not as
powerful as it seems to be made out to be. That is as long as we live in a
free society. Radical politicization would go a long way to ending that.

In this country, by this self same mindset of radical politicization, we
have successfully killed nuclear power except in the US Navy. But Navy
ships keep safely steaming without problems while California is on the
verge of massive power failures because of opposition to power plants of
any kind.

Do we really want this mindset to also control our food supply? Or
beekeeping?

Bill Truesdell
Bath, ME

--
Learned Hand was right: "[This] much I think I do know--that a society so
riven that the spirit of moderation is gone, no court can save; that a
society where that spirit flourishes, no court need save; that in a society
which evades its responsibility by thrusting upon the courts the nurture of
that spirit, that spirit in the end will perish."