Dots, Defects and Dangers

Today, we're going to do a little theoretical mental exercises.  Don't let that scare you.  I just want to put that up front so that everyone knows this is a mind experiment and not an accusation against several very litigious companies who make money off of trademarking natural processes and suing small farmers.

First, so readily available facts from Google searchers: Brazil is noted to be the epicenter of the Zika virus outbreak in April 2015; Brazil is noted to have one of the highest levels of glyphosate use in agriculture and consumption; glyphosate is noted to cause cancer and birth defects; Brazil has released large numbers of GM mosquitoes in the past to combat disease vectors.

To lay this out a bit, a relatively benign tropical virus discovered in Africa (Zika forest monkeys) in the 1950s, suddenly becomes a major health threat centered in Brazil where they have copiously consumed GM plants, animals and used lots and lots of glyphosate (Round-Up), where it suddenly began causing microcephaly (lit. "small head") and other birth defects.

Now, to my admittedly suspicious mind and overactive imagination, these dots link up to suggest one of two things:
1) The Zika virus mutated in contact with GM cells in the guts of manufactured mosquitoes, and may have been aided and abetted by GM foods and/or the use of glyphosate;
2) The birth defects are actually caused by glyphosate and the Zika virus is being used to cover and "explain" the problem, using a natural cause and vector, rather than face decades of lawsuits and the banning of a very lucrative product (see "DDT").

I do not rule out that the virus may be the actual cause of birth defects and other issues, but given that there is almost no literature discussing these problems before April of 2015, I am hard-pressed to believe that the virus was not modified, either by design or contact with GM genes in plants or animals.  In either case, the culpability of certain malevolent corporations is easily demonstrated.

In sequencing the genome of the Zika virus, one would think it easy to look for patented genes, or even serial numbers (a la Blade Runner) on individual cells.

I perfectly willing to accept that this is all circumstantial and that viruses can mutate naturally, even becoming far more dangerous over time.  However, this kind of event clearly shows the dangers involved in tampering with the genomes of living creatures without a lot more knowledge and practice than we currently have.

If one thing can be learned from the history of science, it is that the Law of Unintended Consequences reigns supreme.  When we begin juggling the foundational substances of Life itself, we are staring the "butterfly effect" straight in the face and daring Fate.  There are many examples of massive boulders resting precariously on tiny pebbles, and to remove even the smallest of them many cause the entire mass to avalanche.

It is the ultimate in hubris and stupidity (often synonymous) to think that humans, with a few decades of trial and error under our belts, can release genetically modified organisms into the wild and not have some kind of blow-back from it.  It is a dangerous and extremely risky game we are playing with the mass of Nature resting on such tiny pebbles.

And while this mucking about with DNA is bad enough, to think that a corporation would purposely modify a virus to cover up the poisonous effects of one of its most successful products if even more horrifying, but to take another lesson from history, it is neither unthinkable nor unprecedented.  Perhaps this situation calls for a much closer look at the origins of the problem.

Let Them Eat Bugs

Kid:  Hi Mom, I'm home from standing idly on the street corner all day hoping something interesting would happen.  What's for dinner?

Mom: Cockroach paste and margarine.

Kid:  Oh Moooooooommmm!  We had that last night!  Johnny's mom made centipede canapes last night.

Mom: Sorry honey, I had to sell your brother's kidney to the CEO of Monsanto just to get this.

Yup, those jolly old bastards who run the world just can't find enough ways to show their contempt for humanity.  Sure, there are plenty of people who eat bugs, but to pronounce that bug powder is going to save the world from starvation is just pure...well, I can't find a polite word for it that has the same emotional content.  Wasn't that the same damn line they fed us with GMOs?

I think all politicians should only receive the local minimum wage and have to pay all taxes and use all services that they force everyone else to comply with.

What really chaps my inner thighs, though, is the way they sell us our doom and make it sound like the greatest thing since water-based lube.

Remember all those films in the 40s, 50s and 60s that sold us the load of horse crap about labor-saving devices and how our lives would be completely free of drudgery in the new age?  That was back when dad could make a decent living and mom could stay home with the kids.  Now mom and dad have to work two jobs each and sell the kids into slavery to make the credit card payments on all the cheap-ass rubbish that lasts two years at best and then must be replaced at premium prices with hefty interest rates to help things long.

By this time, according to World Book Encyclopaedia, we were all supposed to be zipping around in flying cars and hundreds of people, if not more, would be working off-planet on a rotating basis.  Well, we got the rotating part, all right, but not quite in the way we had thought.

Then there was the computer revolution.  Yessiree, we were all going to be working online in air-conditioned comfort whizzing documents back and forth.  Oh sure, we got it.  Now we all sit in vast open rooms staring at monitors day in and day out performing menial tasks while having our eye movements tracks for the least little sign that we may get violent at any moment.

Oh, and who can forget the robot revolution?  We were going to be freed from those mundane, repetitive jobs of putting A-tabs into B-slots.  Now machines would do it all and we could sit back and punch buttons.  Oh, we got it alright, only the robots eliminated three-quarters of all those mundane jobs and the button-pushing was exported to least-cost labor nations.

And now, brace yourself for the 3-D printing revolution!  Yup, those three remaining white-collar jobs will be able to do it all with the press of a button.  They just call up the plans for whatever gizmo they want, hit print, and the printers and robots will jigger it all up and deliver it to their door.

No more need to humanity.  Us useless eaters will be reduced to eating bug paste and watching reruns of Buck Rogers, trying to figure out where the hell we got bumped off the fast-track.

The more you look at it, the more the past century looks like a steady series of steps towards a human-less manufacturing process, with real live working middle-class humans slowly being bumped out of the way by the cold metalic hands of C3PO and R2D2.  It really pisses you off when you realize just how polite and cute those damn machines were while they were impoverishing you.

Pass the bug guts, would ya?


What a load of crap we were sold.  There are precisely six people working off-planet at any given time.  The only flying cars are desperate folks doing a Thelma and Louise off the top floor of the parking garage.  And the miracle of GMO foods has come down to bug paste for dinner.  Hell, those of us who are still working are doing little more than tidying up the place before the last automated process takes over and we are all obsolete.

Makes you wonder if it wouldn't be worth it to tear the whole damn thing down and start over again.  Either way, we'll all be eating bug guts.

GMOs: An Action Plan

(Part I here) (Part II here) (Interview with Drs. Farrell and de Hart)

In my previous two posts, I laid out the arguments.  I tried, as best I could, to present both sides, though frankly I am solidly on the 'against' side at this time.  I say 'at this time' because, like any rational being, I am open to new evidence.  I challenge anyone with a good argument to present their facts in favor of GMOs and I guarantee I will publish it here alongside my own.

That said, I promised to present a model in this essay for a global debate on GMOs.  I think I have made a superficial case for the necessity of such debate, now I want to outline a course of action that I hope to mobilize a great number of people to take.  Through the magic of the internet, my LinkedIn network alone connects to three million people.  This blog has 300-400 unique readers per day, and by six degrees of separation, I should be able to reach well over three million people, if each of us will forward a link to just three more people.

Buyer beware:  I am not promoting myself.  I am promoting an idea and (hopefully) functioning as a seed or kernel to sprout that idea into action.

In recent years, the idea of 'crowd funding' has grown very quickly.  Whether it's the Mars One project or films such as Iron Sky, the idea of appealing to large internet audiences for support is a valid business model.  So, with that said, here's the model:

The UN is a global governance body, for better or worse.  It is, therefore, susceptible to mass opinion, whether it likes that idea or not.  It has proven that it is controllable by corporate interests in that it has promoted global warming, feminism and social services as business models at the behest of business interests.

We also know that the UN does have some teeth.  Those who go against the UN are subject to public scorn, be they the United States or various interests such as Greenpeace, et al.  The UN can throw some weight around, and with enough pressure from any given source, it can be steered.

Furthermore, the corporations letting GMOs into the wild, such as Monsanto and DuPont, are multi-nationals that can easily slip from one jurisdiction to another to avoid sanctions and other controls.  Likewise, their products release pollen, which does not recognize fences or national boundaries, thus even if one country bans GMOs (as many have), crops in neighboring nations can cross-pollinate with natural species.

The only way to address these issues, and things like clear and honest labeling, is to go to the top - the UN.  Many will not like this idea and say that it empowers the UN over national sovereignty, and they have a good point, but the issue is such that there is little other choice in addition to a global boycott, which we must also address.

I propose that people start swamping the UN with email and letters to force a global conference, even a court, to hear the issues.  This court should have three judges, one an expert in Western law, one an expert in Eastern law, and one specialized in international law.  There should be a jury of twelve composed of six recognized experts who agree with GMO technology, and six who are openly and vocally opposed to it.  There should be a period to allow people around the world to file sworn affidavits detailing their experiences with GMOs, as well as those from acknowledged experts in the field - pro and con.  The proceedings should be webcast so that all humans can participate in this crucial debate.

Most importantly, the open dissemination of GMO products must have a moratorium imposed on them for at least 25 years.  There are far too many unknowns in this technology.  The issue of 'junk DNA' alone demands that the use of GMO tech be stopped until such major questions are answered.  We just don't know what huge chunks of DNA do, nor do we know what can happen if we start mixing and matching bits of DNA from different species, or creating new genes that could enter our DNA permanently with unknown results.

The potential long-term problems are just too great to ignore.  We know that every technology has its drawbacks, and we've already caused major long-term damage to our habitats with accidents like Fukushima.  We are challenging Fate by stepping into realms where we just don't know enough to go, and we risk the entire human race, if not the entire biosphere, in doing so.

Start writing the UN General Secretary and your national delegation.  Swamp them with email and letters until they can no longer ignore or dismiss this issue.  Demand open hearings, such as the one I outlined above, and demand a stop to open dissemination until the outstanding issues can be resolved.  If your nation is not yet recognized, such as Palestine or Texas, then you can address your concerns to UNPO.  Also, contact the World Court, since GMO technology is potentially a Crime Against Humanity, and possibly even Genocide - two issues for which the court exists to address.  Finally, contact your local and national representatives and demand that they support a moratorium on GMO tech and support a global debate on the issue.

GMOs are an emergency issue.  We don't know what we are doing to our long-term survivability and we know that GMOs in the wild agressively mix with other natural species and transfer genetic material to them.  Monsanto has proved this in courts of law by suing farmers whose crops were accidentally pollinated by neighboring GMO crops.

We also know that GMO crops do NOT meet all the criteria for patents, and any patents already issued should be revoked, thus removing the profit motive.  Companies who break any moratorium should be fined an amount equal to one year's revenues (not profits but revenues).  Give the law real teeth and make infractions really hurt in the only way one can with corporations.  This money can be put towards helping farmers who have been damaged by GMO crops.

If everyone who reads this gets the contact links to just three other like-minded folks, it would reach millions in a matter of days.  We have readers from 98 countries on a regular basis.  Let's put that kind of power to work for the benefit of our species.  It won't take you more than ten minutes of your entire life to get this issue moving.  If you are under 30 years old and/or don't yet have children, then the imperative is even greater to address GMOs now, before the problem becomes a crisis.

Don't forget to contact your local and national media, while you're at it.  Make them sensitive to the issue so they will look for any stirrings on the part of global bodies, and perhaps - just maybe - some will join us in bringing the problem to a head.

Thanks for listening, and good luck!

The Issue: GMOs And Survival

(Part 1 here) (Part 3 here)

For too long, humans have sat by passively while corporate and government interests have run rough-shod over the rest of us.  They have frequently created and instituted technologies and processes that were later found to have egregious effect on the world population as a whole.  Examples?  Pharmaceuticals, geo-engineering, nuclear power, and the list goes on.  In each case, safer alternatives were suppressed because they weren't as profitable, or the technologies were put in place without a full debate by all parties on the benefits and detriments of the technologies, usually with a profit motive involved.

We are currently being damaged as a whole by things like Fukushima, strange diseases and side-effects from pharma, massive natural disasters attributable, as least in part, to modification of the environment (geo-engineering), not to mention unbridled profiteering causing economic hardship worldwide.

We now stand on the verge of instituting a technology that will have profound long-term effects on humanity and the very survival of our species.  Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) are a very real and present danger to our survival as a race.  We are quickly reaching the point where it will be possible to modify the human genome and have those modifications become a permanent part of our species, for better or worse, and it is the 'worse' part that concerns us most.  The Law of Unintended Consequences states that whatever benefit we gain on the whole from GMOs will be offset by detrimental and possibly horrific consequences that will not be easily remedied (see Fukushima, Chernobyl, et al.).

The possible physical effects are only part of the debate.  As I discussed yesterday, the legal ramifications are just as horrific.  The ability to create beings as a dedicated slave race or engineer living beings whose sole purpose is to be diced up for body parts raises dozens of ethical and moral issues that are in no way simple or easy to dismiss.

Humanity has spent the past few hundred years making great strides in individual liberty and human rights.  The creation of legally-owned beings for the purpose of hard or hazardous labor - a disposable race - would reverse all the achievements we have made as a species and lead to a cheapening of life on the whole.  After all, if we can accept that a certain group of individuals is disposable, then it is a short jump to seeing the entire human race as such, or more likely the establishment of a genetic elite who could not be challenged since they hold the power of life and death with legal precedent and backup.

The moral and philosophical issues are even harder to debate.  Some would take the point that only God owns an individual and is empowered to muck about with our genome.  The counter-argument would be that if only God is empowered, then how is it that we mere mortals have discovered the technology?  Without the ability to place God in the witness box, there is little weight to such arguments, and many would see them as archaic.  The debate is millennia old and shows no signs of being resolved soon.

In fact, what makes humans free but our ability to kill anyone who challenges that freedom?  Has not all of human history shown that those with gold and guns make the rules?  Aren't morals and ethics just idealistic constructs backed up by appeal to a higher authority that no one can prove exists (assuming one is Aristotelian in outlook)?  Especially in the post-Darwin era, might-makes-right has taken on a kind of natural imperative, especially in the age of Nietzsche and his ilk.  If God is dead, then there is no teeth behind the claim of moral superiority on that side of the argument.

Those in favor of GMOs and related technologies can run out dozens of proposed benefits to humanity, and on the surface they seem quite desirable.  Improved bodies and immunity.  Longer and better quality lives.  Greater harvests and healthier foods to support increasing populations.  Lofty goals indeed.  But as we have seen again and again, the reality often falls far short of the rhetoric.

Iran's attempts to develop nuclear power have been used as an excuse to place the country and its people under threat of invasion and economic sanctions for the better part of 30 years now, though similar programs in other countries have gone unchallenged.  Fukushima is rapidly poisoning our planet and the effects will be with us for thousands of years.  The area around Chernobyl has been a wasteland for decades and likely will be for centuries to come.  British dumping of radioactive waste in the North Sea has been poisoning that region for 40 years.  And this is only one technology.

Internal combustion engines and petroleum fuels.  Chemical waste from manufacturing.  Fracking.  Just read the list of side-effects on most pharmaceuticals to see that not everything is as peachy-keen as advertised.  There is a quiet war building with super-bugs created by the profligate used of antibiotics, which were hailed just 60 short years ago as the redemption of mankind and the end of disease.

GMO technology has been foisted upon humanity with little or no debate as to the desirability and long-term effects of the processes.  There has been no great public debates on the moral and ethical hazards.  Problems and horror stories have been buried in the name of profit.  Just one example is the Indonesian cocoa crop.

GMO tech promised to provide cocoa trees to Indonesia that would have larger canopies, produce more and better fruit, and increase the profits of the small farmers who used it.  Instead, the trees have larger canopies at the expense of root development, so the trees literally fall out of the ground.  Those that don't fail to provide the promised bonanza of higher yields.  In the longer-term, Indonesia's cocoa crop, one of the largest in the world, has been damaged and many small farmers have been impoverished due to crop failure.

In other areas, Monsanto's Round-Up ready seeds promised the use of less poisons to kill pests and weeds.  Instead, the resistance engineered into the crops have transferred to the pests and weeds, as well, causing greater use of highly toxic Round-Up and other poisons to maintain the same levels of efficacy pre-GMO.

Then there's the whole issue of ingesting GMO foods.  There is mounting evidence that these foods cause horrific diseases and organ damage when eaten.  These effects have been hidden by a complicit media hoping to protect advertising revenues, but the stories are getting out.  In any event, it is safe to say that the corporate interests are hiding information that might harm their profits, and the anti-GMO side is likely guilty of hyperbole in some cases.  Either way, the facts must be placed on the table and debated.

In the past, humanity as a whole did not have the ability to mount a global debate.  It is only since the communications revolution and democratization of satellite and internet technology that the entire human population has had the ability to mount such an endeavor.  Until now, corporate and government interests have had a free ride in protecting each other's revenue streams at the expense of the rest of us humans.

The time has arrived whereby humanity can mount a global debate and every human has the ability to join in.  The nature of and threat from GMOs demands that we open this debate now and on a global scale.  We have a global institution in the UN with the resources and teeth to bring all the parties to the table and enforce the results.  We have the technology to invite all humans to participate in a way never before possible.  And we have an issue that demands a global solution before it goes any further and becomes irreparable.

In my next column, A Modest Proposal.

Opening Arguments

(Part 2 here) (Part 3 here)

Your honor, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, thank you for your time in hearing this case.

I represent the people of the world - natural human beings - and their generations yet to come, whose very existance hinges upon the outcome of thise case.  Your decision will affect millions, if not billions of lives over the next several hundred years.  This is not hyperbole, but a fact that I intend to prove during the course of this trial.

The facts of the case will be complex and subtle, and it will require deep reflection and understanding on your part to grasp what is at stake here.  The argument will touch on both physics and metaphysics.  It will delve into the very nature of what it is to be human, and who can and does own those things which make up our mental, physical and spiritual selves.

This case is styled Humanity vs. Biotech Companies, et al., for a reason.  This is a class-action suit on the part of every single human being living and not yet born - the Plaintiffs - versus companies who seek to "improve" human beings or modify them for specific purposes, and thus patent and claim ownership of some or all of the human genome.

Some would call this "playing God" while others say that no individual or organization can own DNA or genes, and thus have no claim on the results of processing and modifying the genomes of living things.  Yet, there is a long history, predating genetic research, that has established legal precedent for these claims of ownership.

Under Western patent law, a patent is granted if a process can not arise in nature - in other words requires humans to create it - it uses a documented and repeatable process, like Henry Ford's assembly line, and the product is unique and useful to others.  In granting a patent, the law protects this process and its product as intellectual property for a certain amount of time, so that the inventor may profit from his labor.

Patents have already been granted and upheld for genetically modified lab animals, food crops and cloning.  Thus, the law has recognized the right of individuals and companies to 'own' various lifeforms because they were the product of a process invented by Man and/or they contained artificial genes and chromosomes that were created by Man.

So far, these patents have only applied to lower animals, plants and microbes, however, we are here today because we are on the verge of applying these processes to human beings, the products of which will be called property of patent owners.

We intend to prove that this is, in fact, slavery under a different guise.  We intend to show that the genome of lifeforms can not be owned by any one entity, no matter what the circumstances are that created the lifeform.  By granting even a small foothold into the realm of owning Life in any form, we open a Pandora's Box that can and will ultimately lead to mass slavery on a scale never before seen in human history - a concept that violates the very heart of human development over the past 300 years since the Enlightenment.

The defense will argue that their lifeforms will not be used as slave labor or that their processes will be so limited in scope that they will never lead to the creation of entire classes of sub-humans, but history teaches us differently.

Slavery has been endemic to humanity since records began.  Whether involuntary or indentured, slavery has existed for as long as humans have had civilization - until recently.  Beginning in the 1600s, and on up to today, we have sought to end slavery.  The highest ideals and sensibilities of modern society is that slavery is unacceptable in any form and for any reason.

The defense will argue that beings containing genetic property will only be charged a small royalty fee throughout their life.  In effect, they will argue, this fee is no different than government taxes on people, who by virtue of being born in a certain location, must legally pay a fee called tax for the rest of their lives.

Here we will step into a very sticky area, because they are right.  Taxes are legal, patents are legal, so why shouldn't life-long royalty fees charged to humans with patented genetic modifications be legal?  In fact, ladies and gentlemen, you decision in this case will change how we look at taxes, property and life.  The verdict you render will have far-reaching implications that touch at the heart of our modern life - how governments operate, who can own what things, and is slavery acceptable in any instance?

We will argue that children contain the unique genetic imprint of their parents,  Thus, they are the direct and repeatable product of the union of two people that could not have arisen in any other way.  Yet, we do not view children as the property of the parents, nor do they own fealty to their parents for any other reason than voluntary loyalty.  There are no legal precedents allowing parents to claim ownership, nor are they allowed to demand royalties from their children.  Why should corporations be granted this priviledge?

Even more worrisome is the notion that an individual may become inadvertent property by virtue of having ingested a patented gene or chromosome.  If we take as axiomatic that we are what we eat, then it stands to reason that by eating GMO foods and incorporating private property into our beings, we become property of a corporation until such time as that property is purged from our bodies.  As beneficiaries of private property, we therefore would be required to pay royalties to the patent owners under current law.

As you can see, this case has far-ranging implications into nearly every aspect of our existance, and the decision you render here will affect generations of humans to come.  The possiblity exists that finding in the favor of the Plaintiffs will in fact lead to all of humanity one day becoming nothing more than products and property of corporations.

The only way to stop this is to remove the profit incentive.  By taking away the right of property and the right to benefit financially from intellectual property, these corporations will cease their efforts to engineer slave races.

We claim that all humans are created equal, by whatever process, and endowed by God with rights that can not be taken away, among these being liberty and self-determination.  We stand on the threshold of two very different futures.  Either we chose the road of freedom, or we choose slavery.  There is no middle ground.  A foot in the door towards slavery will be thrown wide open at some point, sooner or later.  We are tasked here with closing that door forever or risk losing our humanity - possibly forever.

Our decision here is that important.

The trial will be long and involved.  It will require surveys of history, science and metaphysics.  It will demand profound reflection on our parts into the nature of what it is to be alive and to be human.  We will be wrestling with questions that have perplexed philosophers for centuries.

It is absolutely vital that your decision come down on the side of humans and liberty.  We owe no less to our children and their children.  While profit and the advancement of science are noble and necessary, we can not sacrifice our future to them.

We ask your undivided attention.  We ask your deep reflection.  And we ask that you render a verdict that will ensure the greatest benefit to the largest number of humans.  Remember, there is no grey area, there is only black and white.  Either life itself can be owned, or it can not.  Any other decision will allow future challenges of this kind, if we are ever able to bring the matter to argument again.  Do not squander this opportunity.

Thank you very much for your attention.

Protecting Our Precious Bodily Fluids

The question is not whether we can do a thing, but whether we should.

History is replete with good ideas and bad outcomes.

Nuclear energy had great promise as an idea.  Boundless electricity from rocks.  No smoke and relatively quiet.  Yet, one would be hard-pressed to find a room full of people who would say it was a great idea.  With Fukushima spreading radiation planet-wide, British nuclear waster poisoning the North Sea and a No Man's Land around Chernobyl, it's safe to say that maybe that technology was not such a great idea.

There was a time when TeeVee seemed like a God-send.  Great literature and drama could be democratized.  Debates among the best and brightest could be brought live to our homes.  People could vicariously experience history as it happens.  Yet, in hindsight, it probably wasn't such a great idea.  The vast majority of TeeVee content is mindless rubbish.  Marketers have learned to manipulate people's behavior and opinions without most knowing it is being done.  Instead of elevating humanity to new heights, it has rather debased the masses with vile pablum.

At one time, cell phones seemed like a great idea.  One could contact just about anyone from just about anywhere.  Yet the result has been social gatherings where people do nothing but tap or talk into their phones completely oblivious to those around them.  Employers can contact and track employees around the clock and around the globe.  Government agencies can record our most inane conversations and activate our phone cameras and microphones at will to listen in on our lives.

Great promises.  Lousy results.

The problem is, humanity has this really bad habit of diving off cliffs without checking the waters below.  By the time we see the rocks, we're already balled up on top of them.  The only consideration with new technologies is how fast one can generate a profit, not what the short- and long-term consequences of the techology will be.

And that brings us to the latest Big Deal: genetics and transhumanism.

If someone came to me tomorrow and said they could not only restore my eyesight, but give me greatly enhanced senses by mucking around with my DNA, it would be very tempting to accept.  If they could also cure multiple sclerosis and regenerate my knees, ending decades of pain in weeks, I'd probably jump at the chance.  Just a couple of questions, though:

What effect will tinkering with my DNA have on any potential progeny?  Could viruses that invade my body at the cellular level be mutated by any exposure to my upgraded DNA?  And what about the environment?  After all, I shed skin and hair, leave behind saliva, oils and other bodily fluids, and intermix with my environment in any number of very intimate ways.

We are well into new technologies now that have and will continue to have very profound consequences, far beyong just giving a few folks cancer or causing their hair to fall out.  We're talking generations and possibly permanent changes that could cause the species to cease.  Yet, we are amazingly nonchalant and unconcerned about such matters.

At the root of all our problems is the culture of immediate gratification that we have built our society around.  We have been trained like show dogs to herd in the direction of anything new with lots of bells and flashy lights.  Like addicts, we crave a fix of novelty without any thought to tomorrow, much less to long-term survival.  We casually toss away our iFad5 for iFad6 without considering the materials and resources that went into creating something that is still viable and usable.

Oh sure, it sounds like such a great idea to tinker with food crops and increase yields or resistance to disease, but what is it doing to the human race and to the entire biosphere of the planet?  Nothing exists here in isolation.  A change to even the smallest part will have greatly multiplied effects in the future.

If you believe in evolution, as a great many people do (out of ignorance), then you believe that all extant life is the result of billions of years of mutations in DNA, one at a time, with some mutations causing death and others adding advantages.  Yet, here we are purposefully mutating entire genomes in dozens of species with no concern whatsoever to what happens millions of years from now.  After all, we will have made our profit and long since passed on, so who cares, right?

Who cares if we add spider silk to goat's milk or bio-luminescence to spinach?  It serves our purpose right now.  Who cares if we add shut-off genes to corn to increase profits?  It won't harm humans, even though we eat the corn and absorb its very essence into our physical beings, and it keeps investors happy.

We have become such selfish and myopic people.  We have no concern for anything past our next pleasure fix.  We marvel at our technological achievements and yet use them for such inane and ridiculous things.  What good is global instantaneous communications if all we have to say is, "At the mall," or "Prado makes me gag...BARF!"  What good is high-yield corn this year if next year the field is barren because the anti-biotic genes in the corn killed all the beneficial bacteria in the soil?  What good is smoke-free energy from rocks if we poison the entire planet for the next 50,000 years?

We are all suffering from a kind of self-destructive insanity.  Our culture is so infused with the idea that someone or something will come along to save us from ourselves that we happily shit in our nest because it gives us instant relief, not thinking that at some point we will get E. Coli.

In the collective, we are like a giant child, completely unable to control our impulses and ready to pitch a mighty fit if we don't receive every demand on the instant.  And perhaps that is by design.  Perhaps a pernicious few have decided to sacrifice all of humanity so that they can live rich and lavish lifestyles.

It seems that General Jack D. Ripper was on to something.  Maybe we are victims, but in claiming victimhood, we are in danger of laying down and doing nothing to stop it.  In any event, it can't hurt to listen to the General's reasoning:

General Jack D. Ripper: Mandrake, do you realize that in addition to fluoridating water, why, there are studies underway to fluoridate salt, flour, fruit juices, soup, sugar, milk... ice cream. Ice cream, Mandrake, children's ice cream.
Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake: [very nervous] Lord, Jack.
General Jack D. Ripper: You know when fluoridation first began?
Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake: I... no, no. I don't, Jack.
General Jack D. Ripper: Nineteen hundred and forty-six. 1946, Mandrake. How does that coincide with your post-war Commie conspiracy, huh? It's incredibly obvious, isn't it? A foreign substance is introduced into our precious bodily fluids without the knowledge of the individual. Certainly without any choice. That's the way your hard-core Commie works.

Just because something is NEW doesn't mean it is necessarily IMPROVED.  A little circumspection on the part of our species is long past due.

After all, how much more free time do you have now with all those labor-saving devices in your home?  And if you conclude that you have more now, then what are you doing with that extra time?  Texting your bathroom habits?  Watching TeeVee?  Have you used any other it to improve your or anyone else's life?

It's probably the fluoride.  Seemed like such a great idea back in the day.

Custom-Fit Genes

For eons, humans have eaten the plants and animals that inhabit our surroundings.  At the molecular level, we are bound to our environment in a way few of us really think about.

When we eat something, we are ingesting everything that meal consumed, plus its DNA.  As our bodies digest the meal, its molecules are either directly used by our bodies, or are rendered into a form which can be used.  Everything about that meal becomes us in a most intimate and fundamental way.

UPDATE: How about custom assassinations using bioweapons tuned to individual DNA?

 Within the past 20 years or more, humans have learned how to manipulate the very structure of life.  We have cataloged its structure and begun rearranging it to suit our whims.  We are changing the very fabric of the reality into which we have spent millions of years assimilating, with little concern on the part of the masses for the long-term effects.  This is in spite of the fact that we are all aware on some level that every action has a consequence, good, bad or indifferent.  And it's usually the bad we don't prepare for that bites us in the tail.

Back in the 90s, I was witness to a series of experiments injecting the P53 Wild gene into tumor cells.  The gene was attached to the protein coat of a certain virus and then injected directly into the tumor.  The protein coat acted as a key to allow the gene inside the cell wall, where it was incorporated into the cell's DNA.  The tests were reasonably successful with the P53 Wild gene acting as a switch to turn off the run-away growth of cancer cells.

In those experiments, the P53 gene was 'wild', meaning it was a naturally occuring, though unmutated, gene found in all of our cells.

Today we have companies such as Monsanto and DuPont liberally mixing and matching genes of different species, turning them on and off, and even creating wholly new ones from the basic building blocks of DNA.  The chimeras created in this fashion are liberally sprinkled in the environment in the form of GMOs for the stated purpose of increasing food crop yields, or producing natural substances on a mass scalle, or even to provide antibiotics and antivirals within in the foods we eat.

There is no concern for consent or even basic information.  There have been no life-long controlled trials to see what the outcomes will be.  If anything, there is callous disregard for how these modifications will affect not only individual humans, but the global environment.  Some would suggest that this cynical disregard for consequences is motivated merely by profit, but I believe there is a far more sinister agenda at play.

There are numerous examples of companies such as Monsanto suing farmers for possession of their crops for the simple reason that the farmer's crops were cross-pollenated by neighboring GMO fields.  The pollen carried patented genes into the farmer's crops, thus allowing the mega-corp to claim ownership on the basis that the natural crop now contained their intellectual property.  Governments have issued patents and courts have upheld claims, so there's no reason to think things will change soon or easily.

Monsanto and others have also gone on pogroms to destroy 'heirloom' seed banks that preserve generational seeds that can be reseeded.  The GMO seeds switch off after one generation so that the crop cannot be reseeded without buying fresh stock from the corporation that owns the patents.

Some might see these actions as strictly profit motivated, others see an agenda to take control of food sources, and these are likely correct.  But I submit there is a much more nefarious agenda at work.

If it is conceivable that our bodies ingest the DNA of foods we eat, and that DNA can be manipulated to produce, say, viral protein coats.  Then it is easily within the realm of possibility that GMO foods could insert patented genes into the human genome.  If this is possible, then any number of outcomes can be realized.

For one, if a human is found to have patented genes in his or her genome, then legal precedent states that the owner of the patent can claim ownership of that person.  If that's the case, then the owner can claim royalty rights for the life of that human, as well as any offspring they have (presuming the gene is passed on).  In time, the mega-corps could legally claim ownership of the human race, forcing us to pay annual royalties simply to be alive.

If we take that scenario as a given, it is entirely possible for the inserted gene to cause things such as vastly shortened lifespans.  Presumably, the patent owner would have a remedy that could be sold to turn off the gene or forestall its expression for another year until the next payment.

Genes could also be inserted into our DNA making us susceptible to various diseases.  This would create a rather lucrative licensing opportunity with Big Pharma for cures or treatments.

At the highest level of the agenda, this kind of ability would grant certain mega-corps absolute authority over humankind.  They would have the ability to 'tax' us and the enforcement would be certain death or disability.  We would be utterly dependent on the patent owners for every aspect of our lives.  And the worst part is that all of this could be achieved before any of us is even aware that it was happening.

It seems rather apparent that the world is moving towards a global government and that the form of that government would be corporatocracy.  A select few mega-corps, which already operate above all laws, could congeal their iron-handed control within a couple of generations, depending on how fast they can infect the human genome.  And who could argue with their taxing scheme?

While this may seem like wild speculation, there are plenty of reasons to think this is quite plausible.  The P53 Wild experiments show that gene 'seeding' is doable.  There is a lot of research hinting that the HIV virus and others were manufactured to affect certain genetic haplogroups.  Courts have upheld patent ownership even in cases of 'accidental' cross-pollenation.  And even proposed laws, such as California's doomed Prop37, to label GMO foods have failed to protect humans from this insidious attack.

There is also sufficient reason to believe that at least some mega-corps are acting in such a way as to belie an egenda of global domination.  This has been visible for at least the past century or so.

From the standpoint of increased crop yields, GMO technology holds little promise of greater harvests.  There are plenty of failures to point to.  Here in Indonesia, cocoa growers were sold a bill of goods that promised trees with larger canopies, and more and bigger pod production.  However, the larger canopy came at the cost of an equal root ball and the trees have literally fallen out of the ground.  On top of that, the pods are hopelessly withered and undersized, though there are more of them per tree.  As a consequence, Indonesia's cocoa crop, one of the largest in the world, has suffered quite a bit this past season.

We already know that the use of antibiotics in livestock have spurred the growth of more virulent disease-causing bacteria.  The use of antibiotics can also be blamed for weakening our natural immune systems, making us even more susceptible to disease.

How much does any one of us know about what we put into our bodies?  How many folks read the fine print on vaccines before we allow them to be pumped into our bodies, much less those of our children?  And those are voluntary actions.  What about the foods we eat?  How much do you know about the corporate-farm grown meats and vegetables on your plate?

Worse still, how many of us consider the consequences of allowing corporations so much power over our lives?  Worse still, how many of us close our eyes to these possibilities because they seem too far-fetched and beyond consideration?

Finally, if we know mice can grow human ears, pigs generate human blood and goats produce spider silk, what sorts of things don't we know about?  And how far has this permeated our daily lives before any admission is made?  Furthermore, by actual consent, or consent by lack of action, how much have we allowed this to be done to us without our knowledge?

The time for discussion is passing quickly.  By the time we know the full implications of this technology, we may be in mortal danger with all-powerful corporations holding the key to our survival.  The most dangerous part is the unintended consequences, which always appear because every single variable can never be fully accounted.  For such deep and lasting effects, we are asking far too few questions and allowing far too much free rein.

Are you willing to take these risks with the next 20 generations of your family?  Where's your line in the strand?